Archive for August, 2008

Thinking about Birds

I’ve been thinking about birds a lot recently. And I’m not the only one. Jen Bekman, as we know, has a thing for birds (and her brilliant 20×200 project ensures that I’m constantly looking at work with birds in it). I also just got the Fall calendar for The Photographic Center Northwest, in Seattle. Opening in October is a show—curated by Gallery Director Ann Pallesen—entitled Bird Studies. It will feature the work of 6 photographers: Jules Greenberg, Neeta Madahar, Annie Marie Musselman, Darryl Schmidt, Charlotte Watts and Paula McCartney.

Paula’s work, specifically, has been on my mind as I’ve been working on an essay for her (distant) forthcoming book from Princeton Architectural Press. (The book isn’t even listed yet, so don’t worry if you can’t find it.) Paula is poking around with a lot of different ideas concerning truth, falsehood and the photographic medium. But mostly she’s having fun and making amazing artist’s books. She has an upcoming show with her books at Carleton College in their library gallery.

I’ll post about her again once the book is announced!

Tags: Paula McCartney
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Print-on-Demand discussion

Joerg Colberg has posted and stirred up a discussion about the “Pitfalls of Self-Published Books” which is about the print-on-demand phenomenon and technology that is very much on the lips of photographers around the world. It’s a really good read and both asks certain questions and answers others.

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Ancient Abstraction

This past weekend I stumbled across (on my shelves) the small catalogue and exhibition checklist to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s “History of History” exhibition that took place at the Japan Society Gallery back in 2005-2006. I hadn’t been able to see the show, but reviewed the hardcover book that was produced in French for the photo-eye Booklist. I was impressed with the book and the thinking behind the show, which was curated by Sugimoto from his own collection of pre-historic and historic objects. This little checklist from the Japan Society installment was not illustrated, but offered single paragraph descriptions for each piece, written by Sugimoto.

The uniqueness of this book is that it is essentially an art history essay by Sugimoto illustrated with ancient art from his personal collection, interspersed with his own photography. The thesis for this project provides much needed context for the book. “Contemporary art and ancient art are like oil and water: seemingly opposite poles. Yet for the longest time now, I have found the two melding ineffably together into one, more like water and air. Living with pieces of ancient and medieval art, I have come to feel that I might borrow upon some small increment of their beauty, so as to transplant that power into my own words. Seen here are seascapes informed by both my mentor, ancient art, and that unworthy pupil, my contemporary art. The remarks that follow constitute what I have been able to learn about the various orginal pieces, embellished slightly perhaps by my imagination.”

“Ever since the age of cave painting,” Sugimoto writes, “humans have wanted a unified vision with which to see the chaos of this world of ours. Largely, it has been artists who have filled such a role—and they still hold this function today. No matter how brilliantly religion and science might explain and persuade, there will always remain shadowy areas. Scooping up shimmering particles, these persons of vision fashion decoding devices that afford us a look around in the gloom; we call their handiwork art.”

The exhibition included Cambrian-period fossils as well as various amulets, sculptures and textiles from up to 6000 years ago that he has collected. The description for one piece in particular caught my eye.

Wheelstone, Kofun period, 4th century.
Jasper
“Jasper bracelets such as this were produced mainly in the fourth century. They were probably derived from bracelets of the preceding Yayoi period (ca. 300 BCE-300CE) made from limpets and other tropical seashells, but substituting stone from the Izumo and Hokuriku regions (in central Japan, along the Sea of Japan coast) for the shell. The striking form of this bracelet surpasses contemporary abstract sculpture in its power.”

The last sentence is what got me thinking. “The striking form of this bracelet surpasses contemporary abstract sculpture in its power.”

At Radius Books we’ve been working on a title by John McCracken called Sketchbook. In an interview with Neville Wakefield that is being published in the book, McCracken, who is himself a sculptor, says something quite similar.

