Posts about and including photography
My first annual round-up of favorite raccoon photographs from this past year!
Anonymous, 1950s)
Anonymous
Ed Panar, from Animals That Saw Me limited edition
Colleen Plumb, Procyon Lotor, from Animals Are Outside Today
Anonymous
Portrait of Darius with his Dr. Pepper, 1978
Sent from Barry Greff
Sent from Amanda Boe
Sent from Larissa Archer
Sent from Peter McCollough
The Photography Book Now 2011 Winners are announced!
PBN 2011 Grand Prize Winner from Blurb Books on Vimeo.
PBN 2011 Category Winners from Blurb Books on Vimeo.
The gent in blue is none other than Gerry Badger, one of the most influential writers in photography at this point in history. And the man behind the words in Volumes 1 & 2 of The Photobook: A History. He was in NYC this weekend for the judging of the Photography Book Now competition.
British.
Warm heart.
Keen mind.
Smiling personality.
A wonderful photographer himself.
Winner of the ICP Award for Writing in 2011.
And is currently working on the writing for the 3rd volume of the history of photobooks in his ruled notebook.
In pen.
By hand.
Kill me already! So great to see.
[Sorry this is such a lousy portrait, Gerry!]
An image by Cooper, the Photographer Cat
SOME CONFUSION
I’ve sat through so many lectures and panel discussions and slogged through too many essays and articles of late in which there is abundant confusion and conflation around both the ideas and terms surrounding documentary and art photography that the time feels ripe to at least initiate a conversation about this contentious subject.
It was Cooper the “photographer cat” that pushed me over the edge. ArtInfo published their story on Cooper on May 17, 2011.
“Cooper’s owners stress that they have not digitally altered any of Cooper’s photographs.”
Well, that’s reassuring. We wouldn’t want to think that somehow humans were manipulating the carefully chosen compositions of a housecat. They sound like certain cranky photojournalists emphasizing the “absolute objectiveness” of their work. This whole thing smells of lazy thinking around documents vs work made in the documentary style.
The photographic images “made by” Cooper are documents in the most basic sense. They are no different than stills from a surveillance cam. Cooper’s camera goes off every 10 minutes (on a timer set by his intelligent and crafty human owners). He not only has no choice in the matter, he’s not even consciously aware of the processes of photography. On a sensory level, yes, he’s aware of a collar with an object around his neck. These are not, however, intelligent or inspired photographic works. (Of course, there is a little wiggle room to state that the group of images that have been edited and selected by his owners are intelligently curated.)
Walker Evans
Ansel Adams, Half-dome, Yosemite
DOCUMENT VS. “DOCUMENTARY STYLE”
“What you’ve got are not photographers. They’re a bunch of sociologists with cameras.”—Ansel Adams, in reference to the FSA photography project, which included Walker Evans.
“The term should be documentary style,” [Evans] told Katz. … “You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, although it can adopt that style.”—Interview with Walker Evans by Leslie Katz
Documents have a particular use—driver’s license photos, security camera imagery, topographical maps, etc.—and art does not share in that kind of utilitarian usefulness. The all-important point that Evans then makes is that art (ie, artists) can adopt the “style” of documentary work, and do something within that style or language. The implication is that the artist produces engaging work even while co-opting the style of rote documents that don’t comment or critique on anything, but simply provide a descriptive image.
Evans’ worked in a “documentary style” while on assignment to make pictures that addressed the socio-economic conditions of the American South. He did far more than produce rote, machine-generated documents with no thought behind them. (In this connection, think Eggleston adopting the “style” of the vernacular family album color snapshot.)
I regularly hear photographers talk about individual photographs as “documents” of a person, place or thing. That is a lazy use of the word. Did Yosemite actually exist in front of the camera in the minutes before Ansel Adams pressed the shutter release, thus documenting the sky, granite, and forested slopes for all to see? Yes. Is it a photographic document? No. Was he photographing in the documentary style? No. (Are the legions of Ansel Adams imitators who photograph the same views in the same style as Adams making documents? Actually, I think they might be just making copies …)
It’s easy to see how all of this gets confused.
