ADAM BELL / blog

Redwood Saw by Richard Rothman

2012-01-09T19:14:00.002-05:00

My review of Richard Rothman's Redwood Saw (Nazraeli Press, 2011) is now available at Photo-eye. The book was also on my list for one of the best of 2011.

As sentient animals, we arrogantly pride ourselves on our dominion over the land and its creatures. Entering the 21st century, the demands we have placed on the earth are reaching their limits. In the long view, after we are gone, the forest and animals will reclaim the Earth, and humans will likely become a footnote in Earth's long history. Richard Rothman's first monograph, Redwood Saw, tackles the thorny problem of our relationship to the planet. Rather than show often clichéd images of environmental destruction, as powerful and real as they are, Rothman focuses on a dying timber town, Crescent City, CA. Beginning in the forest and weaving his way through the town, Rothman leads us through the landscape and the inhabitant's lives, and offers an affecting portrait of America struggling in the face of depletion and worn-down dreams.

Read the rest here.

RVB Books

2012-01-03T13:44:00.000-05:00

RVB Books is a new publisher based in Paris, who've been putting out some great photobooks. I've included three of their books below, but there are more on their site. All the books are especially well designed and each has a different look and feel from the encyclopedic design of The Significant Savages by Grégoire Pujade-Lauraine to the playful oversized board book Cathedral Cars by Thomas Mailaender.

I've also include The Hibernators by Ruth van Beek, whose work I first became aware of at Erik Kessel's fantastic, albeit polarizing, show, Use Me, Abuse Me, at the 2010 NY Photography Festival.* van Beek's work is a great example of the humorous and smart contemporary work being done in collage. I already have a soft spot for guinea pigs, but her collages of headless cats, dogs and guinea pigs are funny and poignant. I also can't help but think of a certain famous Star Trek episode.

I'm hoping to do a review for at least one of the books, which I will post in the near future.

* Note: Thomas Mailaender's work was also included in the same show. I would include a link, but the folks at the NYPH Festival have inexplicably removed all trace of prior festivals from their site. The exhibition catalog for that show, which is really a sticker book, is awesome too.

The Significant Savages by Grégoire Pujade-Lauraine (RVB Books, 2011)

The Hibernators by Ruth Van Beek (RVB Books, 2011)

Cathedral Cars by Thomas Mailaender (RVB Books, 2011)

Best Books of 2011

2011-12-29T09:55:00.006-05:00

This past year, I've been reviewing photobooks regularly for Photoeye and The Brooklyn Rail, as well as occasional reviews for Ahorn Magazine. Given all this new activity, I thought it appropriate to finally post a 'best of' list this year. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with best of lists. I love reading them and secretly wait for them each year, but they also remind me of the all the books I haven't seen or missed, and generally can't afford, but now desperately want. That said, I was flattered when Photoeye asked me to contribute to their 'Best of 2011' section. My 'best of' lists have always existed solely in my head, so I thought I would finally share.

The following are in no particular order, but contain books I've reviewed and consequently spent more time with, as well as books I've returned to and grown to love over the past year. I've also added a honorable mentions/late additions section below.

Redheaded Peckerwood by Christian Patterson (MACK, 2011)
Blood streaked and gritty, Patterson’s book deconstructs a decades old crime and creates a beautiful and smart puzzle about crime, desire, hopelessness and the American landscape. If I had to pick a favorite, this would be near the top.

The Auckland Project by John Gossage and Alec Soth (Radius Books, 2011)

Two books in one by two great photographers and bookmakers. What more could you ask for?

Abendsonne by Misha De Ridder (Schaden, 2011)
Containing a mere eight images, De Ridder’s sumptuous book perfectly encapsulates the ephemeral beauty of nature.

A by Greg Halpern (J&L Books, 2011)
Filled with beauty and a keen eye for poetic details, A is a sobering journey through the back roads of America's forgotten cities.

Towards a Warm Math by Lucas Blalock (Hassla, 2011)
A book of strange photographs that pulls back the digital curtain and teases apart the possibilities of the image in the 21st century.

A New Map of Italy by Guido Guidi (Loosestrife Editions, 2011)
A long overdue US book by a contemporary Italian master. Look harder.

Photographs by Penelope Umbrico (Aperture, 2011)
An artist’s monograph brilliantly reimagined as an artist book.

Oculus by Ken Schles (Nooderlicht, 2011)
A poignant meditation on images and memory, Schles’ book is as evocative as it is beautiful.

One to Nothing by Irina Rozovsky (Kehrer, 2011)
Rozovsky's Israel is a land of modern ruins and ancient mysteries that never offers solutions, only questions and riddles.

Redwood Saw by Richard Rothman (Nazraeli, 2011)
Rothman’s first monograph documents a dying timber town and offers an affecting portrait of America struggling in the face of depletion and worn-down dreams.

Honorable Mentions/Late Additions:

Summertime by Mark Steinmetz (Nazraeli, 2011/12)
This may officially be a 2012 book. Regardless, it is the perfect coda to Steinmetz's amazing trilogy South Central, South East and Greater Atlanta (all Nazraeli). Summer break in all its lazy, boring glory.

Paloma al aire by Ricardo Cases (Photovision, 2011)
Smart but quirky design coupled with great pictures. Painted pigeon racing in all its multicolored glory.

Le Luxe by Roe Etheridge (Mack, 2011)
I can't tell if I love or hate this book. After all, who would have thought of making a book about Goldman Sacks, let alone one so weird and timely? As Beckett wrote, "Fail better."

Idyll by Raymond Meeks and Mark Steinmetz (Orchard/Silas Finch, 2011)
This is another one that may be a 2012 book, but I got a chance to look at it at the New York Editions|Artist's Book Fair this Fall. The third in a series of collaborative books between Meeks and another artist/photographer, Idyll is beautifully made and full of exquisite images.

Tooth for an Eye by Deborah Luster (Twin Palms, 2011)
A strange and haunting archive of crime scenes in NOLA.

Dirk Braeckman by Dirk Braeckman (Roma, 2011)
Although discovered late this year, this dark and brooding book is not to be missed. Tom Sandberg meets Michael Schmidt in a dingy Belgian apartment complex.

Illuminance by Rinko Kawauchi (Aperture, 2011)
More deceptively simple and poetic images by the master of the genre.

Visitor by Ofer Wolberger (Horses Think, 2011)
It is hard to pick one book from Wolberger's ambitious book project, but this one is an especially nice example from 2011.

The Significant Savages by Gregoire Pujade Lauraine (RVB Books, 2011)
Stripped of comments and status updates, Pujade Lauriane's collection of social network profile pictures offers a funny and astute portrait of our virtual selves.

Like any list, this is incomplete and entirely subjective. It is now not possible to see everything being produced - which makes it an overwhelming, but exciting time for photobooks. There are a lot of books I should probably add, but have not seen in person yet - Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada is one example. There are also many I have yet to discover. So little time...

See Photoeye's entire 'Best of 2011' list here.

Oculus by Ken Schles

2011-12-22T18:31:00.003-05:00

My review of Ken Schles' new book Oculus (Nooderlicht, 2011) is now online at Photoeye. The book is quite unusual and beautiful.

Blurring the boundaries between a philosophical essay and photobook, Ken Schles’ new
book Oculus is a beautiful meditation on the role of images, memory and perception
in our lives. In many ways, Schles’ work builds upon the questions and concerns of
his last two books. If The Geometry of Innocence (Hatje Cantz, 2001) can be seen as a
deconstruction of photojournalism and documentary practice, and The New History
of Photography (White Press, 2008) a meditation on influence and our relationship to
history and images, Oculus pushes these questions to a deeper level and explores how we
use images to understand and construct meaning from the world around us.

Read the rest here.

The Photobook Review

2011-12-15T13:02:00.002-05:00

Image Courtesy Aperture's blog Exposure

Aperture recently launched The Photobook Review at Paris Photo. The first issue was guest edited by Jeffrey Ladd and looks fantastic. You can get the digital version here. I can't wait to get my hands on it.

P.S. Aperture has copies in their gallery space. Get one while you can - they are going fast.

Redheaded Peckerwood by Christian Patterson

2011-12-10T16:25:00.003-05:00

Christian Patterson's long-awaited book, Redheaded Peckerwood (Mack, 2011), is just out in the US and well worth the wait. My review of the book is now available in the Dec/Jan issue of The Brooklyn Rail. I'm a bit averse to 'best of' lists, but I have to admit this is at the top of my list for 2011.

In the late 1950s, Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate carved a bloody trail of mayhem across the plains of Nebraska and Wyoming. At the end of their three-day killing spree, more than 10 people lay dead, including Fugate’s family. Later immortalized in Terrance Malick’s film Badlands, their crime seems unimaginably horrific and unexplainable—the act of two angry, violent, and bored teenagers that defied reason. These terrible events serve as the launching pad for Christian Patterson’s fantastic new book, Redheaded Peckerwood (MACK, 2011). Moving across various photographic genres, Patterson’s work offers an oblique and mysterious exploration of desire, anger, hopelessness, and despair.

To read the rest, pick up a copy of the Rail if you are in Brooklyn or read it online here.

You can also get a copy here or here.

Please Note: Caril Ann Fugate's name is incorrectly spelled Fulgate in paragraph 3. The correction was made online, but remains in print.

A by Greg Halpern

2011-11-17T16:46:00.002-05:00

My review of Greg Halpern's A (J&L Books, 2011) is now on the Photo-eye site. I've been a fan of Greg's work for a number of years, so it is great to see another great book.

These days America's Rust Belt seems to be growing – the long collapsed centers of American industry have metastasized and are merging with the larger landscape of economic woes plaguing the United States. Most often evoked by politicians to decry the stagnant state of the American economy or to celebrate past greatness, it is a landscape often heralded, but rarely visited or known. On the surface, Greg Halpern's new book A is a journey through numerous Rust Belt cities (Detroit, his home town of Buffalo, Baltimore and others), but it is also a metaphoric journey through the American landscape and an examination of its hopes and failures. As we navigate this landscape, solitary figures, dilapidated homes and skittish, frenzied animals all blend to evoke a state of stubborn survival, resilience and beauty.

Read the rest here.

UPDATE: The book signing at ICP is on January 27th.

Traces by Ian Teh

2011-11-15T17:32:00.001-05:00

My review of Ian Teh's Traces (Deep Sleep Editions, 2011) is now on Photo-eye.

Over the past twenty years, large swaths of China's landscape have been transformed and denuded of their natural resources in an effort to propel the country into the 21st century. The skyscrapers of Shanghai or Beijing superficially display progress, but powerful political forces and willful ignorance often hide the environmental cost of such rapid development. This is not unique to China. All countries and their citizens prefer to remain ignorant of, or resigned to, the demands and toll we place on the earth in order to live the lives we live. Ian Teh's Traces (Dark Clouds) is really two bodies of overlapping work that examine the rapidly industrialized landscapes of China's remote provinces, as well as their human costs. Teh's unique approach to the subject not only elevates the work above much recent work on China, but also offers a disturbing and powerful vision of China's ongoing transformation.

Read the rest here.

In The Face of Silence by Christophe Agou

2011-10-27T16:41:00.003-04:00

My review of Christophe Agou's In The Face of Silence (Dewi Lewis, 2010) is now on the Photo-eye magazine and blog.

Documenting the rural Forez region of France, Christophe Agou's touching book In The Face of Silence offers a glimpse into the lives and hardships of the several older family farmers struggling to survive off the land. At first glance, it might be easy to dismiss this work as another romantic photo-essay about rural life, but that would be a mistake. In addition to being born and raised in the region, which does not necessarily void this risk, Agou has clearly befriended his subjects and invested the time to explore and engage with them. Tender and heart-felt, Agou's photographs reveal a world of simple pleasures, but also marked isolation and adversity.

Read the rest here.

Abendsonne by Misha de Ridder

2011-10-20T09:57:00.033-04:00

My review of Misha de Ridder's book Abendsonne is now available online at Photoeye.

