muse-ings

Found Books - Andre Kertesz "The Early Years"

2011-06-28T17:16:00.002-06:00

Unpacking boxes of books after moving I am finding - or at least rediscovering - quite a few books I hadn't looked at for a long time (some had been pushed into to top shelves of the bookcase in the basement. Others hadn't actually been unpacked since the last time I moved...).

One of these is an enchanting little jewel of a book - Andre Kertesz, "The Early Years".

It is actually a fairly small book about 5" x 5" - roughly the size of the original Phaidon 55 series, although it is hardcover. Published by W.W. Norton in association with a 2005 exhibit at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery

The pictures in the book are all small contact sized prints for a box full of negatives that Kertesz had from his early days in Hungary when he was experimenting as a photographer. In fact most of the photographs in the book are smaller than they appear on screen here, yet with the crispness and depth of a contact print. A number of these early photographs are some of his most well know pictures. Others are less well known.

The Early Years is a wonderful book to have on hand for just sitting and browsing through for a few minutes every now and then. The photographic equivalent of a zen moment, mediating with your morning coffee/tea.

"When Hungarian photographer André Kertész did not have access to an enlarger early in his career, he made contact prints instead. And he became quite adept with this size, creating miniature images with incredible depth and sophistication. A real feeling of youth and artistic exploration dominates these pictures, which span from 1912 to 1925. From the very joyous experiments with his brother, Jeno, in the countryside, to his idyllic romance with Elizabeth, from his portraits of WWI soldiers, to his later hospital stay as he convalesced from a wound, we witness Kertész explore different photographic
interests and subjects. In order to compose for such a small format, Kertész needed to ground his images in strong lines and geometry, forging the hallmarks of his later modernist vision. Thus, the Hungarian Contacts, as they are called, chronicle not only Kertész’s coming of age as a man, but also his development as an artist. Before emigrating to the U.S. in 1936,
Kertész left the contact prints with an agent in Paris, who was later forced to flee the city under Nazi occupation. She buried the cache of tiny works in a makeshift bomb shelter on a farm in southern France. Kertész lost contact with her, and decades passed before the agent re-discovered Kertész because of his Bibliothéque Nationale exhibition in Paris in 1963. Thankfully, she led him to the site where he recovered the still-buried treasure. Though some of the Hungarian Contacts were part of the National Gallery of Art’s 2004 retrospective and though Kertész enlarged some of the images in his later years, a broad selection of them are presented together here as art objects in their own right and in the size that Kertész originally
intended for them. The book commemorates an important show of the work at Silverstein Photography in New York City and includes an engaging personal essay by Robert Gurbo, the curator of the estate. This new volume presents the Hungarian Contact Prints—many unpublished before now—in a wonderfully small format that enchants and refreshes.". Denise Wolff

I've always felt that Kertesz is one of the more important photographers of the Twentieth Century, especially (though not only) in the whole area of what might be called "Street" or "Candid" photography. Kertesz's photographs are in many ways a much needed antidote to the so called (and incorrectly named) decisive moment. More broadly, his place in the development of modern photography is frequently underrated. In most cases I'll take Kertesz over, say, Cartier-Bresson any day.

The Lytro camera will let you focus your pictures after they've been taken (and see around the edges...)

2011-06-22T13:45:00.003-06:00

It will also let you see around the edges of foreground objects... I'd read a bit about the Plenoptic/Light-field camera before but hadn't quite got my head around the physics. Lytro is a spin off from Stanford

Interesting news via Charlie Sorel at Wired:

"...Ng’s company Lytro is planning on launching the camera this year.
Regular Gadget Lab readers will recognize the technology as a a
light-field, or plenoptic camera. These camera put an array of
micro-lenses over the sensor. This lenticular array sits on the focal
plane of the camera (where the light is focused by the lens — also known
as the film plane), and the sensor sits slightly behind.

Thus the camera not only records the color and intensity of the
light, but also the direction. Using some heavy processing, this
information can then be used to do the magic you see above. It also
replaces much of a camera’s precision mechanics with software.

While this after-the-fact focus choice is the clear wow factor, there
are other neat tricks the camera can do with this information. First is
that the camera can shoot in much lower light. Second is that, as the
sensor is recording direction information, you can peek “behind” the
edges of the foreground objects...." (more).

From Lytro:

The Science Inside

Light Field Defined
What is the light field?
The light field is a core concept in imaging science,
representing fundamentally more powerful data than in regular
photographs. The light field fully defines how a scene appears. It is
the amount of light traveling in every direction through every point in
space – it’s all the light rays in a scene. Conventional cameras cannot
record the light field.

Light Field Capture
How does a light field camera capture the light rays?
Recording light fields requires an innovative, entirely new
kind of sensor called a light field sensor. The light field sensor
captures the color, intensity and vector direction of the rays of light.
This directional information is completely lost with traditional camera
sensors, which simply add up all the light rays and record them as a
single amount of light.
Light Field Processing
How do light field cameras make use of the additional information?
By substituting powerful software for many of the internal
parts of regular cameras, light field processing introduces new
capabilities that were never before possible. Sophisticated algorithms
use the full light field to unleash new ways to make and view pictures.
Relying on software rather than components can improve
performance, from increased speed of picture taking to the potential for
capturing better pictures in low light. It also creates new
opportunities to innovate on camera lenses, controls and design.

If this is technology that really does prove practical and scale-able then it has the potential to quite radically change photography. It's also a nice reminder that photograph isn't a picture of a thing, but a recording of light. "Now how much reality is there in that" as David Hockney once said of photography...

Picture of the Day

2011-06-16T08:34:00.001-06:00

Photograph - Rich Lam (via Bleacher Report)

From the post Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver last night. Although there are more than enough humorous retorts I'm tempted by (maybe in the comments...), I just like it as one of those classic daily news shots.

It captures the confused ambiguity of such a situation rather than just one more picture of a thug smashing a shop window.

Excellent catch by Vancouver photographer Rich Lam.

"The Waste Land" app

2011-06-15T00:32:00.005-06:00

(App icon)

There are hundreds and hundreds of not very good apps for the iPad. And thousands of really crappy ones. And then there are the few imaginative ones which are starting to appear which take advantage of what the iPad can (and, as importantly, cannot) do.

All that's needed is a bit if creativity and a modicum of lateral thinking to start exploring the potential of the iPad.

I have a couple of apps - mainly for my boys - from Stephen Wolfram and Theodore Grey and their colleagues at Touch Press - The Solar System and The Elements. They are just to very nice apps that are trying to make better use of what the iPad can do.

Some magazines have also started coming up with apps that are actually quite nicely done and take advantage of what the iPad can do (one of the better ones I've come across happens to have been free for the first few issues - Intelligent Life from the Economist. Another, which also happens to be free is Dazed & Confused magazine).

Which brings me to the Waste Land App. I had originally read that it was published by Faber & Faber, - Eliot's publisher. Until I was writing this I hadn't caught that it is actually produced in partnership with Touch Press who I mentioned above. I haven't got my hands on this yet but I really like the look of it and what they have done around one of the more important and influential poems of the Twentieth Century.

From a couple of reviews:

The LiteraryPlatform

"The gallery is my favourite bit, giving us a clutch of relevant postcards – of Bob Dylan, Dante Alligheri, the first Mrs Eliot,
a crowd of people crossing the river Thames,
‘so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.’
These images create real breathing space around the poem. They evoke, inform and leave the poem be.

There’s a picture of the first edition of Prufrock in a plain brown cover, then all the pages of the typescript manuscript with the inky slashes of Pound’s fierce corrections and comments. The notes, presented in a Comment-press style, can be brought up when wanted, then brushed away if you want the text plain. Likewise it’s a doddle to switch between the different audio readings or switch them off entirely."

and Salon

"You can watch (Fiona) Shaw read for a while, then switch back to the text to check a reference or translation, then go on reading the lines to the accompaniment of Ted Hughes' very different vocal interpretation; the app keeps track of your place as you go. Eliot's friend Ezra Pound played a crucial role in shaping "The Waste Land"; and the inclusion of the original manuscript with Pound's handwritten edits offers a glimpse of that process. These various ways of approaching the text are enticements to the multiple readings that make a full appreciation of the poem possible.

 Spending a day poring over "The Waste Land" app made me look at my old Norton critical editions with a new gleam in my eye. Instead of leafing through tissue-paper-thin pages of "Paradise Lost," squinting at the tiny footnotes, it would be so pleasant to scroll through Milton's epic (maybe with Gustave Dore's engravings?), tapping on the lines that cry out for elucidation while listening to a professional narrator vault the poet's enjambments far better than I ever could myself. How about "The Canterbury Tales," with an audio track in Middle English to juxtapose against a modern English translation? I would indeed pay for these, and the enthusiastic reception for "The Waste Land" app suggests that I am not alone."

I already have two or three different recordings on my iTunes/iPad of Eliot, Hughes et al reading the Wasteland and various other Eliot poems. But I like the way this app appears to take those, along with the text itself and a multitude of other things about the poem and draw them all together."

If The Wasteland app is as nice as it appears to be in the review I've seen then I have no problem paying a decent price for it. Some people automatically start to moan when and app costs more than $3.00 or $4.00, whatever it is. I'd rather have one good, creative app like The Elements that cost $10.00 or $20.00 than a couple of dozen crappt 99c ones.

BTW, I haven't yet seen many photography based apps (as opposed to "photo apps") which have managed to take advantage of the iPads possibilities quite as well. In fact I'm having a hard time thinking of one worthile one that I would pay more than the usual 99c or $1.99 for. I paid out a bit more for one that was billed as "the first photo book designed for the iPad" or some such, mainly to see what it was like but it was basically pretty lame.

I think there is lots of potential for some very creative and intriguing photograph based apps along the same broad, general direction. I just haven't really come across many yet.

Mind you, now I'm waiting for The Wittgenstein app.... Stephen Wolfram, Theodore Grey... anyone?

...

THE river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
...

--------

P.S. Talking of apps, this post was written with Blogsy - so far the only decent blogging app for the iPad. For the longest time blogging from the iPad was a really rather clunky affair. There was no decent blogging app at all, which was a little strange as really, the iPad and blogging go together like 5 year old Stilton and a tankard of Scrumpy (and led to me beginning to muse on the possibility that the rumours of the death of blogging were not actually premature...). I had the opportunity of beta testing Blogsy and was quite excited about it when it came my way. It has been out for a couple of months now and the creators have continued updating and tweaking it and it continues being nice app that's very good at what it's supposed to do. Usually link to the AppStore stuff

Sohei Nishino's Diorama Maps

2011-06-03T00:29:00.008-06:00

Istanbul

I really like this work by Sohei Nishino - his Diorama Maps. I came across it some time ago but didn't get around to writing about.

These are pictures I'd definitely like to see in person, but even on the internet they draw me in. Their depth and texture and detail are quite mesmerizing.

Istanbul - detail

I've long been a fan of Hockney's "joiners". I think that they said a lot about the limits of photography and also opened up interesting new potential. The problem with them was that they were such a brilliant Hockneyesque step that it seemed pretty hard to move much further beyond them in in a new direction. For a few years we were subject to a good few joiner type projects with most being somewhat poor imitation of the original idea (rather like that Gheary-lite museums popping around the globe after the Guggenheim Bilbao). When we were finally subject to a slew of joiner-like advertising it was pretty much over for the time being.

One of the more important things I liked about Hockney's original joiners was how they broke out of the perspectivism that binds most photography and how they showed some new potential ways of stepping outside Renaissance perspective with the camera.

London

I think Sohei Nishino's pictures have taken this at least one good imaginative step further in that direction. In part because of their scale. Not necessarily the scale of the prints - though I think they certainly need to be a certain size to be able to interact with them (originals are around 50" or 60" wide), but the scale of what they depict - a whole city. And while Hockney tackled some large subjects such as the Grand Canyon he still did so from a somewhat limited, if multiple, range of viewpoints.

London - detail

Sohei Nishino's pictures move to an almost infinite and ever changing multiplicity of viewpoints and perspectives in depicting the city. For me they combine the multiple viewpoints and perspectives of a classical Chinese scroll depiction such as one of the Kangxi Emperor's magnificent 17th Century Southern Inspection Tour scrolls - an inspiration for Hockney's joiner work as well as his panting - along with the imaginary vision of the city such as Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

Detail Kangxi Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour, Scroll Seven: Wuxi to Suzhou (University of Alberta: Mactaggart Collection)

But then they also speak to our ways of seeing, remembering and imagining places today; from touristic views to modern technological innovation and the social networking of photographs with things like Flickr, Photosynth and Seadragon (as well as to the early career of Louis Daguerre, one of the fathers of photography, who invented the popular Diorama shows in Paris before going on to invent the photographic Daguerreotype process)

Kyoto

And all this is aside from the technical brilliance and what I think must just be dogged, painstaking determination in actually photographing, producing and constructing these.

From Sohei Nihino's website:

"The narrative behind the Diorama Map series is the fluid nature of memory and the setting is always a city. The creation of a Diorama Map takes the following method; Walking around the chosen city on foot; shooting from various location with film; pasting and arranging of the re-imagined city from my memory as layered icons of the city.

The Diorama Map, which is almost a bird's eye view of the city, is not a precise google map, but presents the key elements of the city in a form closer to my own memory and observation. Therefore, every single element amongst the enormous mound of pieces reflects my own act of photographic creation itself."

Kyoto - detail

Of course the question now is where to take these next. A never ending series of city pictures would eventually become merely monotonous so I hope Sohei Nishino is letting his imagination run wild in considering new directions.

But in the meantime I'll continue to enjoy and take inspiration from these pictures for what they are.

Paris

All Photographs - Sohei Nishino

peripheral vision - the yellowknife project

2011-06-01T13:21:00.007-06:00

the suburbs as a state of mind (a mild retrospective continued....)

There no longer appears to be a clear division between the suburbs and either the urban or rural environment. There now seems to be a generic suburban condition that may be a potential quality for all inhabited spaces. This extended suburban condition does not easily show up on maps, it is in many ways more of a suburban state of mind than a topographic location.

Yellowknife - a city perched on the Canadian Shield and surrounded by Boreal forest is like an isolated specimen of this condition - the idea of the suburbs. Wherever you are in Canada (or indeed, North America) there is a mundane, yet reassuring familiarity to the suburbs and the strip malls and the big box stores that results from the pressure of market forces and from blunt expediency. And while each place often displays subtle individual differences, the movement is away from difference towards similarity and the success of homogenization. What dominates is the generic.

In photographing Yellowknife I find myself looking at things that are somewhat off centre, off to the side - a peripheral vision. Things that are often unnoticed and just below our level of perception. Things seen that are in plain sight yet so familiar or obvious they are usually ignored, unseen, and their existence barely registered - attention no longer paid to them.

The landscape is forced to conform to the construction of standardised suburban sub-divisions and the exposed Canadian Shield, some of the oldest rock in the world, is blasted and flattened to accommodate familiar suburban housing rather than the housing being designed to conform to the landscape.

This project conveys everyday North America and the infiltration of the city by suburban culture - the place seen on the way to the office or the supermarket - viewing these familiar environments from an off-centre perspective, revealing the ambiguities and artifice of everyday life.

Spring Time - A Mild Retrospective

2011-05-25T13:05:00.003-06:00

Spring time is here and things seem to be slowly coming back to life (including me).

I've going through boxes of stuff in a form of forced spring cleaning recently. Plenty of things to throw out but also coming across many things that I'd forgotten about but were a joy to rediscover.

In that spirit I'm going to post some pictures on here over the next while that I hadn't really looked at for some time. I find I often put pictures together for an exhibition or for a web page or whatever - pictures from a project that I might have spent some good time working on - and get so caught up with that often frantic end presentation process that it finishes with a sort of "fire and forget" conclusion. A quick glance, a sigh of relief and then on to whatever is next.

So I've been taking some time to go back over some of my pictures and projects and will be posting some selections on here - A Mild Retrospective.

Today a few pictures from Immersive Landscapes - boreal forest/precambrian shield

"Mining the Photo Archive"

2011-05-06T01:00:00.002-06:00

"...the archive is never closed, it opens out of the future." Jacques Derrida - Archive Fever

I must say I find it mildly annoying when someone discovers something which is in fact old hat but then proceeds to trumpet it far and wide as the next best thing.

Such seems to be the idea of "mining the photo archive". I've seen versions of this come up in a couple of places in the last year or so, but most recently in two posts on Conscientious. One entitled "The case for mining photography archives" and the other a review of the book "Photographic Memory - The Album in the Age of Photography" by Verna Posever Curtis of the Library of Congress

Now the idea that Colberg suggests in the first post is that there are large collections of photo archives in various forms - some such as Flickr as a sort of informal contemporaneous photo-archive and others which are more formalized photo-archives from the massive - such as the Library of Congress (or indeed just about any other national archive) to small local archives and historical societies.

His suggestion being that;

"Having new eyes look at older archives of photographs of course could also lead to fantastic insights into a photographer’s work. This is not to say that the old edits are bad. But who knows what kinds of new edits someone smart, with a great eye, might come up with? Of course, the old edit is always informed by its times and circumstances - but maybe an old, classic edit could get radically transformed into something that suddenly looks fresh again?"

(He goes on to add that another possibility would be to develop fluid ways of changing the original edit in photo-books which would likewise be a way of re-envisioning the original set of photographs).

Colberg concludes by saying;

"But still, I think there are interesting, largely unexplored opportunities here… and some agency, foundation, publisher and/or photographer might just pick them up."

In reviewing Photographic Memory (an excellent book, beautifully put together btw) the idea of mining the archive is picked up again;

"This new book could also be seen as a prime example of the mining of an archive that I discussed earlier on this site. The Library of Congress’ website offer access to their collection via digitized documents and images (which, btw, essentially provides a free additional way to look at the albums in the book), and one can only hope that there will be more projects such as Curtis’ "

Which sounds like a very interesting and quite wonderful set of ideas. What an intriguing new direction to take photography. The problem being that of course nothing at all in this is in any way new.

Archivists have been working for at least the last 15 to 20 years to find ways to make use of the new advantages provided by digitization and digital media in being able to ("data") mine the archive - both visual and non-visual. There are numerous projects online (including, but not only, on Flickr) where repositories have made large chunks of their collections available and have encouraged their broader access and use in a wide variety of ways, social tagging, commenting, various forms of crowdsourcing, new arrangements (or "edits" as Colberg calls them) and more, far beyond what the originators of the projects potentially imagined. In fact that latter idea is very much at the core of many of these projects - to put these photographic archives out there, make them available, encourage people to access and use them and then see what people do with them.

Indeed this has been one of the more exciting aspects of how such projects have developed. Photographers, artists and others - down to schoolchildren doing school projects - have been able to mine these archives for their own many and varied projects - creatively remaking the archive in ways that were previously neither imagined nor really possible. And as these projects grow and develop, new ways of using these records continue to explored, encouraged and developed.

