Adi Lavy's Camp Sundown shows the lives of children allergic to light - a condition called XP - at a Summer camp, where they can meet to interact in larger groups. Photographically, a nightmare project: There is almost no light available.
Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders
via (Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography
A week or so ago, Eric Etheridge e-mailed to tell me that his collection of portraits of Freedom Riders is being published this month.* This is a wonderful project, about which I have posted directly [1] and indirectly [2][3] a couple of times in the past. Eric has launched a separate blog for the Freedom Riders project here.
In his email, Eric mentioned that this is an ongoing project. He noted that that while he had managed to photograph roughly 100 of the courageous citizens who participated in the freedom rides in Jackson, Mississippi and had identified about 80 others who had died, he was still trying to locate about 140 individuals who'd taken part in the freedom rides. He hopes to solicit their participation in the project. (Some of those he has located have declined to be photographed, while Eric is trying to coordinate with still others - things take time, after all..) In any case, at this web page Eric has posted a list of individuals known to have participated in the freedom rides though Mississippi whom he has thus far been unable to locate. Have a look at his list. If you know, or think you know, or know anyone you think might know any of these people, any of the individuals on it drop Eric an email. I am certain he will appreciate any leads you can offer.
For my part, I believe Eric has undertaken an incredibly important task. He is recovering for us a set of true American heroes. Looking into the eyes of these men and women should make it just a tiny bit more difficult to sit back meekly while contemporary government officials plow under precisely the civil and political liberties that the Freedom Riders risked so much to obtain and defend. __________ * Eric Etheridge. 2008. Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders. New York: Atlas & Company.
This week’s New Yorker has an entertaining profile about Pascal Dangin, retoucher extraordinaire and owner of Box Studios.
I first heard about Pascal Dangin when I saw the Guy Bourdin exhibition at Pace Macgill a few years ago. I was really impressed with the color and over-all look of the prints. I asked too many questions and found out that they were made by Pascal from the original vintage chromes specifically for the exhibition.
From what I could gather, there was quite a bit of work to do in order to get the colors to pop the way Bourdin meant them to. I’m not sure about what went into scanning and printing them but you could tell that someone worked extremely hard to make them as gorgeous and meticulous as they were.
For comparison, see the current Marvin E. Newman exhibition at Silverstein Gallery consisting of recently printed Inkjet prints of vintage chromes. While I admire Mr. Newman for dedicating himself to the newest in print technology (I was told he made the prints himself), I really wish he could have worked with someone more experienced on them. Not all the pictures are lacking but a whole bunch (even visible in the Jpgs online) seem to be flat with little color and no real blacks. I’m easily disappointed especially when I’m expecting images to just pop off the page.
I guess it would be interesting to see what someone like Pascal Dangin could do with Marvin E. Newman’s vintage photographs (the exhibition is still worth seeing either way).
Dangin has worked with the cream of the crop for years now and has built up an enormous business with 80 employees at his beck and call. Mario Sorrenti, Steven Meisel, Craig McDean, Annie Leibovitz, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin and Philip-Lorca diCorcia all trust and rely on his eye to clarify and perfect their images.
I suggest reading the entire story written by Lauren Collins as it contains quite a few interesting tidbits about the commercial photographic world of magazines and advertising.
?But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone?s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.?
About bad retouching:
?I want people to have an understanding of the skeleton and musculature and how it works. There is nothing worse than looking at an ankle or a calf that?s wrong. This is what bad retouching can do?you see in magazines girls having their legs slimmed and they no longer have tibias and femurs, and it?s weird.?
About celebrities and fashion:
“But this world is not reality?it?s about drawing people toward an ideal vision, if we?re talking about fashion photography. You have to think that celebrities are playing roles the same way they do in movies.?
As an added bonus watch this video that circulated a few years ago showing what actually happens to a model from a photo shoot to the finishing touches on a computer.
Today we launch a new series of conversations with various Magnum photographers. For our first conversation we invited Jörg M. Colberg, founder and editor of the fine-art photography blog Conscientious and experienced interviewer, to talk to Magnum photographer Miguel Rio Branco about his work and photography. This conversation is cross-published at Jörg's own blog. I hope you enjoy the read and please let us know what you think.
Jörg Colberg: When people hear "Magnum" I think many of them will think of classic b/w photojournalism. With its use of often very vibrant colour, your work clearly doesn't fall into that category. Now colour photography has been widely accepted, but it hasn't always been this way. Was using colour an obvious choice for you? And since you have a background as a director of photography for movies I'm wondering how much that also contributed to your development of your own photographic style?
Miguel Rio Branco: Today it is possible that when people hear Magnum they are not anymore seeing just traditional black and white, since there are already some members using color in an expressive way for some time, and also I see that Magnum is growing into a dynamic creative force with many individual paths and not only in the traditional photojournalistic way.