The horizon [is] a kind of temporal hinge between immediate apprehension and a constant postponement of closure...The very fact of the horizon is what is immutable; it is an infinite dividing line between infinite entities, a place toward which the mind journeys and yet a place that appears as a continuous, productive, deferral of place.
-Susan Stewart, "What Thought Is Like" from The Open Studio Essays on Art and Aesthetics

Rooted in 19th century Romantic notions of the sublime, Misha De Ridder's images are subtle and beautiful, but also utterly contemporary. Abendsonne is a narrowly focused book that contains a mere eight large images (seven inside and one on the cover) printed on a heavy card stock, but is full of nuance and visual sophistication. The title, translated from German, means "setting sun" or "evening sun," but more specifically refers to a phenomenon in northern Europe during late autumn and early spring where the sun barely rises in the sky. In the mountainous Swiss towns where these images were made, the sun hovers briefly above the peaks before sinking back and shrouding the landscape in darkness - the cool otherworldly light, temporally transforming the landscape and shifting our perception.

Read the rest here. Lay Flat has also put out another book by de Ridder, DUNE, where you can get here.

De Ridder is also doing an artist's talk/book signing/screening at Printed Matter this Saturday, Oct. 25th, for DUNE. For more info about this event go here. I wish I could make it, but I will be out of town.

Cruising by Chad States

2011-10-13T14:27:00.001-04:00

My review of Chad State 's new book Cruising is now online at Photoeye.

Move past the clearing, over the hill and enter along a faint path. Keep moving forward into woods and make a right when you see the cluster of bushes - meet me there...

Chad State's Cruising explores the secret, and not so secret, sites where gay men meet for anonymous sexual encounters. Mostly hidden in plain view, the parks and rest areas frequented by these men are on the outskirts of the everyday world, cloaked by branches and coded signals. Never sensationalistic or merely erotic, States work intimately draws the viewer into this secret world through furtive glances and secluded paths - coaxing us (willingly or unwillingly) into the act of cruising.

Read the rest here.

A New Map of Italy by Guido Guidi

2011-10-04T12:47:00.001-04:00

I'm very pleased to have a review of Guido Guidi's new book A New Map Of Italy (Loosestrife Editions, 2011) in the latest issue of The Brooklyn Rail (Oct. 2011).

Covering the last 20 years, Guido Guidi’s new book A New Map of Italy is an excellent introduction to a seminal Italian photographer. Edited and designed by the photographer John Gossage, A New Map of Italy draws from Guidi’s vast archive of images and past books, but also contains many previously unpublished photographs. Like his influential forefather and near contemporary Luigi Ghirri, Guidi is a photographer whose gritty Neorealist-influenced documentary work is little known and underappreciated in the United States. Working in the tradition of Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, and Stephen Shore, Guidi’s large format color photographs are full of surprises and pictorial sophistication. (excerpt)

Read the full review here and pick up a copy of the Rail if you are in NYC - its one of the best publications around.

NY Art Book Fair

2011-09-29T10:44:00.000-04:00

Most readers of this blog are already aware of the NY Art Book Fair, but if you are in NYC this weekend, make sure to check it out at PS1. Check out more info here.

I will also be posting some new reviews in the coming week, including one for Guido Guidi's new book, which is running in the Oct issue of The Brooklyn Rail, and two more reviews for Photoeye. I will also be participating in an upcoming panel discussion for the Images on the Verge conference sponsored by BH Photo and the Young Photographer's Alliance on Oct. 4th.

Chinese Sentiment by Shen Wei

2011-09-16T13:33:00.000-04:00

My latest review of Shen Wei's Chinese Sentiment (Charles Lane, 2011) is now on the Photoeye blog.

Judging solely by the numerous photobooks and news reports that have inundated the West in the past ten years, modern China appears alternatively as a skyscraper laden wonderland or a threatening economic and political juggernaut. Rarely do more nuanced reports or reflections on these radical changes appear in the West. Avoiding the jingoistic and sensationalist tenor of recent books, Shen Wei's first book, Chinese Sentiment, offers an antidote to the neon tigers and faceless masses of recent photographic work on China. Instead, Shen presents a beautiful dream fugue about contemporary China in the throws of tumultuous change that even its populace hasn't quite fully comprehended.

Read more here.

Social Media

2011-09-14T13:36:00.000-04:00

There are tons of fantastic shows up this Fall, but I wanted to let you know about one show that opens this week. Social Media, a group show at Pace Gallery (510 W. 25th Street) opens this Thursday, 6-8pm.

The show was put together by Pace/MacGill and the Pace Gallery in conjunction with the MFA Photo, Video and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts. I worked with my colleagues in the MFA Department to help put the show together. It was a lot of fun working with the team at Pace/MacGill and Pace and I'm excited about the show.

There are some great artists in the show including Christopher Baker, Aram Bartholl, David Byrne, Emilio Chapela, Jonathan Harris (w/ Sep Kamvar), Robert Heneicken, Miranda July and Penelope Umbrico.

Be sure to see David Byrne's installation Tight Spot underneath the Highline next door.

P.S. The above QR code from the invite/sticker links to a special site with videos and images of the work.

One to Nothing by Irina Rozovsky

2011-08-26T14:07:00.002-04:00

My review of Irina Rozovsky's One to Nothing (Kehrer Verlag, 2011) is now available on Photoeye's blog.

How does one take a picture of Israel and not account for the conflict? The proverbial elephant in the room? To an outsider, inundated by the news, such an approach seems impossible, or maybe even morally irresponsible. Irina Rozovsky's book One To Nothing examines contemporary Israel as a complex, but contest site - never giving us an answer, but leaving clues throughout. The very title, One To Nothing, suggest a zero sum game, or at the very least a slight edge, but to whom or what? What is refreshing is that the winner never emerges. Is it Israel and Palestine locked in struggle, or man, Arab or Jew, struggling in a land of dust and swelter? Rozovsky's Israel is a land of modern ruins and ancient mysteries that never offers solutions, only questions and riddles.

Read more here.

Brut by Paul Kranzler

2011-07-27T12:00:00.001-04:00

My review of Paul Kranzler's Brut (Fotohof, 2010) is now online at Photoeye.

'Home' in all its iterations is a dominant theme within photography. Approached from infinite different angles, it can provide a wellspring of ideas and inspiration for a photographer, or it can be a comforting shelter to confirm well-worn platitudes. Paul Kranzler is a young photographer who has already proven himself unafraid to stare at the darker side of life as seen in his first two books Land of Milk and Honey and Tom. While his first two books are more focused portraits (a struggling alcoholic couple and the life of an adolescent named Tom), Brut is a loving meditation on Kranzler's family - both biological and adopted.

Read the rest here.

House of Love by Dayanita Singh

2011-07-23T18:50:00.002-04:00

I've started writing reviews for the Photoeye blog. You can read my first review of Dayanita Singh's House of Love (Radius Books, 2011) here. I have a few more in the pipeline, which I will post once they go live.

After college, I almost worked for Photoeye when a job at the now defunct photobook publisher, Arena Editions, fell through. I decided to move to NYC instead, but I've always loved Photoeye and am excited to contributing in some small way.

Here is a small excerpt from the intro:

South of Delhi, in the plains of Uttar Pradesh, the Taj Mahal stands as a testament to love and devotion. Built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who tragically died in child birth, the iconic mausoleum took over twenty years to construct. By the end of its construction, Shah Jahan himself was deposed and eventually buried next to his wife -- forever resting with his beloved. In addition to hosting millions of visitors a year, the Taj Mahal has come to represent not only the love of a king for his queen, but the rich and diverse culture of India itself. As a mirror, the Taj Mahal reflects not only stories of love, but also the complex stories of Indian life -- both past and present.

Read the rest here.

Ahorn Magazine, Issue 7

2011-04-25T16:53:00.000-04:00

My review of Jason Fulford's The Mushroom Collector is now available in Ahorn Magazine. Check it out here.

The issue is full of some great articles and interviews by Melanie McWhorter, Nicholas Gottlund, Jocelyn Lee and others. The conversation btw. Ron Jude and Ed Panar is great.

Art School and Gertrude Stein

2011-03-16T18:02:00.001-04:00

I finally got around to reading Steven Madoff's book Art School: (Propositions for the 21st Century), which came out last year. It has some very good essays and interviews - but I loved this Gertrude Stein quote.

The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything. This makes the thing we are looking at very different and this makes what those who describe it make of it, it makes a composition, it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen. Nothing changes from generation to generation except the thing seen and that makes a composition.

- Gertrude Stein, "Composition as Explanation"

You can download a pdf of her essay here.

FOAM - What's Next?

2011-02-27T17:34:00.003-05:00

There is an interesting discussion going on over at FOAM Magazine's site - entitled What's Next. In celebration of its 10th year, FOAM is looking back on the changes in the medium over the past twenty years.

On the one hand, it seems like a rehashing of tired arguments about the future of the medium or what digital means, but it also has great potential. Why is it we have to revisit the 'Is photography dead?', or 'What is the future of photography?' every 10 years? (Note: Parsons is hosting The Photographic Universe this week, which addresses some of these concerns, SFMOMA held a series of forums last year, as did MoMA.) Despite my misgivings, such discussions are often exciting and are healthy for the medium.

So far there are a couple of artist submissions and a number of different questions, which invite user's responses. I just posted a response to the question "Is Lens-Based Media A More Appropriate Term Than Photography?" Since I was limited in the space, I thought I would share my full response below. At the time I wrote, most of the comments answered in the negative (photographers are often very conservative). I must admit, I am somewhat biased in this area. I work in a graduate program that has been digital for over twenty years and has long embraced the term lens-based arts. Here is my full response:

I have to disagree with some of the responses, but also acknowledge the question is somewhat misleading. As a broad term, I think it is very appropriate and would even revise it to the ‘lens and screen arts.’ How else can one account for work as diverse as traditional large format color photography on one end of the spectrum to the growing number of artists using appropriated images (e.g., Google Street View or found imagery online). The term also acknowledges the technological shift that artists are now embracing – namely the convergence of the still and moving image in DSLRs.

One of the exciting aspects about photography is that artists have always grappled with and responded artistically to the technological developments of the medium. This does not preclude artists from still identifying primarily as photographers, using a large format camera, or rejecting video, nor does it deny the history of the medium. Just as it is absurd to separate video artists from the larger history of the moving image or artists who use acrylic from those who use oil paint, limiting it solely to photography does a disservice to the diversity of artistic practices within the medium. The work all originates from a lens be it Rodenstock glass, an anonymous satellite or an image online. There are already too many walls segregating and distorting the diversity of photography and its promiscuous relationship with other mediums, we need to break them down.

---------

P.S. The discussion on the FOAM site is actually shaping up with some interesting contributions. Make sure to check out Charlotte Cotton and Aaron Schuman's discussion and Lisa Oppenheim's comments.

Seizure by Mark Wyse

2011-02-10T23:21:00.000-05:00

I'm very excited to see that Mark Wyse's Seizure has just been released by Damiani. The release date is not until April, but copies seem to be available. In 2009, I helped bring Wyse to SVA's MFA Photo Department to give a artist talk and he showed an early version of the work, along with a maquette of the book. At the time, he was still looking for a publisher, so it is great to see this enigmatic and challenging project finally come to fruition.

Building upon the ideas of his 2008 show "Disavowal" at Wallspace, the book blends appropriated images with Wyse's own work. Avoiding any easy narrative or artistic concept, Wyse's work tears apart the assumed relationships and built in meanings of the images - opening them up and allowing for new meaning. As Wyse writes, "the photographic image is intimate and defensive at the same time. The photograph is less a representation of the world than a representation of a thought that reflects a relationship to the world." The book begins beautifully with a series of enigmatic quotes on yellow pages, and then moves on to what seem at first like a random collection of photographs. Whereas Wyse's show "Disavowal" was about deconstructing photo histories, and as he states a "engagement with our conflicted relationship to desire," Seizure is a more free-flowing exploration of photographic meaning and context - at once highly personal and expansive.

Writing about the exhibition on ArtSlant News, Charlie Schultz wrote, "Strictly speaking, every snap of the camera’s shutter is a form of seizure in which the photographer takes possession of some visual slice of the world. Wyse has also taken possession of other artists’ work (including Ansel Adams) to augment his own images. The third form of seizure is where things really get interesting. Through Wyse’s manipulation of the images’ context he subordinates the subject matter to establish a new system of relationships between each photograph."

Charlie White's essay Soft Copy/Hard Copy, which was commision for the book, is fantastic and available here. You can see some additional installation shots here from Wyse's April 2010 show at Wallspace. As much as I liked the show, the book really shines.

