Tom Winchester conducted an interview with the curator of Boris Mikhailov’s Case History at MoMA, which you can find here. It’s a very interesting piece, tackling the various issues around that body of work.
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It is time to reveal the winners of the Conscientious Portfolio Competition 2011. This year, the jury consisted of Caroline von Courten (FOAM Magazine), Michael Mazzeo (Michael Mazzeo Gallery), and myself. Find more information about Caroline and Michael here. Without further ado, the winners are… (more)
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I remember then when I saw portraits from “Mona Lisas of the suburbs” by Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler for the first time, I was blown away. Seemingly very simple photographs, the portraits reveal enormous depth, while at the same time they are incredibly beautiful. To make a long story short, there had been some plans to make a book, so after some discussions Ute and Werner decided to do it with Meier & Müller, the photobook publishing venture I’m part of. The book is now out (in Europe, US copies are in transit), so I asked the photographers some questions about this very special project - their first together, as a married couple, after each being a photographer for almost forty years. Find the piece here.
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“This idea that everything has been done is a sign of the limitations of our own imaginations.” - Colin Pantall And: “More important than knowledge and research is passion and conviction. You need to invest something in what you photograph - the Bechers had a passion for water towers and smelting plants. And it shows, in a good way. Too many people photograph what they think they ought to. That shows too, but in a bad way.”
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“I had heard about the mummies of Guanajuato in Mexico, mummified cholera victims from the 1830’s.” writes Steve Pyke. Find his account of getting access to and photographing them here.
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The newly launched online photography magazine timemachine is off to a good start with its first issue, “Home.” Check it out!
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Have a peek at Gaddafi’s family album, found by Tyler Hicks (Gaddafi? Kadafi? Qaddafi?).
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Parents of teenager sue fashion photographer. I don’t want to comment on those photographs in question, and I also don’t want to comment on parents who allow their underage child to be photographed that way. You can come to your own conclusions. But it’s pretty obvious that having a model release is a good idea.
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Blake Andrews just published a post, writing “reinterpretation threatens to overtake generation as the dominant creative act in photography.” Should we be worried? I don’t think so. Looking over the many, many submissions for the Conscientious Portfolio Competition this year, only a miniscule fraction - a handful maybe - involved reinterpretation. The rest - the vast majority: Plain “good old” photography. Of course, that might mean very little. But I think if somehow reinterpretation was about to overtake generation as the dominant mode in photography I would see many more submissions based on albums, old photos, or screen shots of webcams or Google Street View. (more)
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In a couple of recent posts, Pete Brook addresses what I think is the key issue of all Google Street View (GSV) work: Authorship. The first post, Navigating the Puzzle of Google Street View ‘Authorship’ investigates two recent project, which has a curious overlap of imagery. Perhaps not surprisingly, both Jon Rafman and Michael Wolf consider the images in question “completely different images, altered by their own hand.” (more; updated below)
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This week’s photobook presentations are: 101 Billionaires (2nd ed.) by Rob Hornstra, One Mississippi (One Picture Book) by Alec Soth, The Polaroids by Sibylle Bergemann, Italia (One Picture Book) by Mark Steinmetz, The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings by Kaylynn Deveney.
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Donn Zaretsky reports: “Janine Gordon’s copyright infringement suit against Ryan McGinley has been dismissed on grounds of ‘utter lack of similarity.’” Update (19 August 2011): More
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Here is a crazy (or maybe not so crazy) thought I had the other day, sitting in a crit, listening to somebody talking about “the other”: As photographers, we love to think of ourselves as being incredibly aware of that problem. We love to think that if there’s one thing we need to avoid it is to picture someone or a group as “the other”. And there are very good reasons for that. The thought I had: We’re still doing it, though. There still is “the other” in photography. Politically correct as we are, the way a group is turned into “the other” has changed, though. Instead of us treating a group as “the other” and thus separating them from our own group it now works the other way around: There are those who for whatever reason decide they don’t want to be part of our group, and it is those groups that we can - and in fact happily will - depict as the other. As someone pointed out to me, the currently most prominent such group might be the (US) Tea Party, whose resentment-based politics makes them a pretty easy and simple target. Unlike in the case of the earlier other - where “the other” had no say in being excluded - exclusion now works to cement the view points of both sides: The Tea Party sees the way it is being treated photographically as confirmation of their ideas, whereas we get photographic confirmation that they’re crazy (see, for example, the kerfuffle around the latest Michelle Bachman cover).
