In a post I wrote a little while ago I said that I was not very interested in the photographic process, but in the resulting images. I didn’t expect to get that many emails from people agreeing with me. But I also didn’t expect that some people would assume that my unwillingness to consider the process when looking at photography meant that I’d be happy to basically accept anything, in particular photography that was done not very well (for an example, see a recent post by Mrs. Deane).
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There has been a lot of talk about recent photography from South Africa, for example see this article, or find a very openly dissenting article here. I have been talking about this issue with a couple of close friends, one living in South Africa, one an American photographer who has spent a long time in various parts of Africa, photographing there. I’ve come to the conclusion that instead of debating the recent work I’d rather talk about and/or introduce other African photographers here. So with the help of my two friends - thanks, Tobias and Robert! - there’ll now be a week of photography from Africa on this blog.
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The other day, I came across Mikiya Takimoto’s wonderful book “Sightseeing”. Unfortunately, it’s basically impossible to find much about either the photographer or the book online (I don’t speak Japanese, so that certainly doesn’t help). You can see three (not particularly good) sample images from the book here, so you get an idea of the kind of photography in the book. It can be ordered via Photo-Eye. Those with too much disposable income might also find it at that popular New York City photo book boutique, which I myself am not particularly fond of.
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“Despite all the critics who have claimed photos are ‘a grammar,’ images are more like a half-language […], always both objective and freighted with meanings that even the photographer and her audience only sometimes understand. Good photography somehow can tell more, with its pulp and its present-ness. That combination of directness and mysteriousness that is part of being a half-language must be preserved into the future. Despite the fact that amateurs have made iconic images in the past […] there have been many more iconic images that are actually extremely professional […]. If we are to keep this history alive, we need to find ways to support professional photojournalists outside of the magazine and newspaper industry.” - story
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Serious money is now being made with photo books - mind you, not all photo books, but some of them. If only half of what various people told me about the market is true, there are a lot of things going on that I find quite unpleasant.
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I have my reservations about several details of this review of Pieter Hugo’s work, but it’s a worthwhile read anyway.
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Sonnabend is probably the gallery that most closely resembles an actual photography museum in (New York’s) Chelsea. Whenever I’m in town I go to see their shows, especially since almost inevitably it’s one of the usual German suspects (and even just a glimpse of, say, one of Elger Esser’s large photographs, often - and sadly enough - makes the whole trip to Chelsea worthwhile).
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By chance, I found HotShoe magazine a little while ago, dedicated to “fresh perspectives in contemporary photography.” Their website is a bit 20th Century - there’s nothing you can see unless you subscribe, which means you’ll have to look for the print edition (but then, a print magazine beats the experience of staring at photography on a lousy computer screen any time, doesn’t it?). I was told the magazine was being distributed in the US, and I found it in New York (but don’t count on being able to find it in Moscow, Idaho!). With its extremely nice print and contents quality it’s worth the money, so if you see it somewhere get one.
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Just like me, my friend and “e”-co-conspirator Andrew H. looked through all the entries of the Blurb photo book contest (or more precisely, those that are for sale via the company’s website). Psychologists might have an idea or two what that says about us bloggers (or maybe just about Andrew and me). In any case, unlike me, he then compiled a summary post. The only thing thus left for me to say about this all is what I was thinking about the contest last night, when looking at the prices of those books: Wouldn’t it be nice if Blurb offered the books at a discount - so that people would be encouraged/enticed to buy them?
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In my six years of blogging, there is one post that I started to write maybe up to ten times, and each time, I refrained from posting it. Maybe it’s time to get it out of my system. It’s not even anything particularly interesting, even though I’m sure some people might disagree.
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Here’s a podcast of Richard Ross talking about his work “Architecture of Authority” (and the page gives some samples).
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I found a moving interview with Hilla Becher, which, unfortunately, only appears to be available in German. I translated some of the passages that struck me below.
