I wrote a little piece, trying to find out what makes the object so precious in photography. You can find it here.
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Lydia McCarthy is one of the winners of this year’s Conscientious Portfolio Competition. About her work, juror Elisabeth Biondi wrote: “In the course of a week, a month, a year I view many many photographs & much of it good photography. I always keep my eyes peeled for a surprise, either in content or style. Portraiture is an important part of my work, or better the work that I assign. It therefore is important in what visually I pursue. These portraits are different from anything I have seen before. They are impressionistic in a contemporary way. Looking at them puts me in a reflective tender frame of mind. Perhaps this is so because we always are looking for picture that might work for the fiction we publish. We try to pair pictures to words that express a mood rather than edge features into the reader’s mind. We want to let the mind wander. This is why I like these pictures.” In this extended conversation, I talk with Lydia about her work.
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Dalton Rooney is one of the winners of this year’s Conscientious Portfolio Competition. As I wrote earlier, what struck me about Outer Lands is how engaging these landscapes are if you spend time with them. Seemingly simple, they are deeper than they seem; seemingly messy, with their tangle of branches, they are clear and beautiful. They offer space for contemplation, without pushing an obvious message. Outer Lands shows the contemporary landscape - with various human traces - photographed most beautifully in a contemporary way. In this Conversation I am talking with Dalton about his work.
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“I see so many photographers making work that purports to show an explanation of a subject but actually is little more than graphic cliche of a situation. That, at a time of crisis for visual journalism, isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to simply point a camera at someone and say ‘how terrible’. It says much that everybody has a camera and thinks that they have a right to call themselves a journalist by photographing the nearest horror without context or understanding.” - Stuart Freedman (via)
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You’ve probably heard it before: Photojournalism is dead. No, it isn’t. Yes, it is. Repeat ad nauseam. It’s one of those debates that isn’t really getting anywhere. Now David Campbell chimes in, noting that “if we appreciate the difference between a mode of information and a mode of distribution, we can understand much better exactly what is supposed to have been killed.” (my emphasis)
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This past weekend, my wife and I went to estate sales. The early birds caught the worms, whereas the late birds - us - still came home with a trunk filled with stuff. Part of that stuff is this little book by David Douglas Duncan entitled I Protest! I had never heard of it before (*). I saw the cover of the book - it was lying on an unassuming pile of other books, and I picked it up not knowing that its author was a photographer. (more; updated below)
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Here’s a wonderful multimedia piece: Daylight Multimedia Podcast - Brighton Photo Biennial - Alec Soth & Martin Parr in conversation, produced and published by Daylight Multimedia.
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Duckrabbit are right: This interview with Martin Parr is “cracking”. My favourite quote: “I think my first mission is to do more about the photographic book. I feel so excited and convinced that we’re just beginning to start to appreciate how important this is in terms of our photographic culture.”
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Chances are you have heard of the the AFP vs. Morel case. If you have not (and even if you have this excellent summary of the latest developments is well worth the read.
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By now you’ve probably seen Richard Mosse’s Infra, photography of what we tend to casually refer to as the conflict in Congo. Why was he using those strange colours? I asked him. Find the conversation here.
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“Perhaps part of the reason why so much of mainstream photography is so derivative and repetitive is because photographers prefer to mimic rather than explore. Perhaps there is a fear that a new idea, a new thought may have to be transformed into a new approach and a new eye. All this is not easy to do. But certainly there are regions which after so many decades of shallow and repetitive coverage could do well with a new approach and some new stories.” - Asim Rafiqui
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It is time to reveal the winners of the Conscientious Portfolio Competition 2010. This year, the jury consisted of Elisabeth Biondi (New Yorker Magazine), Susanna Brown (Victoria and Albert Museum), and myself (find more information about Elisabeth and Susanna here). Without further ado, here they are… (more)
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Round five of the ping-pong chats with Michael Itkoff centers on whether/how we can understand art/photography produced in different cultures. (more)
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In early August, I was teaching two classes on the history of the photobook. During one of these classes, I made a brief comment on German photography. I don’t remember the context any longer, and it doesn’t even matter. What did - and still does - matter is the reaction of one of my students (herself a German). She noted that when I said “German” I was really only talking about the so-called Düsseldorf School (the Bechers and their various students), and while prominent the school hardly represents a fair sample of German photography. That’s correct, and I would write “of course” if it wasn’t for the fact that usually, the Düsseldorf School is taken as German photography. (more)
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Earlier this year, MAS Studio’s Iker Gil emailed me to ask whether I would be willing to write an essay about photography and information for an issue of MAS Context. You’d imagine that’s straightforward, but the more I thought about it the fuzzier it got. In the end, I decided to try to throw a curveball, writing mostly about photography and meaning - meaning, of course, being directly related to the information in a photograph (or so we think). The issue of MAS Context is now online, beautifully designed, and you can download a pdf copy here.