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Benjamin Lowy’s new book Iraq | Perspectives is due to be released later this year. Given photojournalism has been in the news (again) recently, I approached Ben to talk about his book, his work in general, and about photojournalism. Find the full piece here.
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“Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures ‘with no apparent esthetic value’ is within Long Beach Police Department policy.” (full story, via)
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At the time of this writing, Congress is still debating whether or not to ruin the economy by defaulting. A short while ago, Will Steacy went out to take photographs of dollar bills removed from circulation, before they were destroyed. Writes Michael Mazzeo: “The faces which once exuded confidence, security, and self-reliance, now, upon close inspection, appear distressed, disturbed, and disfigured, not much unlike our economy.”
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“The Hampshire College community mourns the loss of Professor Emeritus Jerome Liebling, who died Wednesday at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts.” - obituary
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I found a very interesting thought about photojournalism in a short essay written by Daido Moriyama, which can be found in Setting Sun - Writings by Japanese Photographers. Thinking about why Horst Faas and Michel Laurent’s photographs from Bangladesh don’t take him “anywhere beyond the scenes they depict,” Moriyama writes “Perhaps it’s this: Perhaps the cameramen lost themselves in the Bangladesh photographs and became an intrinsic part of the recording device, so that the only effect that the photographs could have was illustrations of the misery of war. Photographs such as those by [Robert] Capa and [William] Klein, on the other hand, contain the living pulse of the human being behind the camera. The former is nothing more than a journalistic photograph of an atrocity, while the latter is a framed portion of the world that bears a poignant relationship to the world as a whole.” (p. 36, emphases in the original) I can’t help but think that in this short passage Moriyama captured the essence of the problem.
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There’s a great interview with Raimond Wouda here.
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As an update to this: Team Gallery owner José Freire’s personal statement (via).
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Ever since writing about at what stage some photograph might be too similar to some other photograph (also see this follow-up), I have been thinking about how to approach the topic in a more productive manner. In part, this is for slightly selfish reasons: I’m a bit tired of these kinds of debates (“Did photographer X rip off photographer Y?”), and I’d love to have a better answer when asked. So I thought a good approach might be to start from the idea and not from the images. Find the whole piece here.
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“Concerned about security problems, the East German communist regime ordered border guards to snap photos of the Berlin Wall in the 1960s. The images, which were top secret, were lost in an archive for decades. Now a new exhibition will reveal hundreds of the photographs, digitally spliced to create remarkable panoramic views of the infamous landmark.” - story (with lots of pictures)
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Hardly a day goes by now without yet another lawsuit about some copyright violation. Under US Copyright law, the crux always is “fair use”: Do we have a case of fair use or not? Given the way the law is phrased, this is not a trivial question. It gets particularly iffy once the aspect of “transformation” is brought up. How does that work? What does and what does not constitute a valid transformation as far as the law is concerned? This recent post over at Copyhype has an extended section about just that, using a recent case as an example. It also provides a link to a paper entitled Making Sense of Fair Use by UCLA law professor Neil W. Netanel. Netanel’s paper is long and very detailed, and anyone interested in fair use and in how fair use has been treated in the courts so far might want to take a look at it. It’s an incredible resource, yet a tough read.