My own work was never only about color since after painting, in the beginning I did most of the time both, black and white and color, as well as experimental films (New York 1970-72). What happened is that in 1980, while living in São Paulo, my archives burned, and what was left were mostly the color slides that were traveling with me .
And my color, when I look at it now, I see it as not being really very colorful. Most were monocromatic, with some red and sometimes some blues here and there. Never the whole rainbow. One of the things that shows is that there is a dramatic use of color, and this relates a lot to my painting background. But painting is not only the background since I am still painting again since the mid eighties .
The other link is with cinema and music.
I was never really aware of the big names in photography until 1974, and this after already six years of using photography as my main medium. I lived in New York from 1970 to 1972, and never saw one exhibition of photography; my contacts were mostly with artists and movie people. So my influences came definitely from painting and cinema.
The act of editing came from the audiovisuals that I did at the time, the framing from the movie camera, the not cropping afterwards came from that situation as well as the lack of many verticals.
So my photographic style is basically a non-linear style, which depends very much on the construction of the images, the poetic links created with the images, and not with a linear aspect of framing and use of light and color.
"In recent years Wouda has photographed numerous secondary schools in the Netherlands, both in the provinces and the Randstad conurbation. He consciously avoids photographing in classes and focuses instead on places in which pupils relax between lessons and are able to be themselves." (source)
I had the pleasure to meet Christophe Maout just recently, so I was able to see his work in person. I like both his series "spring" and "homelux", the latter of which he talks about in a new interview with Zoum Zoum.
In the world of Mamoru Tsukada, photography exists as a medium to relate himself to the world and its invisible structures. In Spectre, the subject matter is not apparent at first glance - we see bold splashes of color, abstract shapes…
“The new works ‘SPECTER’ have been created using a humorous and physical way putting masks over a camera lens. I use this technique in order to create an image of the inside and outside of masks at same time, in two dimensions. Front is back and back is front. This work is to reveal the ‘optic nerve’ rather than sight, which reflects and challenges how blind people recognize the world.”
" In formal terms, Pertti Kekarainen's works are characterized by the multi-interpretative nature of space. He combines his photographs with local elements of colour that sometimes appear to conform to the space presented in the piece and are sometimes contrary to it. These features create tension and a slightly surreal atmosphere." Read more at:http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/2008/05/pertti_kekarainen.html.
Last Updated ( Saturday, 10 May 2008 )
Color Carbon Printing
via Conscientious
Thursday, 08 May 2008
Last night, I had the opportunity to meet Tod Gangler, the man behind Art & Soul studio. Tod produces color carbon prints, a incredibly complicated process that uses pigments, gelatine, and all other kinds of obscure materials - plus high-tech lasers to etch sets of negatives to be used (it's a contact printing process, and it uses three separate negatives for different colour layers).
I have the feeling that most readers by now have looked at the samples that can be found online and are wondering what the big deal is. If you had been there last night, to see the photos, you would know. In my whole life, I have never seen photos of such stunning physical beauty. The tonal ranges in those prints I have never encountered anywhere else, and for the first time I saw photos that conveyed a very clear sense of a third dimension.
In a sense, the photos looked as "un-digital" as possible - instead of having this kind of edgy crispness that digital photos usually have (even those that aren't completely overprocessed), the photos were amazingly smooth, with what looked like an infinite number of colours. It was quite unbelievable - as was talking to Tod and getting some idea of what actually goes into making those photos.
I think I'll start saving up some money to get selected photos from my own work printed that way...
It’s strange to find a photographer associated with catfish but it probably has to do with Suthep Kritsanavarin’s series, Four Thousand Island…Where the Mekong Die?
In this documentary project, Suthep focused his sight on the fishermen whose daily lives depend on the Mekong river’s giant catfish and other endangered species.
Whether you are a Martin Parr fan or not, there is another good article about him at the UK Times Online. I’m definitely a fan although I prefer his earlier and what I consider his more subtle work.
A few memorable quotes:
?Ordinary people and ordinary things, like the local supermarket, inspire me with the same passion that leads other photographers to go to war zones, or famines, or take pictures of Aids victims.?
?We are surrounded by pictures of propaganda of one sort or another, which even quite intelligent people don?t seem to realise. Even a family snapshot album is carefully edited so that any dysfunctionality is not shown, not allowed. I am only ever interested in showing the world as it is.?
?I am very promiscuous. I do anything and everything. I like the fact that photography is high and low culture all in one. You can take an advertising shot and sell it as art, and vice versa. Part of my agenda as a photographer is to exploit my work in every possible way. Documentary, fashion, art are all so interconnected now, you can hardly tell them apart.?
