Talking about photography...
Longer articles about fine-art photography and extended interviews with its leading practitioners.
The Ethics of Street Photography
“[Garry] Winogrand was famous for never asking people permission before taking their photographs;” writes Caille Millner in a review of the photographer’s current retrospective at SFMoMA, “a whole generation of male photographers idolized him for shooting however he wanted, whenever he wanted.” It’s not hard to imagine what the legions of Winogrand fans will have made of Millner’s review, which continues “No one seems to recognize that Winogrand’s beliefs are shared most seriously by the kinds of men who haunt Reddit subforums like ‘Creepshots.’ On those forums, the chorus is ‘Rape her.’ Thanks to his superior sense of aesthetics, Winogrand’s moments of lechery show up at SFMOMA, where the chorus is that he’s a visionary.” (more)
By Joerg Colberg | Apr 3, 2013
Meditations on Photographs: Riverfront by Curran Hatleberg
For the past couple of weeks, I have come to this photography, Riverfront, by Curran Hatleberg (if you click on the image you’ll see a larger version). I’ve been trying to find out what actually intrigued me about it. Most likely, it’s a combination of factors. For a start, Riverfront is one of those photographs that is very smartly constructed. It’s complex without it being complex for complexity’s sake. It’s smart, without it being self-consciously smart (like, for example, so much of that “new formalism”/”triangle art” photography: I can’t escape the feeling it’s too satisfied with its own cleverness). It’s a contemporary photograph that, at the same time, feels like a classic; or maybe I should say it references the medium’s history without being nostalgic. (more)
By Joerg Colberg | Mar 18, 2013
On Process
This photographs looks like an image made using the wet-plate process, but it’s merely a simulation if you will. I took this picture with my minipad, using the Hipstamatic Tintype package. It’s fairly safe to assume that tor a sizable part of photoland, a digital image that looks like a wet-plate image cannot be judged the same way as a an actual wet-plate one. In the following, I will try to explain why that is a pretty severe mistake. (more; updated)
By Joerg Colberg | Mar 13, 2013