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Aug 3, 2009

“Each day The Black Snapper presents a different photographer selected by one of the many guest curators, who switch places on a weekly basis. Visitors of the online magazine can expect to see a new series of some eight to twenty photos each day. The Black Snapper aims to create an online community that will inspire professionals and photography lovers worldwide and expose new talent. In addition, the online magazine emphatically supports the emancipation and promotion of photographers from Asia, Africa and South America.”
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Aug 3, 2009

I stand by my decision to allow Edgar Martins to explain his thinking behind his work on my blog. I do believe that it is important to see what he has to say - regardless of whether or not I agree with it. In the meantime, the NY Times’ Lens blog linked to the piece on Martins’ website and provided images plus annotations. People noted that Martins’ writing is quite different from what you are used to seeing on this blog. There is a reason why I prefer writing plain and simple language, even when talking about what seems like complicated concepts or ideas. I spoke with a number of my friends (some of whom with MFAs from places like Yale), and they all told me that they couldn’t understand Martins long text and that it spoke for itself (and really, that’s not a compliment).
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Jul 30, 2009

Excellent post from the folks over at DLK Collection: The Gallery Show Review is an Endangered Species. Key quote: “the erosion of print media, and in particular, the waning coverage of everyday run of the mill gallery shows, is going to continue to cause gallery owners to rethink how they build word of mouth for their artists, how they find new accepted sources of reference-able credibility to ease the concerns of uncertain collectors, and how they more broadly generate some buzz. […] If the coverage of photography (and gallery shows more specifically) by the mainstream press is going to slowly wither away, we as a community need to step into the breach and start writing. Most of all, we owe it to the artists/photographers, who deserve more from this community than deafening silence.” I agree with this 100% - which is (in part) why I started reviewing photography shows on this blog a while ago, something I hope to be able to expand in the future.
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Jul 30, 2009

It has become fairly obvious that lately that our understanding of what photography is and does has not quite caught up with, well, what it is and does. A wonderful case in point is the attempt to differentiate between “photographs” and “photo illustrations”. What is the difference? When does a photograph become a “photo illustration”? If you think the answer is so simple keep reading. I don’t think it is.
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Jul 30, 2009

There is a wonderful interview with Bertien van Manen over at Bint photoBooks Too Much Chocolate (seriously, people, if you copy interviews at least be very open and obvious about where you got them from - thanks, Pim, for letting me know!).
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Jul 29, 2009

There are many reasons why I provided Edgar Martins the space to explain his motivations and work on this blog. I believe that in general, what is missing from photography online are longer, in-depth discussions and/or articles about the medium. I intend to publish more of those in the future, and many will be written by photographers or writers. Some might be more theoretical, others less so. I’m not so much interested in publishing something I agree with 100% as in providing/publishing writing whose goal it is to expand the discourse.
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Jul 29, 2009

Recently, the New York Times published an article in its magazine that featured photography Edgar Martins. The Times withdrew the work (something that could only be done on the web, of course) after it became apparent that Martins seemed to have manipulated the images. As could be expected, this case caused quite an uproar (find some smart comments by architectural photographers here). So far, Martins has remained silent, in part because at the time of the publication of his images he was traveling. The following text was prepared by Martins as a response and explanation (the same text can also be found on his website). - Jörg Colberg
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Jul 23, 2009

While I am waiting for further clarifications from Edgar Martins on the NY Times Magazine kerfuffle (don’t worry, they will come), Alan Rapp (a photography and architecture book editor - who, for example, edited the BLDGBLOG book) talked to four architectural photographers about the complex.
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Jul 22, 2009

Paddy Johnson over at artfagcity certainly claims it is. I don’t see how I am putting an “awfully positive spin on the value of reproductions” given that most photography books - and this is a photography blog - are well, if not extremely well produced objects. Compared with a $2,000 or $10,000 print a $80 book is in fact not only very much affordable (as an aside, some photography might in fact actually work better in book form) but indeed “a valuable alternative aesthetic experience”, because we’re talking about photography here. If you don’t believe it, look at the photography books I have been reviewing on Fridays on this blog! Some of those books are so well produced and printed that you could cut out pages, frame them and hang them on the wall.
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Jul 22, 2009

The list of possible sins one can commit with one’s website is pretty long, and it includes - apart from very bad or unusable navigation and goofy music - such gems as tiny images or gigantic copyright text over the images or terrible image-compression artifacts (or, of course, any combination of those). As Brian said during the blogging panel in New York, if your images are so precious (that you’re worried about people stealing them) why put them online? Regardless, it might be worthwhile to point out some recently overhauled websites to see some good solutions. Turns out Brian’s website was just re-done, and it can serve as a nice example: Nice big images, very simple navigation. Another good example is Chris Buck’s website. Get this: It’s not only easy to use, it even has a “download” button - so if, for example, you want PL diCorcia to stare at you, you can simply download the image as a pdf file. Perfect! I’d love to see something like that more often! And I’m sure if someone tried to use any of those downloaded photos for something commercial without permission, they’d hear from Chris’ lawyer. BTW, don’t miss Chris’ new celebrity look alikes (under “Isn’t”).
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Jul 21, 2009