John McCracken: “In a simpler way, ‘distilling the world’ is a useful concept. I remember seeing a slide once of a piece of Trojan architecture. It was a big, bulky cube-like thing, just sitting there but filled with energy and power. It’s like the Trojans knew something, knew more than we know. They distilled something about mankind into a form. It’s so simple and so partial but this power still comes through.

“Often I think that ancient buildings and some modern buildings are interesting in form for reasons that few writers or analysts can pinpoint. They talk about other things instead of this energy. So often, in art criticism or art writing, what largely gets talked about are influences and lineages and not the meaning and the things that really have power.”

It seems that Sugimoto and McCracken are both interested in a very non-quantifiable quality to art. McCracken’s own work has a very elemental, “distilled” quality to it that is hard to describe but palpable, so sophisticated and rich and yet exceedingly simple at the same time. Strong paradoxes are, to me, indicators of successful and powerful work.

Radius Books launches John McCracken: Sketchbook in New York at David Zwirner on September 11th. I’ll be there and hope to see many of you as well.

Tags: Hiroshi Sugimoto, John McCracken
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Photo Plus Expo 2008

PDN/Photo Plus Expo has just opened up registration for their 2008 conference held at the Jacob Javitts Center in Manhattan. I will be conducting a panel discussion called Photobook Publishing: The Inside View from 3:45-5:45 on Thursday, October 23rd with editors from Phaidon, Harry N. Abrams and Princeton Architectural Press. I ran this panel last year and am happy to be asked back again for 2008. The panel gives photographers a view of what happens both before and after a book has been signed or committed from the editor’s viewpoint. It’ll be an insightful afternoon. There are also lots of other workshops going on. Just before my panel (also on Thursday) will be the panel discussion First Impressions: Selling Yourself in 20 Minutes led by Mary Virginia Swanson. Sign up for both now!

Tags: PDN, Photo Plus Expo
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Godzilla vs. Iran

Errol Morris, a documentary filmmaker based in Connecticut, has just written a blog post on the New York Times website entitled Photography as a Weapon. In the post, he interviews Hany Farid, a Dartmouth professor and an expert on digital photography and together they raise age-old (or at least Industrial Age-old) questions about truth and veracity when it comes to photographs and our vision. It’s well worth the read.

Tags: Godzilla, Iran, New York Times
Posted in Art + Film + Design + Architecture, Photography, Pop Culture | No Comments »

The Tools We Use

After posting my interview with Stephen Shore a few months ago, I’ve received comments from several photographers along these lines:

“I’ve never seen the reasoning behind using large format laid out better than in this interview. Of course, to achieve the effect Shore talks about, today you can use a high resolution digital camera of considerably smaller format as well…”

This comment in particular made me think about how the tools we use affect our results. I’m talking about the relationship between craft and art.

There are several ways that any tool—here, a large format camera—affects the way one works and, by association, affects the way one envisions and thinks about one’s surroundings. The first, and perhaps easiest to grasp, is the physical interface required by the tool. When Shore stated that he’s “pretty much” put the 8×10 camera away because it’s a lot of work getting it out, he’s talking about the physical interface. It’s a heavy object; it requires a tripod; it’s bulky; there are a lot of attendant tools—level, loupe, dark cloth, shutter-release cord, something to stand on, large lenses and large film holders—required to make a single photograph. All of the physical activity required to make an image becomes part of the process in an intimate way and creates parameters that your body must accommodate and work within.

This physical activity bleeds into the mental activity of making an image with that particular camera (and this is the second way in which one’s tools affect the way one works). The methodical precision required by the 8×10, I’m arguing, leads to a methodical precision on the mental level. Because a relatively large amount of time is required to simply deal with the equipment, a corresponding large amount of mental time goes into the image—the type of image—that one makes. The camera physically and mentally slows you down, makes you more attentive in certain ways.

The converse is true of using a hand held camera; the different physical interface with the tool leads to a corresponding different mental interface with one’s surroundings. Walking around with a 35mm SLR is simply physically different than walking around with a tripod and an 8×10. We also mentally adapt how we look at the world based on the camera we’re using at the moment. And on an even more minute level, different types of hand held cameras make one think and view the world differently. The physical interface between a point-and-shoot (like the Ricoh* GR1, for instance) and a 35mm SLR (like the Leica* R8) is quite different.