Somehow I missed this announcement last month. But Esko Männikkö was awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for 2008. As I mentioned in earlier posts, he was not my first choice; I'd have preferred John Davies. If you are interested in knowing why see [this post] and [this one too]. In any case, the jury could've done considerably worse.
For some reason I have resisted posting on the Rodchenko exhibition that will end later this week in London. There was considerable coverage in The Guardian[1][2][3][4] and I figured that nearly everyone would've seen that. But this evening I cam across this review of the exhibition in the London Review of Books which helps, I think, to focus on the nature of propaganda. It does so in two ways. First it calls attention to formal details of photographs to which I generally pay little attention:
"He was particularly intrigued by views from high up looking down and from low down looking up. ... Rodchenko must have been crouching when, in 1930, he made close-up, foreshortened portraits of young Pioneers. In the repertory of poses photographers have invented or borrowed, heads seen from below against the sky tend to stand for things like ‘hope’, ‘striving’ and ‘looking to a new horizon’. Photographs taken from above, on the other hand, make patterns out of human activity and embed individuals in groups: crowds weave past each other, bands march, workers eat in the factory kitchen. Looking up at a modern building or fire escape led the eye towards a distant vanishing point; hold the camera at an angle and the stolid horizon becomes an active diagonal.
Such observations may seem banal when stated so bluntly. But it is a useful reminder, I think,that in the analysis of all sorts of images, it is important to attend to the nuts-and-bolts of how picture works. The second way the review helps focus on the character of propaganda is more provocative. and it is more in line with the sorts of things I've discussed here.
"This concentration on pattern-making suggests that the accusation of ‘bourgeois formalism’ levelled at Rodchenko by those who wanted socially uplifting imagery was – as far as ‘formalism’ went – fair enough. In other countries photographers have angered their contemporaries more often by pointing their cameras at the wrong people and places than by abstraction. From August Sander’s portraits of German types, labelled degenerate by the Nazis, to Robert Frank’s photographs of a sadder, rougher USA than the picture magazines showed, to Richard Avedon’s pictures of Westerners who were odder and stranger physically, and maybe mentally, than local pride allowed to be possible, and Diane Arbus’s freakish finds in the park, the complaints have been ‘too cruel’ or ‘we’ (who ‘we’ might be is not clear) ‘don’t look like that’. Rodchenko’s situation was such that even had he wished to uncover the truth about rural poverty, say, or human misery in the Gulag, it would have been impossible. The closest he came to it was with a commission to produce a picture story on the making of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. The photographs he took were edited by the authorities and he wasn’t allowed to take away with him any that hadn’t been approved. Once you know that the crowds of navvies digging and carting clay are made up of forced labourers and political prisoners, something of the misery of their situation comes home to you. Rodchenko said that he had ‘photographed in a simple way, not thinking about formalism’. The results, widely published, were propaganda, but American contemporaries were making propaganda too – photographs of dams built by the TVA, for example. Walker Evans’s photographs for the Farm Security Administration – in their way, quite as formal as Rodchenko’s – also carried messages that are now subject to sceptical scrutiny. Rodchenko’s work was made with more editorial oversight than that of his American contemporaries but he had more control over its presentation than they did.
P.S.: Next morning. Thinking about propaganda campaigns is especially timely at the moment. While the media may seem more sophisticated, the process are essentially the same as they were in the 1930s.
Cai Weidong’s works are infused with traditional and modern influences. In Landscapes and Substances, black and white photographs are heavily manipulated to mimic Chinese scroll paintings.
See the rest of Landscapes here. Other works can be seen here. He doesn’t have an online portfolio but his blog (in Chinese) contains some random snippets of images and words.
The vast majority of Amira Fritz's work, winner of the second prize at the Hyères photography festival is not available online. She shoots her work at dawn or dusk to achieve a painterly effect, and having seen high-quality prints I think it'll be extremely hard to convey the quality of the images on the web. Read more at:http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/2008/04/amira_fritz.html.
A common complaint about a photographer's new work is that it's a mere repetition of older work. As an illustration, I am using a photo from Gregory Crewdson's new work, but that's really just an arbitrary choice. I could have easily picked something from Andreas Gursky's latest work, say - whose Chelsea show got attacked in the press for that very same reason: We've seen this before, we want something new.
In part, this problem arises because our culture is centered on excessive consumption - we can easily satisfy our material needs, but for "the economy" to function well (aka to grow) we have to consume things that we don't need. Thus, we are constantly being told that the reason why we need something is because it is new and better. Being subjected to this in our daily lives just has to rub off and affect us. For example, I have a very old cell phone (which works perfectly well), but it does not have a camera built in, neither can it play mp3 files, and it doesn't come with the automatic cool that Apple so successfully has turned into a marketing ploy for their overpriced gadgets. Even though I am very aware of the fact that I really do not need a new cell phone (and I also don't need a camera in my phone, especially since I have a whole bunch of actual cameras), I constantly have to very consciously remind myself of what's going on, when the part of my brain targeted by ads tells me my old phone sucks. But I'm digressing.