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There’s an interesting article about the recent photography festival in Arles over at Photoworks’ blog. One passage caught my eye. (more)
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Janine Gordon has filed a lawsuit against Ryan McGinley for copyright infringement, “arguing that 150 of McGinley’s photographs, including several used in an ad campaign for Levi’s, a co-defendant in the suit, are ‘substantially based’ on Gordon’s original work.” That’s one of Gordon’s pieces on the left (Plant Your Feet on the Ground, 2000), one of McGinley’s on the right (Levi’s advertisement, 2010). When I saw this my first thought was “Jesus!” - mind you, not as a somewhat mild way of uttering my exasperation at yet another one of these lawsuits (that came right after). Even if you’re not a particularly religious person (like me), with just a little bit of knowledge of art history you’re very familiar with exactly that pose, right? I will admit I was too lazy to look for an even closer match to the photographs from the lawsuit, but I’m very certain you can find one easily (if you know one, email me). So I can’t help but think that Gordon’s image might in fact be “substantially based” on a large number of religious paintings depicting Jesus. And one could probably play the same game with many other photographs involving humans (just remember how much some photojournalists love pieta-style images). That said, Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento can cover the legal side way better than I can: “most likely be — in my educated fair-use opinion — a win for McGinley. ‘Derive’ here is being used not in the fair use sense of ‘derivative’ work, but rather it is being used in the inspirational sense. Based on the images available for comparison online, McGinley is clearly inspired and influenced by Gordon’s ideas, but as both Gordon’s and McGinley’s lawyers agree, ideas are not protected under US copyright law.” Update (13 July 2011): Here are more images - see for yourself.
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In an article called Capitalist Realism or Poverty Porn?, Jason Huettner discusses the work of Shelby Lee Adams. The body of work in question has been debated many times, and as far as I know no consensus been reached, yet. I thought I’d throw a curve ball into the debate: That whole hand-wringing about “mythologizing,” the (supposed) “branding effect that exploits the poverty of others for profit” - do we see these kinds of commentary about similar photo projects about rich people? After all, anyone can be exploited, right? And if you look at, for example, Martin Parr’s photographs of rich Russian - isn’t that also “mythologizing”? (more)
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Here’s a simple idea: Have a photographer suggest a title, theme or topic for a photograph, and then have her or him work on someone else’s. Lined up properly, you get The Chain.
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The number of photographers is steadily increasing, as is the number of competitions, portfolio reviews, workshops, etc. Typically, a photographer has to pay to enter one of those events, often a rather significant amount. But where does all the money go? What is the money being used for? Much to their credit, the people running Photolucida (a 501c3 non-profit) have now addressed this issue in a blog post, concluding that ultimately “each photographer has to assess whether Critical Mass makes sense for them.” Perfect! With this example set, will Photolucida’s post be the beginning of a new trend towards more transparency in the world of competitions and portfolio reviews?
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I don’t remember where or how I came across Alia Malley’s 2009/10 Southland, but I do remember the photography stayed with me for a while. There was something about those landscapes that struck me. Recently, someone pointed me to Alia’s new series A Cavalier in Sight of a Village, for which she was (in fact at the time of this writing is) raising money on Kickstarter. So I got in touch with Alia and asked her whether she’d answer my questions about her work. Find our conversation here.
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What do David Burnett, Alan Chin, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Danny Wilcox Frazier, Stanley Greene, Brenda Ann Kenneally, Andrew Lichtenstein, Carlos Javier Ortiz, Lucian Perkins, and Anthony Suau have in common? They’re not afraid of home. Along with writers Dan Baum, Katherine Boo, Alan Burdick, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Eliza Griswold, Margaret Knox, Alex Kotlowitz, Andrew Meier, David Samuels, they are members of Facing Change - Documenting America: “At a time when America faces enormous challenges, FCDA will embed photographer/writer teams in communities across America to vividly illustrate the nation’s most pressing concerns-from health care to immigration to the cost of the war on terror. The result will be an unparalleled collection of visual and textual narratives accessible through an innovative online platform […] enabling a direct dialogue with America on the stories and issues. As media outlets yield to corporate considerations, narrowing their coverage of vital issues FCDA is acting to fill that gap by humanize a wide spectrum of neglected and misunderstood issues.” Check it out!
