Hellen van Meene’s new book Tout va disparaitre, featuring stunningly beautiful new work (some panoramic!). Hellen asked me to write the text for the book, and I was more than happy to do that.
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I mentioned a few days ago that there will be a redesign of this blog coming up, part of which aims at making the archives more easily accessible and at making it easier to browse the list of links. The current list contains what I had before the crash and is already missing some stuff. Given the upcoming redesign I will refrain from updating it. One blog/photography site that needs to be pointed out, though, is Fabiano Busdraghi’s Camera Obscura. Fabiano wrote me that the “idea of the site is avoid simple quotation and link to other blogs or sites, but always produce original and detailed content.”
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The current issue of Visura Magazine is showing a selection of work from this past New York Photo Festival, incl. Ernst Haas’ wonderful images. I haven’t had a chance to go to the festival, here’s your chance to see some of the featured work.
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By now, you’ve probably seen your fair share of reviews of the New York Photo Festival; here is another and very thoughtful one (by Tom White). Make sure to read the whole piece, since it gives you a very good idea of the many different aspects of the festival - incl. a lot of the photography.
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I don’t even know why I didn’t realize this earlier, but most blogs (at least those similar to Conscientious) are being organized in a temporal way - new posts are sorted by when they were published - but, in fact, their contents usually is not temporal at all! I do post one photographer per day, but the reason why I post one is so that people have enough time to look, so that the photographer’s work is done justice. This might make it look like yesterday’s photographer is “old news”, but that’s just because the blogging software makes it look that way. I mean I could post thirty photographer at the beginning of every month and then remain quiet for the rest of the month - but that would obviously reduce the experience of seeing the work. I guess what this really comes down to is a need for a better way to organizes the “archives”… (thinking out loud) But it’s good for people to realize this: The fact that you here see one photographer after the other, day after day, has reasons that have little to do with showing something new every day.
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“My biggest complaint would be that given the fact that the festival is trying to bill itself as the go to photography event of the year, I think they are doing quite a disservice to many of the photographers on display by printing, mounting and framing a lot of the work specifically for the festival. […] I won’t even get into the strange hanging some work received, the standout being Simon Roberts in Jon Levy’s Home For Good exhibition. Robert’s work was hung in a corner and over the sofas. This will sound harsh but in my mind treating photographic work like this for an exhibition is almost pointless. I would almost rather look at the pictures online or on some poorly projected screen.” - Ofer Wolberger
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In many ways, there are quite a few parallels between what curators and art critics do, especially since ultimately, their success depends very strongly on to what extent they manage to apply their personal vision to what they do: The real meat of both professions is where we encounter the person’s mind at work, regardless of whether we actually agree with what the present us or not (even though our contemporary culture is increasingly moving towards the kind of infantile state where we see everything we do not agree with as “bad”). A good critic can write a very scathing review of a show we love - and yet, we would be admiring the criticism. In the same way, a good curator could present us with a show that we would never even have considered, and we would still walk away satisfied.
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Art buyer Heather Morton has provided some coverage of this year’s New York Photo Festival, and today, she talked about “controversial photographers”. Actually, what the post really should be titled is “Two shows that would have been controversial twenty years ago”.
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At some stage, all photographers arrive at the point where they define their work. This is a crucial part of the photographic process: “This is what I’m doing here, this is what it’s all about, this is how I’m doing it.” In the fine-art context, this is known as the artist’s statement. It’s very worthwhile to talk about statements in more detail, especially since there are quite a few pitfalls to be aware of.
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Those who were unable to come to the panel on blogging at this year’s New York Photography Festival can find a video of almost the whole discussion here (only the introductions in the beginning are missing), taken by my friend Michel (merci!). Also, Laurel has posted a full audio recording.
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“I have been a Webby Honoree, had images in Communication Arts, American Photography, Graphis, featured in PDN and was a Best of Barnstorm award winner at The Eddie Adams Workshop… But I have a new award I wish to share and it’s almost my proudest moment - I have had my account at Blurb terminated against my wishes for pointing out the inaccuracies and faults in the services they claim to provide. Yes, I have been banned from Blurb for simply requesting Blurb print me a book and follow up on services I paid for.” - Jonathan Saunders
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I usually avoid recommendations of digital cameras like the pest, because typically, they don’t offer me anything I could possibly use with their focus on technical details that might or might not be totally irrelevant. That said, what I do like is when someone I know - say a photographer - talks about a camera, because most photographers know what to look for. A few months ago, my friend Richard Renaldi showed me his (then) new point-and-shoot digital camera, and I was about as impressed with it as he was. So when I was looking to buy a new point-and-shoot camera, my first choice was to look for that camera - for which there now is a new model (of course!): The Canon Powershot G10.
