Imagine you have what you think is a brilliant idea for a new photography project. Let’s assume your brilliant idea revolves around taking photos of little dolls or miniature people. Now imagine that even before you start taking your photos - or shortly after (it doesn’t really matter) - somebody (who pays attention to what’s going on on this weblog) tells you that David Levinthal has built his entire career around doing exactly that. What do you do? Do you still proceed with your idea? Or, if you have already done the work, do you throw the following things: 1. a tantrum and 2. the photos (the latter into the trash bin)? And if you decide to simply keep your work and if then somebody tells you that you’re merely copying David Levinthal or that you’re a David Levinthal pupil (or whatever else intellectual laziness makes people say) how do you react to that? I think it’s a pretty obvious statement that it is very hard to do any photographic work that is 100 percent original. How do you deal with that as a photographer? Even if you wanted to pitch your photos for a gallery show do you really have to care? Note, I am assuming that you’re not blatantly ripping of somebody else’s work - taking photos of your little kids growing up and maturing is one thing, but taking hundreds and hundreds of photos of water towers would be a bit too close to what other artists have based their career on. But even if you shamelessly copy somebody else’s work you might actually get away with it. In any case, with the internet showing us so much of what other people have been doing, do you proceed with what you want to do - even if you know somebody else has done it already? (I am indebted to Mark for making me think about this)
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As stories about harrassment of photographers for “security” reasons are becoming ever more common - the latest one creating quite the hype - it is good to see that there is a blog dealing exclusively with legal issues etc. Especially check out their links. (thanks, Toby!)
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Lately, I have been thinking about acquiring a large-format (LF) camera. There are a various reasons for this, the most important of which probably is my continued interest in doing architectural photography. Finding a suitable LF camera has been quite a frustrating experince, though, and it finally dawned on me that this is mainly because of the wide range of options. I’m sure most LF photographers would disagree but at this stage, almost any LF camera would be good - especially given the external boundary conditions, the most important of which is the infamous money issue. Stepping back a little, I am almost perplexed how I managed to spend so much time looking into all the minutae of LF cameras, many of which are actually utterly irrelevant for me, and some of which aren’t that helpful at all. It’s interesting that you can ask people for opinions what I should buy, telling them about the monetary constraints, and then in return get a recommendation to buy something expensive (Do people actually listen?). So far, the whole story resembles examples discussed in the book The Paradox of Choice, which explains in quite a bit of detail how having too many choices and being unable to deal with them can make one’s life quite miserable. Given that photography appears to be so much about choices - what film to use, what camera to buy etc. - I’ll make the book my recommended read for today.
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You know you’re in trouble when a magazine’s mission statement says “Influence aims to highlight the protean dialogue that spans disparate forms of creativity and has come to identify the face of cutting-edge artistic expression in recent years.” If you’re willing to put that trouble aside to look at interesting photography, they have articles on Thomas Ruff, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Bruce Weber - each of which you can download as a pdf file (the article, not the photographer obviously). (thanks Toby!)
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We live in a culture where bigger is supposedly better. Thus, the Gigapxl Project just had to happen. Quite ironically, the project is film-based (with 9” x 18” exposures), with the final Gigapixel images resulting from scanning. If you do this kind of exercise you can then, for example, show where I live. And you can also learn a bit about some very technical information, which explains how you arrive at the number of pixels.
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“Photography can make leaders - or bring them down.” - story
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Oh boy! Has Diane Arbus reached so much pop-culture notoriety that they have to make a movie about her, with Nicole Kidman (yikes!) playing Diane Arbus? Apparently, they’re already working on it, including work on how to milk the photo market afterwards.
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My little rant about digital photography has caused a bit of a commotion, not unexpectedly along partisan lines. It seems these days, you can’t say anything without making people believe you’re either with (film) or against (digital) them. I really don’t want to add anything to what I wrote. Instead, let me just point out Bruce Barnbaum’s Thoughts about digital photography.
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A book presentation with Julius Shulman doesn’t quite go where people expected it to go when Julius Shulman says “This book is crap.” Read the story here. (thanks, Toby!)
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I have been thinking about digital photography for quite a while, and I simply can’t help but feel that there are too many unresolved issues, which are brushed aside too lightly. I thought I’d write them down; and given that I started my weblog to keep an inventory of links with comments I thought I might as well write about it here.