Ignoring the second part in "We've seen this before, we want something new" leaves us thus with the first part: We've seen this before. Is this good or bad? I think the answer is more complicated than it would seem, even though I can phrase it in a deceptively simple way: It depends.
I am not under the illusion I will be able to get to the bottom of all of this in a simple post on the blog, but I think it's useful to disentangle two crucial aspects of this complex, which it is important to keep apart: I want to call the first one "style" and the second one "meaning" (or maybe "contents").
By "style" I mean, very simply, the combination of the photographer's way of work plus the end result. Note that there are photographers for whom defining a style is not that straightforward, but then I submit that for those we probably won't hear the complaint discussed here. So for Gregory Crewdson we'd have a huge crew, an elaborately staged set (either constructed in a studio or a real setting outdoors), and a large-format camera with various exposures, which are then stitched together to create something that looks very unique: You'll easily recognize a photo by Gregory Crewdson when you see one.
With "meaning" or "contents" I am trying to describe what the photos actually say, their intended message. Here, we are on more slippery territory, since it's much harder to describe with words what this is. But for the sake of this discussion, I don't even have to be able to put this down well, as long as it's clear that the meaning/contents is quite separate from the style. (And let's not kid ourselves: Some photography that looks very "cool" is very, very thin on actual meaning [I'd love to give some names here, but I'm in too good a mood for that]).
And it is the meaning or contents that I usually use to decide about whether I really want something new or not. If the style is the same, but there is a different meaning to a set of new photos, that's quite different from a set of photos that just look like the old work and have nothing more/new to say. So when I get an email with the complaint "That's boring, I've seen this before" (as happens occasionally) or (and this is an interesting variation) "XX's photos are just like YY's", I look for what the photos are intended to say before writing back and agreeing or disagreeing.
After all, photographer YY might be able to take the technique pioneered by photographer XX and add just that little twist that elevates the technique and/or meaning into something better. I want to be open to that possibility. And if photographer ZZ decides to use her or his old technique yet again, there might be a very good reason for this, since s/he might want to investigate something different or look at things from a different angle. I want to be open to that possibility, too.
PS: As in the case of Andreas Gursky's (and despite the hang-ups that so many people appear to have with his work), I personally have no problem with Gregory Crewdson's new work. I quite like it - even though, on the surface, it has not changed what it looks like for a while now.
Peter Hujar: Second Avenue at Matthew Marks in Chelsea is another great exhibition worth seeing. Hujar is the third black & white (and square) photographer I’ve posted about in the past few days. I’m surprising even myself with these colorless interests but good photography is good photography nonetheless.
Hujar lived and worked in a studio on Second avenue and 12th street from 1970 until his death in 1987. He photographed close friends, artists, dogs, celebrities as well as the many strangers he met on the streets. With each penetrating and intimate portrait, Hujar explored life through his lens in a very empathetic and personal way. Many of his subjects are captured while sitting or reclining in a plain wooden chair against a white wall. Another example where a simple set up can lead to engaging results.
It’s a shame I can’t find digital versions of my favorite images from the show, but you’ll just have to get over there and see the exhibition for yourself.
This time the show is more of a curatorial exercise that becomes a personal and historical exploration of mostly photographic images.
As he writes in the press release:
“This show started as an act of curation. Wallspace asked me to curate a show of photographs. I quickly realized I was at the mercy of the artists I wanted to include and the availability of historical pieces. This was unacceptable. It only made sense to not submit to the control and intentions of the artists I wished to show. The unintentional or disavowed aspect of their work was what I wanted to see. The solution dictated me cutting into my books, to show precisely the objects that had formed my thinking about the work. To show the reproductions themselves, by framing the reproductions. My desire was to shift the context to a context of individuals. In this sense I think of my show as a show of portraits, portraits of desire, as if each person?s psyche was in the room.”
I’ve seen the exhibition twice now and I found it quite interesting especially in light of Mark Wyse’s recent essay posted on Words Without Pictures titled Too Drunk to Fuck (On the Anxiety of Photography). Copies of the essay are available at the gallery.
In the essay, Wyse spends a good deal of energy deconstructing the motivations and language behind the work of Nan Goldin and Christopher Williams in what proves to be a very insightful analysis. Using the essay as a framework for the exhibition allows the viewer to experience the image selections and juxtapositions in ways beyond mere visual comparison.