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The portraiture of Amy Adams and Louise te Poele could not be any more different. Both were contestants at this year’s Hyeres Fashion and Photography Festival, presenting their work to the jury - and the visitors.
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I have never spent much time looking at abstract photography, because, well, I find most of it too decorative. So I don’t think I’m the best person to review The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography. But I do think I need to mention the book here, given its outstanding quality. The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography, a lavishly produced book, not only traces the evolution of abstract photography and shows the works of many practitioners, but also provides a lot of additional text about it. I don’t know how an introduction to a type of photography could be any better. If you’re interested in this type of photography, it is sure to end up being your favourite book of the year.
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There’s a photography book auction coming up at Christie’s, and even if you can’t make it to London, you can still browse through the “e”catalogue.
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Evan Mirapaul has an answer: “‘Emerging’ is a term that remains mired in the same prejudice that mis-defined the perfect age for the great romantic poets. ‘Emerging’ has no causative effect in great art. It’s a financial euphemism not a creative one. As we’ve been forced to view our finances with renewed sobriety, I hope that we will view this term, too, with the scepticism it deserves.” (my emphasis)
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“Maybe we could do without even the best art about childhood. Maybe we could ask ourselves the questions art asks on our own. But child pornography law does something worse than chill artistic thought. It allows us to ignore what actually abuses children all the time. Strangely, every single one of the scandals about child pornography in art galleries has involved photographs of healthy and affluent white children. Protection of the most vulnerable children, apparently, is not what concerns advocates of child pornography law. Rational protection of real children against actual abuse is not the highest priority of those who demand censorship of pictures. I almost wonder if it is the contrary. Is a strident demand for censorship of images a decoy? Does it deflect the facts of child abuse, the fact, for instance, that the overwhelming majority of cases of child abuse occur in the home and are inflicted by fathers, step-fathers or boyfriends?” - Anne Higonnet, in a very smart article with a lot of examples (via)
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Linus Bill, winner of the photography prize at Hyères, explains his art to Diane Pernet (found on Diane’s blog).
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Those interested in full coverage of this year’s International Fashion and Photography Festival in Hyères can find a very big overview (fashion and photography alike, incl. lots of video clips) on Diane Pernet’s blog.
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I’m currently at the International Fashion and Photography Festival in Hyères. You can find a first report from Hyères here.
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“Each image is like someone’ s id… and then I bring mine and put it on top of it. If it’s good artwork, it’s everybody id in some way. They’re heroes of the human id. Jess and Tessie, [the drooling twins] you see who you were a million years ago…a monkey…and you were that monkey. Subconsciously, genetically in the back your mind it’s the monkey. You’re a monkey. You see it our ancestors, that’s why the picture is so strong. Simple as that, because people relate to it. They’re brutal, they’re simple, they’re drooling but we relate to them. We see ourselves as humans deep inside them. It’s Neanderthal. Half man, half monkey.” - a quote from this fascinating interview with Roger Ballen
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From what I’ve heard one of the first things soldiers (and photojournalists) in war zones learn is which sound actually means that you better hit the ground since there is a missile or grenade (or some other lovely human invention) is “incoming”, aka going to hit close by. I could be mistaken but I think here is one of those “incoming” moments in this current recession/depression: “The Aperture Foundation, the nonprofit photography organization that publishes Aperture magazine and many well-regarded photo books, is eliminating seven of its 41 staff positions and will temporarily reduce some salaries. Aperture blames the financial downturn and says it is trying to reduce personnel costs by 20 percent. In addition, Aperture plans to publish fewer books each year.” (via)
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“When a West German photographer set off on a trip to the East German island of Rügen just after the Wall fell in the spring of 1990, he captured a world that would soon disappear forever. Twenty years after the epochal event, he looks back on his journey in a first-person account.”
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“I have nothing against people making a living selling books. Someone has to do it and I have many friends who are sellers or dealers in one capacity or another. […] The problem I have is that commerce has become so wrapped up with photography books that it has clouded people’s own opinions and aesthetic judgments about what they like about the books themselves. Some don’t buy books because they want them for the content but for the book value alone. In some extreme cases, the content isn’t even considered, it is just pure greed as the motivator.” - here’s more (make sure to read the comments - there are quite a few interesting ones)
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There seems to have emerged a younger generation of photographers who are happy to bypass standard modes of social engagement to create their own. I wonderful example I just came across is Andres Marroquin Winkelman’s Zapallal/Yurinaki, a photo project done in Peru, which involved both Andres taking photos as well as the children living in the two communities portrayed doing so. Of course, there is a bit of a contrast between the two portfolios that emerged, but their juxtaposition is quite powerful.