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Here is something interesting: What happens when you commission four photographers to work on the exact same project, namely to “divulge the story of centuries old borgen (‘farm-castles’) and churches”? Have a look at the results at Noorderlicht.
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This just in from Canada: “An exhibition of work by slain Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi has been shut down, following complaints it was too sympathetic to the Palestinian uprising.” (story) You might call it ironic that this is happening to the photos taken by a photographer tortured to death in Iran, but - of course - “ironic” is hardly the right word to use here. (thanks, Tim!)
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“Photographers across the country have complained of getting harassed by law enforcement officials citing security concerns since the September 11 terrorist attacks.” - Link to audio show (seen at notifbutwhen 2)
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In some places, scrap metail simply falls from the sky. Have a look at a photo essay about the scrap-metal dealers of Kazakhstan, who, living in the backyard of Russia’s space programme, collect scrap metal from rocket booster stages that fall onto their land. (seen at things magazine)
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There has been a significant amount of discussion about why “raw” is better than “jpeg” for digital photography. Here’s a site that explains “raw” and offers some links etc. Update: More on raw. No comment necessary really.
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I’m still quite busy writing grant proposals - that’ll be done next week. Just a brief comment in between; something that has been bothering me for a while: The fact that photographers are now thought of as mere commodities, like in which photographer is “in”, which photographer’s photos will be the next big investment. That really bothers me to no end, as it represents everything (well, almost) that’s wrong with contemporary art.
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As you might know, there are a bunch of photo communities out there, most of which aren’t worth mentioning (unless you’re interested in seing lots of rave reviews of bad photos of nakes women). altphoto.com is the notable exception. There are some remarkable photographer who show their work there, incl. some who you’ve already seen here (for example JP Zorn). Just look around a little, and you can discover gems such as the photographer who calls himself drFeelgood (who Mark Tucker pointed out to me).
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Unlike most people, I don’t subscribe to the idea that war photography does anything to prevent wars. But lots of other people, incl. maybe the Bush government, think otherwise: “The government has blocked the press from soldiers’ funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. The government has prevented the press from taking pictures of the caskets that arrive day after day at the Dover Air Force Base military mortuary in Delaware, the world’s largest funeral home. And the government, by inferring that citizens who question its justifications for this war are disloyal Americans, has intimidated a compliant press from making full use of pictures of the dead and wounded. Also worth noting: President Bush’s latest rationale for the war is that he is trying to ‘spread democracy’ through the world. He says these new democracies must have a ‘free press.’ Yet he says all this while continuing to restrict and limit the American press. There’s a huge disconnect here.” - full story PS: I think the main/sole reason for the Bush government to ban all those photos is to make the photos not interfere with their narrative about the “war on terror”, fought by “heroes”, where only terrorists are being killed. As we have seen during the build-up of the latest Iraq war, pushing a democratic country into a mindless frenzy for war is fairly easy - even if the same country had just gone through a very similar experience (from which it has learned absolutely nothing).
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Despite the somewhat overly touchy-feely talking in this story about Gary Stochl Uncovered, there are many interesting aspects in there (if you want to ignore the fact that Gary Stochl does “street photography”, which I personally consider to be one of the least interesting kinds of photography you can do - if you want to see street photography talk a walk!). I really like the fact that Gary Stochl stored his photos in a paper shopping bag. It seems to me that the questions “What happens to an artist when he or she has no contact with that artistic community? Is it possible to be a serious artist without those connections—and what happens to the work of an isolated artist?” overemphasize the importance of the so-called “artistic community”; and I’d be more than happy to argue that many aspiring artists would thrive much more easily if they managed to disconnect themselves from their comunity a bit and found out what kind of art they really could create. PS: If one of those cutting-edge German book publishers reads this I wonder who’ll be the first to publish a photo book that comes in a paper shopping bag? (thanks for the link, Wayne!)
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“Ever since the Metropolitan Museum opened its retrospective of ArbusÂ’s photographs, in March, her subjects have been turning up to give their own versions of their lives, an occurrence that is as illuminating and curious as a man in a red turban surfacing at a Van Eyck exhibit.” - full story Update (18 May): There is a similar article in the Washington Post.
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Alfred’s Camera Page is a very lovingly compiled description (incl. tons of photos) of predominantly Soviet old cameras, but you can also find, for example, the Diana or Voigtländer Bessa-L there. Highly recommended for people who love/collect/use old cameras!