John Divola - New Work

2010-11-22T14:49:00.000-05:00

© John Divola, All Rights Reserved

I've always been a big fan of John Divola's work, which is consistently funny, smart and beautiful. He has some new work on his site that is worth checking out. One new project in the Reviewer Resources section of his site is a body of work which uses a Gigapan camera system (look here for the zoomable version). The GP allows you to use a DSLR to make super-high resolution images - typically panoramas. Most of the time, the results are cool, but not terribly interesting beyond their high-resolution zoomable details.

One of the interesting things about photography is that artists have always wrestled with it's technological limitations and innovations. The challenge and dare of these developments, and photography, is to produce something which transcends it's own novelty. Although Divola only has four images on his site, they exhibit his usually quirky conceptual sense of humor. I'm interested to see how the work develops.

There are also more treats, like the series Dark Star (2008) (see installations shots below), which revisits his work from the 1970's.

© John Divola, All Rights Reserved

© John Divola, All Rights Reserved

The Education of a Photographer goes DIGITAL!!

2010-11-06T20:00:00.003-04:00

About four years ago, Charles Traub, Steve Heller and I released The Education of a Photographer. I was just looking on Amazon and was pleased to discover that the book is now available for the Kindle here. You think I would have been notified about this, but such are the mysteries of publishing.

In any event, it is good to know that the book is having a relatively long live, hasn't gone out of print, and has now mutated into a new form. Get it again, or for the first time, here.

New York Art Book Fair - Nov 5-7th

2010-10-30T15:04:00.000-04:00

Run, don't walk.

Via. Jason Polan and LBM.

Le Garage

2010-06-30T13:38:00.002-04:00

Le Garage is a collective of several photographers based in France. They are currently organizing what looks like a really cool show for the Arles International Photo Festival.

As they state on the site,

From the 3rd to the 13th of July 2010 Le Garage will present the first photo book dummies and artist books exhibition to be held during the International Photography Festival of Arles.

Please come and celebrate with us the opening of the show on the 4th of July from 8PM at Le Garage, 9 rue Raillon, 13200 Arles!

They have some great artists participating - including Christian Patterson, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Charnarin, Gregory Halpern, Jeff Ladd, Beatriz Diaz, Taryn Simon and many others. I met up with Grégoire Pujade-Lauraine, one of the organizers, who kindly showed me some of his own book maquettes and told me about the project.

It is a bit of a guerilla exhibition, but looks well worth the trip if you plan on being in Arles for the festival.

FOAM Magazine Essay

2010-06-28T12:08:00.000-04:00

I'm pleased on announce that I have an essay in the current Summer 2010 issue of FOAM Magazine. I'm a big fan of FOAM and think it is one of the best photo magazines out there. The piece is more of a short story written in response of Bertrand Fleuret's work and accompanies a portfolio of his work. You can browse the issue on their website - but I recommend picking up a copy. There is some great work in the issue - including work by JH Engstrom, Joel Sternfeld, Mohamed Bourouissa and others.

Other Histories

2010-03-31T10:49:00.001-04:00

I’ve been thinking about abstract photography lately - both the actual work, but also its current resurgence. This fall I wrote a piece that is now featured in the latest issue of Lay Flat that addressed this subject. More specifically, the piece addresses the ways in which certain histories of photography obfuscate and confuse contemporary and historical practice. While I don’t want to rehash my essay from Lay Flat, and encourage you to read it, I was thinking about these issues again when I read the latest Artforum and read Matthew Witkovsky’s essay “Another History.” While there are many things that I liked about the piece, and I admire its attempt to sketch an alternative to certain readings of photo history, it still falls victim to some recurrent problems in these current discussions.

Witkovsky opens his argument with an important and oft neglected point that photography has always been closely bound to its own technological limitations and obsolescence. As he notes,

Abstraction, however, is not photography’s secret common denominator, nor is it an antidote to “traditional” photography – if photography has conventions local or long lasting enough to be thought of in that way. And it seems equally mistaken to suggest that abstraction is more relevant today because it offers awareness of photography’s passing (and therefore of our own passing into a new historical age). Against present talk of extinction, we should remember that photography has since its first days always been “ending,” it technological bases continually displaced through the actions of (truly abstract) economic and historical forces, couple with shifts in popular habits of consumption and social interaction. No matter how refined or forward-looking in its individual instances, photography as a class of imagemaking is profoundly marked by the enforced obsolescence characteristic of the industrial and postindustrial eras.

Considering this fraught relationship, Witkovsky sets out to sketch his own “short history,” to borrow a phrase from Benjamin, of photography that navigates the relationship between the photograph as image and object.

Any history, curatorial effort or critical argument relies on exclusion. While this is accepted and necessary, the exclusions can often be as revealing and illuminating as what is included. After tracing a history beginning with the Polish artist Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, Witkovsky jumps to Mel Bocher, Jan Dibbets, James Welling, Liz Dechenes, Moyra Devey and Walead Beshty. While these artists are linked in various ways in terms of their practice, what fails to be asked is what is at stake in such a reading and narrative?

For example, in his transition to a discussion of Welling’s work, Witkovsky states “for more than thirty years now, abstraction has been an encrusted subspecialty of artistic academe.” Welling is once again positioned as the crucial link. The exclusions and jumps implicit in this statement as well as others are troubling and do little more than to reinforce accepted dogma. While I appreciate the attempt to trace a “another history” and cast a different light on the current discussion of abstraction, what the essay fails to do is reveal how truly messy and contaminated the long history of abstraction is within photography. It is also troubling how beholden the history is to the current accepted critical discourse on the subject.

As I was mulling over these issues, I was reading the latest issue of The Brooklyn Rail and read a wonderful op-ed by the Artseen Editors, where they reflect on, and praise, Roberta Smith’s recent article “Post-Minimal To The Max” in the New York Times (2/10/10). As they state in their op-ed,

… many of our institutional guardians have sought a prescriptive approach to ensure that visual art works “properly.” These gatekeepers want to dwell in the more easily manageable world of ideas, rather than in the messiness of reality and the tangled threads of aesthetic impulses. They want art that can be domesticated by criticism…

It is the historian and curator’s job to look beyond artist statements and read the artists work against the historical and contemporary landscape in which they work – not merely rely on the dominant critical discourse of the time or the machinations of the marketplace.

In my essay for Lay Flat, I too sketch a brief history of abstraction, but do so to begin the task of revealing not only the truly messy history of photography that is not only intermingled with the other visual arts, but also the parallel, and at times, convergent histories of the medium. Photography and photo histories are too often ghettoized and bound by master narratives. What is troubling are the ways in which particular narratives are repeated, reinforced and eventually accepted wholesale in ways that are not always transparent or seem to reflect the market rather than real practice. It is important to note that artists are constantly restaging, reinterpreting and reshaping the history and historical models of the past, and in doing so shape the way we understand the medium and its history. Any examination of this long history needs to acknowledge and explore that fruitful dialog.

The Unreasonable Apple

2010-03-20T14:28:00.024-04:00

So what is the issue? The broader art world has no problems with the work of Jeff Wall, or Cindy Sherman or James Casebere or Thomas Demand partly because the creative process in the work is clear and plain to see, and it can be easily articulated and understood what the artist did: Thomas Demand constructs his elaborate sculptural creations over many weeks before photographing them; Cindy Sherman develops, acts and performs in her self-portraits. In each case the handiwork of the artist is readily apparent: something was synthesized, staged, constructed or performed. The dealer can explain this to the client, the curator to the public, the art writer to their readers, etc. The problem is that whilst you can discuss what Jeff Wall did in an elaborately staged street tableaux, how do you explain what Garry Winogrand did on a real New York street when he ‘just’ took the picture? Or for that matter what Stephen Shore created with his deadpan image of a crossroads in El Paso? Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity knows they did something there, and something utterly remarkable at that, but... what? How do we articulate this uniquely photographic creative act, and express what it amounts to in terms such that the art world, highly attuned to synthetic creation -the making of something by the artist- can appreciate serious photography that engages with the world as it is?

-Paul Graham, The Unreasonable Apple

from presentation at first MoMA Photography Forum, 16th February 2010

The other night I had the honor of attending the 2nd of a series of MoMA forums on photography. The series is entitled the "Contemporary Photography Forum" and is attempting to address the state of the medium. The first session was on Feb 16th and addressed where the medium of photography was going, while the one this week explored how historical models and practices inform contemporary practice. Each forum has 6 or so presenters and then opens the discussion to the room. While the forum rehashed a lot of older arguments that have dominated the medium and just got warmed up when we ran out of time, it was nevertheless lively and interesting.

In the first session, Paul Graham argued passionately for the value of "straight photography." Graham was a presenter for the first session and has posted his written piece on his website. He has made these points before at artist talks and lectures. I've posted an excerpt above, but it is worth reading in full here.

Lay Flat 02: Meta

2010-03-11T12:38:00.001-05:00

Lay Flat 02: Meta
104 pages, perfect bound
7.75 x 10 in. / 19.7 x 25.4 cm.
ISSN 1948-2876
ISBN 978-0-9842973-1-3
Published February 2010
Edition of 2,000
$30 + S&H | Now available!

The newest issue of Lay Flat is now out. As I wrote before, I'm honored to have an essay in the latest issue. Get it here.

P.S. My essay specifically addresses the rise of photographic abstraction, but more specifically it discusses what could be dubbed "photography about photography." The most recent issue of Artforum also has an article about this subject. While I liked aspects of the essay, there are more than a few things I don't like about the essay and hope to post a response soon.

Colors Dying Light

2010-03-09T20:20:00.057-05:00

Unfortunately, I missed his show this month at Higher Pictures, but I finally got a copy of Sam Fall's Color Dying Light published by Hassla. Simple yet enigmatic, the book is a treat. Like Adam Schrieber, who I wrote about earlier, and Hannah Whitaker, who also has a great show up at Kumukumu, and other conceptually minded photographers, Fall's work playfully defies easy categorization. You can see more of his work here.

In addition to his book with Hassla, Sam has also self-published a number of new books which are available at Dashwood books.

© Sam Falls/Hassla, All Rights Reserved

© Sam Falls/Hassla, All Rights Reserved

© Sam Falls/Hassla, All Rights Reserved

New Address

2010-03-05T16:33:00.002-05:00

As you've noticed, I've taken the plunge and moved my blog over to my new url - http://adambellphoto.blogspot.com. Due to changes at Blogger, they no longer will be supporting FTP blogs or subdomains.

While I deliberated long and hard about moving to Wordpress, I decided I wanted my blog to have a degree of autonomy from my main site. I was also being a little lazy. The migration will also redirect all links to the new site and preserve search inquiries. I'm still not sure about this, but was the easiest solution at the moment. Please update the feed so you can get any posts.

Thanks for reading,
Adam

HERE. . . and Half Blind

2010-02-28T20:43:00.004-05:00

John Gossage's latest book, HERE . . . Half Blind, is a result of his current exhibition at the Rochester Art Center in MN, and an excellent addition to his long list of great books. Commissioned to photograph the city and it surroundings, Gossage has produced another dark yet poetic look at the vernacular American landscape. Much like his previous book, Secrets Of Real Estate, HERE. . .Half Blind continues Gossage's investigation into mid-sized American cities and the larger state of America in the 21st century.

A oversized 12.5"x22.5" inches, the book is printed on newsprint and bundled together with a red ribbon. As always, Gossage surprises and confounds expectations with his design and aesthetic choices. At first, the newsprint seems a disappointing medium for his photographs, but once you learn that the images were also circulated a part of the Post-Bulletin, the local newspaper, the choice has a deeper aesthetic resonance given Gossage's exploration of the American vernacular. Another intriguing detail is the deadpan and somewhat cryptic text that runs along the bottom of the images. Culled from Wikipedia's entry on Rochester, MN, home to the Mayo Clinic among other things, the crowd-sourced monotone of the wikitext refuses to impose meaning on the images and instead frees them for more personal readings and reactions.

Throughout the book and interspersed with his signature images of suburban life are shots of local teenagers and art students. Although his early work does include portraits, the inclusion of portraits is a rarity for Gossage. Given the communal nature of the commission and the dissemination of the images, the portraits are a nice touch and help move the work beyond a purely hermetic and subjective exploration of the landscape. In choosing to photograph teenagers and local art student, Gossage highlights not only the youth than inhabit and shall inherit this shabby, yet beautiful landscape, but the ones who might ultimately transform it in the years to come.