So while there are still undoubtedly unexplored possibilities still to come from mining such archives there are already many agencies from UNESCO, to the International Council for Archives to archivists and curators in museums, archives, universities and institutions, to photographers and artists, and many more already up and running with this and who have already been doing this for some good time. The usual constraint, of course, being funding...

Which finally brings me to the book Photographic Memory. While this is indeed a rather fine new book on the place and role of the photographic album, it certainly isn't the first. As well as books on the photographic album in general there are books - drawing on the photographic archive - on women in photo albums; women's roles in making photographic albums, photo albums and travel, death in the photographic album etc etc. Then there are books which mined the photo archive looking at postcards, the roles of postcards in society, the carte de visite, funereal photographs and so on, again, "mining" the archive and putting pictures together in new ways and remaking the archive.

Opening up of the archive - photographic or otherwise - thanks to the opportunities afforded by digitization and the Internet is indeed a wonderful idea. As is the enabling and encouraging of people to access those archives, to comment on the image, to tag them, to draw on them and remake the archive. But please, let's not suddenly think that 2011 is the year we could start going ahead and doing this. Instead let's put our shoulders behind the longstanding work that already taken this in exciting new directions.

The Library of Congress

Venus of the Hydrants - Brilliant!

2011-02-07T11:48:00.002-07:00

Love it - from Miscellanea/Onsite Review:

"Never let it be said that city utilities workers don't have a finely honed sense of humour
Mme Vionnet
bondage
surrealism
the erotic."

Cairo Geeks Survive Tahrir Square Assault

2011-02-03T20:39:00.002-07:00

From Wired:

CAIRO — For three days, the geeks and online activists and DIY filmmakers protested peacefully here in Tahrir Square. For three nights, they slept in tents with their laptops by their sides and kept their mobile phones charged by hacking into one of Tahrir’s street lights. On the fourth day, Wednesday, the lynch mob came and encircled them.

Thousands of people supporting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak laid siege to the central plaza, pressing themselves into the four streets that lead into Tahrir. They attacked the unarmed crowds with clubs, knives, stones and Molotov cocktails. As I write this, reports put the death toll at three with around 1,500 injured.

“This was a real battle, a real Egyptian street fight, but we kept them back with stones and barricades and fire,” computer security specialist Ahmad Gharbeia, 34, tells me over the phone. “They never reached our camp.”

“I need to preserve my phone battery,” he adds, “so let’s talk later.”

For the past six years, Gharbeia has been training Arab world activists, journalists and human rights lawyers to hide their internet communications from prying eyes. “We use encryption techniques and PGP for e-mail,” he says. “We use proxies such as Tor that circumvent blocking. I was the Arabic editor of a tools set called Security in a Box. It’s a tool kit of open and free software that helps advocates and human rights activists achieve security, privacy and anonymity.” ...
more...

“This is private property - we're here to sell art"

2011-01-24T20:10:00.002-07:00

Incident In Art Land

From the New Yorker:

"Quietly moving through the Anselm Kiefer show at the Gagosian gallery on its final afternoon were eight people wearing black T-shirts that bore the show's portentous title—“Next Year in Jerusalem”—in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. They didn't speak unless spoken to; they took pictures of themselves standing before some equally portentous works of Holocaust-evoking art. (Everyone was taking pictures; the catalogue cost a hundred dollars.)

Only if approached did one of the group explain that they were part of an organization called U.S. Boat to Gaza, which plans to sponsor a ship in the next flotilla to sail against the Israeli blockade. Half of the group had left, and they were reduced to four by the time that gallery representatives asked them to leave, unimpressed by their claims to be extending the discussion that Kiefer had begun. Morality. Guilt. Jewish tragedy, past and present. (“This is private property,” a gallerista in towering heels shot back. “We're here to sell art.”)

A call to the police was threatened. In response, the activists put on their jackets—covering the offending Passover phrase, even while complaining that it had not, to their knowledge, been copyrighted—and asked if they might stay. Without reply, the representatives walked away...

Ingrid Homberg had gone to Gagosian that day to lift her spirits. A delicate blonde woman in her late fifties, she grew up in Germany—she is roughly of Kiefer's generation—but never felt that she belonged there; she moved to New York with her young daughter in 1980, and the city has proved a much happier fit. In recent years, however, she has been ill (fibromyalgia, arthritis) and suffers frequent pain. Still, she was immediately buoyed by Kiefer's magisterial landscapes, in which massive wings overhead suggest the judgment of God. The gallery was filled with such disturbing images. She had earlier noticed the people in the T-shirts, and now she approached them, hoping to discuss the feelings that the artist's work provoked.

But there was no discussion. Two police officers arrived just a moment after Homberg did, and ordered the group out. Including Homberg. She said that she had no reason to leave. She asked one of the officers—“Young man,” she addressed him, and he did look very young—why they did not allow the group to speak. And that was it. His partner grabbed her by the arm and began to pull her out..."

More here

Considering the nature of Anselm Kiefer's work and the themes of history, destruction, rembering and forgetting, societal guilt, judgement, atonement and more that run through it like strata, I find this story not only particularly ironic but also damningly telling.

I think that one phrase says it all; “This is private property... we're here to sell art"

Anselm Kiefer, Flying Fortress (2010), foreground, with Cetus (2010), in "Next Year in Jerusalem" at Gagosian Gallery

TRACES - alleyways & spandrels: An Exhibition

2011-01-03T12:56:00.003-07:00

I have an exhibition of some work from my project TRACES - alleyways & spandrels up at the McMullen Art Gallery in Edmonton until January 28th.

TRACES alleyways & spandrels

Edmonton's 1100 km of urban and suburban alleyways are like the backbone of the city's identity. Unnoticed and unregarded routes and pathways through the city, much of the time un-peopled yet full of the evidence of people.

Back yards often seem less regarded than front gardens, more off-guard and by the time the alley is reached, it is dustbins and recycling boxes, left over bricks and spare siding - every now and then punctuated by a garden of beauty and pride, unrestrained nature or some peculiar product of whimsy.

The alleyways are the pathways through the city's identity. Still public, yet intimate. Domain of dog walkers, jogging soccer moms, garbage collectors, handymen repairing fences, ﬁerce old ladies on solitary walks, afternoon gardeners and schoolboys dreaming and imagining adventures. Yet all encountered only infrequently - more often it is the traces, the evidence of these lives that is encountered.

"The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand,
written in the corners of the street, the gratings of the windows,
the bannisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning-rods, the poles of the flags.
Every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls"

Italo Calvino, Cities & Memory

The McMullen Art Gallery is located at the University of Alberta Hospital
(TRACES is in the After-Hours Gallery which is the exhibition space
which runs along the wall of the main corridor)

After-Hours Gallery (McMullen Art Gallery),
University of Alberta Hospital (next to the east entrance),
8440 – 112
Street,
Edmonton, AB

Winter 2010 - Anselm Kiefer

2010-12-31T17:00:00.004-07:00

The last (?) of Anselm Kiefer's four seasons from the New York Times:

Anselm Kiefer, "Gescheiterte Hoffnung (C.D. Friedrich)" 2010 (Text on the work is translated as follows: "Wreck of Hope."), Charcoal on photographic paper. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York.

Happy Xmas (Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas etc etc...)

2010-12-24T00:02:00.004-07:00

Bethlehem 1884

Gerry Badger, John Gossage and The Pond (update)

2010-10-11T00:02:00.003-06:00

A quick update to the recent post on the re-publication of "The Pond" by John Gossage.

The book now appears to have reached the bookstore shelves and be widely available.

The other thing is that I found that Aperture has a three-part podcast (Part1, Part 2, Part 3) of a discussion between John Gossage and Gerry Badger (he of The Photobook: A History among other things).

It's part interview with Gossage, part interview with Badger about his new book The Pleasures of Good Photographs, and part general shooting the breeze session about photography in general.

(I'm currently reading The Pleasures of Good Photographs and plan to post about it in a little while).

Three Ghetto Photographers

2010-10-05T14:17:00.004-06:00

An interesting post by Colin Pantall that references three different photographers in the Lodz Ghetto - Walter Genewein, Mendel Grossman and Henryk Ross.

(Walter Genewein)

Genewein was a German accountant working for the Nazis and uniquely, in what remains, photographed in colour. Grossman and Ross were Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto

There is a Polish documentary about Genewein which is quite revealing and well worth watching (part1 below).

Ross's photography documented the life and reality of the ghetto and was part official in his work as a photographer for the Jewish department of statistics and part unofficial - he hid a whole day in a shed at the railway sidings to record Jews from the ghetto being loaded onto trains for deportation to the camps. Ross recovered his photographs after the war from where he had buried them in the Ghetto and later testified with his photographs at the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem.

(Henryk Ross)

Grossman secretly photographed in the Ghetto, continuing even when he was deported to the Konigs Wusterhausen camp but he did not survive the final forced death march as the Russians approached the camp.

(Mendel Grossman)

Photographs from all three men show life and death in the Lodz Ghetto from three different perspectives including that of the Nazis. (Ross's book Lodz Ghetto Album is widely available in libraries is especially compelling along with My Secret Camera: Life in the Lodz Ghetto about Grossman)

(Henryk Ross)

I am particularly intrigued by what and how Genewein's photographs show and how we may or may not regard them because of who he was - an accountant and one of the bland but essential cogs in the successful running of the ghetto as a business or industry. The pictures, while informative about the inhabitants of the ghetto, speak much more to the nature of Genewien and the Germans running the whole "project" of the Volkish expansion eastwards:

"Genewein was a skilled amateur, and his Movex 12 was confiscated from its Jewish owner. The scarce colour stock came from Agfa. Thus equipped, the accountant went into factories where hats or Wehrmacht uniforms were being made, and he stood beside the lines of Jewish children as they waited to be fed.
In much the same way as August Sander, the accountant was fascinated by the principles of visual taxonomy and social hierarchy. His subjects stand awkwardly at their workbenches, in groups or singly, glaring out of hollow eye-sockets. These anonymous Jewish workers are exhausted and helpless, and it is intolerable even to think of them being made to pose for the camera.
Genewein's self-portraits, taken in an office beside an adding machine, have the same stilted, literal quality. He is playing the role to which he believed his own status as artist entitles him. Like Hitler - who displayed a consuming interest in the precise way in which he was depicted photographically, not just at every rally, but in private, too - Genewein thinks that he represents the forces of civilisation.
And like Leni Riefenstahl's work, with the same absence of hypocrisy or misgivings, these photographs express the true nature of power. The Germans are engaged in the grand project of reclaiming Jews from their criminal, dissolute ways. The photographs are testimony to the Nazi belief in the ennobling value of labour.
Where Germans are present, as the numerous trainloads of Jews arrive, they stand slightly apart. They are the masters now, and it isn't relevant that what lies in store for their charges is not benign.There are Jewish middlemen to make the contact with the inferior race less onerous. When Himmler visits the ghetto, Genewein is at hand to record the tribute paid to him by the collaborationist Chaim Rumkowski, who ran the ghetto on behalf of the Germans. No imperial photographer would more accurately have captured the complex of emotions implied by the arrival of a proconsul in a remote outpost of Empire."... from Cold Gaze of a Nazi Camera

(Henryk Ross)

Consumed by Fire

2010-09-21T17:40:00.003-06:00

"The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed."

From The Fire Sermon - The Waste Land
by T.S. Eliot

(© 2006 timothy atherton)

Anselm Kiefer's Opinions - The Seasons

2010-09-19T12:55:00.004-06:00

Anselm Kiefer is one of my favourite contemporary artists. Jim Johnson (who runs one of my favourite blogs) posted these works by Kiefer that were published in the Opinion pages of the NY Times (what a great idea btw - kudos to the Times).

It's been a while since I felt the thrill of excitement upon seeing some pictures, but I did when I saw these.

Before Spring

"Snow melt in the Odenwald. Goodbye, winter, parting hurts but your departure makes my heart cheer. Gladly I forget thee, may you always be far away. Goodbye, winter, parting hurts."
(March 2010)

Summer

“Summer in Barjac — the renowned orders of the night.”
(June 2010)

Autumn

“Ygdrasil, Autumn in Auvergne.”
(September 2010)

(All works © Anselm Kiefer, courtesy of the Gagosian Gallery)

ELEPHANT - The Art and Visual Clutter Magazine

2010-09-18T17:03:00.003-06:00

Or at least that's what I thought it said when my eyes scanned over it's cover in the magazines at Chapters.

But then again maybe we need a visual clutter magazine?

Panasonic Lumix GF1 - any good or a waste of money?

2010-09-16T15:36:00.007-06:00

Is this camera any good? (I don't have the energy to keep up with which new digital camera is out this week)

Are there any better alternatives - of a similar size and flexibility?

Uses will be: aside from family snapshots, a certain amount of urban/suburban photography. It may replace - but not supplant - a certain amount of Rolleiflex photography. An available aperture of at least 2.0 would be helpful. Among other things...

All comments welcome.

UPDATE: Oh bugger. I hadn't seen the Sigma DP2/DP2s (I remember when the Foveon sensor was vaporware...). Anyone out there using this little beastie?

(jeesh - how many typos can I get in one short post)

John Gossage - The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler / Map of Babylon

2010-09-14T22:34:00.003-06:00

(reposted due to html getting corrupted)

John Gossage's new book(s) The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler / Map of Babylon is notable for at least a couple of firsts. It's his first book produced and published in cooperation with Gerhard Steidl and it's also his first full body of work in colour.

First things first - publishing with Steidl. Over the last few years John Gossage has published a number of books through his own imprint Loostrife Editions. John is a real believer in the importance of the photo book, as well as a first rate book designer and Loostrife has produced some fantastic books. But I would also imagine that it's a heck of a job (as well as a money black hole?) running a small press - even if it gives a certain level of freedom and control as far as your own books go. So I would imagine that if a good working, creative relationship can be developed with someone like Gerhard Steidl then that is probably a good place to be.

But on to the book(s).

I keep saying book(s) because The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler/Map of Babylon is actually two books in one. If you start with The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler it finishes two thirds of the way through the book. At that point the pictures are upside down. So just flip the book over and start at the back (now the front) and you are in Map of Babylon. A nice added touch being that you can reverse the dust-cover and you get the cover for Map of Babylon if you prefer to view the book that way round. It all runs together nicely and the whole book works beautifully. There is plenty of the feel of John's precise and careful design, along with (and I've always tended tp liked the the design of most Steidl books) a bit of the Steidl/Göttingen touch as well. Design-wise this is a very nice, beautifully printed, book.

Photography-wise this is a bit more enigmatic than many of Gossage's books, although not quite as enigmatic as a select few (e.g Dance Card or Hey Fuckface!). So it takes a bit of context and some careful, extended, reading of the pictures as a whole to get a real sense of it. It takes time for the pictures to sink in - while at the same time still being able to get lost in any particular single photograph.

The context the publisher provides us with is this:

"John Gossage, the renowned American photographer and photography book-maker, presents two companion volumes and his first ever books in color. Engaged in a dance, neither book comes first, there is no hierarchy or sequence to the pair of volumes.

Gossage is one of the most literary of photographic book authors and in The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler, the narrative, whilst not autobiographical, is about a neighborhood in which he lives; one that is singular in the United States. At the same time provincial and international, it is a neighborhood populated by ambassadorial residences, embassies, and the lavish private homes of those who are in positions of power and influence in Washington. A project he began with the arrival of a new neighbor, the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and made over a full year’s cycle of seasons, these are images from the drift of privilege. The streets, cars, homes and yards of this neighborhood are photographed on perfect spring or autumn days, with sparklingly clear blue skies, and flowers or foliage accenting the order. These are photographs about how one might wish the world to be, how beauty might be seen as desire. In the same year Gossage made the Map of Babylon, photographing digitally from Washington, to Germany, to China and places in-between. This look away, to places beyond the immediate and local, is a classic exploration of particulars of the outside world."

I must say I found the accumulation of the pictures in Thirty-Two Inch Ruler conveyed a sense of dread, of oppression after looking through them two or three times, even without having dug any deeper into the context beyond the short publishers comment. Which surprised me for a couple of reasons.

First, the pictures being in colour. During the 1980's and 1990's Gossage didn't seem to get sidetracked by the whole New Colour thing or massive painting sized photographs or such, but continued with his black and white work which continued to be a valid, contemporary and creative way of seeing, of investigation.

The way he has seen and shown us the Berlin of the Wall, or Maghera or the streets and neighbourhoods of several American cities has always seemed absolutely contemporary - yet rarely threatening. They may be a bit grim; they may be beautiful in ways that surprise us, in ways we normally rarely notice; but even the view Gossage gave of the Berlin Wall, while often dark, was very rarely as ominous as these delicately lit suburban views. Yet that's the sense that developed as I looked through these pictures. And that John should chose this particular subject for his first full body of work in colour seemed almost perverse. Surely it's so much easier to convey 'dread', 'oppressive', 'ominous' in black and white? But then, on reflection, I realised what better way to convey such things. What better way to convey what appears at first glance to be an ordinary upper middle class, civil service sort of neighbourhood than in the ordinary, everyday colours of a suburban summer or fall. An ordinary place with ordinary (if rather well appointed) homes yet which contains within it - more than partially veiled or partly hidden - aspects of a global conflict which reach far beyond the suburb or city and with consequences and ramifications still as yet unknown.

And as for John Gossage in colour - that's just what these pictures are - John Gossage in colour. It's as if he has just taken a step sideways and there he is in the dimension of colour. There are many of his usual touches - a way of seeing that is both unique and familiar - and yet he has also been able to use colour as colour - to let it break out of the dominance of line or form so that the colour itself is allowed to be. He seems very much at ease with being able to "colour outside the lines" as it were. In this way each individual picture can hold its own ground as well as being an integral part of the story being told.

But returning to the unease, after a few pages I also found that the pictures started to feel quite voyeuristic so intimate do they become. Then I read one reviewer who made perfect sense of it when he described Gossage as a spy, working undercover as it were, reporting back to us on this strange yet ordinary place. (Besides which, of course, almost all photography is voyeuristic to one degree or another - usually far more so than most photographers like to admit. Indeed one of the great attractions of photography is that it allows us to be voyeurs, peering over the photographer's shoulder, but from a nice safe distance - in time as well as space).

Rather more briefly on Map of Babylon. These seem a collection of related yet unrelated pictures - "Photographs with qualities, but no real explanation" - pictures taken as Gossage has travelled over the last while. They are fascinating in that they show his experimenting with colour as he goes and - I believe I'm correct - his first real experiments with a digital camera (did that old Texas Leica finally wear out and die I wonder??). It has the intriguing feel of a photographer's sketchbook or workbook.

Overall a very worthwhile book to get hold of (and I don't know large the print runs is in this case, but Gossage's books often go out of print pretty quickly).