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“With a $3 trillion war bill and an economy that flounders as China’s soars, could America’s era of dominance on the world stage be coming to an end? Mick Brown and the photographer Alec Soth travelled across America and China to observe how the future of these two great nations is intertwined, and to find out whether, in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics and the US election, we are on the brink of a new world order. In the first of a four-part series, they meet army recruitment officers in Virginia and cadets at West Point.” Part 2: “Once symbolic of optimism and certainty, America’s credit-crunched suburbs may be facing a decline as dramatic as that of Detroit, itself once a beacon of industry.” (found via Colin Pantall’s blog) Part 3: “The thrusting tower blocks of Chongqing stand testament to the headlong economic growth that is changing the lives of millions of Chinese. Mick Brown and the photographer Alec Soth continue their investigation into the contrasting fortunes of the US and China by exploring the world’s fastest-growing city.” Part 4: “With the Beijing Olympics, China hopes to cement its position alongside the USA on the podium of global power. In the final part of their special investigation, Mick Brown and photographer Alec Soth examine how both nations are playing the Games.”
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Over at The Guardian, there’s a new feature up called Portraits of China. I know this is an incredibly vague way to say this, but what bothers me about the photography a little is that everybody is striking some heroic pose (or maybe it’s just too much of an influence of commercial/editorial photography). In any case, it’s an interesting series, even though for me it’s not even remotely close to Liu Zheng’s The Chinese, which I keep coming back to.
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“My hands still shake and my heart pounds despite my fatigue. A combination of depression, fear, and adrenaline makes my thoughts race with the realization that a simple decision was the only thing that seperated [sic] me from a body count that grows daily. I look at the images I took on the 26th of June, and realize they do nothing to capture the emotion of being an eyewitness to the aftermath of the Al-Qaeda suicide attack in Karmah/Garma… the smell… the sound of screams and crying. I want you to observe and comprehend what others live through on a daily basis — to see what the Iraqi civilians and foreign soldiers see. I want people who follow my photography to understand that although I am able to bring images of war to the world in a form of art, what actually goes on here is horror. My message is not that war yields great photography. My message is: War yields human misery and suffering.” - Zoriah Miller (related: Journalist Charges Censorship by U.S. Military in Fallujah)
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I just found - via PDNPulse - that Peter van Agtmael, one of my Photographers of the Year 2007 has become a Magnum nominee (find the conversation I had with him here). And Alec Soth is now a full member (find the conversation I had with him here). Congratulations to both and to the other new nominee Olivia Arthur and full members Jonas Bendiksen and Antoine d’Agata!
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I’m going to play devil’s advocate here, because I think there is something to be learned from looking at a topic from as many angles as possible. Richard Prince recently gained further notoriety when one of the photographs from his Cowboys series sold for 3.4 million US$. These Cowboys, of course, are photographs of other photographs, namely of sections of Marlboro cigarette ads, and that’s where - according to many people - the problem is to be found: Not only is it quite shameless to take a photo of someone else’s work and then pretend it’s one’s own, but it’s even more shameless to sell it for 3.4 million dollars.
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Rob Haggart (aka “A Photo Editor”) just published a great interview with Darius Himes - all about photo books and photo book publishing. And over at The Girl Project (a weblog that deserves to be added to your reader if it isn’t there already), there’s an interview with Cara Phillips about her work and the beauty industry. So now would be a good time for that coffee or glass-of-wine break (depending what time zone you’re in) to read these interviews…
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“Valkyrie. We’ve already delved into the drama surrounding this film, in which Cruise plays would-be Hitler assassin Claus von Stauffenberg. Somewhere along the line, someone mentioned that there had been bad press in Germany. Well, of course there was. Tom Cruise is a Scientologist, Germans don’t care for Scientology, and the subject of Valkyrie is a German hero. But this was different bad press. The rumor that our source had heard was that there was a kerfuffle because some people believed Cruise’s company, United Artists, had tweaked a photo of von Stauffenberg to heighten a postulated resemblance to Cruise.” (story) Tweaked or not (scroll down on that page to see the images)? Update (25 June): Here is an “explanation” for what happened, which, as it turns out, explains nothing. But hey, it sounds good!