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Here’s an interesting problem for you: Assume for a second that you’re a successful, actually a highly successful photographer whose photos sell for many thousands of dollars. Suddenly, only the very well-to-do can afford to buy your works! There you got a real problem because the market is quite small. What can be done? Here’s an interesting solution: As shown on The View from the Edge of the Universe, you start selling “production stills” from your photo sessions, which each are significantly cheaper than the actual photos but still expensive enough to generate some nice income. What an ingenious idea! Now, you’d only have to add t-shirts and mugs for those people (incl. yours truly) who can’t even afford the “production stills” and you got the whole market covered again!
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Over the past few years, especially since the US invaded Iraq, you’ve seen lots of reports of and by “courageous” war photographers. Not here - as I made clear in the past I regard most so-called photo journalism from war zones as nothing else but pornography. Things weren’t always this way, though. The Vietnam War has been cited as being similar to Iraq, with lots of people claiming those similarities are just bogus. And they might have a point: Have you noticed that - unlike for the Vietnam War - our view of the soldiers fighting there now centers around a sort of heroism, which - at best! - smacks of a mid-20th Century aesthetic? I think as long as all debate about the war is stifled even visually - with casualties, civilian or military, our own or “foreign”, being hidden from view - the Iraq War is not like the Vietnam War. And, most crucially, it is painfully obvious that what many people claim is simply not true: The claim is that photo journalism from war zones makes people more aware of the violence and, thus, makes war less likely. Is there anybody who would be seriously willing to argue that this is the case? In any case, one of the main photographers during the Vietnam War, Philip Jones Griffiths, has just published a book called Vietnam at Peace, and he is telling the BBC about the book and what he thinks about the Iraq War and photojournalism there.
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Doisneau Photo ‘The Kiss’ Sells for $202K we are told. Photography has finally become an established art form. And you get everything that comes with established art forms: Lawsuits about compensation, inflated prices for art work, which puts them out of reach for 99% of all mortals (unless you want to buy a cheaply mass-produced poster), etc.
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Seesaw Magazine is a fairly new online photography magazine, a definitely must-look-at for the consumer of fine photography online. Don’t miss the interview with Todd Hido!
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“The idea of skill has come to seem woefully outdated in an art world that emphasizes conceptual innovation, and making the right statement at the right time, with the right media.” Thus begins an article about art education, many of whose comments apply equally well to photography. Highly recommended read, regardless of whether you’re attending a photography school or are self-taught. (thanks, Mark!)
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There’s a very interesting post over at The View from the Edge of the Universe about editions of prints in photography. If you’ve ever wondered how that works or how that makes sense, check it out just to see you’re not alone.
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This weblog can be one of the most frustrating things you can encounter if you’re a photographer yourself. There is such a thing as the equivalent of “writer’s block” for photographers, and what would be more ideal to reinforce that block than a collection of links to people who all (or at least most of who) know exactly how to take great photos (or so it seems)? Jim Beecher, a photography teacher, emailed me to tell me about PATH: Ways-of-Working in Photography. If you’re a photographer you might want to have a look. You will find many things that you will agree with and many others that you will not agree with. In any case, it will do something with that photographer’s block that I talked about above. In the end, it might come down to this for a non-professional photographer (I never thought I’d ever post my personal view on this here): Take the photos that you want to take, the photos that you feel happy about. And do whatever it takes to improve them. If other people like them, good for you. If not: Why care?
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Over the course of the past couple of years, every once in a while somebody recommended Polar Inertia Journal to me. I’m not nearly as excited about it as any of the people who recommended it, but maybe you will be able to appreciate it.
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“Sources at Kyocera have confirmed that the company is to cease production of film and digital cameras, putting a huge question mark over the future of one of the oldest brands in photography, Contax.” (story) It’s a shame to see how the so-called free market, the true God the Western world is currently praying to, is destroying so many companies. It teaches you a simple lesson - which Europeans will understand much more easily than Americans - namely that if you measure everything by whether it’s profitable or not you’re making a big mistake. PS: It especially irks me to see that Kyocera will now be “concentrating on its mobile phone and semiconductor business.” As if cell phones added any value to human society! PPS (7 March): Mark Tucker brought my attention to this somewhat more precise article according to which “the 645 range would continue in production for the foreseeable future.” That’s excellent news - even though I don’t have one of those. Any step away from the on-going uniformity in photography is good news.