From Evidence, by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel
From A New American Picture, by Douglas Rickard
THE QUESTION OF ARCHIVES OF DOCUMENTS
It is a rare person that can take loads of existing photographic documents and actually turn them into something meaningful. But that’s precisely what Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel did in their book Evidence. They took existing images that had been made as documents, in the literal sense, and re-contextualized them; they re-placed them in a new and different framework, thus changing our understanding of the images (and our understanding of how photographic documents and the mind of the artist work). It was their conscious, sustained activity that qualified them, or the whole project at least, as art. Similarly with Doug Rickard’s brilliant A New American Picture project using Google street views; the same type of sustained activity on the part of Rickard to re-contextualize existing photographs is going on.
There must be ideas behind the work—intentions and contexts and sustained choices by an intelligent being—for it to even be considered art. You can’t perform laboratory work sloppily and say that “it’s all subjective”. No. There are standards and sloppy is sloppy. (Please don’t mis-read this as my saying that all art must be idea-based or intellectual).
Those elements are not evident in a huge swath of the photography we see in the world (ie Facebook, cell-phone snapped Revolution-photographs, or those made by Cooper the cat). Today, we might be able to update the nomenclature from “documentary style” to “vernacular Facebook style”. In the end it doesn’t matter what style you adopt or decide to work in; the point is to do something intelligent and inspired within that style and with tools of your choosing. Otherwise it’ll just be uninteresting.
We’ve all seen those photographs by a macaque monkey, right? Here‘s what the photographer David Slater said about them:
“One of them must have accidentally knocked the camera and set it off because the sound caused a bit of a frenzy,” said Slater, 46. “At first there was a lot of grimacing with their teeth showing because it was probably the first time they had ever seen a reflection. They were quite mischievous jumping all over my equipment, and it looked like they were already posing for the camera when one hit the button. The sound got his attention and he kept pressing it. At first it scared the rest of them away but they soon came back—it was amazing to watch. He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn’t worked that out yet. I wish I could have stayed longer as he probably would have taken a full family album.”
Slater isn’t confused about what had happened, even if his language at the end involves some basic anthropomorphizing; it was accident not purposeful use. What this shows is that any-thing can push a button and set in motion the process which yields a photographic image—whether that thing be a computer program that activates a timer on a camera, a monkey depressing the shutter repeatedly with its finger, a robot on the Space Shuttle, or the millions of Facebook users that use the iPhotoBooth function on their iMacs to take a very uninteresting profile pic while seated at home or in the office. There is no intelligence and therefore no art in it.
One last word about Cooper, who happens to be the furry puppet of the owners in this scenario. In a way, they’ve put a cutesy cat face on their own (debatable) hard work of editing what comes out of the random generated image maker tied around Cooper’s neck. As with Rickard’s Google Street Views project, or Sultan/Mandel’s Evidence work, thousands of images had to be sifted through in order to arrive at a select group of “pictures” that convey, in this case, the editor’s viewpoint (which is to get publicity from a gimmick involving their cat, and make some money, which they’ve brilliantly done). Art it does not make. (But fodder more morning talk-shows it clearly does.)
But in its opposite we have the answer to our initial question: an artist/editor with a viewpoint using a particular method, making conscious decisions in pursuit of an internal goal (describable or not). That is the stuff that art is made of.
[I'm sure there are many other angles I've neglected to address, but it's been useful to write about this even if just for myself.]
PHOTOGRAPHY, A Very Short Introduction
by Steve Edwards
160 pages
$8.95 BUY
I have a real thing for small books that come in series. (The Penguin Great Ideas books are, at the moment, my real obsession.) It was this love, in general, that led me first to notice, then to covet and promptly lift* from a close friend’s book shelf a copy of Photography by Steve Edwards, published by Oxford University Press as part of their intelligent (though not as visually exciting as Penguin’s) A Very Short Introduction series. I’m so glad I did.