© John Gossage, All Rights Reserved

© John Gossage, All Rights Reserved

In addition to Gossage's work from the book and a series not included in the book, the exhibition includes a collection of postcards from Rochester. The tension between the the more direct postcards and Gossage's subjective exploration sounds intriguing. As the press release states,

As in his previous projects, Gossage makes known the disregarded and seemingly insignificant elements of our environment. Beyond the compelling formal qualities of these photographs, there is an emotional and human component to these images, though in most no individual is visibly present. In his photographs, Gossage reveals somewhat ambiguous and indeterminable information about place, to allow the viewer to ultimately decide upon the significance. The subtlety of this approach is in stark contrast to other images of Rochester, such as in the postcards, which are meant to overtly declare the importance of whatever is presented.

Unfortunately for me, the show is in Minnesota, but it sounds great. As spoiled as I am in New York, there are always shows I wish were a little closer. If are in Minnesota or near Rochester, check out the show. You can order the book directly from the Rochester Art Center here.

© John Gossage, All Rights Reserved

Adam Schreiber

2010-01-25T17:12:00.007-05:00

© Adam Schreiber, All Rights Reserved

Adam Schreiber has a show coming up at Sasha Wolfe Gallery this March. There is not much out there about his work - but it looks pretty interesting. Like many contemporary photographers, his work seems to skirt easy definition, but seems to draw playfully on the history and multifaceted nature of the medium from corporate and scientific photography to conceptual art photography. Referring to his recent work, one press release states,

[Adam draws] much of his imagery and inspiration from the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, a library and museum dedicated to the humanities. There, he has photographed cultural artifacts ranging from the first known photograph taken in 1826 to a variety of other industrial and historical oddities.

© Adam Schreiber, All Rights Reserved

© Adam Schreiber, All Rights Reserved

© Adam Schreiber, All Rights Reserved

You can see more here, here and here.

Lay Flat 02: Meta

2009-11-16T15:24:00.003-05:00

Lay Flat 02: Meta, the second issue of Lay Flat is currently in production and is in need to additional funds. If you can, make a donation to help print and distribute the issue. Any donations of $50 or over will receive a tote bag with the Lay Flat logo, but no donation is too small. Issue 01 was great, and is already sold out, and this new issue looks even better. I am very excited to have an essay in the upcoming issue and can't wait to see it.

----------------------

Lay Flat 02: Meta

Lay Flat 02: Meta
Edition of 1,000
ISSN 1948-2876
ISBN 978-0-9842973-1-3

Release date: TBA

Edited by Shane Lavalette and Michael Bühler-Rose.

Lay Flat 02: Meta brings together the works of contemporary photographers whose images are conceptually engaged with the history, process and conventions of the medium itself. Photographs by Claudia Angelmaier, Semâ Bekirovic, Charles Benton, Lucas Blalock, Talia Chetrit, Anne Collier, Natalie Czech, Jessica Eaton, Roe Ethridge, Stephen Gill, Daniel Gordon, David Haxton, Matt Keegan, Elad Lassry, Katja Mater, Laurel Nakadate, Lisa Oppenheim, Torbjørn Rødland, Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, Joachim Schmid, Penelope Umbrico, Useful Photography, Charlie White, Ann Woo and Mark Wyse are accompanied by the textual contributions of Lesley A. Martin (Publisher/Editor, Aperture Foundation), Adam Bell (Co-editor, The Education of a Photographer), Noel Rodo-Vankeulen and Arthur Ou, as well as an interview with artist James Welling by Lyle Rexer (Author, The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography).

JL editions

2009-11-05T10:54:00.010-05:00

© Michael Schmelling and JL Books, All Rights Reserved

JL Books has a number of great limited editions and artists books now available that are all very reasonably priced - especially given many are only in editions of 10-30. All of them look pretty great, but some stand outs are: Michael Schmelling's mystery envelope, which contains a small collection of prints; David La Spina's xeroxed book on Mamaroneck, with hand-tipped photos; Ed Panar's collection of prints enclosed in a glassine envelope, Relics; Darin Mickey's collection of prints in a HR envelope; and finally Gregory Halpern's Omaha Sketchbook.

© David La Spina and JL Books, All Rights Reserved

© David La Spina and JL Books, All Rights Reserved

© Ed Panar and JL Books, All Rights Reserved

© Darin Mickey and JL Books, All Rights Reserved

© Greg Halpern and JL Books, All Rights Reserved

Space is the Place

2009-10-15T13:18:00.002-04:00

Fun and Games

2009-10-05T11:36:00.002-04:00

Sad lonely arcades, tattered carnival attractions, haunted houses and threadbare strip clubs. Lisa Kerezsi new book, Fun and Games, has just been released by Nazraeli Press, and is the culmination of a large ongoing project investigating the odd and mysterious places we go for amusement. With the closure of Astroland in Coney Island, space like those photographer by Kereszi are fast disappearing, but nevertheless, remain a vital part of the American landscape.

What is remarkable about Kereszi is her subject often seems so common (abandoned spaces and kitschy spaces), especially among photographers, yet her attention and keen eye make the work wholly her own. As she states, "when you look at a nocturnal place in the light of day, it looks strange and uncanny. Reality becomes surreal. I look at those banal details that I find (a rip or tear, some dirt, a crack) with a documentary, deadpan view, but colored with emotion and desire and a longing for something beyond." Like the curtain pulled back on the wizard of Oz, the attention to detail in these images reveal all the longing, hope and desperation that imbues these spaces.

The book itself is gorgeous. At 14x12 inches, the images have a power and presence that is difficult to achieve in smaller books. At only fifty images, the book is also tightly edited and sequenced to great effect. Humorous, smart and affectionate, Fun and Games shows how even a clichéd subject can be transformed by a great photographer.

© Lisa Kereszi, All Rights Reserved

© Lisa Kereszi, All Rights Reserved

Robert Bergman

2009-09-21T15:03:00.011-04:00

Robert Bergman, who I wrote about a couple of years ago, is having a much deserved revival this fall. After his knock-out inclusion in the MoMA exhibition, The Printed Picture, Bergman is having three major shows this November at Yossi Milo, PS1 and the National Gallery in DC.

UPDATE: Bergman's PS1 show opens Oct. 25th and runs until Jan. 4th. There is an excellent interview in this month's Brooklyn Rail, which you can read here.

Words Without Pictures - Event (9/17/09)

2009-09-14T13:06:00.004-04:00

WWP is hosting an event this Thursday the 17th at the New School that should be great. I'll be participating as a special guest along with a few other people. If you are free, come check it out. Given the star caliber, it should be packed.

Words Without Pictures
Thursday, September 17, 2009, 7:00 pm
Panel Discussion

FREE

The New School
Tishman Auditorium

66 West 12th Street
New York, New York

Aperture Foundation at The New School presents this panel discussion as part of the Confounding Expectations: Photography in Context series. This event is the first in series VI, celebrating the launch of the innovative Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) book project Words Without Pictures, which documents roughly one year of conversations about the most pressing issues shaping contemporary photography.

Featuring moderator Charlotte Cotton, curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, LACMA; and panelists Alex Klein, artist and Ralph M. Parsons Curatorial Fellow in the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, LACMA; Matt Keegan, artist and editor of North Drive Press; David Reinfurt, graphic designer and co-founder of Dexter Sinister; Denise Wolff, Aperture Editor, plus special guests including Fia Backström, Adam Bell, Johanna Burton, Melissa Catanese, Sarah Charlesworth, Moyra Davey, Darius Himes, John Lehr, Miranda Lichtenstein, Arthur Ou, Ed Panar, Laurel Ptak, and others to be announced.

More info here.

Words Without Pictures

2009-08-06T11:14:00.005-04:00

Words Without Pictures, the online essay, discussion and interview site created by the LAMCA Photo. Department, Charlotte Cotton, Alex Klein and Stephanie Ford, is now available as a book. While originally available as PDFs on the site, the essays along with new content, transcripts of discussions at the LAMCA, and reader responses, have been compiled into a fantastic book. Evolving out of Cotton's equally engaging, but now defunct site, Tip of the Tongue, the anthology brings together some of the most prominent contemporary photographers and critics - including Walead Beshty, Jason Evans, Charlotte Cotton, George Baker, Sze Tsung Leong, Paul Graham, Shannon Ebner, James Welling and many more. Rather than seek a publisher, the editors have taken the rather brilliant move and used lulu, the print-on-demand service, to print and distribute the book. Considering the project's effort to offer a contemporary assessment of photography and photographic practice, the effort to bypass a more institutional publisher, and publishing's frequent lag time, is smart.

As probably the most interesting, and fiercely contemporary, book on photography I've read in a while, I love the risk the book takes. Rather than offer safe assessments of photography, the essays map and explore new territory in photography. Charles Traub and I were lucky enough to contribute a small part with an excerpt from our book - The Education of a Photographer - in the questionnaire section. While very different from our somewhat theory-averse book, WWP led me to reflect on the challenges of putting together a book of this nature and more broadly how texts shape the medium.

One of the difficulties of editing any book on photography, where accepted truths and texts are well established and entrenched, is creating something new. By staking a claim in the present, WWP does not attempt to usurp the canonical texts of photography, but rather offer new ones that grapple with the issues shaping contemporary practice. For our own book, TEOP, we intentionally excluded certain texts that still dominate most photography anthologies (i.e., Sontag, Barthes etc...) and tried to compile something more idiosyncratic, diverse and unique. Limited by budget, we could not get a lot of the pieces or include certain photographers we wanted. Given these limitations, we made an effort to get pieces that didn't just discuss someone's work or retread know issues, but touched on something deeper about what it means to be a photographer.

It's often hard to follow the life of a book as it enters the world. Is it possible to shake off the ghosts of the past, or does one just learn to live with ghosts? Even with a publisher, understanding how, when or if a book has been received and digested can be hard to parse. My only concern with WWP, as a print-on-demand book, is that enough copies enter the world, so that its prescient and diverse discussions, raised so eloquently, have the opportunity to percolate, ferment and enter the contemporary dialogue shaping it for years to come.

blurb, photobooks etc...

2009-07-21T18:21:00.023-04:00

If a blurb photobook is printed, sells a few copies, and is subsequently deleted and no longer available, does anyone read it? what is its life, influence and significance to the medium?

One of the exciting aspects of services like blurb is that they allow photographers and artists to create their own books. As much as self-publishing has a bad rap, for photographers it is worth noting that self-publishing has long been a liberating tool of necessity - Lee Friedlander's Haywire Press is a prominent example. Although photobook publishing has grown tremendously over the past fifteen years or so, the costs and hurdles to getting a book published are still great. Without the large overhead of self-publishing, blurb, and other similar services, allow photographers to publish their books and transfer the cost onto their audience. However, for all its democratic appeal, these books are often expensive and have an uncertain future. Lacking the certainty of an edition of 1000 or more and a publisher with distribution, a book may sell well or may not sell at all. A book may also only have fifty copies printed before an author deletes it from the servers, or blurb goes out of business, leaving the book homeless.

I was thinking about these issues when looking at this years Photobook.Now competition at blurb and reexaming the one book I bought from last year's competition winners - John Lehr's Something is Happening. Unfortunately, the book is no longer available and seems to have an uncertain future. While blurb printed a number for the competition, how many were bought? Did it sell out? Was it pulled from blurb? Does it have a future or beyond its short life? Will books like it become prized limited editions or artist books hoarded by future (and current) book collectors, whose carefully detective work has determined exactly how many copies were actually printed and sold?

Sifting through the endless books of nudes and sunsets, there are a number of excellent books, which are worth mentioning from this years entries. Ed Panar, whose book Johnstown, was a winner last year, has offered two books, one of which continue his obsessive documentation and exploration of Johnstown, PA, 574 Views of Johnstown, and City of Champions, which turns his gaze to Pittsburgh.

Ed Panar, City of Champions

Ed Panar, 574 Views of Johnstown

Emily Shur, a photographer based in California, has created a smart book of idiosyncratic landscapes and landscape fragments from around the world entitled The Woods.

Emily Shur, The Woods

Hannah Allen Smith's book, The Battle Of Monmouth, is a subtle and poetic exploration of place and history.

Hannah Smith Allen, The Battle of Monmouth

Irina Rozovsky's quiet and beautiful images of Israel in One Too Many are reminiscent of last years critically acclaimed Naini and the Sea of Wolves by Trinidad Carrillo.