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Image permanence is a more important topic than many people might realize. Over at The Online Photographer, Ctein wrote a column about the topic, and there’s a follow-up column by Mike Johnston.
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You know you’re in trouble when you have to deal with levels of transformativeness. Levels of what? But - and this is a huge but - that’s a must-read article for anyone interested in photography, copyright, and fair use: “There’s lots of interesting issues there, but one that caught my eye is one that has been bugging me more and more […]: the seemingly infinite manipulability of the transformativeness inquiry of the first fair use factor. Much seems to depend on how broadly or narrowly the purpose is defined, but that categorization is almost never accompanied by any discussion of the proper level of generality.” (my emphases) I’d like to point one more thing out here, namely the fact that in all the recent cases I can remember the courts have decided in favour of the photographers. That’s great news for photographers (maybe all the complaining about how copyright supposedly still is not severe enough can stop now?), but not necessarily good news for art making in general. I wrote about this before, I’m not going to repeat my arguments here.
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A couple of recent posts, both addressing very similar issues: Noting that the economy, jobs, healthcare and education are key issues for most people (especially in the US, with elections coming up), David Campbell writes: “what does photojournalism contribute to these debates? Beyond the daily campaign picture and stock political portrait, what stories are we seeing from photojournalists and documentary photographers that engage these issues? My sense is not much, and certainly not enough.” Over at No Caption Needed, Rachel Rigdon addresses a very similar issue: “Despite the Great Recession and the escalating rates of both poverty and economic inequality within the United States, finding images of poor Americans within the news often feels like a process of excavation. There is a curious deficit of photographs of the 44 million Americans living in poverty, and in lieu of using photographs, many articles on welfare or economic inequality feature graphs and charts.”
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“When the earthquake hit on 11 March, a young photographer, Aichi Hirano, was showing his work in an exhibition entitled Rolls of One Week. Hirano explains, ‘At that time, I felt so powerless, being in the same country yet unable to do anything to reach out and help directly.’ To combat his sense of helplessness, he decided to distribute fifty disposable cameras to survivors displaced by the tsunami who had been evacuated to shelters in Ishinomaki, Miyagi prefecture. Hirano provided some loose directions on sheets of paper: ‘Please take photos of things you see with your eyes, things you want to record, remember, people near you, your loved ones, things you want to convey… please do so freely. And please enjoy the process if you can, even if it’s just a little bit.’ Of the 50 cameras he distributed, Hirano was able to retrieve 27, which he uploaded in their entirety to the website www.rolls7.com” - Marc Feustel, writing about rolls7.com
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Is there anything that has not been said about the analog-vs.-digital debate? With every passing day, the debate looks slightly sillier, as digital photography is firmly replacing analog photography. Just the other day there was another report about plummeting film sales. Those numbers are dominated by “amateurs” - people who take their snapshots now with their cell phones or digital point-and-shoot cameras. But of course, there are many who still shoot film (incl. me) and will continue to do so (at least as long as it’s possible). Analog photography is here to stay in the realm of fine-art photography. So what’s left to talk about?
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OK, I’ll admit it: That’s not the actual question from What’s Next? The actual question is “Why do my students think that working with analogue techniques is more ‘real’ than with digital ones?” I took the liberty to re-phrase the question because I think there is an underlying, more general issue here. If I’m correct, dealing with the (slightly) larger issue will also answer the original question. Read the rest of the piece here.
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There is a wonderful piece over at FOAM’s What’s Next?, Charlotte Cotton in conversation with Aaron Schuman (now re-published on Aaron’s Seesaw Magazine). (more)
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Here is a very smart and perceptive article about Google Street View photography that you definitely want to read.
