January 6, 2009

Two noteworthy interviews

Roger Ballen at Lens Culture and Lydia Panas at The Girl Project.

Jorge Colberg

One of my pet peeves is people not bothering to worry too much about how to spell my first name, and I've always wondered how people can possibly manage to turn "Joerg" (which, btw, is the no-umlaut version of Jörg) into "Jorge". Can letters in words simply be shuffled around? Is thta mcomon praticce anwherey? In any case, maybe those people sending email to "Jorge Colberg" really mean the actual Jorge Colberg, who even has his own theme tune! I can't compete with that (neither can the actual Jim Colberg).

'Stunning photographs of landmark captured over six-month period'

"A series of majestic emerald arcs light up one of Britain's most iconic landmarks in this stunning photograph taken with one of the longest-ever exposures." (story) Those interested in this kind of work might want to check out Michael Wesely's work, for example, his two-year exposures of Berlin's Potzdamer Platz.

Review: Clinic

Just like any other aspect of our modern Western lives, health care has been turned into an industrialized business, with all its advantages and disadvantages (for a particularly noxious example, read this article). Their associations with illness and death aside, there is a reason why most people are very hesitant to go to a hospital (unless they have to): Hospitals are extremely unpleasant places. Thus most people probably prefer not to look too closely at the actual environment inside a hospital while being there. Enters Clinic. Clinic "explores the aesthetic of the medical world through contemporary photography" through the eyes of eleven photographers (Olivier Amsellem, Constant Anée, Eric Baudelaire, Geoffroy de Boismenu [who shot this reviewer's favourite section of the book], Christophe Bourguedieu, Jacqueline Hassink, Albrecht Kunkel, Ville Lenkkeri, Matthew Monteith, Mario Palmieri, and Stefan Ruiz), with artistic director Rémi Faucheux.

Continue reading "Review: Clinic" »

Elger Esser

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Elger Esser is one of my favourite German photographers, in large part because of his large-scale (colour) landscapes. These photographs invite the usual complaints about German photography, but I could not imagine seeing Esser's landscapes any other way. Needless to say, the image samples on the web do the prints absolutely no justice. Here's a page with more information (and samples), and hopefully this one is not going to disappear as rapidly as all my earlier links. (updated entry)

January 5, 2009

Reviews of shows

If you want reviews of photography shows you typically have to look into your print media. I suppose the absence of such reviews in the world of blogs is based on the same reasons as the paucity of critical discussions of photography. A noteworthy exception is the blog dlk collection, which, however, seems to focus mostly on larger shows. Another very noteworthy exception is this review on the German blog Fotofeinkost. Unfortunately - you probably already guessed it! - it's only in German. Shame, it would (and should) serve as a fine example of a really good review of a photography show.

Justin Guilbert

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I have been thinking about landscape photography a lot lately. The problem with that type of photography is that there appears to be a sweet spot that is sandwiched between extremely decorative - some would probably prefer the word "kitschy" - work (everything you see in "National Geographic") and extremely boring work (think Ansel Adams). Both extremes typically spend too much time on technical details since they both resulted from a history in which the "combination of sharp focus, tonal richness, and clarity of detail [...] came more and more to be the subject of the photograph [...] rather than a tool for artistic expression." (Janet Malcolm, from "East and West", an article I found in her 1980 collection of articles "Diane & Nikon", emphasis in the original) Finding that spot in between - where things are neither plainly decorative or boring (or, yikes!, both) - seems to be quite hard. Justin Guilbert's (Some Nudity) points in that direction.

January 2, 2009

JPG Magazine RIP

Via David Bram's blog comes the news that JPG Magazine is closing shop. When I first saw the magazine I wondered how a magazine that basically was Flickr in magazine form could survive - and we now know it can't. Of course, you could argue that photography in print always looks much better than online, so then doesn't this all say/mean something? A tempting question, but I think on needs to be careful with what conclusions to draw. I think what this all means is that for JPG Magazine's target audience the added value of seeing photos printed on paper that they can easily see online does did not translate into sustainability of the magazine. This conclusion cannot necessarily be applied as a whole to other photography magazines, though - Rob might disagree (he does know these things better than I do after all), but I think the demise of JPG Magazine clearly shows that for a photography magazine to be able to survive it needs to offer something that you can't easily find online.