Irina Rozovsky, One To Nothing

Ofer Wolberger's Life With Maggie, which has already deservedly won awards and is currently on exhibit at Michael Hoppen Contemporary in London, is a smart and funny travelogue/photo-album in the tradition of Ralph Eugene Meatyard's The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater.

Ofer Wolberger, Life With Maggie

In the recent tradition of Jason Fulford's Crushed and Raising Frogs for $ $ $, Mike Flemming's Vague Vagaries is an idosyncratic collection of smart and funny photographs.

Mike Flemming, Vague Vagaries

Steve Smith, whose first book, The Weather And A Place to Live, was the recipient of the Honickman First Book Prize, has created another book which continues and expands his exploration of the man-altered landscape of western landscape - albeit this time in color.

Steve Smith, Close To Nature

Other excellent books include Maureen Dreenan's Meet Me In The Green Glen, Jacqueline Bate's La Vita Americana, Sarah Palmer's Heart's Desire, Susan Worsham's Some Fox Trails In Virginia, Sean Hanratty's Photosynthesis and Mike Sinclair's City Beautiful. There are others I've missed, I'm sure, but it is daunting sifting through the 2000+ entries. I'll post more as I go through them.

What exciting is that you can preview most books, so take some time and have a look.

[Update: Please note the revision above about Ed Panar's books. City of Champions is based on Pittsburgh, not Johnstown. Thanks Ed, and sorry for the confusion.]

Cold Souls

2009-06-28T12:30:00.007-04:00

About a year and half ago, I was fortunate enough be the still-photographer on the upcoming movie Cold Souls (dir. Sophie Barthes, Samuel Goldwyn). Produced by Journeyman Pictures and Touchy Feely Films, the movie is finally coming out August 7th - and looks great. A cross between Woody Allen's Sleeper, Godard and Gogol, the movie is a black comedy with a sci-fi twist. Unfortunately, I missed the movie at the New Directors/New Films Festival, but am excited to finally see the film.

A lot has already been written about the movie since it first screened at Sundance, but here is an interesting interview with Sophie Barthes, the director.

UPDATE: The official site and trailer is now up here.

Ahorn Magazine - Issue 2

2009-04-13T19:30:00.007-04:00

The most recent issue of Ahorn Magazine is now online. Created by Daniel Augschoell and Anya Jasbar, Ahorn is a great collection of reviews, portfolios and essays. I was honored to be asked to include a book review in the latest issue. Having recently discovered the strange and enigmatic work of Bertrand Fleuret, I choose to write about his most recent book - Landmasses and Railways (J&L Books, 2009). Also included in the issue are the photographs, writings and reviews of Shawn Gust, Daniel Shea, Ben Alper, Andrea Diefenbach, Ian Aleksander Adams and Nicola Kast.

Check out the essay here along with the rest of the magazine.

© Bertrand Fleuret and J&L Books, All Rights Reserved

Lay Flat 01: Remain in the Light

2009-03-16T16:59:00.003-04:00

© Ed Panar — featured in Lay Flat 01: Remain in Light

I just received my copy of Lay Flat 01: Remain in the Light and it looks great. Shane Lavalette and Karly Wildenhaus have both done a great job bringing the project to fruition. The essays and interview are an especially nice addition to the well-curated collection. I also like the fact that the photos are loose. Unbound, the magazine and its images feel rooted to their online origins. Ready to enter the world as postcards, frame-ready prints, or however else their owner sees fit, the pictures are free to circulate widely. Hopefully, they will make it far.

If you haven't already, get your copy here.

a shimmer of possibility, redux

2009-02-11T09:09:00.009-05:00

© Paul Graham, All Rights Reserved

The other night Paul Graham gave a talk at the School of Visual Arts in collaboration with Dear Dave Magazine. I missed Graham's talk at Swann Auction Gallery earlier this year because I was teaching - so I was excited to hear about his work and most recent project - a shimmer of possibility. The work is currently on view in a modest show at MoMA, which is fantastic and well worth the trip. The book is also being re-released as a single volume paperback this spring by Steidl. The lecture was sponsored by Dear Dave, a great new photography magazine, and the BFA Photo Department at SVA, who are beginning a series of monthly lectures/conversations with photographers that looks promising. The next conversation is scheduled for April with Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin.

I should prefix my final comments by saying I am a big fan of Graham's work. I think he is a smart conceptually-minded documentary photography - who has contributed greatly to the medium. Although well-received in Europe, his work lacks the critical and appreciative audience it deserves in the US. I especially admire his courage to challenge his own work and practice, and not retread past successes by repeating himself. I wrote about his recent book, a shimmer of possibility, when it came out and think it is a complicated and monumental achievement that will contribute greatly to the medium.

Part of its success lies in its ruthless contemporaneity. Discarding the 'great moment' photograph, the seemingly banal sequenced shots reveal the shabby but beautiful world, and its flow, as it is. As he noted in his talk, we often forget that photographers like Eggleston and other 60s and 70s photographers, were ruthlessly contemporary and often dismissed at the time because of this fact. We look at their work now, not only with a recognition of their prescience and an acknowledgement of their artistic greatness, but also with nostalgia for the material surface of the past. At the time, for many viewers the work of Eggleston, Shore, Adams etc... often looked awkward, ugly and strange. To be truly contemporary requires "piercing the now," as Graham noted in his talk, and not merely retreading visual models of the past. Graham's radical approach succeeds in this regard.

Having read a couple of interview with Graham and read about the work online and in print, much of the conversation about the work was familiar, but still engaging. In addition to comments about the work's inception and creation he talked at length about his relationship to photography. Expressing his affinity and admiration for post-WWII American photography, he offered the interesting insight that much of the constructed, or tableau, photography that has dominated the art world owes much of it success to the transparent nature of its creation. In contrast to the work of Winogrand or Frank, who "just captured a fleeting moment," the work of Jeff Wall or Cindy Sherman clearly reveals it authorial intent and artistic mark in its very staged or constructedness. I think there are other issues at play, but this is certainly a factor and aptly put.

When pressed, Graham was reluctant to over analysis his work for fear of pinning its meaning down. This is greatly appreciated. Too often artists speak too much and either end up diluting the complexity of their work or, especially in the case of photographers, digressing into discussions about the history and academic discourse about their subject-matter. I don't need a lecture on the history of the suburbans etc... At the same time, I was also a little disappointment because one of the problematic aspects of the work was avoided.

a shimmer of possibility clearly deals with issues of race, class and social inequality in the United States. Looking through the books, one immediately notices that a large number of the subjects are socially and economically marginalized, and/or African-American. Graham's last book, American Night, clearly and bluntly dealt with issues of race in America. Contrasting harshly blown out images of marginalized, homeless and physically distant African-Americans on the outskirts of American cities with full-color images of suburban McMansions, SUVs and other iconic symbols of affluence, the work addresses the racial and economical inequalities of America in the 21st century. I appreciate the fact that Graham choose to address this difficult subject, but the work is far too blunt in its declaration for my taste. While the poetic structure and innovate approach of shimmer are often highlighted, its exploration of the racial and social reality of America is often minimized, or secondary. To be fair, the work is relatively new and there is not a lot of critical discourse around the work.

Although Graham was asked about this aspect of the work, he chose not to answer the question. Citing the time limits, the fact that he had not showed his American Night work, which could help him adequately frame the discussion, and the general complexity of the subject, he deferred the discussion to another time. Since I am conflicted by this aspect of the work, I was disappointed. I do not believe, as a white Englishman, he is barred from or incapable of addressing issues of race in America, but I do believe it must be dealt with frankly and honestly. While some of the subjects are clearly aware they are being photographed, others are not. This is not always a problem, but when the subjects are poor and socially/economically marginalized it strays into dangerous territory. There are one or two sequences in particular that are not only painful to view because of the social reality they reveal, but disturbing for their placement within Graham's artistic construct and the manner they appear to have been taken. As challenging, provocative and important as the work is, it is diminished by failing to critically confront this issue. As the work enters the world and gains a broader audience, hopefully, these issues will be addressed and discussed.

P.S. Graham will also be showing work this month (March) at Salon 94 Freemans and Greenberg Van Doren Gallery.

Wounded Cities

2008-12-15T11:51:00.006-05:00

As a graduate student, I had the great fortune to work with Leo Rubinfien my thesis year. I was already a huge fan of his woefully under-appreciated book, A Map of the East, and was just discovering his insightful essays on Winogrand, Robert Adams and August Sanders written for Art In America. Leo has a fantastic new book and traveling exhibition, called Wounded Cities, which combines his talent as a photographer and writer. Just published by Steidl, and currently showing at the Corcoran, Wounded Cities begins as a personal meditation on the psychological wounds of 9/11, but broadens to a larger exploration of cities, their inhabitants and the trauma of terrorism, religious violence and urban anxiety.

© Leo Rubinfien, All Rights Reserved

Having moved to downtown Manhattan in the shadows of the Twin Towers less than a week before 9/11, Rubinfien reflects on the violence that unfolded on the doorstep of his new home, its effects on him and his family, but also the lingering wounds and political anguish of the years to come. As he writes,

...I found myself searching the faces on each street corner where, as people waited for the light to change, masked as at any other time, I would hope to discover indications of who they really were... to peel out of this stranger here or the next one over... some foretelling of what — if I extrapolated madly — was going to happen...

Rubinfien moved from searching and photographing the faces of New Yorkers, to traveling to cities like Tokyo, Karachi, Bombay, London, Madrid, Nairobi, Tel Aviv and others, which had similarly been affected by acts of terrorism.

© Leo Rubinfien, All Rights Reserved

It is worth noting that Rubinfien never includes the rubble or any physical evidence of the attacks in his images and instead looks to the witnesses, the survivors. Projecting the complexities of 9/11 and other terror attacks on the inscrutable expressions of strangers photographed in passing is problematic at best. However, Rubinfien makes no attempts to account for their expressions or their meaning, which he admits could reflect any of a miriad of different personal worries. As actors, they become witnesses to terror - grappling with it's aftermath. Like the essay in which Rubinfien reflects on the personal effects of the tragedy, the anonymous faces on the streets become a mirror reflecting Rubinfien's conflicting emotions and struggle for meaning in the face of unspeakable horror and lingering terror - where did we go wrong, how did this happen?....

© Leo Rubinfien, All Rights Reserved

While the images are all striking and evocative, what binds the work together is the book's unique format and eloquent writing. As a traditional monograph with an essay, the book would have failed and lacked the personal and emotional weight necessary to carry the heavy subject. Instead, the book is essentially a personal essay, divided into four chapters, with over 80 gate-fold portraits interspersed. The first chapter considers 9/11 and events it triggered; the second chapter reflects on the the generation conflicts and political turmoil into which Rubinfien was born; the third chapter reflects on Islam, jihad and the predominantly young men who are drawn to groups as disparate as al-Qaida, Hamas etc...; the final chapter reflects on the 9/11 lingering political consequences around the world and the growing divisions around the world.

Largely influenced by Japanese photographers, Fukhase and Tomatsu come to mind, Rubinfien's personal and poetic exploration of the events surrounding 9/11 elevates the work above a mere document of the tragedy, making it one of the best, and most evocative, photobooks to deal with 9/11 and it's aftermath.

© Leo Rubinfien, All Rights Reserved

Wounded Cities is currently up in the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC and Robert Mann Gallery in NYC. The book can also be purchased here and here.

Try To Praise The Mutilated World

2008-11-20T10:52:00.002-05:00

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

Adam Zagajewski
Translated by Renata Gorczynski

Darker Diamond, the work of John Opera

2008-11-19T11:52:00.006-05:00

© John Opera, All Rights Reserved

I discovered John Opera's work the other day when looking at the forthcoming MP3 book by Aperture this spring. Combining Romantic landscape and modernist abstractions, Opera's photographs toy with the historicized themes of the sublime landscape and modernist abstract photography. While mixing these two disparate modes of photographic representation may seem odd, or jarring, at first, together the different images highlight the messy convergence and construct of both the exterior, natural world, and the interior, personal abstracted world.

Like artists such as Walead Beshty or Florian Maier-Aichen, the work cleverly draws on and critiques historical modes of photographic representation to explore and challenge the medium. As Opera states in an interview,

There is the photo ghetto: the photo world that folds in on itself that is only really serving itself. It’s associated with the grand failures of photography in the twentieth-century, and it includes the whole feminist critique of photography being a machismo mode of representation, or the myth of the “decisive moment,” or staging. There’s part of photography that’s still closely connected to failures in late Modernism that most other art forms have recognized and moved on from.