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They say that patience pays - which probably explains why I’m always short of cash. If you got a lot of patience and if you don’t mind to be exposed to a lot of Flash animations check out Spanish webmagazine FotoCultura.com’s galleries. As far as I can tell (my Spanish is non-existing and I fell asleep while waiting for yet another unnecessary Flash intro) there are some interesting portfolios (plus some fairly standard stuff) on that site. (thanks, Andre!)
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You know, on the one hand I think it is nice that areas not commonly known to be hot spots of photography (quick! name a photographer from Idaho!) get some exposure. On the other hand, PDN’s feature 50 States 50 Photographers is a little bit like the US Senate: Completely skewed. Anyway, have a look to learn what problems wedding photographers in Arkansas stuggle with or to learn that there are no good labs in Montana.
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“LOST LABOR: Images of Vanished American Workers 1900-1980 is a selection of 155 photographs excerpted from a collection of more than 1100 company histories, pamphlets, and technical brochures documenting America’s business and corporate industrial history.” (seen at wood s lot)
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lens culture is a web-based magazine, which features photographers and projects. The portraits of photographers typically contain a set of images and an interview - something I like very much (and which I have been toying with myself). Recommended!
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View from the edge of the Universe offers a summary of how contemporary photography sold in the latest set of auctions. Seems like the Düsseldorf School is quite popular these days.
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This software application is quite interesting. It allows you to pick images from Flickr based on their colour (thanks, Dominic!). It’s not quite obvious what this is good for, though. Apart from stock photo agencies who would want to look for images based on colour? It’s one of these cool ideas that, when realized, turn out to be quite useless - useless in the sense that life without it is about as good (or maybe even better). Another obvious example for this category would be a cell phone with a little camera inside.
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Mooncruise Magazine taps into the vast pool of talented, underappreciated photographers what can be found online and some of which you even saw here already. (thanks, Tobias!)
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Only 14 percent of the seats in the U.S. Congress are held by women (January 2003 - the percentages for racial minorities are even worse - with the Republican party being more or less all white). In an article somewhat too optimistically named Changing the Face of Power, Digital Journalist shows the small group of female Senators. It’s too bad they didn’t choose the following quote from the photographer’s video clip: “A wall of men in black suits”.
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I can’t tell what exactly it is that I find immensely sad about this story. Is it the paranoia of some people that has lead to this? Is it the fact that this story, with just a few little changes (use “saboteur” instead of “terrorist” and “commissar” instead of “investigator”), could have been written in the Soviet Union? Or is it the fact that the writer, despite noticing the utter absurdity of all this (“Obviously it’s a waste of time to have counter terrorism resources being devoted to investigating photography students or professionals doing what they do. In all likelihood, a real terrorist would be more likely to behave more like a tourist and be less likely to arouse suspicion.”) then proceeds to write “Beyond these limited steps, the Investigator agreed that there was little a photographer could do to avoid coming under suspicion in these troubled times.” (thanks, Felix!)
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“Never before in history was photography such an integral part of the military machine as it was during World War II. Many of the photos in SPIEGEL’s new photo book ‘Images of World War II,’ were only possible because German soldiers hid them from their Nazi censors.” - full story (incl. links to multimedia presentations of colour photos from WWII)
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(In the spirit of the foul mood I have been in these past two days:) Andy Warhol is probably the prime example of a bullshit artist. A while back, there was a show entitled I Shot Andy Warhol (Was that when the movie came out? I can’t remember) at Fahey/Klein Gallery, featuring photos of Warhol and the types he was hanging out with.
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For those who have the unfortunate problem of not knowing what to do with that extra cash there’s always the option to collect photography books. This neat article explains what to look for. (thanks, Tobias!)
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John Perkinson has just added an excellent tutorial on how to do night photography to his photoblog (part 1, part 2). Note that he seems to be happy to answer questions in the “comments” area. (Not that anybody would think this but John doesn’t pay me to pitch his weblog…)
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“Recent tests found no evidence of X-ray scanner damage to digital camera media cards or to the images they hold. […] These findings mean that digital cameras and their image storage media can travel safely in either checked or carry-on bags, which will be reassuring to holiday travelers.” - full story
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German news magazine Der Spiegel features a series of before and after satellite photos that show the impact of the tsunami in Southeast Asia.