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A few weeks ago, I had a bunch of discussions with various people - including a group of students at MassArt - about photojournalism. Inevitably, the various problems (or “problems”) were brought up, and at some stage someone asked why any of that mattered. It’s a good question. But I think there is a good answer. Unlike pure art photography (whatever that might be), photojournalism is more than “just” photography. We use it to get informed. At the time of the discussions, unrest in Libya had erupted into what started to look like a civil war, and several NATO countries were urging the rest to get involved. Were we going to be in favour of that or not? At the time, news from Libya filled the news, and a large fraction of the news consisted of photographs taken by photojournalists. There now is a new pitch up on emphas.is by Michael Christopher Brown, entitled The Libyan Republic - if you want to support a photojournalist specifically working in the country, which still torn by war, check it out.
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Brian Dupont just published the final post of a three-part series on copyright and fair use (part 1, part 2, part 3), which is well worth the read.
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The other day, Dan Vercruysse, a reader of this blog, sent me an email reacting to something I had written here. In his email, Dan brought up a well-known photographer (the name doesn’t matter) and wrote “he is surprisingly neutral in his commentary about the subject matter he is shooting. How can this be? He is clearly shooting very explicit images and subject matter with an agenda.” (Dan kindly allowed me quoting him here) Oh, the a-word: agenda. There’s something many photographers would rather avoid talking about, an agenda. (more)
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One of the best videos about a photographer I’ve seen in a while: a documentary about Rob Hornstra, the Socci Project, slow journalism, and self-publishing.
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There’s a wonderful (short) documentary about Eikoh Hosoe here. Go and watch it!
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When I was writing If everybody can be a photographer… I approached things from my perspective of someone who writes about and teaches photography. You probably figured it out: That’s only part of the story. There’s more. (more)
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Here’s the big question: If everybody can be a photographer, what will be the function of a professional? Good question, isn’t it? We all have at least cell phone with cameras, if not iPhones (with the assorted “apps” to make the images look a certain way). It gets amusing when you look at how some photojournalists have started using their iPhones to produce work - why shouldn’t they be doing what everybody is doing? Of course, things get quite a bit less amusing when you think about the role - or let’s say supposed - role of photojournalists: You’d imagine that catering to the latest hipster trend seems pretty low on the list. (more)
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… but they make the money (and you won’t be seeing any). Key quote (my emphasis): “Image owners allow it to happen, though. Nobody forces them to accept the Twitpic terms of service. For many, it may well be a perfectly acceptable trade-off for a chance to share their images with the world. For others, the terms may come as an unwelcome surprise, but the onus is on Twitpic users to read and understand the service agreement when they sign up for an account.”
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If for some reason you missed the rifle kings Mrs Deane unearthed head right over and check them out.
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The above image is from Doug Rickard’s A New American Picture, which - so far - has been flying under the radar in most unfortunate ways. Culled from Google Street View, A New American Picture demonstrates what can be done with photography even if you don’t leave your house. Needless to say, the “leaving your house” aspect shouldn’t really be a criterion to talk about photography, but we’ll come to that later. Via dvafoto now comes Mishka Henner’s No Man’s Land: “the margins of our urban and rural European environment as experienced by what appear to be women soliciting sex in liminal, post-industrial and rural settings, captured by Google Street View cameras.” (more)
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Talking about photography, I don’t think there’s an elephant in the room. There is a group of elephants in the room, with different sizes and ages. Stan Banos just pointed one out and asked “When will we finally see people of color not only in front of the lens serving as ample, year round subject matter, but also as: photographers, judges, editors, gallery owners, workshop presenters and festival organizers in some representative proportion beyond mere tokenism?” I’d be incredibly happy if I had a good answer, but, alas, I don’t, and unless I’m missing something (always possible) I don’t think anyone else has one, either. Such questions are, should we say, inconvenient, but that’s what makes it a good question: The elephant will not disappear if we ignore it, so we might as well make an effort to deal with it. We owe it to ourselves, if when we use the phrase “the photographic community” we truly embrace the meaning of the word “community”. (more)
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You might have already read this article on lenscratch about the high costs of photography (if you have not head right over). I’m currently on the road, so I can only post something brief, at least for the time being. (more)
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