Find out more about his work here and here.

© John Opera, All Rights Reserved

© John Opera, All Rights Reserved

spring book spring

2008-11-13T15:14:00.009-05:00

© Doug DuBois, All Rights Reserved

Being an unrepentant bibliophile, I can't resist being excited about the latest crop of Aperture books. They've just released their Spring Catalog, and they've got a number of cool books coming out. Among the books are Thomas Ruff's book JPGS, The Edge of Vision (Lyle Rexer's exploration of contemporary photographic abstraction), Vol. 2 of the MP3 Project (Curtis Mann, John Opera and Stacia Yeapanis), a Magnum compilation on the effect of AIDS wordlwide, and a book called Photography After Frank, an essay compilation which explores Robert Frank's neverending influence.

However, there are a couple of books I'm most excited to see. The first is entitled Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 1970s, and is edited by Ryuichi Kaneko, the curator of the Tokyo's Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Riding on the success of Parr and Badger's books, as well as Roth's book, 101 Photography Books, this is another in a growing list of photobooks on photobooks. Hopefully, along with more recent re-publications of important Provoke and other seminal Japanese photobooks, this book will help fill the gap in the West's knowledge about Japanese photography and books, and their profound significance for the medium. Although I'm admittedly often perplexed by the faint trickle of tomes that make their way to the US, the wealth, volume and variety of work in Japanese photobooks is exciting. Given the often narrow range of creative influence for young photographers in the US, the variety and radically different nature of the work is welcome.

I'm also excited to see books by both Eirik Johnson and Doug Dubois. Eirik Johnson won the Santa Fe Prize a couple of years ago for his project Borderlands, which was subsequently published as a book by Twin Palms. His new body of work, entitled Sawdust Mountain, explores the fragile relationship between man, industry and nature in the Pacific Northwest. Although travelling well-worn paths, Johnson manages to offer fresh and interesting images that further probe our conflicted relationship with nature. Likewise, Doug Dubois' book All The Nights And Days, is another exciting publication by a well-deserving and excellent photographer on a familiar subject. The culmination of over twenty-years, DuBois' tender and smart pictures of his family manage to avoid the ready clichés of photographing the family while remaining evocative and touching. Began after his father suffered an on a commuter train, the work explores the subtle frailties and daily emotion struggles of a family. Sadly, we have to wait all winter to see these treasures.

Here Comes The Sun, or Obama Has a Posse

2008-11-10T12:07:00.007-05:00

Get yours here.

the past is a foreign country

2008-10-08T17:34:00.008-04:00

Although I'm a bit late on this on due to my lax and sporadic posts, but I wanted to mention the recent book and exhibition at ICP - Bill Wood's Business. Organized and curated by Marvin Heiferman and Diane Keaton, the book is a collection of the work of Bill Wood, a commercial photographer from Ft. Worth, Texas. From the late '30s to the early 70's, the Bill Wood Photo Company created a photographic record of the daily life (both commercial and private) of a rapidly growing Texas city. From store openings to evidentiary documents to mortuary photographs, Wood's encyclopedic output not only illuminates the distant, yet temporally close past, but also becomes a perplexing exploration of photography's mutable role in our culture.

© Bill Wood, All Rights Reserved

While many curatorial efforts have used photographic archives (individual or collective) to explore and make arguments about the past (Michael Lesy being the most prominant and influential example) or as part of a larger conceptual gesture (Sultan and Mandel's Evidence or Peter Piller and others), Heiferman and Keaton make a conscious effort to avoid decontextualizing or reframing Wood's work as something it is not. It is easy to see how a simple edit of the work could create something as perplexingly obtuse and wonderful as Sultan and Mandel's work, but by refusing to do so, the work emerges as somehow odder and just as rewarding. The dispassionate commercial eye of Wood reveals the distant world of the past, but his images in their encyclopedia scope point down the knotted forked paths of contemporary photography.

© Bill Wood, All Rights Reserved

© Bill Wood, All Rights Reserved

© ICP/Marvin Heiferman, All Rights Reserved

While the exhibition is down, the book is still available and worth checking out here.

Iron Fists and Trademarked Smiles

2008-10-08T13:31:00.007-04:00

About a year ago, I got the opportunity to work with Steve Heller on another book, Iron Fists: Branding The Totalitarian State (Phaidon, 2008). Photographing Steve's extensive collection of Chinese figurines and totalitarian paraphernalia was a great pleasure. Housed in a veritable museum of graphic design, pop culture and design ephemera, Steve's collection is as impressive as it is comprehensive. The latest in a long list of Heller's publications, Iron Fists, is a brilliant examination of the ways in which totalitarian regimes (Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy and Communist China) used graphic design to branded themselves and solidified their control.

From Mao's "Mona Lisa smile" and Lenin's proletarian cap to Mussolini's Futurist posters and the Hitler's infamous swastika, the visual cues, typeface, logos and jingles of the various regimes were all as carefully crafted and considered as the marketing efforts of Madison Avenue ad executives. As Heller writes,

A popular brand of frozen food or laundry detergent is not forced down the consumer’s throat with an iron fist...[nevertheless] the design and marketing methods used to inculcate doctrine and guarantee consumption are fundamentally similar.

Heller's exploration does not attempt to diminish the atrocities of the various regimes, but rather illuminates the efficacy, influence and powerful sway these efforts had over their populace. Considering the continued confluence of design, state power and propaganda, the lessons from this era have continued relevance.

It's also telling that three of the profiled dictators considered themselves artists - Hitler, a architect and watercolorist; Mao a calligrapher and poet; and Mussolini, a pulp novelist and hypermasculine sex symbol. As "artists," the state become their platform to terrible ends. Clearly influenced by (and working in collaboration with) the Futurists, the Russian Constructivists and other artists, the regimes drew upon the artistic heritage and wealth of their nations to design and wield terrible instrument of power.

pretend that you're actually alive

2008-04-27T11:38:00.012-04:00

Leigh Ledare, a freshly minted Columbia MFA, has just produced a complicated and disturbingly voyeuristic book, Pretend You're Actually Alive. Published by PPP Editions, the book coincides with his solo show at Andrew Roth, who runs the press. The work is a dark collaborative exploration of Leigh's mother, their relationship, and the damage of fame and victimization. As the press release states,

[PYAC] can be viewed as an archive of a mother and son’s shared, private moments amidst the desperate attempts to renew her identity as a dancer – this time working as a stripper in a club beside her parents’ apartment. Pretend You’re Actually Alive is also a mapping of Ledare’s mother’s efforts to commodify herself –initially through her precocious childhood talent, later through her overt sexuality, and eventually through the portrayal of herself as an archetypal victim – in efforts to find companionship, attention, financial security, and a benefactor before her youthful, marketable currencies expire.

Combining archival momentos and notes with frank and graphic photographs, the work continues in the intensely personal documentary tradition of Larry Clark (Ledare was the still-photo from Clark's film Ken Park), Nan Goldin, Richard Billingham and even Jim Goldberg. Coming home one holiday, Leigh visit his mom, who lived next door to his grandparents, and she answered the door naked -- dramatically announcing she was now a stripper. His mom, once a famous ballerina, was stripping at a local club and working through a series of abusive relationships in a desperate attempt to maintain and affirm her beauty and talent, and garner the attention and affection of wealthy patrons and boyfriends, who offered her the possibility of financial security.

© Leigh Ledare, All Rights Reserved.

I'm typically wary of personal photojournalistic work - because more often than not the peculiarities of the person's life (or their approach) rarely merit sustained attention. More recently, the trend for self-involved hipsters to document themselves getting drunk or cavorting about naked seems to offers little beyond the initial voyeuristic excitement. At the same time, the kind of self-destructive lifestyle and drama that fuels much similar work can also be a trap and misleading foundation that props up otherwise thin work. Ledare's work seems to avoid this danger and explores deeper issues of intimacy, the collapse and evolution of a mother and son relationship, co-dependency, performance and authorship. In many ways, the work is a performative investigation and collaboration btw Ledare and his mother about her and their relationship.

© Leigh Ledare, All Rights Reserved.

The book is quite beautiful and comes softbound in a slip-case. The book is divided into chapters with photographs mixed in with various typed and hand-written notes, archival photos, and diary entries that recount what are fictional and truthful events in Leigh and his mother's life. The show is up at Andrew Roth until mid-June and the book can be purchased there or here.

bye bye photography

2008-03-28T13:17:00.019-04:00

© Daido Moriyamo, All Rights Reserved

Sometimes I think the Japanese got it right all along - f*#k the print, long live the book. Having to contend with limited gallery opportunities, the photo book industry flourished in Japan and they developed innovative ways to push the boundaries of the printed image. This thought crossed my mind again when I went to Christie's in anticipation of their photobook auction next week. The previews don't open until next week - but I wanted to take a peek at the catalog - and see a few of the treasures like Yutaka Takanashi's Toshi-e, Towards a City, issues of Provoke and William Eggleston's Morals of Vision.

After looking at the catalog, I walked through the Contemporary Art Auction previews - which reminded me why I don't like auctions. Art work in all states of disrepair hung with a loose effort to create a vaguely meaningful dialog - after all it is a sale, not a show. There are a few photographs for sale - and with a few exceptions they looked like sad rejects cast off by their owners before they faded into oblivion. A relatively early Gursky (1993) had not only faded and developed a sickly jaundiced pallor but also looked like it was barely clinging to its diasec mount. It reminded me of the shock I felt at the Thomas Struth retrospective at the Met, where most of the prints had a noticeable magenta or yellow cast - suggesting their owners had placed them next to their windows and long hours of sunlight.

© Daido Moriyamo, All Rights Reserved

Perhaps it is the willful disregard of the "fine print" that seems refreshing in the face of over-sized megaprints. Artist's such as Daido Moriyama, Kikuji Kawada, Yutaka Takanashi and others (including American artists such as Lee Friedlander and the incredible John Gossage), have all used the book to magnificent ends. Give me a copy of Moriyama's bye bye photography (Shashin yo Sayonara) (1972) or Kawada's The Map (1965) over a sickly Gursky anyday.

© Daido Moriyamo, All Rights Reserved

Mark Steinmetz - South East

2008-03-27T11:14:00.003-04:00

Following up on his beautiful book South Central, Mark Steinmetz and Nazraeli will be releasing South East in June 2008. Although I've written about Steinmetz before, he seems like one of those photographers who is consistently present (i.e., Blindspot, exhibitions etc...), but somehow eludes wider acclaim. Perhaps the fact that he works in B/W and in a more traditional social documentarian mode, has led some to dismiss the elegant and poetic beauty of his photographs and see his work as somehow less contemporary. Photographing mainly in the South - Tennessee, Georgia, and Louisiana - Steinmetz captures a life lived on the periphery of the American Dream, yet a life that is still touched by grace and beauty.

© Mark Steinmetz, All Rights Reserved

© Mark Steinmetz, All Rights Reserved

© Mark Steinmetz, All Rights Reserved

these birds walk

2008-03-24T20:51:00.005-04:00

© Mike Brodie, All Rights Reserved

these birds walk, the excellent series of books published by Paul Schiek, has announced the next round of books in the kin series. The next round promises an exciting mix of familiar and new names - Alec Soth, Todd Hido, Marianne Muller and Abner Nolan. They aren't taking subscriptions yet, but it should be up soon.

I still love looking at Mike Brodie's book from the first round, which featured Polaroid snapshots and portraits from his trainhoppin' adventures around the US. Jim Goldberg's book is coming out shortly and I can't wait. The series received a lot of attention when it first came out, but it is worth revisiting since the next round is coming up. While much DIY efforts can be self-aggrandizing and largely forgettable, it is nice to see a project producing exciting new work that skirts the edges of the ever expanding photo publishing world.

the idea of order

2008-03-24T20:37:00.007-04:00

© Robert Adams, All Rights Reserved

The form the photographer records, though discovered in a split second of literal fact, is different because it implies an order beyond itself, a landscape into which all fragments, no matter how imperfect, fit perfectly. -Robert Adams

a shimmer of possibility

2008-02-01T10:23:00.002-05:00

From A-1: The Great North Road to Empty Heaven, Paul Graham has been incredibly adept at exploring and expanding the potential of social documentary practice. As an artist who has continually reinvented and pushing himself to explore the potentials of the medium, Graham's latest work, a shimmer of possibility, is an amazing contribution not only to his complex body of work, but to the medium as well. In a time when the photographic default, not only critically and institutionally, are often monumental images that blur the lines between cinema and the still-image, Graham's complex and subtle work has reinvigorated the tradition of social documentary photography.