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“Last week I read in the morning paper about a street here where 60 out of 66 homes were vacant or abandoned on a single block. The reporter called it a ‘ghost street.’ Yesterday I found myself in the area. Other than an errant sofa, the street was completely empty, almost peaceful. I took a photo of every house on the north side of one block and then stitched them together. If you were to compare the current international housing crisis to a black hole sucking the equity out of our homes, this one-way street near the northern border of Detroit might just be the singularity: the point where the density of the problem defies anyone’s ability to comprehend it. These homes started emptying in 2006.” - Jim Griffioen
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I often get asked by photographers seeking gallery representation about where they should go. What I’ve noticed is that my standard answer doesn’t seem to satisfy most people. If you want to know what my answer is it’s basically identical to what Ed Winkleman’s blog post ‘How to Do Your Homework’. So if you’re looking for a gallery there’s a must read for you. Update (13 April): Part II is now up.
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There’s an interesting article about Roger Ballen: Before, During & After Abu Ghraib over at Prison Photography.
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Just like there are seven stages of grief, there have got to be seven stages of an art controversy. I’m not inventive enough to come up with those (anyone?), even though my gut feeling tells me they contain “Shock & Denial” (“Oh, no, I can’t believe he did that!” - “No, I didn’t!”), “Anger & Bargaining” (“I’ll sue the living daylight out of you!” - “How about we settle out of court?”), maybe “Depression, Reflection, Loneliness” (“Why the f*** did I become an artist and not an accountant like my dad wanted me to?”, “How dare these people question my motives?”, “I’m an artist, I can do whatever I want!”), and more. I don’t know what stage of the Shephard Fairey Hope poster controversy we’re in right now, it’s hard to tell. It does involve law suits, but since all self-respecting art controversies contain those, that’s not too helpful.
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When Fraction Magazine asked me whether I wanted to put a show together for their site, I agreed, and it didn’t take long for me to come up with something. It took me a little bit longer to decide about not using my original idea and, instead, to do something entirely different. Something maybe a bit surprising, especially in the light of the kind of photography you typically see here. My show, just unveiled, is called The Unknown Portraitist, and it features tintype portraiture from my own collection, taken by unknown photographers.
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So here’s the question: When does a shtick become a shtick? It might be easiest for me to explain this using an example. When I first saw Thomas Ruff’s jpegs I thought it was a very interesting idea, visually very intriguing, but I also had the nagging feeling that the whole series maybe didn’t contain much beyond the basic idea itself.
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Dear Dave is one of those photo magazines that seems to be flying a bit under the radar (I seem to be establishing a theme here with my posts yesterday and today). Published thrice per year, you can find it at all better sorted magazine stands.
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Colin Pantall has been posting a series called “How Not to Photograph” (recent examples: Deadpan or Playing Possum), which you might want to check out if you haven’t seen it yet, so you can either agree or disagree.
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“Demand is a minor academic conceptualist whose use of specially constructed sets to examine memory and to question photographic truth was long ago wrung dry.” Thus cites Greg Allen Tyler Green, and I found it hard to disagree, especially in the light of the immediately following sentence: “Ultimately Demand’s Oval Offices look like a kind of illustration — the exact sort of intentionally temporal decoration a magazine would logically commission to illustrate a story.”
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… over at Lens Culture. Not to be missed!
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Word on the street in Berlin has it that there’s a massive reorganization going on in Düsseldorf. Apparently, the students were required to sell all their large-format equipment and to instead use Holga toy cameras. Several people independently told me about this, and over the past few days I have been trying to get this confirmed in Düsseldorf (where I know some people). All I managed to find out is that in all of Düsseldorf, Holgas are completely sold out! Apparently, some students are trying to figure out whether using a “Colour Sampler” camera will do - I guess habits are hard to break?!
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“Helen Levitt, a major photographer of the 20th century who caught fleeting moments of surpassing lyricism, mystery and quiet drama on the streets of her native New York, died in her sleep at her home in Manhattan on Sunday. She was 95.” - obituary
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I recently came across of contemporary practitioners of tintype (ferrotype) photography: Robert Benson (via Feature Shoot) and Robb Kendrick (via Exposure Compensation).