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“Invisible borders is a photographic project that is organised and executed annually by as many as 10 Nigerian photographers. The project is trans African in its orientation, and sees participating artists collectively taking road trips across Africa to explore and participate in various photographic events , festivals and exhibitions. The emphasis is primarily on the individual and collective journey of the participating artists who during, the momentary stops in capital cities; create photographic works that often reflect their individual approach to engaging with the populace as well as local artists and art practioners.”
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When Time Magazine published the cover that showed the face of a mutilated Afghan woman (for an in-depth take on it read this article) I immediately thought of Ernst Friedrich, who published a book entitled War Against War a few years after the end of World War I (1924). Friedrich used previously censored images from the war to make his case against war - showing what war looked like. Just like in the case of the Time Magazine cover, the most shocking images are those of people with terribly mutilated faces. (more)
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Chances are that after reading this article you’ll either find yourself in the “Yeah, right!” camp or in the “Well, that’s just how it works” one: “To the extent that art is about appreciating aesthetic objects for their own sake, is it right to put so much stake in the question of who did the drawing or painting or snapping?” Of course, things are slightly more complicated than that. A lot of people who buy an Ansel Adams print don’t buy it for the photography. They buy it for the status that comes along with owning one (just like in the case of an expensive watch, say). Having an original Uncle Earl on the wall just won’t impress your dinner-party guests all that much (or worse, it will impress them in exactly the wrong way).
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Remember cassette tapes? Those little plastic shells that protected the two spools? You would usually buy blank ones and produce your own tape, recording from the radio, say, or compiling music from records. I used to love cassette tapes. In fact, I still do. (more)
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“The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers, destroyed wildlife, did untold harm to the Gulf coast ecosystem and brought economic hardship to communities […] And as Steven Meisel points out in a new fashion story in Vogue Italia, the oil spill is also super-duper yucky. The new issue contains a 24-page story, ‘Water & Oil,’ showing model Kristen McMenamy covered in thick, crude oil and collapsed on a rocky coast like an oil-drenched shorebird, if a shorebird wore designer clothes.” - story (more)
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“Rick Norsigian’s 10-year quest to prove that he turned up a trove of “lost” Ansel Adams photo negatives at a Fresno garage sale now has a rival explanation advanced by Norsigian’s opponents: They were taken by a heretofore unknown photographer from the Fresno area named Earl Brooks. […] conclusive proof could well lie in the negatives themselves. Because all 44,000 Ansel Adams negatives are archived at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, a physical comparison should be made between Norsigian’s negatives and identically sized glass negatives from the archive — with particular attention to clear spots along the negatives’ borders that invariably were caused by the wooden holders and metal clips used to slot the glass plates into old-time cameras.” - story
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Not everybody is excited about Ansel Adams. I’m not. A.D. Coleman isn’t, either: “a few dozen ‘new’ Adams images from his early days won’t force any serious reconsideration of his already exhaustively overconsidered and vastly overestimated oeuvre. The thought of yet another Adams book and show makes me cringe reflexively.” The post also contains a longer discussion what exactly an “original print” is. That might strike many as an exercise in semantics, but it’s interesting to see how the topic typically is approached.
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If you haven’t seen the cover of TIME magazine or if you haven’t read the editors’ thinking about it, head over here. Also, there is a moving short film in which Jodi Bieber, the photographer, talks about taking the photograph. I’ve spent all day now thinking about the various aspects. A post over at Jezebel does a brilliant job summing up the real complexities of the issue, way better than I could: “Aisha’s abuse and mutilation took place last year, with U.S. troops’ presence in the country and alongside Afghan women’s significant progress on certain fronts. Women For Women in Afghanistan has some more details on her tragic background […] Such stories are obscene, not at all uncommon, and need to be told. But there is an elision here between these women’s oppression and what the U.S. military presence can and should do about it, which in turn simplifies the complexities of the debate and turns it into, ‘Well, do you want to help Aisha or not?’”
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There’s an interesting post over at Susana Raab’s blog about Image Makers vs. Print Makers. Quoting John Gossage (“There is a belief I have noticed among the best of the young, that a good picture is a good picture, no matter how it is reproduced. A belief I completely agree with.” - let’s ignore the “best of the young” bit), Susana notes that “I empathize with both a bit. Seeing the same image in I don’t know how many different complex incarnations leaves me a bit cold, but when I am looking at a gallery wall, I do want that print to be the best it can be […] - but I want content to be there as well.” (more)
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The occasion of the upcoming release of an Aperture book by Trevor Paglen (Invisible) seemed like the perfect opportunity to talk with the artist about his work. Find the full piece here.