There is also a good review and conversation here: The Devil in Kalorama: A Tour of John Gossage’s Neighborhood as Hell

~~(Oh - and as far as I can tell Babylon was photographed with print film not digital? But I may well be wrong on that.)~~ Well, I was wrong. I just heard from John and all the photographs in the book were taken with a digital camera.

All Photographs - John Gossage

Summer (Autumn...) Book Sale

2010-09-13T19:03:00.002-06:00

Regarding my Summer Book Sale, it turned out to be bit time consuming/convoluted trying to sell the books through the blog so I've started loading them up on Ebay.

All have comparatively low starting bids - so you might get a bargain... Anyway you can find them by linking through here.

Up now:
Luigi Ghirri - Paesaggio italiano/Italian landscape

Lee Friedlander - Factory Valleys

Sally Eauclaire - The New Color Photography and New Color/New Work

Stephen Shore - Fotografien 1973 bis 1993

Andrea Modica - Treadwell

Josef Sudek - Smutná krajina/Sad Landscape

A few more to come over the next few days.

I Like - Flash Camera

2010-09-02T13:13:00.002-06:00

Flash Camera t-shirt. Unfortunately they only go on sale for 24 hours... damn

"The Pond" by John Gossage

2010-09-01T17:39:00.007-06:00

I'm pleased to see that Aperture is re-publishing John Gossage's seminal 1985 book The Pond. (I've written about John Gossage several times before: The Romance Industry; Putting Back The Wall; Snake Eyes).

"Considered a groundbreaking book when first published in 1985, John Gossage's The Pond remains one of the most important photobooks of the medium. As Gerry Badger, coauthor of The Photobook: A History, Volumes I and II, asserts, "Adams, Shore, Baltz--all the New Topographics photographers made great books, but none are better than The Pond." Consisting of photographs taken around and away from a pond situated in an unkempt wooded area at the edge of a city, the volume presents a considered foil to Henry Thoreau's stay at Walden. The photographs in The Pond do not aspire to the "beauty" of classical landscapes in the tradition of Ansel Adams. Instead, they reveal a subtle vision of reality on the border between man and nature. Gossage depicts nature in full splendor, yet at odds with both itself and man, but his tone is ambiguous and evocative rather than didactic. Robert Adams described the work as "believable because it includes evidence of man's darkness of spirit, memorable because of the intense fondness [Gossage] shows for the remains of the natural world." Aperture now reissues this exquisitely produced and highly collectible classic monograph. With the addition of three images and two essays, this second edition offers new audiences the opportunity to celebrate this notable work by a master photographer and bookmaker."

To my mind The Pond is one of the more important photography books of the last fifty years and stands (preceded by Walker Evans' American Photographs) with William Eggleston's Guide, Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places and Paul Graham's A1: The Great North Road among a few others.

I have a rare copy of the original which is one of my more valued photography books, but I'll look forward to seeing the new edition.

Now all we need is for someone to republish Michael Schmidt's Waffenruhe... any takers?

More to come on John Gossage's new book(s) The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler / Map of Babylon soon.

(Update) P.S. The first exhibition of the photographs from The Pond has just opened at the Smithsonion American Art Museum and is on until January. Interesting little comment here:

"EXPRESS: What does the pond represent?
GOSSAGE:The pond is a literary monologue, a narrative landscape book, character development — all of it. ... It's set in Queenstown, but a few of the shots were actually taken in Berlin. I won't tell which ones. I wanted to speak metaphorically about nature and civilization, which I realized halfway through my project. It's a work of documentary fiction. The sites are universally trivial. There are many ponds, and that one may not even be there anymore."
(my emphasis)

(All photographs: John Gossage - The Pond)

Marshall Mcluhan by Douglas Coupland - two thumbs down

2010-08-26T14:08:00.005-06:00

Marshall Mcluhan from the Penguin "Extraordinary Canadians" series, by Douglas Coupland

What a perfectly annoying, horrible little book.

It reeks of middle-aged hipsterism like a failed, corduroy clad, English Professor reeks of Old Spice.

Among other things the 'internet tricks' scattered throughout the book already look as dated as one of Mcluhan's glen plaid jackets.

Two thumbs down for this one.

"Another Summer" by Terri Weifenbach

2010-08-22T23:59:00.003-06:00

I got this small book by Terri Weifenbach a while ago and although I had looked through it a couple of times I hadn't given myself the time until recently to sit down with it and get to know it properly.

Published by The Thunderstorm Press (based in Japan) Another Summer is a small book (and a small run of only 500 numbered, signed copies) - in a simple grey cloth-covered binding with just the title embossed on the the front in sky blue. It resembles a small volume of poetry rather than a book of photographs and in many ways that's what it is: poetry.

There is no introductory text or essay inside, just the title and forty or so photographs. All of which seem to tell the story of the title - of another summer: a lake, a cottage, children and grandparents, picnics and canoes and back-yards.

In short the summer break of american myth and - sometimes still - of reality. It may be at the cottage or the cabin, or camping or the RV. There is something of the sense that the American Dream still includes Life, Liberty and a relaxing getaway to somewhere "other" in the summer. The idea of escaping (for escape it is) somewhere a little remote, a little wild, a little Walden-ish is still there, albeit it threatened by obsessive workloads, the Protestant Work Ethic, Blackberry addiction, a struggling economy and the threat of the disappearance of the American middle class. Despite which the desire to let children or grandchildren run free by a lake, swim off a dock, hunt for frogs or picnic in a clearing in the woods still survives.

Despite Terri's use of a fairly bright - if not quite saturated - colour palette, her work is a long way from a picture postcard or colour snapshot aesthetic. Or a digital pocket camera print for that matter. All of which would be an easy card for a lesser photographer to play in depicting the 'american summer'.

For one thing Weifenbach continues to use focus as a way of drawing attention away from or towards part of the picture and, to my mind, rendering the picture beautifully photographic in nature - it becomes a photographic picture. In a way these are the anti-HDR photograph, which is the photograph become something else - kitsch among other things.

But more than anything I don't think that this is a book about one summer, or one family or just another summer. Where it could easily tend towards nostalgia and it's associated sentimentality Weifenbach moves much more towards elegy.

And despite the beauty found within the pictures there is also melancholy mingled in with the happiness. Weifenbach doesn't tell us the why or the what of its source. That is up to the viewer, the reader of this book - to make our own meaning as we read it, to make the story our own. Growing up, growing old, loss of parents, loss of the summer idyll itself? It could be all of these and more - or none.

Which is the wonderful thing about photographs - and something so many photographers appear to forget. Photographs have no one meaning. We bring our own meaning(s) to them each time we view them. The inherent ambiguity of the photograph always leaves space for us to imagine and experience in ways which can rarely be foreseen or predicted.

As Edward Hopper said; "I hope it does not tell an obvious anecdote for none is intended", which could equally be said of Another Summer.

(All photographs: Terri Weifenbach - Another Summer)

Summer Book Sale Part I.

2010-08-19T21:48:00.004-06:00

Here are the first three books going up for sale:

~~Walker Evans - Polaroids.~~

Published by Scalo in 2001
First Edition
Near Fine (slight scuffing on cover)
$100.00 + shipping

Stephen Shore: Fotografien 1973 bis 1993

Published by Schirmer/Mosel, 1995
First Edition

If you've never seen Stephen Shore's photographs of Montana, Texas, the Yucatan and Scotland (along with some of his more well known images) then this is the book for you

$200.00 + shipping

Andrea Modica - Treadwell

Published by Chronicle Books
First Edition edition 1996
Fine

$95.00 + shipping

The fine print:

Books will be sold on a first come first served basis - first person to
email me and pay the price + shipping via Paypal get the book. If
someone emails to buy a book me but doesn't make payment within 48 hours
then it will go to the next person in line.

Shipping costs will be based on shipping via Canada Post - Standard Parcel for Canada and USA, Air Mail (which seems to get more expensive by the minute these days...) to anywhere else in the world.

All the books are used - sales are as is and final. So if you have questions about the book make sure to ask them.

I'll strike off the books if and when they are sold.

Email Contact for books: Contact

America in Colour in the 1930's & 1940's - LoC

2010-08-16T22:00:00.004-06:00

(A cross roads store, bar, "juke joint," and gas station in the cotton plantation area, Melrose, La. 1940 Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-, photographer)

Going by the number of posts that have crossed my Reader in the last couple of weeks it would seem that the rest of the photo-blogosphere has discovered that there are some fascinating colour photographs of the US in the 1930's and 1940's which are held by the Library of Congress. Many of which were taken were by some of the well FSA/OSW photographers such as Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano and Russell Lee.

However, just remember, you actually heard it here first - January 24th, 2008 to be precise...

(The "original" Rosie the Riveter - Riveter at work on Consolidated bomber, Consolidated Aircraft Corp., Fort Worth, Texas 1942 Oct. Howard R. Hollem, photographer (LoC))

Many of these photographs are indeed very fascinating although it the colour ones in particular which seem to have caught peoples imagination.

While these have been up on the LoC website for a number of years, they have become much more widely known since the LoC put a large selection up on Flickr. In fact there are quite a range of institutions and collections which have joined in adding a fascinating array of work to the Flickr Commons from the Getty to the Imperial War Museum to The National Archives UK to the State Library of New South Wales and more.

One result of this is that many institutions are finding they have been able to glean a large amount of extra information about the images through the crowd-sourcing of descriptions on Flicker.

Mind you, although they re easier to view on Flickr, one of the nice thing abut going back to the Library of Congress site for them is you can frequently download very large versions of the files - 50mb to 100mb or so - if you fancy printing off a few for your wall.

All in all worth a look (or another look)

P.S. - The Library of Congress recently updated the front end of it's normal image catalogue database system which improved its user friendliness quite significantly

(Louise Rosskam, 1910-, photographer. Shulman's market, at the southeast corner of N Street and Union Street S.W., Washington, D.C. 1941/42 (LoC))

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet - a good read

2010-08-12T23:56:00.007-06:00

A good read - so far anyway. I've been reading this on and off over the last few weeks and I'm about halfway through.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet is an enjoyable, well written, dense (but not impenetrable) novel set in Eighteenth Century Japan on the tiny western foothold of the guarded island of Dejima in Nagasaki Harbour. Home of the traders of the Dutch East India Company.

I had previously read only one of David Mitchell's novels Black Swan Green, which like this is fairly straightforward in terms of it's narrative. Whereas he is generally known for his more narrative bending efforts in his previous novels Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten.

I guess this novel has also just made it to the Booker Prize long list and so will undoubtedly become more popular.

"The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland.
But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient,with his very life?”" (Official book blurb)

Mitchell is quite a wordsmith. I enjoy the way he plays with word and language and does so in a way that appears effortless. I read one comment on this book where a reader/reviewer complained about the anachronisms in it - with made me laugh out loud. A "historical novel" is basically just one big anachronism so it seems a bit of a waste of time to actually note them as you go along and then complain about them. In fact one thing I enjoy about The Thousand Autumns is the role of interpreters in it. They are fairly central to the story as they were central to the lives of both the Dutch Traders, Japanese Merchants and Japanese authorities involved with the combination of commerce and protecting Japan from the threat of Western influence. But if course everyone in the book "speaks" English. So there will be a Dutchman helping a Japanese translator find the right words to translate a phrase correctly from Dutch to Japanese - but all done in English. As are also mistakes in translation caused by different but similar sounding words or words with two different meanings - all of which are again in English. Yet you come away from reading such a passage convinced you read/heard it in Dutch and Japanese!

I listened to a radio interview with Mitchell, who lived in Japan for a number of years, and when announced to his Japanese wife (they now live in Ireland) that he was going to write his "Japanese novel" she said that if he wrote another noble Geisha potboiler type novel she would stab him with a very large knife! Luckily she must have considered that The Thousand Autumns passed muster.

Anyway here's some clips from a review. And as I said it is an interesting, enjoyable and intelligent read with enough of a challenge to it that you probably wouldn't want to take it to the beach.

From Charles Foran's review in the Globe and Mail:

"...Jacob de Zoet lies in between the sprawling, mind-altering Cloud Atlas and the controlled, sensitive Black Swan Green. It is a straightforward historical novel, told chronologically and in vivid present tense. Mitchell, who recreates entire worlds with such ease one could be forgiven for assuming that he time-travels to them, and then returns to report on what he has observed and heard (in multiple tongues), moves with no less apparent effortlessness from perspective to perspective.
Jacob’s point of view dominates early on, but there are scenes set among the Japanese themselves, including sequences in a remote mountain nunnery where women are imprisoned as sex slaves. A thrilling narrative shift in Jacob de Zoet centres around that nunnery, and the novel moves away from its should-be lovers, widening out to address the emerging global politics of 19th-century imperialism. How it reconciles them in the elegiac final pages is beautiful and despairing, a quiet, perfect note on which to end.
That ending, a string of failures of “contact,” with the disappearance from history of the story’s protagonists as certain as the vanishing of Dejima itself, is deeply felt. Often overlooked by admirers of Mitchell’s daunting formal skill is the humanism, empathetic and moral, that informs his fiction. An English naval captain endures an outbreak of gout while he attempts to do his empire’s bidding in Nagasaki Bay, affecting his decisions; a Japanese magistrate, learning of an unspeakable cruelty going unchecked, ends it in the only way possible – by sacrificing his own life.
In Cloud Atlas, the theme of predation, the tendency of organisms to prey upon each other to mutual ruination, unified the six separate narratives. In Jacob de Zoet, this preoccupation is evidenced in the careful construction of the various small, overcrowded prisons – islands, nunneries, ships, homes – inside of which the characters must operate. “Why must all things,” the same gout-ridden captain laments, “go around in stupid circles?”
A writer as naturally curious, generous and able to translate an acute perceptivity to, and wonder at, the natural world as David Mitchell isn’t likely to produce a hushed, low-key novel. For some, Black Swan Green was even a little muted: Mitchell with the volume kept too low on his singular voice – or, rather, his glorious voices. Though direct in its storytelling, Jacob de Zoet marks a return to full amplitude. That means occasionally over-long scenes and one or two rambling monologues. But it also guarantees fiction of exceptional intelligence, richness and vitality"

Coming Soon - Summer Book Sale... Gill, Evans, Ghirri and more

2010-08-11T14:36:00.003-06:00

Over the next little while I'm going to be offering a few photobooks for sale (for some much needed fund-raising...).

Most will be of the slightly harder to find variety but at a something of a discount from the prices found on the likes of Advanced Book Exchange, Amazon used books, Photoeye etc.

Here's a taster of a few of the titles but please DON'T email me yet about them (I'll just ignore any such emails unless you are offering way over the odds). Please wait until I actually post them. Then it will be on a first come, first paid, first served basis.

Here are a few of the titles that will be on offer:

Joel Sternfeld - American Prospects (First paperback edition 1994)

Sally Eauclair - New Color

Walker Evans - Polaroids

Andrea Modica - Treadwell

Stephen Gill - Archeology in Reverse

Lee Friedlander - Factory Valleys (ex-library)

Luigi Ghirri - Paesaggio Italiano/Italian Landscape (1989)

more...

Photojournalism 1855-2010 R.I.P.

2010-08-09T15:50:00.003-06:00

(Roger Fenton's assistant Marcus Sparling in the Crimea 1855)

Photojournalism was finally taken off life-support and pronounced dead on 1st August 2010.

At least, that is, according to Neill Burgess. Burgess - who runs his own picture agency, NB Pictures, represents 10 photographers, including Simon Norfolk, Dayanita Singh and Sebastião Salgado, and was also head of Network Photographers and Magnum Photos in New York, and Magnum London, which he helped set up in 1986. He is twice a former Chairman of World Press Photo - writes for Editorial Photographers UK:

"“For God’s sake, somebody call it!”

Has the time come to take photojournalism off life-support? After nearly 25 years in the business, agency director Neil Burgess steps forward to make the call.

...Today I look at the world of magazine and newspaper publishing and I see no photojournalism being produced. There are some things which look very like photojournalism, but scratch the surface and you’ll find they were produced with the aid of a grant, were commissioned by an NGO, or that they were a self-financed project, a book extract, or a preview of an exhibition.
Magazines and newspapers are no longer putting any money into photojournalism. They will commission a portrait or two. They might send a photographer off with a writer to illustrate the writer’s story, but they no longer fund photojournalism. They no longer fund photo-reportage. They only fund photo illustration.
We should stop talking about photojournalists altogether. Apart from a few old dinosaurs whose contracts are so long and retirement so close that it’s cheaper to keep them on, there is no journalism organisation funding photographers to act as reporters. A few are kept on to help provide ‘illustration’ and decorative visual work, but there is simply no visual journalism or reportage being supported by so called news organisations.
Seven British-based photographers won prizes at the ‘World Press Photo’ competition this year and not one of them was financed by a British news organisation. But this is not just a UK problem. Look at TIME and Newsweek, they are a joke. I cannot imagine anyone buys them on the news-stand anymore. I suspect they only still exist because thousands of schools, and libraries and colleges around the world have forgotten to cancel their subscriptions. Even though they have some great names in photojournalism on their mastheads, when did you last see a photo-essay of any significance in these news magazines?
The wire services have concentrated on development of TV and internet services and focused on financial intelligence to pay the bills, rather than news as it happens. They rely on stringers and on ‘citizen journalists’ when there’s a breaking story, not professional photojournalists...
...I woke up this morning with a dream going around in my head. It was as if I’d been watching a medical drama, ER or something, where they’d spent half the programme trying to revive a favourite character: mouth to mouth, blood transfusions, pumping the chest up and down, that electrical thing where they shout “Clear!” before zapping them with 50,000 volts to get the heart going again, emergency transplants and injections of adrenalin …, but nothing works. And someone sobs, “We’ve got to save him we cannot let him die.” And his best friend steps forward, grim and stressed and says, “It’s no good. For God’s sake, somebody call it!”
Okay, I’m that friend and I’m stepping forward and calling it. “Photojournalism: time of death 11.12. GMT 1st August 2010.” Amen.

(full article here).

(Making the call: Neil Burgess is at his photo-bookstall in London’s Broadway Market most Saturdays. Photo © David Hoffman.)

I'd have to say that, within the confines of Burgesses definition of photojournalism, I'd pretty much have to agree. I don't see the day coming in there near future when a major "publication" - paper or digital - sends off the likes of a McCullin or a Nachtwey or a Peress to cover important stories in depth. Most Photojournalists today - be it for local or regional papers, the national press or the likes of Newsweek or Time or the Sunday Times (or their digital versions and/or equivalents) - really aren't even news photographers anymore - just photo-illustrators.

(Thanks to Dave Burnett for the link)

And on an almost lighter note I'll repost this:

Working in the Print Media today

A short film about how to conduct yourself when offered a photo assignment.

And I can assure those of you who have never worked for newspapers or magazines that every situation in this has happened - and worse... (after I posted this the first time an old friend emailed me and pointed out he'd once been "offered" the half-day rate to travel from Kabul to Uruzgan via Kandahar - check the map - because he would only be photographing for a couple of hours...)