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“Bayo Ogunsanya, a collector and private dealer of African-Americana and other items, said that on February 17 his lawsuit against Robert C. ‘Bob’ Langmuir of Pennsylvania reached an out-of-court settlement. Ogunsanya filed the suit in April 2008 in federal district court in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives. He did so after learning that photos he had sold to Langmuir for $3500 in 2003 were works by Diane Arbus. […] Langmuir, a rare-book dealer, had planned to sell the photos in April 2008 at Phillips de Pury & Company in New York City. The estimates on the 27 lots ranged from $20,000/30,000 to $80,000/120,000 each.” - story
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Reporting on Two Recessionary Shifts in Attitude, Ed Winkleman notes: “The other trend I’ve noticed (and had confirmed by other dealers) recently is a much more aggressive and, seemingly out of nowhere, clueless approach among unrepresented artists seeking gallery representation lately. Whereas we had been getting about 1-3 artists a month who clearly had no idea how best to approach a gallery either send us a package or email, now we’re getting 1-3 a day calling us up and insisting we give them a show. And we’re not the only gallery reporting this.”
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This all sounds so simple and outrageous, doesn’t it: “The British Journal of Photography reports that the band management for Coldplay has been asking concert photographers to sign a contract giving the band all the rights to their photographs” (found here). (Updated below)
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Here’s something that I don’t understand. Twenty five years ago, people would not have volunteered to enter a lot of their private information into an easily accessible public space, but you could have taken their photo without their permission without much of a problem. Today, it’s the other way around: While people share more and more of their sometimes most private information with total strangers online, they’ll get very angry if you take their photo without their permission. The only explanation I can come up with is that it’s about control: Today’s situation corresponds to people having more control over what they want other people to see (even if it makes very little, if any sense, to share as much information as some people do; and one can probably argue about whether it’s really more control). However, if that is true the privacy argument about having one’s photo taken disappears - how inconvenient! In any case, this is an interesting development, isn’t it?
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Robert Glenn Ketchum’s ‘Books that make a difference shouldn’t have to make money’ brings up a number of interesting points, even though I am not convinced I believe in the solution outlined in it (who defines “make a difference”? what does that even mean?).
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See some of Brian Ulrich’s new work over here.
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Rob sent me the link to this interview with Paul Graham, which contains some interesting nuggets.
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I mentioned Kate Hutchinson’s “Why Am I Marrying Him?” here before. Kate’s (now) husband is modeling again, this time for photos inspired by the work of other artists, this one Salvador Dali.
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Maybe I shouldn’t call these men thugs, since some people’s thugs are other people’s freedom fighters. These people are Velupillai Prabhakaran (center), head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and a bunch of assorted rebels, in an “undated handout photograph” by their organization (I found this photo here). What really did strike me about this image was not the people in it, but the way the photo was staged and set up. The lovely background - fluffy clouds on top of a pleasantly blue sky, with those mint-green drapes on top, and in front of all that these people with their weird uniforms and their grim expressions… It’s just so weird and so grotesque (especially given that these people are responsible for hundreds of suicide bombs). I mean what fine-art photographer, or conceptual artist, could have come up with something like this?
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On his blog, Ian Aleksander Adams offers an analysis of Ryan McGinley’s work, which is well worth the read: “This is an image, then, of a very specific America, a very specific American youth. Adventure and sexuality may be freer (and gay, youthful McGinley himself is adamant about this) but there is a possibly disturbing undertone that this fantasy is for a certain group of people, the people approved and selected for this lifestyle. Then, for the majority of the world, even outside of its ridiculousness, it is exponentially unattainable. You must be young, American, waifish, freely naked, and part of ‘whiteness.’”
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“The 50 States Project has brought together 50 photographers from across the USA. Each photographer lives in one of the 50 States and during the year long project each photographer will represent the State where they live. Every two months each photographer will be sent an assignment by e-mail, they then have two months to produce one image in response. The images must represent both their style and the State in which they live.”
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Former war photographer Bruce Haley just added Tao of War Photography to his website, “written over a decade ago, so some of it is a bit dated”. If you look through his portfolio of work you’ll see that he covered a lot of conflicts, and his writing provides a very harsh dose of reality. For example, “Make sure you can count (remember, we’re talking photographers here)… if the multiple-tube rocket launcher that’s firing at your position goes ‘fffwuupppp’ six times in a row, please count six explosions around you before poking your head back up……”
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