These days, barely a week goes by without yet another announcement of some photography now on sale for cheap somewhere. You will never see the word “cheap”, of course - you might see “affordable”. But regardless, prices seem to be coming down; or maybe the range of prices now extends to numbers, which the art world has not seen in many years. I’d be the first to admit that part of me welcomes this trend, because given that photography has such a wide appeal it should be affordable for large numbers of people.
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Jul 20, 2009

First The Kiss and now the dying soldier? For some reason, I thought the debate about whether or not Robert Capa’s photograph of the soldier getting shot during the Spanish Civil War had long been settled (in favour of “fake”), but it seems I’m misremembering things (I was so certain I had read about this a couple of years back). Anyway, here we are (again): “New evidence has emerged that one of the most famous war photographs, shot during the Spanish civil war by Robert Capa, was taken well away from the battlefield, reopening the debate as to whether it is a fake.” (story; also see the video; via)
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Jul 19, 2009

No Caption Needed (Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, both professors of rhetoric and public culture) have been discussing photography for a while now, and there are lots of great posts on their site. The other day, in a post entitled Photographing Poverty: Realism or Sentimentality?, they discussed photography of poverty, noting that debates “about the moral value of photography have to deal with poverty.” You can agree with that or not, but the post is very much worth the read.
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Jul 16, 2009

“A pair of photograph collectors in Maryland, USA, have uncovered what they believe to be the first and only ever photographic record of Phineas Gage - the railway worker who survived an iron tamping rod passing straight through the front of his brain, following an explosives accident in 1848.” (story) (Updated below)
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Jul 14, 2009

“Curated blogs and online galleries are playing an ever more influential role in the fine-art world.” - full PDN story
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Jul 14, 2009

If you’re not immensely bored by the Fairey saga (you know, where a hipster/amazing artist took/stole someone else’s photograph to transform/convert/rip off it into a political campaign poster/an amazing piece of art/an utterly shallow piece of nonsense - your picks - and then got sued), here is the latest update: The photographer who took the photo now claims he owns the copyright and not AP. It’s hard to predict what will happen next; but I’m sure there will be new “developments” for a while.
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Jul 13, 2009

Rob Hornstra’s book “101 Billionaires” made it into this blog’s ‘best of 2008’ list and into countless others. “101 Billionaires” - self published by Rob - quickly sold out, but for those who missed out on it, there now is a second edition: The Crisis Edition (what with the number of billionaires in Russia now sadly down to 49). It’s a hardcover edition, just as beautiful as the first one, and at 46 Euros (it’s less if you live in Europe) it’s a real steal. There are 1,000 copies - I don’t expect them to be available for long, so you better order a copy quickly.
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Jul 13, 2009

A good post by Todd Walker on the ruins left by Communism and Capitalism - and the photographers covering them.
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Jul 13, 2009

Michael Mazzeo Gallery’s RSVP is the latest addition to efforts to use the internet as a way to exhibit and sell photography. I find the following extremely noteworthy: “It is important to note that this is not a pay-to-play program and the exhibitions are not ‘competitions’. There is no charge for entries. There is no charge for inclusion in exhibitions. There is no charge for inclusion in exhibition catalogs.”
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Jul 9, 2009

In an email to me, photographer Edgar Martins - whose New York Times Magazine photo essay just caused such a stir - told me that he is currently traveling and for the most part without access to the internet. He wrote he will get back to me as soon as he can. So stay tuned…
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Jul 8, 2009

This past weekend, I looked quickly through the latest photography project commissioned by the New York Times, photographs of abandoned houses etc., done by Edgar Martins. Since the photography did not strike me as particularly interesting, I didn’t spend much time with it, but I remember I was a bit puzzled about the stairs in this photograph. Updated below (thrice)
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Jul 2, 2009

“A few months ago I met with the Department Head of Photographs at a major art museum to show them my new book Fall River Boys. During the meeting I asked if I could show another more recent body of work that appeared on my website. They obliged and handed me a laptop to bring up my site. When I entered the url a message was returned that my website was blocked due to adult content […]. This was regarded as no big deal by the curator. I was told that there were many artists whose websites were blocked because there was some form of nudity in their work.” - Richard Renaldi
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Jun 30, 2009

This video by Andrew Hetherington is worth watching for Phil Toledano talking at length about his work (once you’re beyond the “this is my studio” bit - and you also get to see the fabled astronaut suit).
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Jun 27, 2009