Wyse can sometimes go above my head (requiring repeated reading) but if you are looking for a way to understand and appreciate the complex conceptual nature of an artist like Christopher Williams, this could be your best bet.
I do wonder if Wyse considers the show to be an actual work of “art” and also whether the entire exhibit is up for sale.
Mark Wyse’s Disavowel is on view at Wallspace Gallery until May 10, 2008.
Not too long ago I actually met the curator of the show and didn’t realize who I was talking to. I totally stuck my foot in my mouth when I told him that I wasn’t a fan and didn’t think the work was anything special and that Warhol did it better.
Now because of Saltz’s video I might have to head over to Brooklyn, enjoy myself and then eat my own shoes.
Picking up a thread from my earlier discussion, I occasionally get email telling me about a photographer who has done the same work (or something very similar) as someone featured on the blog, often with the implication that someone is ripping someone else off. For me, the issue usually is not about whether there is a rip-off going on (especially since two people, in different countries and without actual contact with each other, can easily create the same kind of work), but, instead, which of the work is more interesting. I think it might help if I gave an example.
This image was created by Idris Khan, and its a digital assembly of all the spherical gas tanks ever photographed by Bernd & Hilla Becher. When I saw this image for the first time, I thought it was absolutely brilliant (and I still think that), since it takes the original, very conceptual idea of the Bechers, and it employs what I would call a visual remix to it. It's a wonderful example of when a technical idea is applied, the quality of the result is not determined by the technique but, instead, by what you achieve with it (just as an aside: yes, you can take very bad photos with a large-format camera, and a photo taken with a "toy camera" is not automatically great because of light leaks and/or blurriness).
When I linked to Idris Khan's work, I received a few email, all of which pointed me to Jason Salavon's work. None of the people who emailed me was aware of the fact that I had linked to his work earlier (I ended up updating my entry to stop people from sending me more emails). One of his images shows the technique used by Idris Khan applied to photos of homes for sale:
His website also shows Every Playboy Centerfold, The Decades and more, done (if what I can find on the web is correct) before Idris Khan did his work. But for me, who did what first here is not nearly as interesting as the fact that while I do like Idris Khan's combined Becher photos very much, Jason Salavon's montages are not nearly as interesting. It's the same concept, but the result is just so vastly different. For me, it simply doesn't work. It could be anything really. Homes for sale? Sure, I believe it. I can't see anything anyway: It's a digital blur.
Which is then pretty much the same problem that I have with some of the other images that Idris Khan created (find some samples here), say if you look at "every... William Turner postcard from Tate Britain" or "every... stave of Frederick Chopin's Nocturnes for the piano". Sure. Whatever. I can't see anything. The visual trick is back to being, well, just a visual trick - quite unlike in the Becher photo cases.
Coming back to the whole idea of a "rip-off", it's extremely tricky to decide when a rip-off is a real rip-off (which would then involve a copyright problem) and not just an application of the same technique. But just as I wrote in my earlier post, I think that it is very important to avoid conclusions based on superficial similarities. If someone has done something already, I do not see why someone else shouldn't be allowed to use the same technique. There always is the chance that something new or better or more interesting might emerge. It's a chance that is worthwhile taking - as long as one has to be prepared to admit that nothing new has actually been produced.
Review: Photo Art - Photography in the 21st Century
Review: Photo Art - Photography in the 21st Cen
via Conscientious
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
In spite of a "hot" photography book market, books giving an overview of contemporary photography are still fairly rare. Photo Art, edited by Uta Grosenick and Thomas Seelig and published by Aperture, is the latest and most welcome attempt to fill in the gap. Listing a whooping 112 artists, according to the editors the book is "a comprehensive survey of photography in the early 21st century".
There is no doubt that presenting more than one hundred artists results in an impressive view of contemporary photography - whether or not is in "comprehensive" is, however, an entirely different matter, and it invites criticism, which - unfortunately - might distract from what the book manages to achieve.
As regular readers of blogs will know, contemporary photography is a very active and varied art form, with literally many thousands of artists producing an extremely diverse output that is hard to grasp unless one spends a lot of time on it. There are various epicenters, located on different continents, and various "schools" (if we want to call them that) and styles; and photographers employ techniques ranging from the most basic and old-fashioned to the technologically most advanced. Debates are raging between traditionalists and those who don't shy away from digital manipulations, between proponents of black-and-white and of colour, between "street photographers" who claim to find the ultimate art around us and those who use elaborately staged sets to investigate what the imagination can come up with. How can this immensely varied scene be introduced?
The answer, of course, is surprisingly simple: One needs to make a selection - and then be aware that it's a selection, and that someone's selection might be quite different from someone else's. Given the paucity of photography books that aim at looking at the bigger picture any such attempt is extremely important, and Photo Art clearly provides a very good example of what one could show.