This can also be understood when it comes to “thinking” in color or black-and-white, and represents the third way that one’s tools affect the way one works. I’ve heard (and am intimate with the experience myself) many photographers talk about “seeing” in black-and-white or color. With certain tools—in this case cameras and film/pixels—you assess the world in one way, and with different tools, you assess it another way.

The comment the photographer made that one can “achieve the effect” of Shore’s work with a high-resolution camera is false on all three of these levels. Walking around with a hand-held medium format camera is both physically and mentally different than walking around with an 8×10. The last element, which has to do with the materials of the tools, also comes into play here. The way light reacts with film and chemistry is also different than the way light is registered digitally on sensors. It’s not better, just different. Perhaps the best analogy here is the difference between oil and acrylic paint. They simply look different because they are different.

Granted, some of the differences are extremely subtle, but to the trained eye, they are just that differences. (For example, place a sheet of text printed with letterpress next to a sheet of the same paper printed with the same text from an inkjet and the majority of common folk won’t register the difference. Show any one familiar with printing presses and they will see the wide differences.)

Just as there are radical differences in the look of an albumen print and a Polaroid print, or the look between a Cartier-Bresson photograph and an Irving Penn, my argument is that not all of the difference rests on the creative vision of the artist. Some of the difference—and how we value or judge or critique those images—is because of the tools, their materials, and our physical interaction with them.

Any thoughts?

[added 8/14: I'm not concerned with placing a value judgment on any one group of tools/cameras. If anything, the 20th century has amply shown that great images and works of art can be made with the humblest of tools as well as the most complex, technologically advanced of tools. My main concern was to map out some thoughts about the mere fact that our use of certain tools will affect us in ways that are specifically relative to those certain tools. Some people will find that they are most creative with one particular tool used over and over while others will find themselves able to flow from tool to tool. Again, my point is that with each different tool and its variables, they will "picture" things slightly differently. Thanks for all the comments!]

* I’m not on the payroll of any camera manufacturers.

Tags: Stephen Shore
Posted in Book Review | 13 Comments »

Book Review: Geert van Kesteren’s Why Mister, Why? and Baghdad Calling

In 2004, Artimo published Why Mister, Why? a book of photographs by Dutch photographer Geert van Kesteren (one of the newer members of Magnum). Van Kesteren had been embedded with US troops in Iraq that were waging war against Sadam Hussein during 2003-4. Working for Newsweek, van Kesteren was witness to everything that war brings: civilian and military deaths, both intentional and accidental, as well as rampant destruction of homes, businesses, and all manner of societal infrastructure. The book is ultimately a partisan one, but van Kesteren lays the mantle of blame on the shoulders of politicians and governments rather than the soldiers themselves.

The book feels like a magazine—thin glossy pages for the images alternating with newspaper stock for the pages of text are serrated along the edges as though they’ve come off the same presses that print up daily newspapers. This “magazine” is 544 pages, though, which seems to carry several layers of meaning. First, Van Kesteren (and/or the publisher) realizes that this work is created and meant primarily for a periodical format. Printing it on magazine stock paper acknowledges that. This device also speaks to the lack of any substantial number of magazines that are able to publish extended stories of this nature; this is a fact to be lamented. The choice of materials and design also speaks to an awareness that this is a book length project but not a group of photographs that are intended for the gallery wall, nor for the pages of a hardbound “monograph.”

Martin Parr and Gerry Badger include the book in Volume 2 of The Photobook: A History, giving the book an instant cult classic status. It is well-deserved, to be sure. Here is the final paragraph of the accompanying blurb (p. 258, Chapter 7, The Camera as Witness. The ‘Concerned’ Photobook since World War II).