You have probably seen it already on Ofer’s blog: Two French art students created a fake photoreportage, to win first prize at a competition (more coverage here, and - if you are able to read French - here). Ofer translated some of the students’ motivation from the Figaro article: “Speaking to Le Figaro, Guillaume Chauvin [one of the students] confided that they ‘wanted to enter the contest in order to show the codes used too often in photojournalism and to prove that something real could be translated into something staged.’”
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Jun 25, 2009

DLK Collection offers some thought provoking commentary on summer group shows: “Like kudzu covering every inch of the roadside, the summer group show is an invasive species, crowding out all other offerings, creating a monoculture of culture. The formula is simple: gather together a handful of artists already represented by the gallery, select 4 or 5 works each, and hang them in groups in the gallery space, covered by a catchy summer related title. Think of it as the pu pu platter of Americanized Chinese food: a thrown together sampler of otherwise unrelated items.”
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Jun 23, 2009

I found a very interesting post on Marc Feustel’s eye curious, with links to a recording of a panel discussion about war photography and the crisis of photojournalism (some of which I talked about in my post on the visual language of photojournalism).
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Jun 23, 2009

Right here - from the days when “podcasts” were distributed on vinyl. Bonus vinylcast: Henri Cartier-Bresson (thanks, Jonathan!). Update: More Weegee audio (thanks, Joe!)
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Jun 22, 2009

Ed Winkleman just published a post about political art, which is worth the read. For once, I do not agree with Ed, even though that doesn’t mean that I feel compelled to embrace each and every bit of art that proclaims and/or pretends to be political. When I think about photography, it’s straightforward to come up with a large number of artists whose work is quite political, while it still is wonderful art. I don’t know whether he would agree, but for me, Brian Ulrich’s work is one of the examples I can think of (there are many others).
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Jun 22, 2009

If you love “vernacular photography” check out this post over at Bint Photobooks. If you don’t know what “vernacular photography” is do the same - you’ll find out and see some great work. And if you don’t like “vernacular photography” have a look at the post anyway; it’s well worth the visit.
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Jun 19, 2009

“Who ever said that just because the objects on the wall or in the gallery are over-sized that the book needed to be over-sized as well? I don’t see Richard Serra making gigantic books. I’m getting kind of tired of the inflated book size that you can’t even pick up let alone carry around. That Richard Misrach On the Beach book that I got all excited about, it’s been sitting above my wardrobe cabinet in the same cardboard box it arrived in for pretty much the entire time I’ve had it. I now plan to sell my Gursky MoMA catalogue as it’s just taking up too much room on my shelf and I never really liked it that much anyway.” - Ofer Wolberger
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Jun 16, 2009

The full collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography is now available online. You can either search for stuff, or browse the archives alphabetically, and then look at all images by an artist (example: Brian Ulrich). I just wish the images were a little larger…
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Jun 15, 2009

Over at the incoherent light, Darren Campion discusses the work of Miroslav Tichy. It’s a very good read; even though I think that at the end of the day, voyeurism is, well, voyeurism.
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Jun 11, 2009

Here’s a very interesting interview with an on-demand book publisher. Make no mistake, I’ve heard and read a lot of hype before, but unlike in many other cases, Edition One Studios seem to be very aware of some of the issues that make on-demand publishing such a mess for professionals: “Many of the online options make excellent consumer products, and we often send clients looking for one-off family photo books, or travel books etc. to Blurb, Apple or Lulu. We think all of these companies are perfect for that. The mistake made by these vendors is that they market to professionals whose demands are greater than the average consumer and in the end more than they can handle.” I especially like this bit: “We look at everything that comes off the press. If a job is 10% too magenta, we stop it and contact the client to sort things out.” Of course, someone needs to put this all to a test…
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Jun 10, 2009

“So the other day, I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Slate’s editors were, ‘ironically, unable to get permission’ to reproduce Richard Prince’s Untitled (Cowboy), 2003 for Sarah Boxer’s slideshow review of ‘Into The Sunset,’ MoMA’s exhibition of photography’s role in creating the concept of the American West. [The irony, of course, is that Prince’s work is actually a rephotograph of a Marlboro Man ad, which was probably photographed originally by Jim Krantz.] And so I blithely grabbed an image of Untitled (Cowboy) online, resized and retitled it, and republished it as my own work, 300 x 404, After Untitled (Cowboy) 2003 by Richard Prince, and offered to let Slate show it instead. Though I’ve written for Slate before, they have not, as yet, taken me up on my offer.” - greg.org; also see the follow-up post.
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Jun 10, 2009

I’m sure I’ll be missing people, but since I just found Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko’s work (image on the left), I thought I’d do a little post about what one could call “street fashion”. Other practitioners: Albrecht Tübke (center image) and, of course, “The Sartorialist” (image on the right). I’m not entirely sure what to make of this genre, though.
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Jun 10, 2009