Given the fact that a selection has to be made, Photo Art achieves its goal not necessarily from which artists are included (and which are excluded), but from the overall view it gives. When looking through the book, I could not avoid wondering what a similar book ("Photography in the 20th Century") would have looked like, had it been published one hundred years ago: I have no doubt the variety we see today did not exist back then (obviously, I am not talking about colour photography or computers here).
In the book, each artist is given four pages (an introduction on one page and three pages for images) plus a photo of the artist right at the beginning. Thus, the book starts off with a few pages of these portraits, and the variety of the portraits foreshadows the shape of things to come.
Photo Art must not miss in the book collection of anyone interested in contemporary photography. Just like the extremely varied photography blogs it showcases contemporary photography as one of today's most interesting art forms - if not the most interesting one (sorry, painters, sculptors, and potters!).
Click here to see a full screen version: ILikeThesePhotos UPDATE: Follow this link to see the entire group as medium thumbnails APE Flickr
Click on the photograph to see the name and website of the photographer. Adjust the speed of the slideshow (I like 1.2 seconds) or use the manual controls at the top. Attention art buyers and photo editors, this is a free promo that’s meant to supplement all the other ways you find photographers to hire. I created it see if there might be an easier more efficient way to quickly look at 200-300 photographers. Compared to the weekly promo pile this works pretty good. Plus, if you’re like me, you remember a picture and not necessarily who took it so you can come back to this slideshow and find the name and website of the photographer whenever you like. This project only works if you find work you like and hire the photographer. I can create more of these but it’s a complete waste of time if it doesn’t connect buyers with photographers. That’s the only reason I did this. If you have suggestions on how to make the next one more useful for you please let me know.
Photographers, I want to thank everyone who participated, it was a privilege to look at all your work. If you disagree with the selection I’ve made not to worry, we’re going to do this again with different editors in a couple months. The flickr group was such a pain in the ass because it didn’t behave anything like the personal area but now that everything is hosted on my account it seems to work fine. Let me know if you need me to do something with your photo. I ended up editing it down to 1 photo per photographer to make the viewing faster.
Anyone who has a blog and feels like spreading the word you can use this embed code or link to the full page version at http://www.ilikethesephotos.com You can change the size of the embeded version by changing the width and height (keep it square).
Popular folklore has it that German photographers have had a dominating influence on the aesthetics of contemporary photography. In this context, "German photographers" means people from Düsseldorf, with their "cool", "detached" style and their "typologies". Needless to say, this image is a mere caricature, and a pretty shoddily drawn one at that. In reality, German photography has become a very important part of contemporary photography, but while the Düsseldorf Art Academie has spawned quite a few well-known practitioners, there are many others whose work doesn't conform at all to the "cool" and "unpersonal" style that is supposed to be what makes the "German" in "German photography". To wit: Wolfgang Tillmans.
At age 40, Wolfgang Tillmans can already look back to an impressing career, and Lighter provides impressive testimony of this career. Lighter mostly contains a very large number of installation shots, taken at all the different venues where Wolfgang Tillmans was able to show his work, which ranges from his earlier snapshots to his later abstract work (this reviewer finds the former extremely forgettable - in contrast to the latter, which in a very convincing way expands contemporary photography into abstract art). In addition, some of the abstract work is shown directly, reproduced on the pages.
Even though it might seem as if showing almost four hundred pages of installation shots was a bit gratuitous, the large number of photos gives a very nice overview of Tillmans' work. And as an added bonus, the book also provides a nice presentation of how contemporary photography (and art in general) are shown - in large, mostly empty rooms, with white walls.
By showing the wide variety of Wolfgang Tillmans' work, Lighter can be considered as a mirror image of contemporary photography: Whatever you think it is, it indeed is, but there is always more. It's extremely fascinating to see a single artist explore so many different venues, and hopefully Lighter will contribute to flushing the simplistic ideas of what German photography is out of the system.
I’ve been wanting to post something about Tseng Kwong Chi, the Chinese photographer (actually from Hong Kong), who dressed up as a Chinese diplomat in the 80’s and got invited to all the cool parties by people who didn’t know otherwise.
In 1979 Tseng Kwong Chi put on a thrift store Mao-era suit to enter a “coat-and-tie” restaurant in New York and was mistaken by the maître d’ for a Chinese dignitary. The next year he successfully crashed the opening of the Ch’ing dynasty exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?posing with the rich and famous as a Chinese Communist official.
I read about Tseng’s life a while back and was impressed by his ingenuity, courage and determination for his work. His most famous series, “East Meets West”, not only created a stir in the US but also inspired his counterparts in China. Sadly, Tseng passed away in 1999 due to Aids.