NOTE: Language NSFW...

Raymond Meeks - amwell | continuum

2010-08-08T00:36:00.003-06:00

(© Raymond Meeks amwell | continuum)

For a long time, as I kept coming across Raymond Meeks’ work, I could never quite make up my mind about it. I was drawn to the land(scape) aspects of what he does but I wasn’t so sure about some other parts of it and how it all fit together.

One thing I wasn’t so sure about was the mixture of the portraits/people in along with the land in most of his projects. But this was quite hard to tell because although Meeks and his work seemed to turn up quite regularly it was usually only as a brief passing mention somewhere or two or three images from one of his books. And while his books seem to be the main way of presenting his work but they are quite hard to find.

(© Raymond Meeks - topsoil)

With the exception of two or three books, such as A Clearing and Sound of Summer Running published by Nazraeli Press, most of his books are hand-made and/or small print runs produced very much as an artist's book (although Meeks has indicated that he experimented with deconstructing the “artists book“ I see it more as expanding the boundaries of the artist's/photographer's book). As a result these books tend to a). sell out very quickly, b). increase in value rather quickly once they are sold out and c). some of the artist's books are quite expensive (and rightly so) in the first place. In fact a. and b. also seems to apply to his books published through Nazraeli as well.

(© Raymond Meeks from amwell | continuum)

So until recently I had to rely on the overview of his work found at places like Photoeye or on viewing his website. And as the internet is basically crap for viewing this kind of work and getting anything more than the roughest, blurriest, myopic sense of what the work is about I really had to wait until I actually got some of his work in my hands.

Then a couple of months ago a friend sent me a link to Meeks’ website where I could buy a copy of his latest hand-made book project amwell | continuum. So I fired up Paypal and got in on the ground floor with this one.

Two or three weeks later the package arrived and I must say I was impressed. The size is about 12”x9“ and it is a hand-sewn soft covered collection with 18 pages by my count. It was printed on what Meeks describes as a ”broad format laser printer (weighing-in at a hulking 150 lbs.) I suspect the machine lacks an “energy-star rating” and have found that by shutting down the lights and music and turning down the heat, I can successfully print books without short circuiting the power“, which I think speaks to his continued exploration of the hand-made artists book. My copy also came with two signed prints - one black and white and one colour - along with a delightful little hand written card from Raymond which also has another picture on it.

So as a physical work it is very nice to handle. This particular laser-printing process (I’m thinking at least decade old technology - but maybe two??) also gives a nice and somewhat unique feel which reproduces the images well.

But what of the content? Well, I was pleased to find that my initial sense of being drawn to Meeks’ work was confirmed. The work has a very low key and gentle feel to it. It is very much about a place but it is not sentimental or nostalgic - but rather is straight forward yet maintaining something of the magic or the mystery of the everyday - that is there around us when or if we allow ourselves to notice it. There is a sense of beauty but also more than a little of the sublime.

(© Raymond Meeks from amwell | continuum)

For myself I found quiet echoes of other photographer’s work. Sally Mann - but without so much of Freud’s death-drive. John Gossage - but not quite as cool-eyed. The tiniest chord of Roger Ballen - but without the associated psychotic nightmares. As well as some resonances with Stephen Gill and Masao Yamamoto.

Overall though Meeks’ vision is very much his own. This short book moves beautifully from place to people to interiors to place and from colour to black and white and back to colour smoothly with a sense of ease and in a way which is almost unnoticed as you spend time with the pictures (one thing I have long thought is that the mixing of colour and black & white is an almost impossible thing to pull off). This is all very much in the realm of poetry.

And amwell | continuum is indeed a continuum, a continuation of Meeks’ own coming to terms with moving from Montana to Portland, Oregon - from deeply rural to urban (indeed suburban) and in good part seems to be about letting go of the former while trying to work out how to see and make sense of the latter, a process started in his earlier book Carousel.

”“amwell | continuum” is an artist book/journal which advances the narrative of my most recent artist broadside, “carousel”, while continuing to explore the construct of memory and resolve loss. it’s only now in the completion of this book, that I recognize a sustained and underlying thread of melancholy, similar to a passing glance in the mirror on your way out the door that reflects the unseemly or the shock of hearing your voice in a recording. for me, there are delicate moments of joy represented throughout this book, as well as a kind measure of hope. there are multiple pairings observed in the layout, perhaps to suggest a lingering in the landscape and to parallel my personal impulse to do so. in addition, I’ve been compelled to experience and express time beyond chronological sequencing, the absence of time in the horizontal dimension of past and future.
in the making of books, I’m drawn to the merging of contemporary materials and media with less common and impermanent results. Nazraeli publisher and friend Chris Pichler has generously offered a broad format laser printer (weighing-in at a hulking 150 lbs.) I suspect the machine lacks an “energy-star rating” and have found that by shutting down the lights and music and turning down the heat, I can successfully print books without short circuiting the power. obviously, this limits my printing operation to daylight hours. however, the printer allows for fine reproductions where toner sits on top of cotton fiber paper and is “fused” creating a wonderful merging of mediums. While my recent publishing efforts may have something to do with deconstructing the “art book” and shifting focus from the beautiful object to honoring content and subject, I am, as many, drawn to tactile experience and a clear expression of the work in book form; using inexpensive materials and common tools while subtracting nothing of quality or value from the piece.“

(© Raymond Meeks from Carousel)

Something I’ve also long held is that the book is very much the natural home for photographs and that photographs on the gallery or museum wall are really more of a secondary way of presenting or seeing photographs (My prediction is that in a few years time we’ll look back at the ever larger Stately Home/Palais sized photographs currently in vogue as something of an interesting blip in the photographic continuum. And a few years more and we may even look back at them as something a little bit quaint in the same way we look back at the Kodak Coloramas). Today, with the ever increasing options for photographers to produce their own books - from gluing and hand stitching, to varied forms of print on demand to print it yourself and more, we are already seeing an exciting growth in the photography book in all sorts of different forms. Books limited only by imagination rather than by cost and technology.

(© Raymond Meeks from watching waiting where,?)

There is an interesting interview with Meeks by Darius Himes (worth reading in full) which picks up on the artist’s/photographer’s book aspect:

”Darius Himes: Your artist books are made from appropriated books that I assume you've picked up here and there at various bookstores. When did you first start using old books as a space to work on your photographs, and what motivated you to do so.

Raymond Meeks: It’s just been within the last year that I’ve been thinking about the use of older, existing books. I’d been mounting prints to folded pages for a few years, creating small books with limited, homespun bookbinding skill. I have a sorry stack of tattered books with crusted glue, ruined in the final attempt to bind covers with pages. The use of secondhand books also seemed a decent effort towards recycling, considering the vast heap of books that rest idle on bookshelves and especially
since what I’m doing is exploratory. So little of what I do with photography and books is deliberate or intentional. Certainly, what resonates with others seems to be born out of good luck and grace.

Creatively, I thrive when I’m put in a corner and given limited resources and few options. The books I find provide portals and clues, which allow me to work with the existing title or narrative. Sometimes the dimensions are just right, or the number of pages. But I rely heavily on the inherent voice of the book and enjoy the collaboration between what the book was in its previous life and what it might become...

...DH: Could you describe for us the process of finding a book and then how you transform it? Are there clear steps along the way and does that take months? Or do you find yourself completing these objects in a weekend?

RM: Frequenting secondhand bookstores is not an obsession, but I leave myself open to discovery. I recently came across the title Minna and Myself, containing the poetry of Maxwell Bodenheim. I immediately placed my daughter in the role of Minna, and I imagined my wife using the first person voice. The book was originally published in 1918, and Bodenheim’s verse drips from the page like sap. Here are some of the lines: “Twilight pushes down your eyes, with shimmering, pregnant fingers, that leave you covered with still-born touch. With little whips of dead words”. And, “your cheeks are spent diminuendos, sheering into the rose-veiled silence of your lips”.

Needless to say, I had to use the verse sparingly, which left space for my own interpretation in pictures. This became my collaboration with Maxwell Bodenheim, who died in Manhattan in 1954. I hadn’t known of Bodenheim previous to the discovery of Minna and Myself and I imagined, in a narcissistic way perhaps, that I might renew his words. I trust that he might approve of our posthumous collaboration. I genuinely took his words to heart and spent a number of days with prints and negatives, trying to work with his pace and rhythm. In the end though, it’s just a book that’s already had a life and it’s indulgent to think about the book now in a new way. At times I feel it doesn’t exist for anyone else, really, apart from myself."

Raymond Meeks’ work has a looseness in style that I envy combined with an intriguing way of seeing. If you can't find any of his books to look at first hand at least go and hunt around his website where you can find his different books and projects (as well as the photoeye galleries)

Now I just need to find a reasonably priced copy of Carousel or Orchard or at least A Clearing somewhere...

(© Raymond Meeks from amwell | continuum)

(note: please excuse any typos or strange forms of sentence construction. My brain still isn't currently quite working as it should do and I don't always catch them...)

New Likea Camera - $19.95

2010-07-09T17:55:00.002-06:00

A new (cardboard) pinhole Leica - just the thing. From Wired:

"The Likea camera is like a Leica camera. Specifically, the Likea MPH is a stripped down version of Leica’s already frill-less MP rangefinder. How stripped down? Try these anti-specs:
No battery, no light meter, no mechanical shutter, no embellishment –
just your eye, a lightproof box and the emulsion.
It is also $20, and made from cardboard. The MPH is in fact just a pinhole camera, although so sparsely equipped is the kit that it doesn’t even include the pinhole: you will have to cut your own from a soda-can. One thing it does share with every real Leica ever made is the sensor: it uses the exact-same 35mm film as the legendary German rangefinders have always used."

The Seed Cathedral - British Shanghai Expo Pavilion

2010-05-12T10:00:00.002-06:00

photo © Daniele Mattioli

Whether it actually "works" or not as a piece of architecture, visually I think this looks just fantastic. (Plenty more here and here). I also like the combined concepts of "seed cathedral" and "blur building"

photo © Daniele Mattioli

"The Seed Cathedral is 20 meters tall and is formed from 60,000 slender transparent fiber optic rods. Each fiber optic rod is 7.5 meters long and encloses one or more seeds at its tip. During the day, they draw daylight inwards to illuminate the interior. At night, light sources inside each rod allowing the entire structure to glow. When the wind blows the optic “hairs” gently move as they create a dynamic effect for the viewers. Inside the darkened inner chamber of the Seed Cathedral” the tips of the fiber optic filaments form an apparently hovering galaxy of slim vitrines containing a vast array of embedded seeds.”

photo © Daniele Mattioli

Thousand and One Words

2010-05-04T09:55:00.004-06:00

Great photo commentary and critique blog - Thousand and One Words - by "Ryan Howard" ؟

From his Artists Statement

"They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but my photographs strive for more. I document life--capturing emotions and provoking thought. My pictures serve as a mirror, not only reflecting the truth in existence, but also providing the viewer a glimpse back through my lens, past the viewfinder, and straight into my spirit/soul.."

Here are a couple of posts:

Block Drive

"The eye is drawn to the sign and its cry for help. "Do not block drive." It begs us to examine what is blocking our drive. It's easy to believe we are resigned to this black and white life, but look closely at the picture. Notice how the letters go outside the lines just like the writer is trying to break free of the locked door. Delve deeper to see the play between light and dark highlighting the symbolism of the text. The washed out effect from the letters is our light within trying to break through. I could have shot this head on, but I choose the angle to emphasize the padlock - the darkest part of the photo...the darkest part of life. The lock in the shadows is the darkest parts of our lives; addiction, abandonment, orphanages, greed, metaphorical blindness. That darkness is the secrets and secrets locked deep within each of us - the darkness chaining our drive."

Mysterious Pipes

"Protruding out from the coarse stucco, these three holes are a mystery. Where do they lead? What flows through them? The observer cannot know for sure, giving them license to draw up their own interpretations. Looking at them, the viewer can easily conjure up images spanning from pollution to sex to Ninja Turtles and beyond... The true mystery comes from your imagination."

Ryan is also doing open critiques where you can send your own work in: It seems like anyone with an SLR camera seems to fancy themselves a "photographer," but there's a huge difference between "taking pictures" and "being an artistic chronicler." I could rant for hours about all the terrible photographs I've been subjected to--instead I'm going to do something about it. I plan to offer you unprecedented access to my brain, eyes, heart, and yes, even my soul. Every few weeks I'll pick a theme and you'll have the opportunity to submit your photos to my blog; a few lucky individuals will have theirs critiqued by me. The tips and insight I'm offering are sure to make anyone who pays careful attention to what I say (and what I don't say), fantastically better. And who knows, maybe you'll even teach me something in the process.

I'm surprised I haven't already seen Ryan interviewed on Conscientious yet.

(Link via Jon Feinstein via Joy Drury Cox - Jon, I hope you are considering Ryan as a juror for a show at Humble Arts Foundation?)

Working in the Print Media Today

2010-05-03T20:21:00.002-06:00

A short film about how to conduct yourself when offered a photo assignment

NOTE: Language NSFW...

Starbucks Listens to Customer Request for More Sizes - including the 128 fl oz "Plenta"

2010-04-01T13:43:00.002-06:00

From the Starbucks company blog:

'SEATTLE, April 1, 2010 –Starbucks announced today the introduction of two new beverage sizes in stores in the U. S. and Canada this Fall. The announcement follows a year of research and direct customer feedback through MyStarbucksIdea.com requesting even more choice in beverage size.
“Whether customers are looking for a large or small size, the Plenta and the Micra satisfy all U.S. and Canada customers’ needs for more and less coffee,” said Hugh Mungis, Starbucks VP of Volume. “Our size selection is now plentiful.”

Plenta™ (128 fl oz) and Micra™ (2 fl oz) cups arrive in Starbucks stores this Fall. Derived from Italian word for plentiful or small, the Plenta™ delivers coffee lovers record amounts of the world’s finest coffee beverages while the Micra™ delivers a quick and satisfying morsel of goodness.

Recognizing the potential impact the Plenta™ presents for municipal waste collection, Starbucks is also suggesting several subsequent uses for the Plenta™ cup post coffee enjoyment. Suggested usage options include popcorn receptacle, rain hat, perennial planter, lampshade or yoga block. The Micra also serves as a convenient milk dish for kittens, soft boiled egg cup or paper clip holder."

well - my favourite April Fool Day joke of the day so far. Mind you. as a coffee lover/addict (even if Starbucks isn't usually my number 1 choice) I'm quite drawn to the idea of a Plenta Latte....

"The measuring and folding of the cloth of time itself" - Paul Graham

2010-03-31T00:40:00.008-06:00

- when you form the meaningless world into photographs, then form those photographs into a meaningful world -
Paul Graham - The Unreasonable Apple

(Paul Graham from "Troubled Land")

Last month photographer Paul Graham gave a presentation at the first MOMA Photography Forum that deserves to be widely read by creative photographers as well as those who promote and curate photography.

It's certainly one of the most succinct and clear arguments I've come across in recent years about the place and value of creative (or "art") photography.

In particular Graham makes an unapologetic case for the importance of "...photography that is taken from the world as it is" (my emphasis), as opposed to photography that is constructed from an artist's vision.

The text of the presentation can be found on Graham's website and deserves to be read in full, but here are a few extracts.

"...there remains a sizeable part of the art world that simply does not get photography. They get artists who use photography to illustrate their ideas, installations, performances and concepts, who deploy the medium as one of a range of artistic strategies to complete their work. But photography for and of itself -photographs taken from the world as it is– are misunderstood as a collection of random observations and lucky moments, or muddled up with photojournalism, or tarred with a semi-derogatory ‘documentary’tag".

What I find so refreshing about the whole presentation is that Graham essentially says is that its not an argument about the photography world versus the photography world. This form of photography is as creatively important as painting or sculpture or whatever and it's simply time for the curators and the critics to unblinker themselves and wake up to the fact. And it's also time for the best of them to bring their skills and intelligence to bear on conveying to the wider art world and the public at large what it is that such photography is about:

"I have to say that the position of ‘straight’ photography in the art world reminds me of the parable of an isolated community who grew up eating potatoes all their life, and when presented with an apple, though it unreasonable and useless, because it didn’t taste like a potato...

...The point is that we need the smart, erudite and eloquent people in the art world, the clever curators and writers, those who do get it, to take the time to speak seriously about the nature of such photography, and articulate something of its dazzlingly unique qualities, to help the greater art world, and the public itself understand the nature of the creative act when you dance with life itself - when you form the meaningless world into photographs, then form those photographs into a meaningful world."

Graham concludes with a final statement which he correctly (in my view) describes as an astonishing description at the heart of creative photography:

"So, what is it we are discussing here - how do we describe the nature of this photographic creativity? My modest skills are insufficient for such things. However let me make an opening offer: perhaps we can agree that through force of vision these artists strive to pierce the opaque threshold of the now, to express something of the thus and so of life at the point they recognised it. They struggle through photography to define these moments and bring them forward in time to us, to the here and now, so that with the clarity of hindsight, we may glimpse something of what it was they perceived. Perhaps here we have stumbled upon a partial, but nonetheless astonishing description of the creative act at the heart of serious photography: nothing less than the measuring and folding of the cloth of time itself."

So go read it, email it around and print it off and stick it on the wall by your computer.

(and thanks to Terri Weifenbach for pointing me to this)

Unhappy Hipsters and the deadpan aesthic

2010-03-28T14:58:00.006-06:00

"Drink in hand, he settled into the numb nothingness of his self-imposed isolation".

(Photo: Daniel Hennessy; Dwell, November 2006)

On a mildly serious note, over the last few years it's been interesting to note how the "deadpan" aesthetic in photography - applied to both people and places - has eventually made its way from the edges through to illustration and advertising. From the New Topographics by way of New Colour and the "Dusseldorf School" etc. it has been showing up more and more often in ads and magazine articles. Nowhere is this more so than in the case of architecture, design and "lifestyle" magazines.

At first seen mainly in the more hipster magazines such as Azure or Dwell or ID or Wallpaper this style is now found in even the most staunchly traditional architectural magazines. Check the architecture and design magazine section at Chapters, Borders or Barnes & Noble and you will find no end of articles apparently illustrated by the combined team of Thomas Struth (huh - I can't believe I've never done a full post on Struth), Rineke Dijkstra, Joel Sternfeld and Stephen Shoren Ltd.

We are presented with models or owners - not a smile among them whether adult or child - with their deadpan gaze lit by diffuse and slightly unsaturated colour, as is the rest of their dwelling - usually on an overcast day - seen fair and square by the camera. Rarely pretty or beautiful or stunning but always understated. Somber and mildly sublime but never harsh or bold or brash.