“I have progressed. Axel Hutte, Thomas Struth or Candida Hofer, for example, still all work on specific subjects for certain periods. But in my case I don’t distinguish between one area and the next - for me it’s much more of a slow process. But I also think that if you compare me to Thomas Ruff, you can see that he has moved on as well because what he is doing is maybe more like the work of a scientist who is trying to find out what the essence of photography is.” - Andreas Gursky
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Jun 10, 2009

“In 1975, eight young Americans — and one German couple — were featured in an exhibition that pretty much flew in the face of Ansel Adams. Curated by William Jenkins at the George Eastman House, the exhibit was called “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” and, according to some historians, it marked a paradigm shift in the world of photography, although that shift was imperceptible at the time.” - story
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Jun 9, 2009

A post by Rob Haggart pointed me to an issue of the jury of this years’s PDN Photography Annual being all white (find another take on this here, plus there is the original post that raised the issue here). With a jury of 24 people a complete lack of diversity does indeed look suspicious. I did not want to write something without having spoken with the party in question, PDN, so I emailed them yesterday. PDN told me this morning that they have looked at the comments and discussions following Rob’s post; should they decide to comment, they will do so on their PDNPulse blog. (Updated below)
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Jun 9, 2009

“insig.ht is both quick take and deep dive into the means of making photographs. It’s personal vision, from the inside out; a new, collective way of seeing that’s immediate, original and global.”
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Jun 4, 2009

As far as I can tell, for many commercial/editorial photographers finding an agent/a rep is the equivalent of finding a gallerist for a fine-art photographer: It’s kind of like the da Vinci code, except that unlike in the case of the da Vinci code, it’s a real problem, and there doesn’t seem to be any secret societies involved. Rob has now published an interview with an agent, which, I think, will answer many questions, and which might also be of interest for some fine-art photographers.
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Jun 2, 2009

“Stephen Shore talks to Jean Wainwright about Uncommon Places […]. Shore explains why he prefers smaller format prints, bucking the current trend of huge photographs, and gives a rare insight into the thought process that goes into his photography.” - video here
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Jun 1, 2009

“The photograph is among the most striking I have ever seen. I came across it first in the Auschwitz museum on a day when snow was falling across the empty camp. […] For days after viewing the photographs, I could not shake the girl?s expression from my mind. She is around 16 years of age and looking directly into the camera. The girl has only recently arrived at the camp. On her lower lip there is a cut. Her eyes stare directly into the lens and the fear transmits itself across the decades.” (source) “Wilhelm Brasse was put through daily torture photographing the horrors of the Auschwitz death camp but the young Pole pulled a fast one over his Nazi captors to make sure the terrible events were not forgotten. Brasse, now 91, had to take pictures of women whose genitals were butchered by Nazi ‘Angel of Death’ Josef Mengele, of Jewish prisoners arriving at the camp to go to the gas chamber and even of the camp brothel where women were turned into sex slaves. Somehow, Brasse survived the war.” (source) Find a short video interview with Wilhelm Brasse here; and there are two other noteworthy articles here and here.
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May 28, 2009

I had all kinds of image references going through my head when I saw these images of the German government trying to save a car company in lengthy talks at night (never mind the German text; simply click on the arrows or numbers to move between images).
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May 28, 2009

Over at bldgblog, there’s a brand-new interview with Richard Mosse about his new work, photographs of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.
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May 27, 2009

Find an interview with Daniel Shea about his Mountain Top Removal project here.
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May 27, 2009

There’s an interesting post over on Ian’s blog about ambition and the photographic lifestyle.
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May 26, 2009

I caught a lot of flak late last year for my post containing some thoughts on the visual language of photojournalism. Discussing some (then) new work by James Nachtwey I noted that “the photography employs the same visual language that we are incredibly familiar with and that, I wager, for that very reason doesn’t achieve its actual purpose any longer.” Today, Colin Pantall pointed us to a post with a large excerpt of a speech Stephen Mayes gave at the most recent World Press Photo event in Amsterdam, which, essentially, contained the same criticism I had leveled at photojournalism, but using stronger wording: “The overwhelming impression from the vast volume of images is that photojournalism (as a format for interpreting the world) is trying to be relevant by copying itself rather than by observing the world.”
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May 26, 2009

Via German weekly Die Zeit’s Fotoblog comes this wonderful collection of glowing landscapes.
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May 24, 2009

“I disagree with Phillip Gourevitch about whether the Obama Administration should release what remain of the unseen photos from Abu Ghraib, but he has written this thoughtful Op-Ed in The New York Times today.” - Jim Johnson
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May 23, 2009

This is so simple I’m surprised it hadn’t been done extensively before: If you click on the little clapperboard image, a second window launches, in which the artist (Joel-Peter Witkin) talks about the image in question (found on James’ Twitter feed)
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