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I sometimes get asked what kind of photography I like, and I don’t think there is a simple answer. However, there appears to be an underlying motif, in that I seem to prefer photography that asks questions instead of giving answers, photography that requires a little bit of an investment and that then repays whatever time is invested generously.
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It’s easier than ever to produce a photography book, and for those who want to try to turn their own photo book into $25,000 there’s Photography Book Now (with a 14 July 2008 deadline, and make sure to read the fine print).
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“On patrol near the Mississippi river one afternoon in November 1955, Lt RE Brown of the Arkansas State Police spotted a suspicious, ‘foreign-looking’ man driving down the highway in a battered old Ford and pulled him over. Unshaven and shabbily dressed, the man didn’t have proper ID and his car was full of maps, foreign books, a bottle of ‘foreign whisky’, and - most suspicious - fancy foreign cameras. Thinking he had caught a spy with ‘Communist affiliations’, Lt Brown arrested Robert Frank and threw him into jail for an interrogation that would last until midnight. […] What saved Frank’s skin - not to mention the many rolls of film the police wanted to confiscate - was a rolled-up copy of Fortune magazine, a red, white and blue pro-capitalist publication if ever there were one. Frank pointed to a feature story, explaining that the pictures on the page were his.” - story
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Darius Himes just posted an extended conversation with Stephen Shore that is well worth the read.
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“I used to think that more people making images would necessarily lead to more conscious image reception, but I’m less sure of that now. It seems that it’s possible to make images as unconsciously as one consumes them, bypassing the critical sense entirely. One of the main culprits here is time pollution, or “the pollution of temporal distance” that Paul Virilio writes about. To regain our liberty (and our distance), we must slow the images down.” - David Levi Strauss
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Peter Marshall makes a compelling case for backups of data files - a must-read especially for people who either think that backups are for cowards or who are too lazy to create a backup.
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“Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old ‘Ms. Ruth’ sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it’s done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, ‘Lilbit,’ who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.” - story
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“Bill Henson is free to continue his internationally renowned photographic career without risk of jail but yesterday’s decision by NSW police to abandon its case against the Melbourne artist has done nothing to bridge the bitter divide between those who support his work and others who believe it is child pornography. […] NSW Law Society president Hugh Macken said the Henson photographs did not offend the Crimes Act because they did not show children in a sexual context. ‘There was never any prospect that these photos would fit the definition of child pornography and the decision of the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions] vindicates that position,’ Mr Macken said. ‘Nudity is not obscenity.’” - story (my emphasis)
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Yet another new web magazine: 1000 Words Photography, which features a very nice variety of work in its first edition.
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Jake Rowland emailed me to tell me about his project Texas, New York City, which features photography and poetry. Well worth the visit!
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“Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. […] Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required. Except that it’s nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn’t photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn’t photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn’t photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. […] Given that real terrorists, and even wannabe terrorists, don’t seem to photograph anything, why is it such pervasive conventional wisdom that terrorists photograph their targets? Why are our fears so great that we have no choice but to be suspicious of any photographer?” - story
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What with the scandal around Bill Henson’s work in Australia, here is some news about something that is similar, except there’s more than one twist - and it might serve as a yardstick to measure what is art and what not: “Germany’s largest-circulation newspaper [note the word “newspaper” does not really mean newspaper in this context - JMC], the tabloid Bild, which routinely places nude photos of women on its front page, has admitted that it published a topless photo of a 13-year-old girl. On August 8, 2003, as part of a reader contest seeking the ‘hottest girl of summer,’ the newpaper [sic!] ran a topless photo of ‘Melanie from Leipzig.’ […] the paper ran the photograph next to a short text that read: ‘Hot Bitsy, this summer is becoming a catwalk for naked children. The sun is stroking our beautiful women in their birthday suits more beautifully than ever before. Melanie from Leipzig, too, just can’t keep her clothes on in this heat. Do your clothes slip off in this desert heat, too? BILD is seeking the hottest summer girl. Send us your beat the heat photos.’” (story)
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The new website Women in Photography launched today with its first post. Amy and Cara told me they’re still looking for more photographers to add, so there really is no excuse not send send them an email! Update (4 June): There’s a very nice interview with the co-creators of WiP here.