Now this happens to be a look and a type of photography that I actually quite like. At first I was excited as I started to see it effecting main stream commercial photography and especially as it started to fracture the dominance of a style of architectural photography that had been in place since sometime in the 1970's. But now I'm coming to realise that it can become rather tiring in such quantity (if not downright depressing) after flicking through the third or fifth or tenth magazine with article after article illustrated in a similar deadpan style - even if meticulously executed, as they usually are.

And while I know that many of the photographers also pursue their own personal projects alongside their commercial work (wherein the latter has become a happy subsidising side-effect; making hay while the sunshine lasts) I find that once this approach moves too far into the commercial realm it also seems to take on a deadening effect. Whereas the personal work, the art projects, may appear deadpan and impassive they are often in fact suffused with a sense of real irony or genuine affection or fascination or criticism or even subtle humour. Yet with most of the commercial work this more often seems lacking and all we are left with is the austere, sober deadpan.

Which is why I was happy to run across the site "Unhappy Hipsters" - subtitle: "It's lonely in the modern world" (thanks for the link Shafraz). The (anonymous??) author takes a sample of these pictures and adds his own humorous (though often highly believable) take on them by adding his own captions. Some are gut-achingly funny. Most are wry. Some beautifully satirical. Many are tellingly accurate - at least as far as the current urban middle class condition goes.

"The emotional distance was immeasurable.
(Photo: Noah Webb; Dwell, February 2007)"

Really, I enjoyed the site as just being very funny but it did prompt me to do a bit of musing on photographic style as well as (a mildly humorous take) on meaning in photographs - how images contain a multiplicity of meanings independent of the original creator (I know adding captions to change meaning - intentionally or unintentionally - is nothing new, but this seemed a particularly well done example). So just enjoy Unhappy Hipsters

"He deeply resented her insistence that their wardrobes coordinate.
(Photo: Stephen Oxenbury; Dwell, March 2009)"

BTW the competition posts (they start about halfway down the page), where readers were invited to send in their own captions had me creased up in part because of the wonderful brilliance of the subject photograph by Gregg Segal (who must have a beautifully humorous sense of irony):

(Photo: Gregg Segal; Dwell,
October 2009)

And a couple of sample captions:

Zen had come easily to him—sparse interior, shaved head, “rug-garden.”
It was motorcycle maintenance he was having problems with.
-Sebastian Biot

He knew she would be happy that he had adhered to the “NO SHOES ON
THE CARPET” policy. Finally, he was getting their relationship right.
-Brilliant Anonymous

He had no intention of ever riding it, or even fixing it. But he decided
from this moment forward, all visitors would enter to find him in
exactly this position.
-SteveZ.

Binder Clip cable catcher

2010-03-23T12:10:00.002-06:00

Off-topic (well, sort of), but this is so blindingly (bindingly?) simple I had to post it.

How many times have you crawled around in the dust bunnies under you desk trying to find the business end of a scanner or printer USB cable, external hard-drive cable, camera download cable, ipod cable, charger cable etc etc.

Well, here's the solution - using cheap and ubiquitous binder clips (or foldback clips as I think we called them in the UK?)

Now, why didn't I think of that - doh

(via Lifehacker - where I also learned how to make fantastically tasty but very quick - 5 minutes a day - and easy to make artisan bread...)

Terry Richardson accused of being cowardly, pervy. Who'd of thunk it..?

2010-03-22T17:13:00.006-06:00

(Photo via Huffington Post)

A big DUH! moment this last week or so in the fashion and "art" photography world

In the last week various models have accused fashion/"art" photographer Terry Richardson of being a pervy old man. Model Jamie Peck is quoted as saying:

"Before I could say "whoa, whoa, whoa!" dude was wearing only his tattoos and waggling the biggest dick I'd ever seen dangerously close to my unclothed person (granted, I hadn't seen very many yet). "Why don't you take some pictures of me?" he asked. Um, sure."...

(Check out a bit of this issue of Foil Magazine - NSFW though)

Supermodel Rie Rasmussen started it all off by confronting Richardson about his creepy approach, and his use of photographs of her, at a recent Paris fashion event; adding the "cowardly" label after Richardson "...ran out of the bar and called her modeling agency the next day to complain. She called his actions "the most cowardly thing I have ever seen."".

Since then more models and "subjects" have chimed in with their own tales and confirmations adding that the "establishment" - the art directors, editors and agencies (and gallerists?) are all well aware of "know full well Richardson's predatory behavior," but that he "is tolerated because the industry folk are just sheep."

Huh - Well who'd of thunk it? It's always the ones you'd never suspect - like creepy old tattooed uncle Joe out on probation after being inside since 1978, wearing the same clothes he went away to the Big House in 30 years ago, polaroid in hand offering to baby-sit his nieces...

Or "Uncle Roy" from SNL:

Gabriele Basilico redux

2010-03-11T14:48:00.004-07:00

I'm glad that there have been a few posts in the photo-blogoshpere in the last week or so about Italian photographer Gabrielle Basilico. It's also a reminder of how parochial the North American photo-scene can be. I'm frequently surprised at the number of important photographers whose work is often not at all well known across here because they aren't based in N. America

As far as I'm concerned Basilico is one of the more important photographers of the last 25+ years, especially in the whole area of city and urban photography. Not only does he make great photographs, he also brings to his work an extremely sophisticated understanding of, and vision of, "the city". He is acutely aware of the changes that have taken place in what a city is - especially over the last 50 or so years - and of what the city now means. Changes in the centre, the edge, the suburbs, the terrain vague - the space that holds it all together.

While much of his work can stand strongly on its own as single images it is his ordering of images - often in dense sequence - that can often be most effective. Still one of the best examples of this is his book Interrupted City; Italy - Cross-Sections of a Country. Through his work Basilico has been an important influence on many of the current crop of cityscape/urbanscape photographers as well as architects, planners and urban theorist.

(Other books by Basilico which I particularly like are Cityscapes and Beirut (both the original and the "revisited"). The Phaidon 55 book is also fairly good. My two favourites though are L'esperienza dei luoghi and Porti di Mare.)

If you want a bit more info about Basilico, I've written about him several times before - here are a few posts, which include plenty of other links:

Gabriele Basilico

Gabriele Basilico - Workbook 1969-2006

Gabriele Basilico - Silicone Valley - 07

From the recent postings this last week, I was pleased to finally find a link to some of his more recent colour work - which is quite stunning (for the longest time - with the possible exception of the Beirut work - he was very much a master of black and white pictures. He is now showing the same with colour).

(All photographs - Gabrielle Basilico)

On Plagiarism Pt. II

2010-03-03T00:56:00.005-07:00

(Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds)

(NOTE: Some very good responses since this was posted - below as well as on the related posts, especially the very first one. Check E.E. Nixon's and Struan's in particular.)

After my post yesterday there was a comment on both that and the earlier post which I wanted to respond to (note that it is listed under the first post).

"REB" writes:

In the first instance, Burdeny's work is not plagerism, by definition and as others have stated.

If Leong would have his way no one could produce an image in the same style as his. In photography, with digital camera and photoshopping, that will be an impossible conclusion.

The copying of an idea and execution of an idea, if limited to the originator and if applied across the spectrum of mankind and the evolution of ideas would lead to one of each idea and nothing else. The use of an idea and/or execution of an idea is neither copy written or trademarked.

Ideas that can demonstrate technical specifications mat be patented, however, I am sure that an image of some element of the World is not in that category.

The other element of this blog, is the individuals who are so quick to be critical, but even here they are plagerizing Leong and his idea that Burdeny did him wrong. His idea by those standards are his alone and should be expressed by others.

God forbid, in our society, if ideas become the sole property of the first who expresses the idea.

Tim's comment of Burdeny's lazy approach shows that he doesn't know Burdeny's work ethic.

Tom G. says “The images are photographed with an 8”x10” view camera and printed as chromogenic color prints, Each image offers a finely grained density of visual information, rendered in the broad range of tonality only made possible by the 8”x10” inch transparency..."

This description has always been evident in ALL of Burdeny's work.

By Tom G. standard, the use of any format would be owned by the initial user. Bluntly stated... Get a Life.

I'm not going to respond to every point, but I wanted to highlight a few:

In the first instance, Burdeny's work is not plagerism, by definition and as others have stated.

I've left it up to people to decide whether or not Burdeny's work is plagiarism. The Oxford English Dictionary's ("The definitive record of the English language"...) definition in yesterday's post is as clear and straightforward as any other I have come across. A work, portion of a work, idea or concept can be plagiarized.

The copying of an idea and execution of an idea, if limited to the originator and if applied across the spectrum of mankind and the evolution of ideas would lead to one of each idea and nothing else. The use of an idea and/or execution of an idea is neither copy written or trademarked.

This seems to come from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of plagiarism. I don't believe the first point to be true at all. And as for copyright and trademark - plagiarism is essentially a moral and ethical issue not a legal issue. As a concept, plagiarism has been around for a long time - since at least the 17th Century and probably longer. It hasn't yet seemed to have had the sort of stifling effect on creativity that REB fears.

Tim's comment of Burdeny's lazy approach shows that he doesn't know Burdeny's work ethic.

I'm not concerned with anybody's work ethic - rather that plagiarism displays a certain intellectual and creative laziness. Many plagiarists seem to work extremely hard. Imagine the amount of work - the time and effort - that goes into writing a full length book. Several years of writing and editing, finding a publisher and so on only to have the whole thing shredded at the end of the day because it was found they plagiarized someone else's words or novel. What an expensive risk to take (see final OED quote).

Tom G. says “The images are photographed with an 8”x10” view camera and printed as chromogenic color prints, Each image offers a finely grained density of visual information, rendered in the broad range of tonality only made possible by the 8”x10” inch transparency..."

I don't believe Tom.G was commenting on the use of camera format as a form of plagiarism (interesting concept...), but rather on the extremely close correlation between the wording of the two artists statements.

As most readers probably know, since it's inception the OED has sought out and included examples of historical and contemporary usage of the words it defines. I'll leave you with two from it's entry for plagiarism:

1753 (Dr.) JOHNSON Adventurer No. 95.

9 "Nothing..can be more unjust than to charge an author with plagiarism merely because he..makes his personages act as others in like circumstances have done".

1820 W. HAZLITT Lect. Dramatic Lit. 257 "If an author is once detected in borrowing, he will be suspected of plagiarism ever after".

On Plagiarism

2010-03-02T14:02:00.004-07:00

(Eugene Atget)

From the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary:

plagiarism, n. The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own; literary theft.

plagiarize, v. Originally of writers, later also of composers, artists, etc.: to take and use as one's own (the thoughts, writings, or inventions of another person); to copy (literary work or ideas) improperly or without acknowledgement; (occas.) to pass off as one's own the thoughts or work of (another)

[<plagiarius person who abducts the child or slave of another, kidnapper, seducer, also a literary thief (Martial 1. 53. 9), in post-classical Latin also (adjective) concerning plagiarism (15th cent.) < plagium kidnapping...]

There were some interesting responses to the recent post on David Burdeny and Sze Tsung Leong. PDN's story, as well as being discussed across the photo blogs, was also picked up outside our narrow little world by the LA Times among others.

The two bookend quotes here from the OED and Emerson sum up my take on plagiarism quite clearly. What follows is a slight diversion.

If newspaper and internet reports are anything to go by, plagiarized work might seem to be increasingly in vogue, especially in the world of writing as well as in the Universities. But I doubt there has been a sudden huge increase in the number of plagiarists out there. Rather in this day and age it is simply just so much easier to spot plagiarized work. As more and more books, theses and papers are digitized Google oh so easily lets you quickly search for similar or exact phrases rather precisely. Software lets professors quickly and easily find which students cut and pasted their essays.

Much of the focus seems to be on the dishonesty of the practice. And while it is quite obviously dishonest (and at the college level quite simply cheating), when it gets to the level of published or exhibited work, what seems more important to me is that it is about two things. It isn't the stealing or appropriation of words or ideas that strikes me, but rather the lack of creativity or imagination and laziness. (Of course the perspective of the original creator of the work is different and I'm sure the theft aspect looms larger).

Very early in his career in 1929 and 1930 Walker Evans got to spend time with the hoard of Eugene Atget prints and negatives Berenice Abbott had just brought back with her from Paris after Atget's death (Evans shared Abbott's darkroom while she was working on them.). He was both stunned and terrified. Stunned for the obvious reasons - he was seeing for the first time Atget's incredible work long before almost anyone had heard of or seen it. Stunned that it fully confirmed the direction his own work had begun )and in good part defined where has was to go as an artist). But also terrified by the clear and unique vision he saw and how close - to him - it seemed to his own. I recall reading that he was afraid that once Atget's work became well known (which didn't really happen for perhaps another twenty or thirty years) that people would simply accuse him of copying, plagiarizing Atget's work and ideas. And so for a good many years Evans often denied ever having seen Atget's work until quite late on in his career.

Of course Evans was wrong. Certainly we can see the influences Atget's work most probably had on Evans after that. And Evan's later acknowledged his own debt to Atget. But this is really the opposite of plagiarism. The subtle influences one unique vision informing another - which is the way art essentially works.

Which is also just the opposite of laziness and a lack of creative vision or imagination.

Walker Evans Saratoga Springs 1931

"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present
every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation;
but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous
half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can
teach him."

Ralph Waldo Emerson "Self Reliance" (via Little Brown Mushroom)

Caveats:

1. imo plagiarism of expressed ideas or concepts can also quite obviously take place as well as the more obvious copy-catting of a particular single image or scene or sentence.

3. There are also many grey areas - homage, satire, artistic "play", conceptual projects (successful or not...). But in almost all such cases there is usually a certain obviousness to things or some explicit form reference.

2. In the area of commercial work in photography with studio or staged work, quite obvious plagaristic theft of images or concepts does take place - e.g. an almost identical photoshoot. In those cases copyright and legal remedies usually come into play and the courts decide what's what.

"Circumstances Alter Photographs" - the first known combat photographs

2010-02-25T14:24:00.004-07:00

Two cannons fire on Batoche during the shelling that began the battle.

In last Saturday's Globe & Mail I came across a new book called Circumstances Alter Photographs (Talon Books) abut the photographs taken by Captain James Peters during the 1885 North-West Resistance/Rebellion in Canada's West. (Be sure to check out the G&M link as it may disappear behind a pay-per-view firewall)

Funnily enough I had come across these photographs a couple of years ago while researching the Metis and the Battle of Batoche and while I found them interesting I didn't twig to their wider place in photographic history (Doh - damn you tunnel vision and deadlines...).

The book is by Michael Barnholden and appears to be an extension of a thesis he wrote at Simon Fraser University.

I find these pictures fascinating for several reasons. The main one being that as far as I am aware these are the first extant photographs taken during actual combat. Unlike the earlier war photography of Fenton and the Crimea or Brady et al and the American Civil War these were taken as the fighting took place and the bullets and canon-balls were actually flying past rather than during the aftermath of battle.

A house in Batoche burns after being hit by cannon fire.

Those earlier war photographers were limited by the cameras and film of the mid 1850's to taking pictures of static scenes - soldiers at rest in camp or of the dead on the battlefield after the battle was over. Of course some of this was very effective and lasting photography having eventually become iconic - Fenton's Valley of the Shadow of Death or Or Gardener's The home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg. But until cameras become somewhat smaller and more portable and film improved, photographing during battle was virtually impossible.

Captain James Peters with his camera

By the time Captain Peters rode into battle as part of the North West Field Force in 1885 in what is now the province of Saskatchewan, cameras and film had reached that point, just - his photographs clearly suffer from being taken hand-held, often from the saddle. And it seems that from both inexperience as well as the heat of battle Peter's admits to not being bothered too much by getting the correct exposures... Peters used a "Naturalist' Twin-Lens Camera" such as made by Rowland Ward & Co. London. But even so, these photographs show a unique aspect of what was both something of a turning point in both modern warfare and the history of Canada.

Peters was a Captain and Battery Commander in the Royal Canadian Artillery and also acted as a correspondent for the Quebec Morning Chronicle (Peters was a Militia officer) during the course of the campaign:

"On Friday, April 24, 1885, Captain James Peters took the world’s first battlefield photographs under fire at the battle of Fish Creek in the Canadian Northwest Territory of Saskatchewan. As Captain of the Royal Canadian Artillery’s “A” Battery—part of the North West Field Force—he subsequently managed to expose over seventy glass plates for
the duration of the battles at Duck Lake and Batoche as well, many of them again during combat with the enemy, both on the ground and on horseback. In addition to his photographic documentation of the “Northwest Rebellion” he was also a war correspondent for the Quebec Morning Chronicle. His regular dispatches, together with his images,serve as a pioneering addition to the history of war correspondents and are presented here for the first time in their entirety.
This watershed in the documentation of history was created by photographic technology, advanced to the point where “naturalist” or “detective” cameras, which came on the market in 1883, could be carried slung over the shoulder. Their faster shutter speed now allowed for hand-held photography. These cameras used coated plates that did not require preparation and could be stored for later development. Suddenly, the only restriction on any photographer was access to the action.
Neglected for over 120 years, these images literally shine new light on the War of 1885—particularly the second part of the campaign against the Indiansunder Big Bear, Poundmaker and Miserable Man. They are frankly astonishing in both their eerily haunting visual impact and as much by the mere fact that they even still exist." (From Talon Books)

James Peters' first photograph of battle action at Fish Creek: He shot it from his horse as bullets whizzed around him.

The North-West Rebellion (or Resistance as it is now more often described) may not be quite so well known outside Canada, but was significant for several reasons. It was the point at which the new country of Canada decided to impose it's will on the still developing western prairies, using military force to do so. This led to the effective repression of the long established Metis (mixed raced) people of the West as a homogeneous group or people along with their established (and in many ways unique) ideas for nationhood, law and settlement. It also paved the way for the removal of the aboriginal peoples from their land and into small reservations, opening up he West to much grater settlement and as destination for immigrants.

In military terms it was a fairly short, though not initially decisive, campaign. Despite their superior numbers and equipment the Canadian force came off worse in some of the initial engagements (losing the Battle of Fish Creek) and the Metis showed themselves as effective and tough guerrilla fighters. But as the Canadian Dominion government and forces manged to effectively prevent the wider spread of the Resistance and it came to a final conflict around the community of Batoche. But even then it was no sure thing and the battle lasted for four brutal days until the Metis were defeated and their leader - Louis Riel - captured, later to be hanged.

Notable in helping turn the fight in this final battle, aside from the overwhelming numbers of Dominion troops (about 250 Metis held out against about 1,000 Canadian troops) - was he experimental use of the Gatling Gun on loan from the US Army. While it's use alone may not have been completely decisive in the battle it showed how highly effective the rapid firing weapon was, heralding the arrival of modern warfare as it moved from slow single fire weapons to such highly devastating rapid fire weapons.

Louis Riel in custody after the Battle of Batoche.