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Following the publication of what you could call my version of Social Networking for Photographers 101, Massimo Cristaldi emailed me to share a piece has wrote a little while ago, addressing many of the same issues.
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I was going to pen a little piece about the state of critical writing about photography when I came across a new post by Paddy Johnson. Paddy takes a long and convoluted paragraph of art writing and boils it down to what it actually says, which can be summed up in two short sentences. (more)
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I decided to write a little piece on photographers and social networking, presenting my ideas of how photographers might want to approach the topic. The post is the culmination of lots of discussions I’ve had with people. I’m not under the illusion that what I wrote is the solution, but hopefully it will make approaching social networking a little bit easier for those who just don’t know how to deal with it.
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Another great post over at No Caption Needed, about the above image and its use in/for a New York Times article. Notes Robert Hariman “the story that accompanied this photograph in the New York Times is one reason why we will continue to experience large-scale disasters.” And “by putting text and image together, the truth is revealed. Between the technological development that will in fact result from the disaster, and the artistry of the Times and many other propagandists spinning it down the memory hole, the opportunity for genuine societal adaptation will be lost.” There’s nothing I could add to that.
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The New York Tenement Museum’s photography collection is now online. Unfortunately, all the images seem to have a rather large and distracting copyright notice on them.
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Over the past days, this image by Brian Ulrich was subject of two blog posts, one by the artist, and another one at No Caption Needed. Brian writes “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea that a big interest of mine is the ability of contemporary photography to act as propaganda for a like-minded cause.” I’m sure the word “propaganda” will be offputting for many people, but you can easily replace it with something less loaded. His suggestions are more relevant than ever, but I’m not sure how optimistic I am about them being put into action - it’s hard to see a Jacob Riis in the age of Facebook and Fox News. John Lucaites of No Caption Needed talks about photography almost along the same lines, with just a slightly different angle: “The question is, how do you give presence to an economic problem, particularly when it is animated, at least in part, by a psychology of risk?” Right now, it looks that at best we’re going to see a very slow economic recovery (where it will take years to create the jobs back that were lost), at worst there will be a double-dip recession. John’s question is unlikely to go away any time soon.
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Shortly after discovering Dawin Meckel’s portrait of Detroit, I approached him to find out more about this body of work: How did he go about photographing Detroit? How did this body of work get made? Find out all about here.
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Two months ago, I published some comments a reader had sent me about Fotofest. At that time, there was no reaction. The other day, I noticed how the post suddenly was getting a lot of attention, from people emailing it around. That, in turn, generated some more feedback, which I added underneath the original post. Have a look.
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Remember when President Obama channeled his inner George W. Bush and told a TV reporter he wanted to know “whose ass to kick” over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? Seems like the government found a group to target: Last week, the Coast Guard “announced rules that prevent the public—including news photographers and reporters—from coming within 20 meters (about 65 feet) of any response vessels or booms on the water or beaches. Violate the ‘safety zone’ rule and you can be slapped with a $40,000 fine and prosecuted under a Class D felony.” I’m quoting this from an article by Julie Dermansky, whose Flickr feed contains hundreds of photos from the Gulf. (thanks, Michel!) If you want to see the depressing reality Julie has plenty of photos of it.
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Dhruv Malhotra was one of the photographer at the 2010 Hyères Festival of Fashion and Photography. He was picked as the recipient of a scholarship for SVA’s Photo Global program, so he’ll have a chance to come to New York and work there. I approached Dhruv to talk about his own work and a little bit about photography in India in general. Find the piece here. (more)
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A friend of mine, originally from Peru and now living in Germany, brought me this little book about the photography of one Sebastian Rodriguez, taken in the Peruvian mining town of Morococha. I had never heard of this photographer, and of course I tried to look him up on Google. The results were disappointing. It seems there was a book published in 1987, which I can find in two libraries. In 1983, Aperture Magazine published some of the images. Plus, there is the occasional Spanish-language only text about the work (example). That’s it. (more)
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Round four of the ping-pong chats with Daylight Magazine’s Michael Itkoff centers on individual images, the impressions they leave, their power, and their uses, in the context of the (at the date of this writing) ongoing Gulf oil spill.
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Finding New York Review of Books piece on photography - that’s bound to be a special treat, given the high caliber of their writers. Read Apartheid’s Twisted Dream: David Goldblatt’s South Africa.