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“I got an email the other day from a very angry and very disappointed individual […] asking, among other things: Why don’t you post any street photography? The short answer is…I don’t like most street photography. I’m sorry, I just don’t. This is not to say that I think street photography is bad, it’s simply my opinion that so much of this type of photography seems to only provide answers instead of questions” (source; my emphasis, because that’s exactly how I feel about “street photography”)
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I think it was former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt who described the Soviet Union as “Upper Volta with rockets”. It’s tempting to apply this to Australia and its big scandal about the photography of Bill Henson (see my earlier coverage and this nice overview) - “Massachusetts Bay Colony with computers”, but then that might be not that funny for all those Australians who are appalled by what’s going on (and it seems there’s a fair amount of those), plus it’s not like Australia is the only country that has recently witnessed a scandals like this one. Today, I spent a bit of time looking for what was going on in the press down there, and here’s a small selection.
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“Vancouver native Jeff Wall gives Marsha Lederman his personal take on five seminal photographs from a body of work that this week earned him the $30,000 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts” - story
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This article, which describes the photography around a recent NY Times Magazine article (which the first commenter very fittingly described as being equal to “the sophomore page of the student newspaper at Harding High in Yokelville, Ohio.”), is noticeable because it says a lot about how editorial portraiture works. I admit that I am a bit amazed that Emily Gould, the author of the article and subject of the portraiture, answers the question on whether she felt “exploited” with “Yeah, I really don’t want to talk about it.” It’s kind of like Miley Cyrus being sorry about her photo shoot after the fact (except that here, we have an actual adult talking). Update (29 May): This Salon article discusses some of the non-photo aspects of what’s wrong with the aforementioned piece in the NY Times Mag.
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As mentioned earlier, the latest photographer to suffer from having a show shut down because of his photography of naked adolescents is Australian photographer Bill Henson. There is no single aspect of Bill’s case that is particularly new, but I personally find it somewhat frustrating (and, frankly, tiring) to see the same theme repeated over and over and over again, with the main problem being that there are no serious discussions about what is going on. Usually, there is some sort of investigation, and after that the conclusion is that there is no problem, and then we’re waiting for the next photographer to get harassed. Maybe this new article about the case can serve to illustrate some of the issues. Note how one of the big issues is actually mentioned by the first commenter whose assertion “The naked body is inevitably sexual in most contexts” points to the big underlying problem (which might explain why these kinds of scandals are way more common in some countries than in others). Update (28 May): The whole controversy is creating quite the stir down under: At the time of this writing, there are more than 1,000 articles about the case to be found via Google.
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Cornell Capa, Founding Director of the International Center of Photography, died in New York City this morning (23 May 2008). “Capa was the younger brother of pioneering war photojournalist and Magnum founder Robert Capa, whose 1954 death shaped the younger Capa’s commitment to humanity-centered photography. […] In 1966, Capa teamed up with [Werner] Bischof’s widow, Rosellina Bischof, and [David] Seymour’s sister, Eileen Schneiderman, to establish the International Fund for Concerned Photography. The Fund sought to keep alive the work of his brother, Bischof and Seymour by promoting what Capa called ‘concerned photography’ - work committed to contributing to or understanding humanity’s well-being. The fund sponsored its first traveling exhibit in 1967. Aptly titled ‘The Concerned Photographer,’ it featured the work of Bischof, Robert Capa, Seymour, Leonard Freed, Andre Kertesz, and Dan Weiner.” (source)
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“The opening night of an exhibition by the photographer Bill Henson featuring images of naked children was dramatically cancelled after police visited the Paddington gallery to investigate child pornography claims.” (story)
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I recently received a couple of emails, pointing me to two online photography magazines. There is Fraction, which has just had its first issue out; and then there’s Purpose, already at issue 7. Both are well worth the visit!