The North-West Resistance - with the added impact of these photographs - is actually a fascinating look at the development of the North American Western Prairies and has everything a good (but sadly futile) story needs: a tragic but charismatic visionary leader - part poet, part mystic, part political genius; a blinkered "colonial' judiciary; a quietly brilliant guerrilla leader; a possibly crazy yet brilliant young Anglo idealist; a weak government and a Prime Minister who gives in to saving his own butt and to the power of big money; double crossing priests, deception and double agents. Ultimately, political weakness, the power of that big money - and the overwhelming power of the Canad in Pacific Railway - led to the crushing of a dream that may well have produced a very different country had it been nurtured instead of destroyed.

Finally, returning to the photographs, Barnholden takes the tittle of his book - and as the core of the ideas he develops about photography - from words Captain Peters wrote for and article in the Canadian Militia Magazine called "Photographs Taken Under Fire":

"I am convinced of one fact, and that is that no tripod instrument would for a moment survive such a trip; nor would it do for taking pictures in action, for I found that the rebel marksmen of the far West did not give an amateur photographer much time with his 'quickest shutter', and I tremble to think of the fate of the artist who would attempt to erect his tripod where the enemy possessed such a large number of 'spotters', as they call the expert riflemen of the plains. Some of them were vain enough to allow me an occasional instantaneous snap; but their desire never went so far as to allow the planting of the three sticks or the focussing with a black cloth. I marked the sighting or focus on the side for two distances, one at twelve paces (which it is needless to state was only for dead men). For the live rebels, I generally, for fear of fogging, took them from a distance, as far and as quickly as possible. All these little contrivances, and many more are necessary when one is trying to take a portrait of an ungrateful enemy. Numbers of my plates are under timed; but I am not particular. Those taken when the enemy had surrendered, and were unarmed, made better negatives, but 'circumstances alter photographs"'. (The Canadian Militia Gazette Vol I, No. 32 p252 15 December 1885)

I think the book includes a number of Peter's dispatched and letters which are in themselves quite fascinating, especially when he talks about his photography. A pdf of the earlier, thesis version of Barnholden's book can be found at the Simon Fraser University Library and includes many of Peter's dispatches as well as copies of many more of his photographs.

(btw, I haven't actually had chance yet to read the book itself - though I have looked at a number of the photographs - I'm waiting for it from the University Library here)

Basia Bulat

2010-02-23T11:10:00.005-07:00

Just came across Basia Bulat - a young Canadian indie singer (learn more at the CBC) - and her new release A Heart of My Own.

Love it. Full of vibrant energy, lightens and cheers the spirit. She seems to be able to move from a sound that is Renaissance chamber music to deep in the ancient Polish forest to folk/country/indie to almost, but not quite, Celtic all in one song.

Listen to tracks below plus a video (Link to her label Rough Trade here).

Bulat is on tour in Canada and the US right now.

The autoharp... who knew! (and my guess is that the album cover photo shows some of the beautiful landscape of the Yukon Territory around Dawson, heart of the Gold Rush??)

(you have to actually click on the watch "Gold Rush" link above to see it.

Interesting - "Copycat or Not" - Burdeny vs. Leong

2010-02-19T14:54:00.003-07:00

Well I must say this is interesting. From PDN Pulse - Copycat or Not? Photographer Challenged Over Look-Alike Work with an important follow up here: Copycat or Not, Part II: A Case of Nothing New Under the Sun? - about Daivid Burdeny and Sze Tsung Leong (and to some degree, Elger Esser who, as far as I am aware, is essentially the progenitor of this sort of work).

According to PDN Pulse Leong and gallerist Yosi Milo have come out and essentially seem to have accused Burdeny of plagiarism:

“These [Burdeny] works are identical [to Leong’s], particularly the pyramid [image],” says Leong’s New York gallerist, Yossi Milo. “The scale, the feel, the look—the similarities are quite alarming.” Milo says he learned of Burdeny’s work earlier this month after it went on exhibit at the Jennifer Kostuik Gallery in Vancouver. Milo notified Leong, who contacted his lawyer.

while

"Burdeny denies it, saying the similarities arose because he happened to shoot from some of the same tourist spots. And, he added, photographers--even famous ones--often mimic each other's work. So why single out Burdeny?"

Sze Tsung Leong, Seine I, 2006.

David Burdeny, River Seine II, Paris, 2009.

Sze Tsung Leong's "Horizons" exhibit, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, April 2008.

David Burdeny's "Sacred and Secular" exhibit, Jennifer Kostuik Gallery, Vancouver, January 2010.

See the PDN Pulse articles above for a full range of examples

I talked about Burdeny not very long ago and mentioned that stylistically the work reminded me of Elger Essers work. As well as general "style" I was also thinking of the particular Esser picture that is very similar to the Paris/Seine photograph as the PDN piece shows (note that the Esser photograph isn't soft focus, it's just a poor quality jpg).

With hindsight I realise that the other chord being struck was indeed that of Leong's work. But as I'd only ever looked at maybe two or three of Leong's photographs - and never seen how they were sequenced - I hadn't caught all the correspondences.

So, what do you think? Copycat? Or as Burdeny seems to be arguing (and as PDN puts it with a little help from Ecclesiastes) nothing new under the sun? Everyone just happened to be photographing the same well know scenes from the same Kodak Viewpoint?

As a postscript I find that neither Burdeny's work (nor Leong's for that matter) comes close to Esser's.

Normal Service Will Be Resumed Shortly

2010-02-18T15:27:00.002-07:00

Due to a couple of technological meltdowns, posts to Musings have been somewhat delayed.

This has also delayed the print exchange which should now run during March (see 2. below).

1. My old Windows 2000 PC finally began gasping its last... and so I was busy making sure everything was safely back up. And we are now running as iMusings... having moved to Snow Leopard/Mac.

2. I discovered where the gerbil spent part of his recent few hours on the lam - apparently living inside my printer! So I'm seeing if various wiring can be replaced and chewed plastic ignored or a replacement is called for :-(

So hopefully more posts soon

2009 Photobooks pt. II

2010-01-29T00:10:00.003-07:00

(Photo: Karin Apollonia Müller)

Here are another couple of photobooks from last year that I think are worth a look at.

The first one is On Edge by Karin Apollonia Müller. I wrote quite a bit about it earlier this year. Needless to say it is still at the top of my list of photobooks from 2009. If Müller's first book is anything to go by, it may also be hard to get hold of (and rather expensive) when the first edition goes out of print (thankfully now reprinted), so if it appeals to you, you might want to grab a copy while you can...

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

The other book is Cover by Canadian photographer Lynne Cohen. I've talked about Cohen before a few times and she is still a photographer whose work I look to for nurturing my own thoughts and ideas.

Cover is a very good overview of much of her work and definitely worth trying to get hold of. There is also a very good online interview Cohen by George Slade:

"I have to admit I've never been much taken by technology. While it is true that many of my pictures touch on the technological world — military installations and scientific laboratories for example—I'm more interested in how aspects of this world look more like a children's toys or old fashioned game boards. For some people this might be comforting, for others the camouflage might make it seem still more disturbing. But there is another way of interpreting your question. In the late 1980's in a short review of a show I did in NYC, a critic seemed to think I had constructed the interiors that I photograph in my studio, at least introduced objects I brought with me into them. Admittedly, this was a post-modern moment when artists were constructing models in their studios to photograph. But what I photograph is a chunk of the world as I find it (with a few assists). It strikes me that if what I photograph were not more or less true, it would lose an important edge. I am not the first to find reality stranger than fiction. But I have to say that I quite like the idea that there is a question about the truth of what I photograph, that there is the sense that what I am photographing could not be true, that it must be constructed. An interesting example is a picture of an acoustic laboratory that I made the same year as Thomas Demand constructed one. If you look at our pictures next to each other, I am pretty sure you'll think the laboratory in Demand's picture looks more real than the laboratory in mine even though his is entirely hand-made in his studio and mine a photograph of a real acoustic laboratory that I came upon in England. Trying to figure out why his photograph looks more real than mine, it struck me that he makes all sorts of small corrections when building his models. He must step back to look at them, make changes, have another look, make more changes and so on, before taking a picture. In my case I set up a view camera in front of the actual site and make a photograph because I am intrigued by the many ways things in the world look off. In the case of the laboratory, I remember thinking that everything is the wrong size, the light is strange—hot and cold—that the androgynous dummy looks larger than life and has a bizarre red stopper stuck in its mouth and that the acoustic panels look hairy. Demand seems interested in getting everything to look right and making it believable while I'm interested in the many ways the world looks so wrong and unbelievable..." More here

(Photo: Lynne Cohen)

Print Exchange - heads up

2010-01-28T14:05:00.003-07:00

Just a quick note to keep your eyes open early next week for information about a print exchange I will be launching.

I've been thinking about a print exchange for a while, and while I'm still not completely convinced it's a good idea - my two biggest worries being a. pessimistic: nobody will be bothered; or b. optimistic: I will get so many responses I'll be printing for months - I've decided to go ahead with it...

Anyway, it will most likely run for the month of February and full details and information should be posted early next week.

Darling Days - iO Tillet Wright

2010-01-27T00:51:00.007-07:00

I like this girl. One of the main things I use Facebook for is networking with photographers and artists of all types - from the high and mighty to the just out of school and wet behind the ears to the on the ground and running in Haiti/Afghanistan/Gaza.

Anyway, I think iO Tillet Wright was a friend of a friend (or possibly a friend of a friend of a friend...). Either way I think she is someone to keep an eye on.

For starters, I wish more photographers could be as down to earth in their "ABOUT ME" descriptions:

I have been taking pictures, making films, mugging it for cameras, and writing about it since I can remember. Whatever inspired me, I felt compelled to document and disseminate.

There have been some wildly inspirational characters and places in and out of my world in the last few years, since I discovered film photography and dove deeper into writing, so I humbly hope that, herewith, I can bring you a taste of what I see and feel when I'm with them.

But most of all of course it's her work that grabs me. iO seems the antithesis of the young woman straight out of Bard or Yale or Sarah Lawrence with her fresh MFA, full of enthusiasm and newly inspired by her well known New Topographics, New Colour, old friend of Walker Evans/Lee Friedlander/William Eggleston, Professor while also trying to photograph a concept with her digicam (I know - someone is going to point out she actually went to Yale or wherever; which, of course, doesn't change my point at all)

From the work I've seen, she seems able to take today's (and yesterday's) flavour of the month cliché art photographs and make them her own (or avoid them altogether). That is, the sort of photographs I've grown tired of (and to tell the truth, never liked that much) - the un-ironic ironic girl and/or boy portraits of the unshaven scrawny young guy asleep on a rumpled bed/smoking in a grimy apartment. Or a young McGinleyesque nymph naked or in her cute knickers cycling in soft hazy sunlight or hanging out in the back of a truck. Or the deadpan unreal realist "I'm too hip/mentally challenged/poor to smile" portraits etc. (okay rant over...).

She's obviously at ease in a world which isn't mine (I'm more of a Berlin when it still had an East or the grey North of England in it's doomed resistance to Margaret Thatcher kind of guy, not NYC/Jersey/Brooklyn etc.). And thankfully she hasn't fallen into a Nan Goldin style grim self-absorption.

iO seems to draw elements from all of these approaches and places and then transform them into something else (for one thing, she doesn't seem afraid of feelings and humour). Her black and white work has great style and skill as does her colour work. Among other things, she has mastered the classic tri-x and harsh flash NYC look and she also seems to be able to out-Parr Parr, but she isn't stuck in trying to be the next Parr or Eggleston, Winogrand or Klein.

Best of all is that she seems able combine both black & white and colour almost seamlessly and without jarring contradiction. Something few photographers have been or are able to do. The pairing of work in either different styles (harsh/gritty + soft/"human") or in b&w/colour are some of her best work that I've seen. I think that despite the obvious surface differences in the type of media or style there is something deeper and more personal that runs through all her work and makes connections.

In her about me above she writes that she "discovered film", which I must say is both slightly depressing and a little scary... film really is a historic process now - she could just as well have said she discovered tintypes. What's great is what she seems to be learning and discovering in the process (mind you, I'm not sure if the dust spots on some of her pictures are an homage to and signifier of this old medium or simply that she hasn't managed to find a musty old book in secondhand bookstore on "The Art of Print Spotting" [found alongside "Coat Your Own Albumen Paper"]) :-)

Tillet Wright mentions that she spent some time last summer travelling Europe and took 46 rolls of film with her - what wonderful optimism. Going on travels in the days of film I would easily pack 100 or 150 or so rolls. But her attitude rather contradicts the old grumps sat around in the pub dripping beer on their Leicas and complaining how these folks with digital cameras just take thousands of shots until they get it right - "it's just luck" - not like the old days... bah, humbug.

I think (and hope) iO Tillet Wright will be someone to watch, so I hope she finds ways to continue making her work and staying excited about it (btw, she also has a blog). Oh, and did I mention she can write too. So someone out there give her a grant or a residency or some assignments or a fellowship to help her broaden her range and experience - you might be happily surprised by what come out of it...

David Burdeny

2010-01-21T00:33:00.002-07:00

Macon, Loire Valley, France

I'd be interested to see what people feel about the photography of David Burdeny. I've been getting updates about his work off Facebook and have gradually found myself getting more and more interested in it.

Some of his subjects don't really draw me in. Icebergs for instance. I know they are very popular and his photographs are quite stunning - but icebergs just don't do it for me - it's a personal things. And some of them, especially some of the black and white work, comes a touch to close to Michael Kenna territory. Technically and compositionally perfect, eye catching at first glance, but all beauty and no truth. In a way I find them too perfect. In such pictures I find I need some imperfections, some imbalance, more of the sublime - the sublime of the Romantics - awe, a touch of fear, the possibly being overwhelmed - tremendum et fascinans.

Uummannaq, Greenland

But it's the pictures on the front page of his website that are getting me (I believe the project is Sacred & Secular?), especially the series of horizontal sea and riverscapes. I certainly find them beautiful, but there's also a lack of absolute perfection in them. You can't control the skyline of a city so easily and in this form, even Venice doesn't quite look like "Venice". And there is a strange but, in a way, quite obvious linkage between Uummannaq and Venice and Dubai.

Dubai I, Persian Gulf, UAE

This aspect of Burdeny's work reminds me a bit of Elger Esser's work, although Burdeny stays within the accepted limits of the photographic process, not experimenting with colour in the way Esser often does for example.

Oh and if you are in British Columbia he has work up at the Jennifer Kostiuk Gallery in Vancouver at the end of February I believe (So I guess if you are going to the Winter Olympics, you should be able to catch the show around the time of the Olympics Closing Ceremony...)

But over to you - any thoughts?

Grand Canal II, Venezia, Italy

Werner Herzog Reads Curious George

2010-01-18T10:01:00.001-07:00

I just had to share this. Werner Herzog Reads Curious George (or possibly someone doing a pretty good impersonation - though personally I hope it really is Herzog).

I now keep having flashbacks where I seem to realise Curious George played a part in Fitzcarraldo...

Werner Herzog Reads Curious George

Photo Books 2009

2010-01-18T01:16:00.005-07:00

(Photo:Bertrand Fleuret)

I just noticed that Photoeye has their list of the best photo books of 2009 up. Seeing as they do such a comprehensive job with a large list of "photo luminaries" choosing them, I'm just going to pick and chose a few from the list over the next few days and possibly add in any I think they have missed (one thing about their list is that I enjoy seeing who picked which books).

Before I pick books for today, just a couple of thought. First, it seemed very noticeable how many of the books are from small presses. In many cases they are either done through some form of self-publication by the photographer - though often the photographer has already made a practice of doing this and they are on book number three or four. Or there is a sort of small collective attelier where four or five photographers seem to be "self"-publishing their work together (presumably this helps with leveling out the costs among other things?) through their own small scale imprint. And then there are a few smallish publishers who seem to have grown from a sort of self-publishing project to now being a photographer who (I'm guessing?) has more fun being a publisher. Whichever way, there seemed to be many more of these books around over 2009, and many of them seem to have made their way to the "best of" lists for the year, simply because many of them are just so damned good.

The other thing I noticed has been discussions about the future of the photobook and/or the publishing of photography books in general. This has often mirrored similar discussions in the broader publishing industry (though usually with nowhere near as much paranoia and angst - in fact such discussions are much more likely to be positive). A couple of examples, out of many, can be found here and here.

So on to books. The first pick is Landmasses and Railways by Bertrand Fleuret. This is a great book. I hadn't encountered Fleuret before, but this book which has the size and heft and feel of a good 200 page novel, is one of my real favourites from the last year. And it isn't just that the physical book itself resembles a novel, but that is also the sense I get from the contents as well - albeit a surrealist or magical realist novel. It's also the nearest I've seen to date of a completely visual, photographic version of one of W.G. Sebald's novels or books:

"Bertrand Fleuret’s Landmasses and Railways is a photographic travelogue to our interior, or perhaps an exploration outwards, to the encircling spheres above. Divided into five sections – I. The Melancholy of Departure, II. Approaching the City, III. Inside The Walls, IV. An Empty Building, and V. The Garden – the book takes us on a winding journey through a strange but familiar world. It seems appropriate that Fleuret begins our trip with a cryptic photograph of an antique booth . . . or is it some ancient space-pod? No time for questions. We quickly crash down into the ocean. Past the swarming jellyfish, we scramble for land, gasping for breath before safely making it ashore..."

(Photos:Bertrand Fleuret)

The quote is from Adam Bell's review of Landmasses and Railways at Ahorn Magazine. The book is published by J&L books where Jason Fulford is, to my mind, one of the most imaginative photo book publishers out there.

Another book from a fairly new publisher (but by a well known photographer) is New Mexico by Lee Friedlander. In many ways this is classic Friedlander - which is just fine by me. So many of his great earlier books are out of print and now virtually impossible to afford, so as far as I'm concerned I try and grab any new publications by him as they come out... and while I can still afford them. The book was also the catalogue for an exhibition of the same title at the Andrew Smith Gallery in Santa Fe.

(Photo: Lee Friedlander)

"Friedlander has been visiting Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and northern New Mexico since the late60s. This new volume of work presents a sequence of images made during his travels in these regions between 1995 and the present. Armed with his signature Hasselblad camera and wandering the back roads in an assortment of rental cars, Friedlander has journeyed from the Plaza of Santa Fe to adobe strewn neighborhood barrios and into the gorgeous, high-altitude desert. In Lee Friedlander: New Mexico, we see the same attentive curiosity that we’ve come to expect. He is a master of creating unity out of diverse shapes and complex tones in the two dimensional picture plan"

(Photo: Lee Friedlander)

This book was published with Darius Himes and others at Radius Books in Santa Fe (ha - I just realised Radius is an anagram of Darius!) and it's beautifully put together. Considering they are a pretty new publisher they already have a fine catalogue.

That's it for today. I hope to get another post or two up soon with some of the other books.