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I’ll admit something: I find most photography multimedia presentations tediously boring. In the worst cases, they’re like watching bad TV. Why bother buying an iPad, say, when all you are given to watch is bad TV? The main problem I see is that most multimedia presentations I’ve seen - in fact all the ones I’ve seen - essentially forget that on a computer you have more options. I love looking at photo books. I love watching (good) documentaries on photography or photographers on TV. On a computer, I don’t want to see photo books or TV. On a computer I want to see more. So I thought I’d sketch out what photography presented via multimedia on a computer could be. Maybe this will generate a little debate about photography on a computer. (more)
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The geek in me has long been interested in ways to move away from simple square pixels, all of the same size. One of the ideas I came up with was to allow for pixels of different size, albeit still squares. But why squares? Why not use circles? Of course, the answer is obvious, since you cannot possible fill the whole image area unless you allow for infinitely small pixels. But you can also just ignore that problem; and after a lot of programming and testing the above image is my best attempt to produce circle pixels (with different sizes - click on the image to see a larger version, which will give you an idea how this works). Needless to say, what you really want are shapes that actually can fill the image area, and that aren’t squares. (more)
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Artist/project statements have got to be the most dreaded aspect of photography. I’ve had many conversations with people about particularly bad statements or about how they are supposed to be written. I have some ideas how they might be written, and I’m sure there are many others. After a lot of thinking about it and quite a few hours of writing and editing, I decided to publish the little essay I came up with, hoping that some people might find it useful/helpful.
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Tony Fouhse just published some thoughts on (art) photography on newsprint: “looking at these pix on the kitchen table with my morning cup of coffee is like seeing the news as poetry.”
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Tyler Green features a veritable Eadweard Muybridge marathon this week, starting here.
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Indre Serpytyte is one of the photographers featured at the 2010 Hyères Festival of Fashion and Photography. There, I had a longer conversation with her about her work and its background. A new conversation at Conscientious Extended, conducted after coming back, touches upon many aspects of Indre’s work. (more)
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In my review of Marco Duyvendijk’s Eastward Bound I was able to only talk about, but not show, Marco’s portraits of Oana, a young woman whose portrait he has taken many times. In a new, exclusive feature on Conscientious Extended Marco now presents the photographs and their story.
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The BP Oil Disaster is dominating large parts of the news, and a pervasive combination of frustration and anger is spreading across the country (check out the size of the spill here). Of course, there are good reasons to be angry at BP and at the government. But it might be worthwhile to step back a little and to realize that ultimately, we all bear responsibility. BP (and other companies) are drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico because our cars need more fuel, and we’ve used up all sources that are easily accessible. BP has a lousy safety record and was unprepared for what just happened because the people we elected let them get away with all of that. Make no mistake, I don’t want BP to get off the hook. But I also think that to prevent future spills it will take more than just oil companies cleaning up their act (and the Coast at the Gulf). It also takes us using less of the stuff that they extract from the ground at such terrible cost for the environment. So now might be a good time to revisit Susan Bell and Mitch Epstein’s What is American Power? (here is a photo of an oil rig from that project)
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Just like most people, I have photographs from my childhood, and I occasionally look through them. Of course, I don’t remember everything about each individual image - in the earliest cases, I don’t remember anything - but for most photographs I do at least remember something. I know what the images mean, I know about the situations. With memory being very fickle and complicated we could of course argue about what these memories mean and whether they accurately reflect what really happened. But that aside, there’s something about these photographs that helps define me in some way - and part of it has to do with the fact that the number of childhood photographs in my possession is limited. (more)
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In a new, exclusive feature, Will Steacy talks about his project Down These Mean Streets, on view at Michael Mazzeo Gallery from June 10 until July 16, 2010. Find a podcast about the project here.
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When in the context of the art world an author starts talking about a colleague’s piece, referring to it as a “review” (note the quotes), you know what to expect. And sure enough, David Levi Strauss is not very happy about a piece by Andy Grundberg, which was published in the Summer 2010 issue of Aperture magazine and which is, alas, not available online. Since the criticism mostly seems to center on “the institutional arbiters,” I’m hoping the original piece will be made available online, too, because there is a real discussion to be had. Update (3 June 2010): There now is a link to the original review, plus a short response by Grundberg.
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This just in: “As photojournalists prepare return to Perpignan in early September for the 22nd International photojournalism festival, Jean-François Leroy, Visa Pour l’Image’s co-founder, has hit out at Photoshop abuses in the field, vowing to ask for raw files for the festival 2011 edition.” This following quote - by Leroy - struck me: “For example, I’ve recently received a project on Afghanistan. It’s magnificent, but I personally think that without the diverse Photoshop filters used by the photographer, the images would have been even better. The framing of the action and of the subject was just perfect. He didn’t need to change anything in post-production. But now I can’t show these images at Visa. I just can’t.” Really? Will photojournalists be happy about having to deal with yet another person inserting himself as an extra editor? (more)
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