Continue reading "JPG Magazine RIP" »

Nicolas Savary

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Found via The Sonic Blog: The photography of Nicolas Savary.

January 1, 2009

Let's start the New Year...

Nothing says "Happy New Year" as much as the 2009 calendar images of a German portable-toilet company. No, I'm not making this up. Not safe for work, but you really shouldn't be working today anyway. Here in Western Massachusetts, it's only thirteen and a half hours into 2009, and there already is a strong contender for the most revolting photograph to come out of this year. Btw, if you can't understand German, don't worry, the captions (explanations! of some of the bits in the photographs) make things only even more tasteless than they already are.

December 31, 2008

Happy New Year 2009!

Political propaganda and images

At least half of our modern world's politics deals with propaganda or, as the players would probably prefer to call it, "messaging". It's not what you really do, it's what you make it look like. Paul Krugman offers a compelling and simple discussion of how staging an image twice didn't play out the same way for George W. Bush.

A Conversation with Phil Toledano

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Phil Toledano is one of those photographers where it's impossible to predict what he'll come up with next. The first to portray video gamers, he has since covered a large variety of topics, such as his most recent America - The Gift Shop (which is really an art installation), the very personal and moving Days With My Father, or the just released Phone Sex. I was curious to learn more about how Phil does all that, so I decided to simply ask.

Continue reading "A Conversation with Phil Toledano" »

Having your work reviewed (part 3)

Another contribution, this one from Rick Olivier. If I receive further contributions, I'll add them below this post.

Continue reading "Having your work reviewed (part 3)" »

December 30, 2008

Having your work reviewed (part 2)

Chris Raecker sent some comments (emphases as in his original email): "Most are from the, 'do as I say, not what I did', two cent bin."

Continue reading "Having your work reviewed (part 2)" »

Links

1000 words blog
2point8
5b4
american suburb x
timothy archibald's blog
artkrush
asia photography blog
bildwerk3
jen bekman's blog
dawoud bey's blog
bldblog
bloggy
boston photography focus
bps research digest blog
buffet
the cartoonist
colbert nation
consumptive.org
nina corvallo
coudal partners
james danziger's the year in pictures
mrs. deane
todd deutsch's blog
digressions
amy elkins' blog
aperture's exposure blog
exposure compensation
the exposure project
flak photo
fraction magazine
from this moment
fugitive vision
gazpachot
gmtPlus9
ground glass (cara phillips' blog)
group show
the guardian - art section
hebig.org
heading east
andrew hetherington's blog
horses think (ofer wolberger's blog)
hippolyte bayard
i heart photograph
japan photo
journal of a photographer
hee jin kang
kottke.org
liz kuball's blog
vincent laforet's blog
shane lavalette's blog
lens culture
lens culture blog
love oliver
magnum blog
modern art obsession
heather morton's art buyer blog
muse-ings
notes on politics, theory and photography
colin pantall's blog
pdnedu
photo book guide
photography collection
photography lot
placeboKatz
susana raab's blog
40 watts (shawn records' blog)
richard renaldi's blog
saatchi - your gallery blog
seesaw magazine
shooting wide open
sign and sight
the sonic blog
alec soth's blog
state of the art
amy stein's blog
zoe strauss' blog
subjectify
swen's weblog
that's a negative
thingsmagazine.net
mark tucker's blog
brian ulrich's blog
uncommons
verve photo
vvork
wan.der.lust.ag.ra.phy
wassenaar
greg wasserstrom's blog
we can't paint
shen wei's blog
white wall collective
edward winkleman's blog
women in photography
wood s lot
zoum zoum
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