Well...2010

2010-01-06T12:10:00.002-07:00

Two thousand and ten - or is it twenty ten? - anyway, I was "chatting" (via Facebook) last night with an old photographer friend who lives in the beautiful city of Barcelona and I realised that not only had I been neglecting this blog, but that I also hadn't done much photography of my own for some time.

So as much as I hate resolutions, it's definitely time to catch up with some photography (as well as finish scanning the pile of 6x6 negs I have) and add some new posts to the blog.

Mind you, it's also time to find a real day job for a while and keeping Churchill's black dog at bay has taken some effort recently.

Oh, and I also figured it's time to try writing a novel... (and which isn't the "highbrow" detective novel I'd always imagined it would be if I ever got around to writing one). Goodness knows where that will end up, but nothing like being at least a bit ambitious. So we'll have to see how it all goes.

Other than that, a good 2010 to one and all.

11.00hrs 11/11/1918

2009-11-10T13:44:00.002-07:00

(Siegfried Sassoon's notebooks)

The Dug-out

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen, cold,
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadowed from the candle's guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head...
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

Canada still commemorates Remembrance Day on the 11th of November, remembering the Armistice coming into effect on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 thus ending The Great War.

For Remembrance day I noticed that the Cambridge University Library is acquiring Siegfried Sassoon's archive in order to preserve it and make it available. Sassoon was one of the best war poets to come out of World War One (along with Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke).

Despite serving as an infantry officer on the front lines and receiving the Military Cross, in 1917 he published "The Soldier's Declaration," speaking out against the futility of the war for himself and his fellow soldiers, stating: "I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it..." after which he refused to return to duty. Rather than being Court-Martialed, the army sent him to Craiglockhart Military Hospital in Scotland where he was treated by Psychiatrist W.H.R. Rivers. (The subject of Pat Barker's wonderful novel Regeneration). At Craiglockhart Sassoon also met Wilfred Owen with whom he formed a strong bond. Owen was to die just days before the Armistice on November 4th 1918, his genius cut tragically short. Sassoon eventually returned to the front where he was wounded in the head.

The Rear-Guard

(Hindenburg Line, April 1917.)

Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.

Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.

Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw someone lie
Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.
"I'm looking for headquarters." No reply.
"God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep.)
"Get up and guide me through this stinking place."
Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
And flashed his beam across the livid face
Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
Agony dying hard ten days before;
And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.

Alone he staggered on until he found
Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,
He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
Unloading hell behind him step by step.

Mr. Lee

2009-11-02T08:51:00.002-07:00

I came across this short fun video by Mark Schwartz of his road trip with Lee Friedlander, compiled - as he puts it - on the occasion of Lee's 75th birthday (earlier this summer if I'm correct?)

Know I know what to eat to make sure I get to a ripe old age as well.

You may be able to view a higher def version here if you are on facebook (I was also having some youtube problems with it...)

(Thanks for the link to Terri Weifenbach)

WARNING: this model's hips were made smaller than her head in Photoshop. Human beings do not look like this.

2009-10-26T09:15:00.007-06:00

Or; What's all the fuss about?

This advert for Ralph Lauren seems to have become the nexus for some quite strange responses to what many seem to see as the "problem" of digital manipulation (and has also confusingly become conflated and confused with the separate issue skinny models and unrealistic body image). I'm going to stick to digital manipulation - or more accurately, image manipulation

There has been something of an outcry about this and other similar images which has led to, among other things, a call from the British Liberal Democratic Party that all such images be labelled with the equivalent of the Surgeon General's warning on cigarette packets, identifying how much the image has been manipulated on a scale from 1 to 6. French parliamentarians also seem to be following suit.

(Paul Strand)

This has also been echoed in many area of the photographic press and blogdom and conveyed in the sort of sentiments which see this as a threat to "real" photography, which apparently aims to accurately show facts and/or tell the truth. The assumption seeming to be that such photography (often, though not always, advertising photography) is a threat because the more of it the public sees and is exposed to, the less and less they will trust real or proper photography.

Now, aside from the ridiculousness and absolute impracticality of trying to grade levels of digital manipulation - and I'm wondering how many members of the public were "taken in" by this and other such photographs; "Mum, what kind of diet do I have to go on to get my head to grow so big?" or indeed whether readers would take any notice of such warning anyway - it's simply a red herring as well as an excuse for some rather uptight photographers to get their knickers in a twist.

(W.E. Smith)

The point is that all this digital manipulation - indeed digital photography in general (whereby anyone can easily and simply play around with digital photographs on their home computers) - is a good thing. I'll say that again: digital photography and digital manipulation is a good thing. Especially for photography.

Digital photography has done photography as a whole a great favour over the last decade or so. It has stripped away much of the veil that the high priests of photography liked to keep between photography and Joe Public to prevent them from realising that photography isn't quite what they were led to believe.

(Walker Evans)

That is, the camera frequently lies and rarely tells the truth (and certainly not the whole truth and nothing but the truth). And that photographs which apparently present "facts" or "evidence" should be treated with a large grain of salt. People are now seeing much more clearly than ever before that most photographs (even photojournalistic ones) are constructs and fictions and that whatever evidence they may claim to present is at best inherently ambiguous, and that the photograph and reality are usually poles apart. Photographs have never presented an objective and impartial viewpoint and this has now become much more obvious to anyone who cares to look. Photographs rarely tell one clear and simple story - despite what may be the photographers intentions - and the viewer now has open to them a multiplicity of legitimate ways to read and understand the photograph.

I find that people are now far less likely to confuse the photograph with the thing photographed - a situation that had existed pretty much since the invention of the medium. People are also much more likely to cast a questioning eye back over photographs (as well as the "authorized" facts surrounding them) from before the digital era. Photographs are no longer trusted blindly in the way they were once generally expected to be.

This should really be seen as an incredibly liberating thing by photography as a whole rather than putting us on the defensive. Photographers no longer need to expend so much energy on trying the maintain their inherited fictions about their medium - i.e. allowing that it is a fiction - and we can now direct that wasted energy towards creativity and imagination instead. As a result viewers of photography have been granted much more freedom to come to the photographic image with their own ideas and understandings.

Perhaps it's time to stop worrying about the bogus threat of digital photography and digital manipulation and instead look at ways of exploring the new landscape and freedom that it continues to open up for us. Not as a technology but as a paradigm.

(Top photograph via Photshop Disasters - who were ordered by Ralph Lauren to take it down from their site, contrary to the Fair Use provision of US Copyright. The other photographs are all pre-digital and are just three examples of photographs that were manipulated in one way or another for publication or presentation)

The Kindly Ones

2009-10-24T11:20:00.001-06:00

"The real danger for mankind is me, is you. And if you're not convinced of this, don't bother to read any further. You'll understand nothing and you'll get angry, with little profit for you or me."

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littel

A strange, controversial, intriguing, sometimes obscene and yet mesmerizing book.

"Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened. I am not your brother, you'll retort, and I don't want to know. And it certainly is true that this is a bleak story, but an edifying one too, a real morality play, I assure you. You might find it a bit long--a lot of things happened, after all--but perhaps you're not in too much of a hurry; with a little luck you'll have some time to spare. And also, this concerns you; you'll see that this concerns you. Don't think I am trying to convince you of anything; after all, your opinions are your own business. If after all these years I've made up my mind to write, it's to set the record straight for myself, not for you. For a long time we crawl on this earth like caterpillars, waiting for the splendid, diaphanous butterfly we bear within ourselves. And then times passes and the nymph stage never comes, we remain larvae--what do we do with such an appalling realization? Suicide, of course, is always an option. But to tell the truth suicide doesn't tempt me much."

Unique photographs of the Battle of the Somme

2009-10-09T10:01:00.002-06:00

A shell bursting some 10-20 yards way on the Somme Battlefield, 1916. Photograph from the album Lieutenant J.S. Purvis, 5th (T) Battalion (1916-1918). RICGH:2005.31.6

I just came across some quite amazing and unique pictures of the Battle of the Somme courtesy of the Darlington & Stockton Times in NE England (btw I love great how you can read articles from small regional papers like this now).

They were taken by Lieutenant John Stanley Purvis of the 5th (T) Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards) on the first day of the Battle of the Somme as he and his men began advancing across no man's land towards the enemy trenches. The photographs are now in the archives at the Green Howards regimental museum in Richmond, N. Yorkshire.

A unique photograph from the second line trench of troops advancing from the forward trenches on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1st July 1916. RICGH:2005.31.2

These are so unique because there are so few photographs of the actual combat in WWI. Most photographs we see are either some way behind the front lines or once the fighting has moved - showing the desolate shell pockmarked landscapes and so on. But there are very few show troops actually out of the trenches advancing to contact. For one thing, taking a picture under the withering enemy (and sometimes friendly) fire would - I think - put most photographers off. For another, Lt. Purvis could have been Court Martialed for taking photographs in the front line (if I recall correctly, keeping personal diaries was also prohibited on pain of Court Martial).

Other photos (there are 43 in all, still well worth looking at) taken by Lt. Purvis - more typical - though equally horrifying - show scenes of the battlefield such as "Soldiers digging into freshly made trenches in Delville Wood, October 1916" where the woods now merely consist of a few shell blasted stumps. I know there is at least one well know picture of "combat" in WWI that was used numerous times as a magazine and book illustration but was later found to have been taken during training. But of Purvis' pictures it is these two or three pictures that for me capture the eye and the imagination.

The scene of the Somme Battlefield, July 1916. RICGH:2005.31.5

What a fool, you might think, taking pictures while shells landed 10 or so yards away and rifle and machine gun fire was most likely coming in in your direction. But remember that an officer's main job was to make sure his men continued to advance into all that. Many did so armed with nothing more than a walking stick (an officer's pistol was of little use until all that ground was crossed and you were nose to nose with the enemy). So, I suppose, why not take a couple of moments to stop and take a photograph... I guess there was nothing you could do about it one way or the other....

From the paper:

"IT was the most terrible day in the history of the British Army with more than 57,000 casualties, of whom almost 20,000 were killed.
But the first day of the Battle of the Somme - July 1, 1916 - was just the beginning of a four-month operation that would end with more than 1.5m casualties.
The shattered fields of northern France ran red with blood and to this day the countries that took part remember the events with abject horror.
Now unique photographs of that first day have been made available for all to see..."

Purvis survived the war and although he went on to study at Cambridge and eventually become a clergyman, I think he had a real eye as a photographer:

A new type of barbed wire used by Germans in 1918. RICGH:2005.31.40

Oooh - I want one of these...

2009-10-08T22:52:00.004-06:00

The Nissan Land Glider concept. From LikeCool:

"Nissan has unveiled the Land Glider Concept at the upcoming 2009 Tokyo Motor Show. The Land Glider is two-seat electric vechicle, features the range of 160km (100 miles) in a full charge. It can lean into turns like a motorcycle, and sci-fi looking cabin, all full of monitors displays and a steering wheel which looks like twin joysticks."

More pictures (and a somewhat boring video) at LikeCool as well as at the Nissan site.

All a little bit slower... and rather more cosy (and rather more green) than this - The Ariel Atom (and a video below):

Top Gear - Ariel Atom - BBC

Featured Comment from Bee (and old friend):

Okay so now I have a Moleskine, but can't think what to write in it. I already had a couple of fountain pens, but don't use them... so while those funky inks sound intriguing, I can't see myself going there. But now this. I see your taste in cars is absolutely disgusting. American Muscle circa 1970, that's cars. The future as applauded by you is just debasing. Like in the future we'll all be Mr.Bean.

:-)

fountain pens, inks, notebooks and a store

2009-10-07T01:58:00.006-06:00

(Stylus Fine Pens - Edmonton)

Here's one of my mildly off the topic posts - about the old fashioned way of writing things and keeping notes. A fountain pen and a notebook (or in my case, several notebooks).

I bought my first fountain pen in 1978 from a small stationers in the lovely little German town of Celle. It was a Mont Blanc - bought when they were still straightforward work-a-day pens not the insane status symbols they are now (nor are they as well made now), the same company recently producing an overly ostentatious über tacky $25,000 gold and silver pen to celebrate Gandhi of all people (what the heck were they thinking!). But I still have my old original pen although the nib is getting well worn and needs re-tipping.

For a long time over the last few years I just used it for writing the odd letter and writing notes in a journal when I was on holiday or at the cottage. But apart from that, it didn't get much use. More recently though I got back into the habit of using it again along with a few of the other fountain pens I'd picked up over the years (though I found my much loved, if somewhat mainstream, Sheaffer Targa had finally succumbed to all the bangs, dents and scratches it took living in my pocket over two years or so of counter-terrorist operations... I have to see if I can get it fixed up).

I realised recently that I had completely got back into the habit of using a fountain pen for a lot of what I write, and that I was also using useful little pocket notebooks much more than any form of digital "recording device". Unfortunately this has been somewhat aided and abetted by discovering that our city has a a rather lovely little shop that specialises in pens, inks, notebooks and fine paper and other cool and funky office supplies (such as magnetic paper weights from Germany or beautifully sculpted steel pocket pencil sharpeners...).

A bit more on the store in a minute, but back to pens and paper for now. I'm finding it much more productive and enjoyable to write a lot of things out by hand - not just short notes and ideas, but longer outlines and papers. It seems a much more comfortable way of doing it. These days I tend to use one of my favourite two or three pens, usually a fairly standard Pelikan Souverän 600 or a Visconti Van Gogh midi, as well as a funky little hexagonal aluminium pocket pen by Wörther.

As for notebooks, I've always been a

Moleskine fan (although they seem to have gone nuts with products these days - which isn't exactly a bad thing) - just about all my photo projects have been recorded in a standard black Moleskine over the years - place, date, time, film, lens, ideas, outlines etc. The trouble is (and I really wish they would fix this), their paper just generally isn't fountain pen friendly. And even worse, it can vary from batch to batch. But on the whole, the ink nearly always bleeds through to the other side of the page. So for now, I've found some great notebooks from a company called Quo Vadis - the Habana (unlined of course - I can't bear the rigidity of lined pages...). Lovely paper and beautifully made - and the orange looks great. I also like some little Japanese notebooks by Apica for every day jotting - shopping lists and things to do and errands to remember. BTW, this being the digital age there are actually a bunch of sites out there with Moleskine and other notebook "hacks"

As for ink - well, that's another story. I always used to just use slight variations on blue or black. Whatever I could find easily. And while I guess there have always been fancy inks around, it seems to me - coming back to fountain pen use as it where - that there has been an explosion of specialist ink makers, as well as established makers becoming much more adventurous in their offerings. There are all sorts of funky colours - every shade and variation on red through purples and blues to sepias and siennas to greys and blacks and everything in between. Along with great names like Dragon's Napalm (meant to replicate mercurochrome antiseptic in a Vietnam War era MASH unit...) to El Lawrence - a sort of motor oil grey black to Zhivago - a deep green black that evokes the Doctor's writing deep in the ice bound dacha, to classic numbers from France such as Violet Penseé or Café des Îles. Of course this would be fine if you had to pick and chose carefully over the internet and pay for shipping etc., but as I mentioned, we have a rather nice pen shop here in Edmonton - so over the last couple of years I've been using some rather funky colours. My current favourites are Noodler's Golden-Brown which shades within each stroke of the pen from a golden yellow to a sort of warm earth burnt sienna colour. The other is the Zhivago that almost looks like a standard black and then, in a different light, you notice a tiny little touch of deep green on the edge of many of the strokes (oh - and a beautiful lavender blue from De Atrimentis in Germany). Anyway, it all livens things up a bit and stops it getting boring.

As for that shop, if you ever come through Edmonton Stylus Fine Pens is definitely worth a visit. And if you are in Canada, take a look as wel they will take orders and ship on line. They do have a great range of pens, but their range

of inks and notebooks and other paper products is also superb. On top of which is their rather nice range of contemporary office products (which sounds so drab, but I can't think of a better term late this evening - writing accessories?). Letter openers like El Bandito to liven up your morning, or imaginative paperweights or the classic looking heavy duty El Casco stapler. Mind you, the website only shows a portion of their accessories. Finally, the store is run by two very nice, friendly and knowledgeable people.

So, if you are wedded to your Blackberry or iPhone, think about giving it a break. Grab a pen (preferably a fountain pen - even if you have to dust it off and clean it out) and stick a notebook or two in your pocket and put all your ideas and schedules and plans in there instead.

Gotta love it...

2009-10-03T11:32:00.004-06:00

I just love this picture that came out of the thousands generated this last week during the 60th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the People’s Republic of China

The ladies of the People's Liberation Army Militia (I wonder if the girl right in the centre will be disciplined for almost smiling...?). As one commentator noted - uniforms courtesy Austin Powers. I guess Dr. Evil must be alive and well in his remote mountain lair deep in northern China.

As Wired put it:

"Lieutenant General Fang Fenghui, general director of the parade, told Xinhua the parade was supposed to showcase the transformation of the PLA from a low-tech, manpower-intensive force to a high-tech, 21st-century one. And nothing says futuristic! like white go-go boots".

Then again, perhaps the officers of the PLA General-Staff simply enjoy classic Bond, with re-runs of You Only Live Twice and Sean Connery as James Bond?

As well as everything on AP and the other news-wires, you can check out more images on the official Xinhua news agency website. The massive array of weaponry is both mesmerising and terrifying.

Walker Evans, Atget and many many more at AmericansuburbX

2009-10-01T00:20:00.003-06:00

(Walker Evans)

I've mentioned the AmericansuburbX site before, but it seemed worthwhile highlighting it again as I constantly come back to it. I get their regular email of updates and there's nearly always something I can't resist.

Doug Rickard who runs it constantly adds new material, which is all writings about photography and photographers, out of print magazine or journal articles, book chapters, interviews, profiles and more.

You can't find that 1998 article from Camera Arts on Emmet Gowin that you meant to clip but realise you probably never did? Lost that photocopy of the Intro to William Eggleston's Ancient & Modern you made when you borrowed it from the library - they're both here, along with half a dozen articles about Walker Evans, (including a an interview with him from 1971) and much more.

The there's a look at the last 40 years or so of Atget exhibitions and scholarship. Or a look back at class time with Gary Winogrand at UT in Austin.

(Thomas Struth)

But it's not just oldies (okay, classic) stuff. There's a 2007 interview with Thomas Struth and there's Paul Graham on "Photography is Easy, Photography is Difficult". There's Taryn Simon's "An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar" and an article entitled "Todd Hido: Art of Darkness"

I never quite know what's going to come out of browsing here and reading one of the articles. It might be renewed energy to work on my current projects. Or a brief comment in one article sending me on a hunt for traces of a never published novel based on Atget's life and work.

(Todd Hido)

Every time I browse through the site, or search a photographer's name there, I always find something to stop and read (or more often than not, to print off). It's a bit like in the "old days" when you would look something up in an encyclopaedia but never actually get to the topic in question because you got side tracked by so many other interesting entries along the way... (yep, those were the old days). Take a look, but don't blame me if you don't get back to your work until three hours later.