At once sumptuous and nondescript, the gorgeous rainbow hued volumes contain sequences of such quiet grace that it would be easy to initially dismiss them as casual throw offs that any "serious" photography would have either never printed or deleted from their digital camera. While containing their own individual strengths, the real beauty comes from the ways in which the images are woven together in what the photographer has called "filmic haikus." Each book contains a short sequence of images that are connected thematically - from a book that only contains one amazing image of a decaying Camero to the complex ballet of a New Orleans street corner spread out over 60 images. Influenced by the short stories of Chekhov, each book is a gem of a short story that reveals the often complicated, disturbing, and at times beautiful, reality of America in the 21st century.

To read more about the books, check out these reviews: here and here.

© Paul Graham, All Rights Reserved

Hyena Men and Honey Collectors

2007-11-29T15:23:00.000-05:00

© Pieter Hugo, All Rights Reserved

Pieter Hugo, an incredible photographer based in South Africa, is having his first NY solo show at Yossi Milo Gallery from Nov. 29 to Jan. 12. The opening is tonight from 6-8pm. The show draws on two amazing bodies of work - Hyena Men and Honey Collectors. The Hyena Men, which was shot in Nigeria documents roaming troupes of animal charmers/performers, who use wild baboons, hyenas and snakes. The Honey Collectors was shot in Ghana and documents men, who don cassava leaves and climb the up into the rainforest canopy to collect and sell the honey. Pieter has produced a number of great documentary series on Africa and is beginning to get much deserved international recognition.

© Pieter Hugo, All Rights Reserved

Not Yet Titled

2007-11-01T15:44:00.002-04:00

In my final year of grad school, I picked up a postcard with the Susan Lipper image below and was entranced - in fact, it still sits on my bookshelf. At the time, I was working on a series of large scale diptychs and had not resolved all the issues of the work. While my work wasn't really succeeding, I was attracted to the messy, problematic inconsolability of the images. Although radically different, Lipper's work offered hope that the differences, ruptures and questions that arose from the pairing could become part of the work and enrich its meaning.

© Susan Lipper, All Rights Reserved

Lipper's series, Not Yet Titled (1999-2004), is a fascinating and thorny exploration of post-cold war angst. As she states,

Functioning as a time capsule of associations, this series is perhaps more defined by its dates than by words. The images began as a loose narrative in 1999. At the time, I found myself drawn to military and Cold War references. Equally I was seeking an unembodied vantage point, one not set in a specific geographic locale.

© Susan Lipper, All Rights Reserved

Although well-known for her book Grapevine, a portrait of rural West Virginia, her work can also be found in the excellent book Trip, which is readily available and criminally cheap. Paired with the short fiction of Frederick Barthelme, the book is a "fictional non-narrative" and follows a enigmatic road trip through the arcane corners of America. It rare to find a smart take on the exhausted road trip genre and Lipper succeeds.

Putting Back the Wall

2007-10-04T12:04:00.001-04:00

© John Gossage, All Rights Reserved

John Gossage and Loosestrife Editions have just published Putting Back the Wall, the final volume in Gossage's Berlin Series, which also includes the excellent Berlin in the Time of the Wall. Comprised of photographs from 1982-89, the book explores the psychological territory of the Berlin wall. Although documentary in the loosest sense, Gossage's poetic images "promise clarity - yet deliver only mystery or might promise invention and fiction - yet actually deliver truth."

© John Gossage, All Rights Reserved

Although the Berlin Wall is the central focus of the work, the two volumes use the wall as a touch stone to explore the forgotten and unwanted histories, the fragmented landscapes and detris that surround the wall and city. While Gossage's work began as a trip to exhibit photographs and conduct a workshop at the Werkstatt für Fotografie in Kreuzburg, it has evolved into deep engagement with the German political and social landscape.

© John Gossage, All Rights Reserved

Using the book as the primary vehicle and statement of his work, Gossage has produced a powerful and unique body of work. From The Pond to Putting Back the Wall, Gossage's work continues to explore the nature of the politicized landscape in fascinating ways. The book also includes two excellent essays by Gerry Badger and Thomas Weski. You can get a copy here and here.

On the Beach

2007-08-10T19:29:00.001-04:00

Aperture has announced its Fall line-up of new books. Over the past several years, Aperture has revived itself and increasingly published new and interesting work. As a subscriber since I was about 15, I have seen Aperture evolve, redefine, and occasionally stumble, over the past decade and was beginning to fear it would fade into photographic history and lose its continued relevance. Given the rapid change and evolution of photography over the years, the mere fact that it has lasted over 50 years, is a testament to its lasting importance.

Among the new titles are Richard Misrach's On The Beach, a reprint of Lisette Model's 1979 Aperture monograph, and new books by Richard Ross, Beate Gütschow, Matthew Sleeth, Dawoud Bey, Thomas Allen and others.

© Richard Misrach, All Rights Reserved

© Richard Misrach, All Rights Reserved

Shannon Ebner

2007-08-06T16:00:00.000-04:00

© Shannon Ebner, All Rights Reserved

Dan Torop, the photographer and co-curator behind last summer excellent show A Rabbit as King of Ghosts at Mitchell-Inness & Nash Gallery, recently wrote a great article on the incredible work of the photographer Shannon Ebner.

You can read more about her work here, here, here and here.

Somewhere/Anywhere

2007-08-06T14:21:00.001-04:00

© Michael Schmidt, All Rights Reserved

Michael Schmidt, one of Germany's preeminent photographers, has worked quietly for over twenty years documenting the social and political landscape of Germany. Well-known for his ground breaking works, Waffenruhe (1987) and EIN-HEIT (1991), Schmidt's work explores the long-term social and political scars of WWII and the division of Germany. Schmidt recently released a new book entitled Ingendwo (2006), which roughly translates as Somewhere/Anywhere. In this new work, Schmidt explores the small nondescript provincial towns of Germany. Carefully sequenced and grouped, the portraits, landscapes, architectural details of the book present, as Schmidt states, a portrait our subjective loss of “home as a place with identity.” Suffused with a sense of inconsolable emptiness and alienation, Schmidt's work presents a powerful portrait of modern Germany and contemporary life.

© Michael Schmidt, All Rights Reserved

Home says nothing to me. In any case, home is what you carry with you, inside you. You remember places because you spent the most wonderful or the most horrible time there during your childhood. But these places have become more arbitrary, less specific . . . There is no such thing as an objective category that one might call ‘home’ any more. Such things take place subjectively nowadays. - Michael Schmidt

Les Chambres Noire

2007-07-27T14:14:00.000-04:00

© Michel Campeau, All Rights Reserved

Michel Campeau's Les Chamres Noire (or Darkrooms) is a fascinating and idiosyncratic examination and tribute to the demise of the chemical darkroom. Reminiscent of Peter Fraser's work, Campeau explores the detritus strewn corners and the wonky analog contraptions of darkrooms throughout his native Canada. As Campeau writes,

As an agent in and witness of a pivotal moment in the history of art and technologies, squeezed between the dual procedures of analogical and digital recording, I find the utmost importance to invest the iconicity of the darkroom with the connotations of ruin and post-industrial debris . . . My investigation, iconoclastic and sacrilegious, scrutinizes the “surrealizing” incongruity of darkrooms and throws the spotlight on the bric-à-brac of plumbing and electricity, the ventilation-system engines, the posted iconography, the weirdness of “planets” envisioned at the bottom of chemical trays, the splattering of silver salts, the wear of equipment and the countdown of timers that defies the disappearance of the panchromatic spectre.

© Michel Campeau, All Rights Reserved

Nazraeli Press is releasing a monograph of the work - selected and edited by Martin Parr. The book is the first in a series of what promise to be excellent books edited by Parr for Nazraeli.

© Michel Campeau, All Rights Reserved

Looking at his work, I can't help but be reminded of the remark by master printer, Richard Benson, "Making art in a room in the dark is the stupidest thing imaginable." Working in the dark may be stupid, but it often yields magical results.

You can see more of his work here.

Susan Meiselas - Pandora's Box

2007-07-25T12:41:00.000-04:00

© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos, All Rights Reserved

Susan Meiselas series Pandora's Box is currently being exhibited at Cohen Amador and the opening is tonight - Wednesday July 25, 6-8 PM. Taken from her 2001 book of the same title, the series explores an upscale NYC S&M club. Created in conjunction with Nick Broomfield's documentary Fetishes, Meiselas' work explores the dark rituals and fantasies of the self-professed "Disneyland of S&M." Exposing the complex relationship between the dominatrix and masochist, the work not only reveals this secret world but also slowly entices us as voyeurs into the complex rituals of objectification and domination.

From her seminal work in Central America to her incredible work in Kurdistan, Meiselas is one of the most influential and important documentary photographers working today. As a graduate student, I had the great fortune to work for her and still treasure my time in the Magnum archive pouring over her contact sheets for Carnival Strippers. The show is definitely not to be missed and if you get a chance take a look at the incredible book.

© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos, All Rights Reserved

Park City and San Quentin Point

2007-07-17T21:51:00.000-04:00

It might be more useful, if not necessarily more true, to think of photography as a narrow, deep area between the novel and film. -Lewis Baltz

One of the lamentable consequences of the current "photo-book boom," is the increasing scarcity and disappearance of valuable photo-books into the hands of all but the wealthiest collectors. While the boom has created a great new wealth of photo-books, many of the most important contemporary or historic books are all but impossible to get your hands on, much less purchase, and disappear quietly into private libraries. As the recent work of Martin Parr and Gerry Badger illuminates, the history of photography can be read in its long tradition of the book.

As a student of photography, when I couldn't buy many photo-books, I strained the resources of my college's Inter-Library Loan system to get as many obscure and out-of-print photo-books I could get my hands on. Deeply enamored of the "New Topographics" photographers, I devoured all their books - from John Gossage's The Pond to Robert Adam's What We Bought: The New World.

In addition to the works of Adams and
Gossage, I fell in love with the books
of Lewis Baltz. Idiosyncratic and
coolly minimalist, Baltz brought an
almost European sentiment to bear
on the bleak post-industrial liminal
landscapes of American. Park City,
the future home of Sundance and
celebrity McMansions, is not only
revealed as a the backwater mining
town it once was, but we witness its
slow transformation into a utopic
western suburb. Through images of bleak gravel piles to chaotic wiring, Baltz portrays the indifferent processes and materials called to service in the name of property development.

San Quentin Point, close to Baltz's home in California, was the focus of another seminal book. Located near the Golden Gate Bridge and close to the infamous prison, Baltz exposing the rough hems of the social landscape - "where communities begin to fray." As Andy Grundberg wrote in The New York Times,

"With Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz was one of the most important, if hard to appreciate, photographers to emerge from ''New Topographics,'' the 1975 exhibition at George Eastman House in Rochester that defined a fresh attitude toward landscape photography. Rejecting sentimentality and pathos, he depicted what he called ''the new industrial parks'' with a puritanical dispassion. Here Mr. Baltz opens his work to feeling, seeing redemption through nature in the worst of manmade landscapes. The 58 black-and-white pictures document an area north of San Francisco that is famous for the prison named for it but that in these pictures appears to be nothing more than a garbage dump. Oleaginous puddles and dried mud flats frame ragged pieces of tar paper, burlap bags and tin cans. By the end of the sequence, however, the land reappears, sending up stalks of growth amid the disarray, and our sympathies are with it."

Fazal Sheikh

2007-07-14T14:07:00.000-04:00

© Fazal Sheikh, All Rights Reserved

Fazal Sheikh is an extraordinary documentary photography, who has spent almost twenty years documenting displaced and marginalized communities around the world. Beginning in the early 90's, his subjects have included refugee communities in Kenya, Afghan communities living under the Taliban and in the wake of the Soviet occupation, the indigenous people of Pantanal, Brazil, and widows and orphans of India. Spending months to years living with the communities, Sheikh combines portraits, text and oral histories to creates deeply humanistic portraits of communities struggling in the face of conflict.