“Not all the incidents shown are detrimental to the argument of the Bush administration. There is a harrowing sequence on the exhumation of those murdered by the Saddam regime. Van Kesteren also frequently shows the faces of soldiers who clearly dislike what they are doing. But overall, Why Mister, Why? is a damning indictment of what at the moment showed every sign of being another Vietnam.”

Van Kesteren also put together an amazing website for the book project, providing an interactive way of accessing the depth and breadth of the project, which weighed in at over 500 pages.

Now, three years after the publication of Why Mister, Why? Geert van Kesteren has just released Baghdad Calling, a follow-up book published by episode publishers in Rotterdam.

“Where violence dominates, people flee, and in Iraq that has been seen on a massive scale,” Jan Gruiters writes in the foreword. More than two million Iraqis have fled the country, crossing primarily over the borders of Jordan, Syria. This fact is the basis for Baghdad Calling. Van Kesteren’s thesis for this project is stated in his opening essay: “This book approaches the daunting complexity of the war from the perspective of the individual refugee.”

Van Kesteren takes the same political stance as Philip Jones Griffiths in his classic of war photojournalism Vietnam, Inc., focusing his attention on the impact that the war has on non-combatants and, in this case, the ripples that the refugees have made as they spread beyond the borders of Iraq.

Confronted with an ever-widening geography as he traveled beyond the area of immediate battles, Van Kesteren searched for more expressive ways to convey the complexity of the situation. “My photography did not in any way square up to the horror of the stories of the refugees,” he explained. “It missed what I see as the cornerstone of my photojournalism: the laying bare of the essence of a situation and making that visual through the perspective of the individual.”

In her essay, Brigitte Lardinois brilliantly sums up the situation that Van Kesteren was confronted with. He solved the puzzle of creating as powerful a statement as possible by looking to the refugees themselves and how they used photography—mobile phone photography in particular—to map out their families, friends, fears and hopes for a new Iraq. Van Kesteren gathered hundreds of cell phone photographs and compiled them, edited them, sequenced them with scant few of his own photographs, to tell a much broader story.

From Brigitte Lardinois: “By giving such prominence to those pictures, Van Kesteren took a bold step. His own work no longer takes central place in this publication; it is a book that gives the Iraqis their own voice. Their story is of paramount importance in this book, not the photographs of Van Kesteren.

“Van Kesteren collected data. This book is therefore a new departure in photojournalism. Many photographers are looking for ways to enhance the power of their message. They are forced to do this by a dearth of editorial outlets in the West. Assignments from magazines and newspapers seem to be dwindling, challenged by the new media offering interesting means of telling stories and conveying information.

“It is notable that photographic books can be seen as a medium that is heading in new directions. Now that magazines are showing less interest in probing stories, photographers are turning to autonomous production of a medium tailored to their personal wishes and vision. A book is a wonderful medium for this, as are websites and multimedia. There is agreater leeway to explore stories in depth, to add nuance, broach aspects for which no space is available in conventional media such as a magazines and newspapers.”

Visit the Baghdad Calling website. Purchase the book at a fine, independent bookstore near you!

Tags: Geert van Kesteren, Iraq War, The Photobook: A History
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The Olympic Spirit

With the Olympics about to begin and everyone discussing the myriad issues surrounding the event, the site, the Chinese government preparations, and the dwindling paper stock available in mainland China at the moment, I thought it appropriate to post an entry about it myself. The other day, the most recent copy of Orion magazine landed on our desk and in it was a review of the new Mark Klett: Saguaros book, published by Radius Books. That alone was exciting. But flipping through the magazine I came across a fantastic little essay by that itinerant essayist Rebecca Solnit. Solnit, as many of you may or may not know, is a writer of national and international acclaim. She has written about photography, the history of photography, the history of photographic technology and the West, as well as many essays about land use, time, the American West, social politics, and the joys of walking (to name just a few off the top of my head). I always thoroughly enjoy coming across her ruminations in all sorts of magazines. This was no different.

The essay is entitled Looking Away From Beauty and is published in the July/August 2008 issue of Orion magazine (click here to subscribe).

Tags: Olympics, Rebecca Solnit
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