(Eugene Atget)

Man-bags and stuff Pt.II

2009-09-26T21:50:00.002-06:00

Well, I may have found it... my holy grail of bags (for now, anyway). The Landscape Satchel by Tanner Goods. I don't have one in my hand as they are made to order. And the price is a little... over the top end, for me anyway (especially as I saw a women with a really nice leather messenger bag after a gallery opening the other day and it cost her all of - $70.00).

Anyway, I like the look of this one - in all three colours actually. Black would definitely be my first choice though, followed by brown. I also like the idea of the removable zippered insert - pouches for this and that or just a big empty bag.

How did I miss this...? Buffet

2009-09-23T21:46:00.002-06:00

(Andrew Phelps - Not Niigata)

I'm not sure how I missed this up until now, but photographer Andrew Phelps has a great blog up call Buffet.

As he describes it:

The Buffet is open........

Buffet is a collection of special editions, book + print sets, artist's books, print/book trades and various interesting ways in which photographers are packaging and selling their work. Some are sold through galleries and publishers, some by the artists. The only ones I am selling directly are my own. I'm not a dealer (more of a junkie) so I am not getting a cut of these sales, I am just a photographer interested in work which is in my price range.

(Nicholas Gottland - Wild Prayer)

Anyway, there's some great stuff in here (as well as a lot of stuff I wish I'd know about which is now long sold out...). So many good photographers are now selling their work directly either as POD books, limited run prints, through small off-the-grid publishers etc which is a movement I'm pleased to see continues to grow. But it's also hard to keep track of what's out there. I found it especially rewarding to scroll back through all the old posts on the blog. There is some quite wonderful work in there.

(Sonja Thomsen Surface)

So I'm going to be keeping an eye on Buffet and seeing what comes along.

BTW - I also like his idea of trading prints for books - you might possibly see that here...?

(Todd Deutsch Chasing the Family Drift)

James Nachtwey et al

2009-09-21T09:03:00.000-06:00

(James Nachtwey)

Scrolling through the channels last night to try and find The Policewomen of Broward County (yes, I know...), I ran across a repeat of War Photographer, the excellent documentary about James Nachtwey. Although I've seen it before, I was immediately hooked and watched the whole 90 minutes or so again.

(James Nachtwey)

After the doc finished I pulled out my battered copy of Deeds of War from the shelf and took another look through it. And this morning I grabbed the doorstep sized Inferno from the local library. I had somehow forgotten how stunning Nachtwey's work is, along with how committed a character he is. Which got me thinking about a couple of things.

(Gilles Peress)

For me, during the late Twentieth and into the earlier Twenty-first Century there has always been a triumvirate of conflict/war photographers whose work spoke more loudly, more convincingly and was nearly always head and shoulders above anything else around. Don McCullin, Gilles Peress and James Nachtwey. Now, these guys are all getting on a little bit. I figure the last two are already into their early sixties and the Don is about 73 (not to suggest they are past it or not still photographing or anything). But who can forget McCullin's searing pictures from Vietnam or the Congo or Beirut arriving in time for Sunday breakfast with the colour supplements? Or Peress' unbearable yet absolutely essential images from Bosnia in Farewell to Bosnia and Rwanda in The Silence. And Nachtwey's b&w essays from Rwanda, the Sudan, Chechnya still, against all the digital and ad-dollar odds, being published in Time.

(Don McCullin)

But who are their heirs? Who is doing work of a similar calibre, work as powerful and searing as this and getting it published? I'm sure they are out there(or at least I hope they are).

Which leads me to: where the work of this sort and calibre from Iraq and Afghanistan (and any other current spot on the globe where human beings are suffering and dying)? There was a time when I would seek out such stories in the news magazines, the Sunday supplements as well as other often not quite so obvious places and publications - but they were never to hard to find and often looked you right in the eye from the newsstand. Perhaps I haven't been quite so diligent this last few years, but where is the work? I seem to have encountered so little in published form, and while the internet has been a boon to photography in so many ways, it seems in some ways to have belittled this kind of work, robbed it of its power and rendered it impotent.

(Don McCullin)

I have, it must be said, gone to the websites of some of the big (and not so big) newspapers and other publications when I have found a pointer that led me there. In one way it has been great that the NY Times or whatever can now publish the whole of an essay online when they perhaps only printed 2 or 3 pictures in the actual (physical) paper. And yet, somehow, scrolling through a slide show, along with added information or commentary just seems to lack impact or staying power - despite how good the images may be. And though many - indeed most - are very very good, where are the excellent ones? The pictures that sear themselves onto our retinas and haunt our dreams?

(Gilles Peress)

Postscript: Having written this, I just came across the story this last week of the photographs of Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard in Afghanistan (and here and here)and words of censure coming from the supposedly open and outward looking administration in the White House. I think one essential thing McCuillin, Peress and Nachtwey all have in common is that their work was and is about pricking our complacency, about not letting us hide in our suburban middle-class ghetto's. Perhaps, in the end, they failed? Not because their work wasn't powerful enough or that they didn't try hard enough, but rather that our self-absorbed complacency was just too immense to overcome?

(James Nachtwey)

The Problem of Photography Pt.1 (The Gaze)

2009-09-16T15:22:00.006-06:00

There is a lovely book of photographs by Stephen Shore called the Gardens at Giverny. It is very nicely done and has always been a favourite of mine. But I wonder at the conflicting emotions when the Metropolitan Museum of Art suggested photographing Monet's newly restored house and gardens at Giverny. Holy crap - what an incredible opportunity - to photograph Monet's Gardens. Holy crap - how on earth do you photograph Monet's Gardens.

The end result is a book that I feel reflects that. It is a beautiful collection of photographs giving us Shore's vision of the renascence of these iconic gardens, showing us their hidden and unnoticed details and late summer parched browns as well as their verdant lushness. A well executed collection of pictures by a major photographer. (I know of one landscape architect who keeps a copy on her desk. I also found, while looking for online pictures from it an interview with Stephen Shore where he notes that the contemporary photographer he is most interested in is Walid Raad which I find most encouraging in the light of what I say below).

And yet... and yet, place one or even all of these photographs beside one of Monet's paintings of his garden and they would be, I believe, immediately eclipsed (though I haven't actually stood, book in hand, before Water-Lilies or The Water-Lily Pond at the National Gallery). Certainly in many ways it's an unfair comparison, and I'm sure it was a comparison that Shore was both aware would be made and was probably constantly aware of in himself while he worked. But there is almost no other way it can be. Which brings me to what I see as the heart of the problem of photography - what I recently referred to as sustaining our gaze.

(Water-Lilies, Claud Monet)

It is one of the fundamental problems of photography that photographs rarely seem able to hold our attention for an extended period of time, never mind sustain our concentrated gaze. I find it hard to think of almost any photograph that is capable of holding a viewers gaze for even thirty minutes, never mind an hour or two or a whole afternoon. And yet I can think of numerous other works of art that can do just that.

When encountered, even a painting by a less than well known 18th Century artist - such as Gordale Scar (A View of Gordale, in the Manor of East Malham in Craven, Yorkshire, the Property of Lord Ribblesdale) by John Ward can hold our direct attention for quite some time. And yet go to an exhibition of work by say Robert Adams or Eggleston or Lee Friedlander and how long would we spend, with our gaze fixed on an individual picture? Ten minutes? Twenty minutes, thirty? I think that would be approaching unusual even for the photographically literate, to say nothing of the serious but non specialist general viewer. Possible, but rare.

(Gordale Scar (A View of Gordale, in the Manor of East Malham in Craven, Yorkshire, the Property of Lord Ribblesdale) by John Ward)

And what of travelling to see a photograph? A single photograph mind you, not a whole exhibit of a photographer's work. I can think of a good number of works of art - mainly, though not only, paintings - that I would make the time and effort to travel some way to see - to another country even (and on occasion have done so). But to do the same for a single photograph? There are less than a handful of photographs that would have the same draw (a particular Atget - tiny as it would be; possibly a Walker Evans. Maybe even something like an early Fox Talbot). For a major exhibit of a particular photographer's work, certainly I would make the effort. But for individual photographs it is hard to think of many at all.

(Parc de Scaux, Atget)

Now none of these or the following thoughts are terribly new or original, but what has prompted me to start putting them together is a growing dissatisfaction with so much of the work I see that crosses my desk almost every day in one way or another. Yes, there is all sorts of work that excels at what it is trying to do. Work that adds another little twist or tweak to a certain direction or area of photography and does so well, whether it be large format urbanscapes, deadpan portraits, large format prints, directed and arranged tableaux etc. etc. And yet almost none of it even begins to push up against what I feel are the current, long standing limitations on photography (but not inherent limitations, because I don't believe they are).

(from Sticks and Stones - Lee Friedlander)

This is what has been called "the problem of photography", and the limitation of the gaze, the holding of our attention, is the clearest symptom of the problem. As I see it there are three main causes to the problem, three main limitations, three boundaries, that photography has yet to make serious - or at least successful - attempts to break out of (and which is where I feel that so much contemporary work is lacking. I encounter little which is even pushing up against these boundaries, never mind making an effort to break through them or smash them out of the way completely).

I want to take some time in future posts to explore these boundaries and the ways they limit or restrict photography, but for now the three boundaries as I see them are:

1. The lack of time in a photograph (which is tied in some way to the minimal influence of the artists hand in a photograph). Among others, John Berger, David Hockney and Richard Benson have tried to address this problem. A photograph contains so little time because everything is compressed into a fraction of a second (and even a "long" exposure practised by the likes of Atget out of necessity or others by choice makes very little difference to this - perhaps just a little, but not enough). As Hockney put it, the imbalance between the two experiences, the first and the second lookings, is too extreme.

2. The frame. The window that seems to continually apply its internally focused tension, never allowing the photographic image beyond those borders - be they square, rectangular or circular, 8x10 inches or 8x10 feet. The photographic frame has frequently been regarded as a window (and often positively so). Yet as a window, all we can ever do is look through it. Never step through it like a door (or even break through it) to what is beyond.

3. Perspectivism. Photography has for so long been limited (from long before the invention of film) by the concept of Renaissance Perspective, a theoretical straight-jacket that photography has usually been too insecure to try and throw off, never mind break from completely. It took painting 400 years. How long is it going to take photography?

(Let's Be Honest, the Weather Helped - Walid Raad - The Atlas Group Archive)

(btw, do respond with your thoughts, criticisms or comments. Posts are moderated, but only because I kept getting too many spam and junk posts)

Two for the Photo-Book Library - Benson and Eggleston

2009-09-03T01:30:00.003-06:00

If you are an addicted photo-book collector, here are a couple of good sized tomes worth getting for the reference section:

First, The Printed Picture by Richard Benson. This is actually a quite beautiful book, most likely because Richard Benson cares to the Nth degree about the presentation and printing of pictures - especially photographs - in books. Benson, who teaches at Yale (and was Dean of the School of Art for a number of years), has also printed some of the most beautifully done photo-books out there such as the gorgeous four volume The Work of Atget as well as the incomparable Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company - probably the finest example of the combination of the photographer's and the printer's art . Among others, he has had a long standing partnership with Lee Friedlander, printing a number of Frieldander's books

The internet aside, I think it's true that we see the majority of the photographs we look at in the form of printed books or in magazines and this book is literally an overview of the printed picture going through the history of how pictures, mainly though not only photographic, have been reproduced, printed and presented. From woodblocks through to inkjets and digital technology with everything important in between. But the book is not overly wordy or academic and the pictures chosen as examples of the different techniques are frequently left to do a lot of the talking for themselves. Benson is both a photographer as well as a master of the printing press and it shows. The book is informative, intriguing and visually beautiful. And Benson is also able to describe these processes in a very straightforward yet complete manner. Definitely one for the bookcase and to thumb through again in the darkness of winter. (There was also a sort of precursor exhibition treading the ground of this book called The Physical Print: A Brief Survey of the Photographic Process, which was well reviewed on 5b4)

The second book is William Eggleston, Democratic Camera : photographs, and video, 1961-2008. This is the catalogue of the large Eggleston retrospective at the Whitney that ended earlier this year (I recently came across a very good review of the show here). It's a fairly heavy duty book and gives a pretty good overview of Eggleston's work along with a quiver full of essay's by Elizabeth Sussman, Thomas Weski, Stanley Booth et al. There's nothing earth shattering about the book or the essays, but if you haven't been able to gather together some of Eggleston's books such as Democratic Forest or Ancient & Modern or Los Alamos or Eggleston's Guide (grab the reprint while you still can...) - some of which are getting pricey these days - then it's a good way to view a fair chunk of his work.

One thing I did feel going through the book is how much better the majority of the photographs work in the context of their original book form rather than in a big retrospective book like this. I didn't get to see the exhibit, but have a feeling it wouldn't matter so much looking at a cross section of Eggleston's prints on the gallery wall - because many of them also stand on their own as well. But somehow, taken out of the overall context of say Eggleston's Guide or Democratic Forest and put together in one large compendium many of the pictures seemed at least a little diminished which makes me think of how important the grouping and sequencing of a set of photographs can be, where the whole is very much greater than the sum of the parts.

Either way, a good book for the shelf, although as I got this one out of the public library, I might be tempted by his new book on Paris instead (though I wasn't too keen on the Dunkerque book... it almost felt like he was a little lost in Basillico territory). Oh and if you come across a cheap copy of Election Eve, let me know!

Crosspostings - design, art and other stuff

2009-08-28T15:30:00.006-06:00

I've been doing a lot of reading and looking at areas outside of photography recently - art (books and blogs and shows when I can), design - everything from clothes to industrial to goodness knows what. As well as things like fountain pens and paper products (in my last job as an archivists I was sort of known at the tech go-to-guy, so it tended to amuse people when I turned up at meetings with a Filofax and a fountain pen instead of a Blackberry...) - and I must say I do have a fondness for cool and funky looking office stuff, like cast aluminium pencil sharpeners from Denmark or industrial looking bookends from Japan or soft chrome magnetic paperweight planes that catch your paper clips as well....

So, just putting you all on notice that I'll be doing a bit of cross-posting on here every now and then when I come across something that takes my fancy.

For today, here's something from the UK designer Paul Smith. Rhodia notebooks from France are often to be found in the offices of architects, film directors and graphic designers (indeed, the paper is of a rather nice quality). Their mouse-pad/notepad is one of the most handy things I have on my desk.

Anyway, Paul Smith has taken the standard classic orange Rhodia cover and added his own twist to a limited edition run. I also thought them quite suitable for the photog crowd - although you would have to order them from the UK...

But to finish on a more sombre note - I don't quite get the whole US political dynasty thing, but here is what is imo one of the best Ted Kennedy photos - quite wonderful - by Dave Burnett (and, I'm guessing here, is probably a result of his Speed Graphic/Aero Ektar setup?)

(Photo - David Burnett)

Man-bags and stuff

2009-08-27T00:22:00.005-06:00

I'm sure there are many readers of this blog who are also charter members of the camera bag a month club... I have what family refers to as my "camera bag mountain".

Well, I've actually been doing a lot of reading, writing and research lately (about the archive, photographs, Derrida, visual literacy and more) and I've been looking around for a nice hip (I need all the help I can get...) bag to transport around all the notes and books etc. Sure I could just use some clunky old messenger bag - but hey, a cool bag is a cool bag. And a re-purposed camera bag might do the trick if my old Domkes weren't so worn that the bottom has just about come out of them; my 26 year old canvas Billingham seems to have gone mouldy in the garage and the more recent bags were all for carrying around an 8x10.

I haven't found the holy grail of man-bags yet, though I did see one in a local store that sells everything from flowers to fountain pens to laser cut aluminium decorations to French pocket knives. Lovely black oiled leather bag, but it turned out to be by an "actual" Italian/French designer and cost nearly $600.00 - yeah, right.

(bag - Isaac Reina)

However, hunting around on the web I did come across these folk in Vancouver, BC - Palmer & Sons. Not the kind of bags I actually want right now (and probably not my price range either), but I just love that there's someone in Vancouver in this day and age making these kinds of beautiful hand-crafted pieces. Kudos to them for even making the effort! (On their blog, you can also see how they put some of them together).

Either way, my search for a cool murse continues...

How long is a photograph able to sustain our gaze - Exergue

2009-08-24T22:27:00.003-06:00

(Thomas Nozkowski - Untitled)

I read two things in the last few days that both seem to come together and point to something I've been thinking about regarding the nature of photography:

About Painter Thomas Nozkowski in a Globe & Mail review (by Sarah Milroy - note: G&M articles are time limited) of his show at the National Gallery of Canada:

"....As well, he abandoned the anonymity of concept-driven art. “All of us are interested in having an un-alienated life,” he says. “What is the point of having a craft if you cannot use it to speak about the things that interest you outside the studio?” His art would be rooted in his own life experience."

and
"...So, I ask him, what can painting do that nothing else can?
“Oh, that's easy,” he says, his voice relaxing affectionately. “There is no other tool that can unite images and emotions so efficiently, that can bring together what you see and what you feel about it. Painting is really about pursuing what you desire. I mean, we all walk down the street, but we see completely different things. Here we are, sharing DNA and two million years of evolutionary history. Why is it that you are looking over there and I'm looking over here?”..."

(Jon Feinstein)

From Jon Feinstein talking about his work Pure Aesthetics:

"Pure Aesthetics rejects the tendency to find meaning and substance from superficial visual experience. Building on Clement Greenberg's ideas about abstract expressionism and the need for a tactile and purely visual perception of artwork, the images have little concept beyond their physical properties. Shiny, colorful, ostensibly inviting materials are laid flat and rendered into abstract patterns that at times appear to descend back into space or contain some code of visual complexity. While the "critical" viewer may demand a layered concept, there is actually nothing to explore beyond the purely physical surface."

Both of these sets of words raise issues about the nature and meaning of photography that I hope to explore over two or three posts to come.

(btw Clement Greenberg, when asked if he thought photography was an art or a craft, considered for a moment and then replied; "I thought it was a hobby?"... which isn't necessarily a bad thing)

Being a designer...

2009-08-22T21:36:00.002-06:00

Sometimes - just occasionally - I wish I was a designer.

It's when I come across something like this:

Late one recent hot northern evening I was turning off the lights and saw this moth flitting around the house and I quickly became enthralled by it's patterns and colours.

The only camera I could lay my hands on was our little family Canon Cybershot. So it was direct flash and trying to figure out how the macro worked as I followed the moth around (it was still around next morning, but I only got a shot of its upper wings before it flew away into the garden).

But those patterns - the black and cream on it's upper wings and then the wonderful orange/red on it's under-wings. I just felt like I need to design a shirt or a dress or a book cover or fabric wall coverings or something - to take those patterns and colours and translate them into something else. Of course I'm not what you might call a designer, so I didn't... (you really don't want to see me draw or even try and design the dogs house).

But the pattern and colour still flits around in my mind.

BTW, it's a Tiger Moth.