When I started working as a photo editor I quickly learned a few lessons up front about buying photographs from amateurs: always ask how they planned to ship the images (we weren’t supposed to give out our UPS account to the non professionals) and determine beforehand what format the photographs might be in when they arrived.
I of course learned these lessons the hard way the first time I was handed the task of locating those awesome photographs the subject of a story always seems to claim his friend/mom/uncle/some dude took that will solve all the usual woes associated with trying to run stories about places no professional photographer has bothered to visit. A couple days would go by and I would call back to find the whereabouts of the images only to discover they’d been dropped in the mail with a stamp (duh, that’s how normal people send shit… not FedEx first overnight) and then a week later when the package finally arrives I discover the cruddy 3×5 prints (or worse disk film) and have to start the whole process over again only this time on a serious deadline.
The value in these otherwise unremarkable photographs was not the elusive subject captured by the writer’s uncle poorly depicted on 1-hour prints but rather the difficulty in obtaining the images and ergo exclusivity our publication would enjoy printing them (surely nobody else would go through all this trouble). In fact that exclusive look at things was so important, magazines with real budgets like People would fly a photo editor to the errant uncles house to gather the 1-hour photos themselves.
This has all changed of course, with the advent of digital cameras and the internet these once obscure, hard to obtain amateur photographs are everywhere and their value has evaporated overnight.
News organizations are picking up on this “citizen journalist” phenomenon as if we haven’t always used citizen journalists to fill in the holes and so I find it strange that they think they’ve discovered the holy grail of cost cutting in photography, because everyone seems to be missing one enormous piece to this puzzle. The value of these images to consumers is also zero.
It’s like walking into the furniture store and finding a junk-ass chair made out of two by fours and ten penny nails. “You’re trying to sell me a chair I could have built… drunk?”
Taking it one step further according to Thoughts of a Bohemian a website called Daylife (here) will scan the text on your web page and deliver relevant news images from a tightly edited pool of wire photography. He goes on to say “As newspapers and magazine are suffering more layouts as ad spending is weakening, most of the photo related professional are turning to the internet. However, because of its built in automation, it just seems that some of the jobs will not be recycle but ultimately replaced by machines. We will still need great pictures, thus talented photographers. Not so sure about needing photo editors.”
I totally agree that using wire photos or even citizen journalist images to “decorate” your story should be accomplished by machines because you’re not really adding anything of value to the overall package.
To all those content re-packagers who think any of this sounds like a good idea: good luck finding readers. Maybe machines will read that crap.
Bar none, showing your book is the fastest way to get a job in this business. If I meet you and like your work, then shake your hand and look you in the eye, it’s a virtual lock you’ll get an assignment. I was such a pushover in this regard that sometimes photographers wouldn’t even make it out of the building before getting a call on the cell phone with a job.
Usually what happens is I’ve got a shoot rolling around in my brain that I can’t quite land and I meet you and even tho you’re not perfectly what I was looking for in this particular story, your work is strong and you’re a nice person so I suddenly really want to hook you up with a job because well, I’m human. And, usually I can trot you over to the Creative Directors office and they’ll have the same reaction as I do “Zoiks Shaggy, let’s get this person a job.”
Getting in the door with your book is not easy (sometimes impossible) and if it was, everyone would be standing in line outside the Photography Directors office holding one of those butcher counter numbers waiting to get their assignment, so you get in which ever way you can. Keep trying, “Hey, I’m in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by if you have time” or “I’m at the newsstand, saw the latest issue and wanted to drop by and show you my work” or get a meeting with a Jr. Photo Editor or an Art Director or the Fashion Director or the magazine down the hall. Whatever it takes.
If your work is strong and you’re not a complete jackass, show your book in person, it’s the best way to land a job.
Richard Learoyd’s photographs were another great find at the Pulse Art Fair this past weekend.
Looking at the images online doesn’t do them justice. I spotted two portraits from across the room and couldn’t help but want to get closer. They have to be seen in person to experience the full effect.
From what I gather, Learoyd sets up a large camera obscura in a studio. He has the subject seated outside against a backdrop while he fiddles with the instrument from the inside. Once he is ready and the focus is set, an extremely powerful strobe is used which exposes the image onto large sheets of Cibachrome paper.
The results are absolutely stunning and crisp. Learoyd’s depth of field is quite shallow but the parts in focus offer a clarity unlike anything I have ever seen before.
The end result is an incredibly penetrating portrait.
Wandering through Strand Bookstore the other day I was lucky to find a used copy of August Sander’s seven volume set: People of the 20th Century at half price. It’s been on my list of books to get for some time.
This thing is quite a behemoth. I haven’t even been through all seven volumes yet as I keep getting stuck and obsessed with certain images. Needless to say, the books contain numerous jaw dropping photographs. It’s almost shocking to realize that Sander was really this good, again and again, over and over.