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In addition to my own list I asked some of my friends and (regular and irregular) contributors to this weblog about which photographer(s) they were most impressed with/inspired by this past year. My thanks to all of them for their responses and for their support and encouragement. Here are their responses: Stan Banos: “1) Brian Rose - Best photo book/project of the year. Lots of really good shots and not a bad one to be found. The scope of the project (historical & geographical) also lends to its accomplishment… 2) Lee Friedlander - Still pumping out primo, innovative work- in his 70’s! 3) Christian Patterson - Only like about a third of his work, but when he’s spot on, he really nails the color/form time-space-continuum— if ya know what I’m sayin’…” Tobias Hegele: “The one photographer I have to single out for myself is Joel Sternfeld and my re-discovery of the book American Prospects. Photographers that I only became familiar with within the last year and that impressed me the most are Alec Soth and Mitch Epstein.” John Perkinson: “As for photographers that I discovered either in 2003 and this year - you’ve already listed one: Alec Soth. I asked for his book for my birthday this year didn’t get it. I asked for his book for xmas this year too. If I don’t get it - then I’m buying it for sure… I also agree about Nathalie Grenzhäuser’s work - very striking. I’d kill for a print… I wasn’t sure if you meant only work done this year, but there are a couple of photographer’s work that I saw for the first time this year I enjoyed immensely… Michael Norton’s 4x5 Havana series on the Litman site and Christoph Morlinghaus.” Jennifer Shaw: “I almost don’t feel qualified to answer this question since I spent the better half of this year obsessed with politics, and haven’t paid as much attention to photography as I should. That said, my favorite new find this year was Dave Anderson, which I’m pretty sure came into my life through a link on Conscientious.” Mark Tucker: “Loretta Lux. Michael Prince is commercial, but I like his work. But overall, I’d probably vote for Alec Soth, even though it’s the easy thing to do. I like Danny Clinch too.”
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It might appear to be a bit early to pick the Photographers of the Year 2004. But apart from the fact that I will be leaving town over Christmas I’m also fairly busy with job applications, and I don’t expect any changes in my selection. As usual, the selection is highly subjective. So while the photographers, who are mentioned below, have reason to rejoice (I hope) all the others, who are not mentioned below, again find solid proof that I’m out of my mind and that my taste just plainly sucks. But as I said many times before, this weblog reflects my personal taste and nothing else, and it doesn’t say anything about merit, success, quality or whatever else. My Photographers of the Year 2004 are simply the people whose work has impressed or inspired me the most this past year or whose work I would buy in a heartbeat if I had the money (Santa, hear that?!). Having said this here they are (in alphabetical order): Susan Bowen’s panoramas are breathtakingly beautiful. The little anti-conformist in me also enjoys the fact immensely that she uses a cheap plastic camera to create them. Nathalie Grenzhäuser’s Omaha Beach series might be the most impressive photo series I’ve seen this year. Outstanding work. Hans-Christian Schink’s documentary series about new highways in East Germany for me combines the best of what people often attribute to the Düsseldorf school but what, in fact, is quite common in Germany. It’s this kind of stuff where you could write pages and pages to describe it. I’m not going to contribute to this largely academic exercise. Let me just say it’s what makes people say “What’s up with those German photographers?” Stefanie Schneider’s work makes excellent use of what looks like badly exposed outdated Polaroid film. Whether it actually is what it looks like is quite irrelevant. The results are very appealing. Alec Soth has been everybody’s darling lately, and even the aforementioned anti-conformiste thinks he needs to be added to the list - especially since I have been able to enjoy his book Sleeping by the Mississippi. Update (15 Dec): See, that’s what you get when you don’t wait until the end of the year. Richard Ross is a late addition to the list. His photography provides huge encouragement for part of the photography I’m working on right now (none of which I have shown anywhere so far).
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If you don’t know what you’re going to buy Conscientious your beloved ones for Christmas (provided you have any beloved ones who’re interested in photography) check out coincidence’s favourite photobooks of 2004.
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Kiran Master’s photography shows us the mundane in a very deadpan and strangely appealing way. Excellent!
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I just bought a new digital camera - a (cheap) digital SLR. My choice was more or less dictated by the fact that the only digital cameras with acceptable performance (nb: acceptable performance is quite subjective) are SLR’s. As much as I hate SLR’s, there just was no other choice. But check out the Epson R-D1, the first digital rangefinder camera, which seems to be modeled after some of the Voigländers (and not really after a Leica as they seem to indicate there). If you have never used a rangefinder you probably won’t be able to appreciate why this is utterly cool. Also check out Epson’s official info sheet.
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