© Fazal Sheikh, All Rights Reserved

© Fazal Sheikh, All Rights Reserved

Recently, Sheikh has been offering his books, in their entirety and free of charge, on-line. In the face of dwindling opportunities for long-term investigative documentary work, Sheikh's efforts to forge new venues for presenting his work and drawing attention to these communities is more than impressive. As stated on his website,

In 2001 Fazal Sheikh conceived of a series of projects that would engage an international audience, furthering their understanding of complex human rights issues around the world. The projects would take a variety of forms – books, films, exhibitions – and be disseminated as widely as possible, using means that offered an alternative to traditional publishing and distribution. As part of the ideology behind the series, where possible the projects have been offered in their entirety on-line, where they may be read free of charge. Books are also available in bookshops at a subsidized price and for sale over the Internet. Proceeds from sales are being donated to the International Humanitarian Fund (IHF) established in conjunction with the Volkart Foundation, Switzerland, for the benefit of the communitiesrepresented.

His books include A Sense of Common Ground, which examines refugee communities in Kenya, Tanzania, and Malawi; The Victor Weeps (DVD version here), which explores communities living in the aftermath of post-Soviet Taliban Afghanistan; Moksha, which looks at the lives of dispossessed widows abandoned by their families and society at large and left to live in religious ashrams in Vrindavan, India; and most recently Ladli, about the plight of young women and girls in modern India.

Sheikh, who has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, along with dozens of other awards, including a Fulbright and National Endowment for the Arts grant, will be exhibiting his most recent work this fall at Pace/MacGill.

John Szarkowski (1925-2007)

2007-07-11T21:04:00.000-04:00

John Szarkowski, the celebrated curator, critic, photographer and writer passed away this week. A tireless advocate for photography, he helped champion and legitimate photography, wrote eloquently about the medium and its practitioners, and taught us how to look at and read photographs with intelligence and wisdom.

His knowledge, wisdom and eye will be missed. Read more here.

Tacita Dean - Floh

2007-07-11T15:56:00.001-04:00

Although much has been written about the demise of analog photography, no one has explored this subtle shift as elegantly as Tacita Dean. Dean's Floh (2001) is a beautiful swan song to analog photography. As Charlotte Cotton eloquently states,

There's a rich heritage of artists assembling found photographs, but Dean does something that is very rare - she makes a departure within the genre. . . Floh silently eulogizes upon analogue photography's magic and random weirdness, they physical sensation of the photographic snap. The artistic force of Floh is bound up in this particular moment when we can still, just, tell the difference between what we discard with these fragile traces of a richly incoherent and disappearing technology, and the seamless correction of digital media. (photo-eye booklist Spring 2007)

Osamu Kanemura

2007-05-31T16:47:00.000-04:00

© Osamu Kanemura, All Rights Reserved

Osamu Kanemura's "Spider Strategy" is currently on view at Cohen Amador Gallery until June 2nd. Kanemura's book, released in 2001, is already a highly sought after collectors item, and the series was also featured in the New Photography 12 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

Building on the rich tradition of street photography, Kanemura's work transforms the cramped vertiginous streets of Tokyo into an ordered yet complex puzzle of chaotic beauty. Teetering on the edge of collapse, Kanemura offers a vision of modern Tokyo that is simultaneously bewildering and alienating, but formally sublime.

Texas, NYC

2007-05-23T21:19:00.002-04:00

Jake Rowland, a great photographer and friend, who I got to know through the 2005 Art+Commerce show has a terrific online magazine - Texas, NYC - which has been up and running for a couple of months. Each issue so far has featured the work by a photographer paired with a poet. The lastest issue features the work of South African photographer, Roger Ballen, along side a poem by Paul Violi. Previous issues have featured Les Krims, Tim Davis, Dustin Wayne Harris and Richard Foreman.

Make sure you check it out and sign up for the mailing list.

Robert Bergman

2007-05-07T22:13:00.000-04:00

Robert Bergman is another photographer whose work is hard to come by and is unjustly overlooked. Besides his monography, A Kind of Rapture, his work, as far as I can tell, is never exhibited and rarely appears anywhere. There is a great article about his work in the Brooklyn Rail, hands down one of the best arts magazines in NYC or the country for that matter. In the article, Vicki Goldberg, David Levi Strauss, John Yua, Paul Mattick and Katy Siegel all talk about his work.

Jocelyn Lee and Mark Steinmetz

2007-05-06T21:46:00.000-04:00

Like most photographers, I have a long list of photographers whose works I admire. Often unjustly neglected, it is always great to see them get the recognition they deserve.

I've been aware of Jocelyn Lee's work for a long time and have been amazed she doesn't show regularly in NYC. All that has changed. She is now represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery and is having her first show there this month. The opening is next week - May 17th, 5:30 - 7:30. Unfortunately, I will be out of town, but make sure you see the show. Pace/MacGill is hands down one of the best photography galleries around and the show is guaranteed to be amazing.

Mark Steinmetz, a photographer from Tennessee, who shows with Yancey Richardson, recently released another monograph, South Central, and now has a website of his work.

In the midst of the garish photographs that dominate the medium, Steinmetz modest and evocative images pack an emotional wallop. Make sure you check out all the projects he has on his site.

JH Engström

2007-04-15T13:00:00.000-04:00

JH Engström is having his first US exhibition at Cohan and Leslie along with Ari Marcopoulos and Leigh Ledare in a group show curated by Arnd Seibert. Long overdue, Engström's work was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Prize in 2005 and he has published a number of great books, including Trying to Dance and Haunts.

Employing a variety of different cameras and an idiosyncratic antique color palette, Engström's largely autobiographical work is pervaded with a melancholy and fragile beauty that is rare.

Engineering Consent

2007-01-14T16:45:00.000-05:00

I watched Adam Curtis' The Power of Nightmares (PON) over a year ago and quickly discovered his earlier documentary, The Century of the Self. In the COS, Curtis explores the ways in which shifting notions of the self, influenced by Freud and his later critics, offered governments and business new tools to manipulate society and the masses. At the center of the story is Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew and the father of public relations. Rather than argue the merits of indivdual products and appeal to people's rational mind, Bernays and his sucessors learned to use the lessons of Freud regarding the unconscious and irrational mind to sell soap, war and cars.

Although incredibly powerful and persuasive when seen independently, what is remarkable about the documentaries are the ways in which COS lays the foundation for PON, reinforces the argument and showing its frightening implications for our world today. As Robert Koehler writes,

the commodifying of the self prepares the soil for the politics of self fostered by everything from depoliticized post-Lefties to Reaganite Randians, which in turn in The Power of Nightmares, provides both neo-conservatives and Islamist thinkers like Sayed Kotb material for their case that there's nothing scarier than a fat, happy, and soulless West that lives for a trip to the mall.

You can watch both series on www.archive.org. Here is a link to an excellent interview with Adam Curtis about the series.

Suellen Parker - Incurable

2007-01-09T19:28:00.000-05:00

My good friend Suellen Parker is having a show of her work "Incurable Perfection" at Daniel Cooney Fine Art (511 W. 25th Street). Suellen's work explores our narcissistic desire for perfection with sophistication, wit and intelligence. Her work was also included in the ReGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tommorrow and its great to see her work get the recognition it deserves. The opening is this Thursday (1/11) from 6-8pm - be sure to check it out.

Borders Booksigning - Dec. 13th, 7pm

2006-11-29T09:11:00.001-05:00

Borders will be hosting a book signing for The Education of a Photographer on Dec. 13th, 7pm. In addition to signing books, Charles, Steve and I will be conducting a brief panel discussion about the book.

Borders
576 2nd Ave (at 32nd St.)
New York, NY 10016

Charles H. Traub - Indecent Exposure

2006-11-07T19:11:00.000-05:00

Daniel Cooney Fine Art is exhibiting a collection of vintage color photographs from 1980 – 1982 by Charles H. Traub. It's been a great pleasure working with Charles on a host of projects over the past couple years, including our new book, which makes it so exciting to see Charles' excellent older work getting new, and much deserved exposure. Much like Katy Grannan or a host of other contemporary photographers, whose work Charles' precedes, the series began with an ad that was placed in a local paper calling for nude models.

As Carol Squieres wrote in 1984, "directed only to disrobe and sometimes to stop in mid-motion, the women are variously forthright, awkward, and self-protective, struggling to act natural in a situation that is supremely artificial. Traub manages visually to dissect the myth of the sexually photogenic woman in pictures of naked ladies that are disconcerting, embarrassing and absolutely riveting."

Also be sure to check out Charles current show at Gitterman Gallery, which is on view until Dec. 2.

Angel Rodriguez (dir. Jim McKay, HBO, 2006)

2006-10-19T15:18:00.000-04:00

Angel Rodriguez (dir. Jim McKay, HBO, 2006) is a film I did the still-photography for back in 2004. It is finally airing on HBO, Monday Oct. 30th at 9pm - so check it out. Jim McKay is a great director and it was a great honor working on one of his films. Rachel Griffiths co-stars with Jonan Everett, as Angel.

Half Nelson and Me Magazine #9 (Autumn '06)

2006-10-12T17:30:00.000-04:00

Half Nelson is an incredible movie, which is now in theaters. I was lucky enough to be the still-photographer for the movie. Me Magazine, a cool culture and arts magazine, is featuring the movie and the talented people involved in the current issue - including numerous photographs by myself. Unlike many interview magazines, which cover a broad range of subjects, each issue of Me Magazine features a guest editor, their circle of friends and colleagues, giving a unique perspective on a creative community, project or organization.

Souvenir Mao

2006-10-11T21:11:00.000-04:00

Steve Heller, graphic designer extraordinare, who I had the pleasure working with on The Education of a Photographer, has a great article in the current issue of Print Magazine on depictions of Mao in Chinese totalitarian art. During the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, the cult of Mao was built on cheap mass-produced porcelain statues depicting Mao, Red Guards, peasants and soldiers. As Heller says, "In this all-out campaign to brand the nation, ideology, and leader - at a time when access to television and radio was limited - these quaint though politically charged souvenirs brought the revolution from the street to the home."

The article is part of a larger study on Totalitarian graphic design to be published by Phaidon in the future. I've had the pleasure of photographing Steve's collection for the book and magazine. Check out the latest issue for a four page spread and look out for what will likely be a fascinating study.

The Weather and a Place to Live (2005)

2006-10-05T22:56:00.000-04:00

Steve Smith, an old teacher of mine, came out with this book in 2005 when he won the Duke Center for Documentary Studies First Book Prize. Here is a great interview, where he talks about his work, working methods, surviving as an artist etc.....

Queens International 2006

2006-10-05T18:22:00.000-04:00

Check out the Queens Interntional 2006, at the Queens Museum, featuring work by Sophia Peer, Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, and Michelle Cheikin among others. The show runs from Oct. 1 to January 14, 2007.

Xpo September - Stockholm-Fotofestival 2006

2006-09-13T21:07:00.003-04:00

The Art+Commerce Festival of Emerging Photographers is making it's last stop in Stockholm for XpoSeptember. The show is really great and it's been an honor to be included. There are a lot of other great shows included in the festival, so definitely check it out if you happen to be in Stockholm.

The Education of a Photographer (2006)

2006-09-11T23:45:00.000-04:00

The Education of a Photographer (Allworth Press, 2006) is finally out.

Here are some of the people in it: Berenice Abbott, Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Wendell Berry, Elisabeth Biondi, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alexey Brodovitch, Harry Callahan, Sarah Charlesworth, Charlotte Cotton, Gregory Crewdson, Yolanda Cuomo, Tim Davis, Dave Eggers, Vilém Flusser, Stephen Frailey, Lee Friedlander, Peter Galassi, Helen Gee, Luigi Ghirri, William Klein, Max Kozloff, Ken Light, Vera Lutter, Nathan Lyons, Peter MacGill, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Susan Meiselas, Lisette Model, László Moholy-Nagy, Vik Muniz, Cynthia Oznick, Brian Palmer, Irving Penn, Philip Perkis, Robert Pledge, Alexander Rodchenko, Leo Rubinfien, Shelley Rice, Stephen Shore, Aaron Siskind, Clarissa Sligh, Larry Sultan, Mary Virginia Swanson, John Szarkowski, Penelope Umbrico, Jeff Wall, Randy West, Minor White, Garry Winogrand, and more....