The above photograph is from Volume III: The Woman. That Sander would include a photograph like this in a series of images about women (namely the absence/loss of) says plenty but what’s truly astonishing is the simple fact that one doesn’t need to read the caption to get an idea of what’s going on. The whole sad story seems written on their faces.
August Sander, Architect Hans Heinz Lüttgen and his Wife Dora, 1926
Another photograph I keep coming back to (also from Volume III) is this portrait of the architect Hans Heinz Lüttgen and his wife Dora.
In many of the husband and wife portraits in the book Sander poses the couples with one looking out towards the camera/audience and the other looking away creating a powerful sense of tension compositionally in the photograph as well as between the subjects.
There are too many great photographs to even mention but you can get your very own heavily discounted copy over here.
I’m seeing as many as I can but my main focus so far has been the weekly silent film screenings with live piano accompaniment by Steve Sterner.
First there was Raoul Walsh’s action adventure film The Thief of Bagdad starring Douglas Fairbanks from 1924. To call it amazing would be an understatement.
This ambitious film tells the heart wrenching and suspenseful story of two orphan sisters who are separated during the French Revolution and struggle to find each other again.
Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton?s Night of the Hunter (1955)
And now this weekend, Film Forum is giving us the ultimate double feature: Charles Laughton’sNight of the Hunter (not a silent film) from 1955 starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and an elderly Lillian Gish and D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms from 1919 also starring Lillian Gish.
There isn’t much to say about Night of the Hunter which hasn’t already been said but this was the only film ever directed by Laughton and it’s incredible from start to finish. It’s a masterful expressionistic noir about the struggle between good and evil. Worth mentioning is that James Agee had a part in writing the script. If you’ve never seen it, forget the dvd and head over to the theater.
As for Broken Blossoms, I’ve never seen it before but I’m sure it’s going to be good. This is coming from a film freak no doubt but one who never really felt the love and patience required to sit through silent films. This is the kind of film that watching at home will never do justice. It’s the kind of film that craves the darkened room, a big screen, the live piano as well as a thirsty crowd.
It’s movie madness, don’t miss it.
As an added bonus and a dose of inspiration, feel free to download this amazing film strip put together by my good friend Peter Rad. Click on the image for the full size.
This is just a reminder that the Irving Penn portrait exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York City is closing on Sunday, April 13th. I almost forgot about it myself but I finally saw it Friday evening.
The show is full of iconic images and also has good groupings of his “carpet” and “corner” portraits.
Penn’s work still feels fresh and relevant today. He somehow makes portraiture look easy just by building a makeshift set or using a surprising prop and always keeping the light simple.
There are many lessons to be learned throughout so it’s definitely an exhibition worth seeking out.
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941 ~ Ansel Adams
In The Guardian today is this review of an exhibition of work by Ansel Adams that is showing in Oxford. Here are a couple of paragraphs that raise interesting issues:
Adams left what he called his Museum Collection: an entire career condensed in 80 images for anyone who wanted to display his work in public for free. This is the first time his self-selected portfolio has been shown in Britain, and it is both a perfect introduction and a summary of his work.
What strikes, over and again, is the awesomeness of Adams's America: a semi-heaven here on rocky earth. His photographs represent untouched nature with meticulous fidelity, as it seems, and yet they appear to belong to the world-in-a-grain-of-sand poetry of painting.
The first thing I find interesting is the bequest Adams left. I suppose there is in it a sense of the artist controlling his legacy by identifying what people are likely to see. On the other hand, though, that he arranged for this set of images to be exhibited for free is remarkable.
Aspens, Northern New Mexico, 1958 ~ Ansel Adams
The second thing is that the author seems to not have looked at the pictures. She starts by referring to this image I've lifted above. But this is hardly unspoiled wilderness. Indeed it show domiciles and grave stones in the foreground. Who are the people - living or dead - here? this landscape is hardly "untouched." I recommend reading Rebecca Solnit's Storming the Gates of Paradise[*] on this theme among American photographers of the 'natural' landscape.
Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, 1960 ~ Ansel Adams
Finally, the author also is incredibly naive. She seems not to get the Adams and other photographers used the sublime, they didn't just find it or represent it in nature, the explicitly sought to connect nature and the sublime. They were trying to induce "wonderment" in the face of the "awesome" beauty or power of natural world and they were doing so for political purposes. Here Solnit is very good too but you might also check out the terrific analyses of historian Finis Dunaway [*]. __________
A common complaint about a photographer's new work is that it's a mere repetition of older work. As an illustration, I am using a photo from 
, edited by Uta Grosenick and Thomas Seelig and published by 