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This has been posted all over the web already: “Yesterday I came across a slightly mysterious website — a collection of Polaroids, one per day, from March 31, 1979 through October 25, 1997. There’s no author listed, no contact info, and no other indication as to where these came from. […] Finally my investigation turned up the photographer as Jamie Livingston, and he did indeed take a photo every day for eighteen years, until the day he died, using a Polaroid SX-70 camera.” Here is a little update/clarification. Note that at the time of this writing, the first link loads very slowly.
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Of all the photos from the earthquake region in China, this one stopped me in my tracks and had me stare at the screen for quite a while: A student’s hand, the dead hand still firmly gripping the pen, with the rest of the body buried in the rubble of a school (found here).
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One of the many nice side effects of attending the New York Photo Festival was to run into some people whose blogs I was very familiar with. Bloggers are often accused of being too self-referential (which might strike some as a somewhat curious accusation, given the context of the art world), but it is now a pretty simple fact that the network of bloggers has created an extremely lively (see Andrew and Michael above!), diverse, and, yes, democratic community - and I still hope that the spark will finally ignite the same kind of fire (read: passion) in those parts of the world that hasn’t quite learned what is to be gained from blogs.
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… that is the question. Or actually, it seems that to an increasing extent, it isn’t the question any longer. At the Getty portrait show that was part of the New York Photo Festival, most of the photos were presented under Diasec (for those not in the know: Diasec is basically plexiglass - a layer of plexiglass is glued on top of a photo. Or in the lingo, the photo is “face mounted using silicone sealants” - suddenly, this sounds so much cooler, doesn’t it?). The only problem with this was that for half the photos this simply did not work. Diasec quite noticeably changes the way the photo is perceived - things get very shiny - and for many photos the glossiness destroys their quiet impact. And an added complication of Diasec is that you need to make sure the show is well lit, because otherwise, the Diasec will turn the art work into mirrors (as it unfortunately did for some of the Getty show photos). So just like in the case of big prints, while Diasec seems to be all the rage, to Diasec or not to Diasec is actually not such a simple question.
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Billed as the “Future of Contemporary Photography”, the New York Photography Festival just ended, and since I had the chance to attend the festival, I thought I’d compile my own thoughts about it. You’re probably aware of the coverage at foto8, with lots of day-to-day posts and more details that I can provide here. Given the Festival also served as some sort of photo-blogger summit (albeit unofficially), you can find snippets on lots of other blogs - there are too many to list them here (and I’d probably forget to include some of them).
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It’s really just a coincidence that the man in this photo is holding his head while walking through Tim Barber’s “Various Photographs”. I could not have staged it any better, though. I think “Various Photographs” might be the worst photography show I have ever seen; and from what various photographer friends told me, there are lots of people who share this sentiment (see, for example, Robert’s post).
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I am extremely pleased to announce that Peter van Agtmael, one of last year’s Photographers of the Year, has been picked as one of the winners of the Critical Mass 2007 book awards. Joni Sternbach is the other winner. Congratulations to both!
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Photographing body builders isn’t necessarily a very new idea, but this presentation of photographs by Joachim Ladefoged is well worth the visit (thanks, Adrian!).
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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).
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At the Griffin Photography Museum, Jen Bekman will tonight be given the Rising Star Award as part of the museum’s 3rd Annual Focus Awards, honouring her contribution to the promotion of photography (more info). Congratulations, Jen!
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