Not only is Photography by Edwards (Oxford University Press, 2006) small and (part of a series), but it’s by far the most brilliant short—very short—introduction to a topic as broad, culturally impactful and deeply loved and debated as photography. Not to mention it’s my own field.
“Trying to account for photography as a whole [John Tagg] suggested, was akin to attempting a history, or a museum, of writing: all that could be done was to trace the uses of photography (or writing) in the institutions in which it was put to work—the law courts, medicine, advertising, art, and so forth.”— p. xi
Edwards, who I was not familiar with but who has authored various critical histories, is a lecturer at London’s Open University. His Very Short Introduction is wildly ambitious as well as perfectly succinct, qualities that he deftly weaves together.
He takes “photography” at its broadest, accounting for the commercial, institutional and popular uses of the medium as well as the issues underpinning what we have come to call “art” and “documentary” photography. It is not a comprehensive accounting, but admittedly so. With a scant 24 illustrations in this 160-page book, I found myself thoroughly engaged—the more I mark up a book, the more I can tell that I want to participate in the dialogue.
Photography is structured into 6 chapters, with a brief afterword to address digital photography: 1) Forgetting Photography, 2) Documents, 3) Pictures, 4) What is a photograph?, 5) The apparatus and its image, 6) Fantasy and remembrance.
“In 1864, Dr. Hugh Diamond—editor of The Photographic Journal, and pioneer photographer of mental illness—wrote the report on the International Exhibition of 1862. In this assessment of the state of photography, he claimed there was ‘scarce a branch of art, of science, of economics, or indeed of human interest in its widest application, in which the applications of this art [photography] have note been made useful.’”
He goes on to list ethnology, natural history, microscopy, archaeology, antiquary, history, architecture, engineering, law, manufacturing and astronomy as fields affected by photography.
The approach Edwards adopts early on is to look at the invention/emergence of photography in the broadest possible terms, and to identify the ideologies and cultural frameworks that underlie both the beginnings of photographic image-making and the current cultural approaches. He is most adept at delineating histories of debate surrounding “documents” and “pictures”, ie documentary photography vs. fine-art photography (and how the argument is essentially moot).
The book is brilliantly structured and would work well for any seminar-type class for photographers at either an undergraduate or graduate level (with the structure lending itself for supplementary material).
Best, Darius
* Of course I’ll replace it, since it’s widely available. But this should serve as fair warning to all hosts that invite me for dinner…;)
Hello all!
I’m excited to be participating in a late-September, 2011, 3-day photobook workshop with the amazing photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb. The workshop, which runs from September 23–25, is being hosted by Radius Books in Santa Fe, and I’ll be participating along with David Chickey, a fellow co-founder of Radius Books, along with being the publisher and creative director of the publishing house.
The workshop is open to anyone “who is passionate about a photography project that he or she has been working on—from serious amateurs to seasoned professionals, from documentary to art photographers, from those photographing a theme, place, or issue to those working on a more personal series of photographs of family or friends.”
Needless to say, it’s going to be intense, informative, inspiring and loaded with great energy (all the while in the beautiful setting of Santa Fe, New Mexico). More info below.
[Alex and Becky speaking at the Boston MFA.]
Workshop Description:
We’ll kick off the weekend with a Friday evening slideshow + talk of the work of Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, a creative team who’ve edited six books together, including Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographers from Cuba (Radius, 2009), a project that’s currently being exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Their slide talk will be followed by a conversation and Q&A with the Webbs and David Chickey, the publisher and creative director of Radius Books who has designed photo books for more than 20 publishers and museums over the last 15 years. This event will be open to the public.
Saturday will begin with a review of each participant’s project (each photographer will present 30-80 small prints—4×6 to 5×7, either inkjet or inexpensive photographic prints). Through a group editing process, the Webb/Radius team will devise an individual assignment tailored for each photographer, which will be due the next morning. On Sunday morning, the Webb/Radius team will go over the assignments, and offer specific suggestions for each photographer about how to take his or her project to the next level. Sunday afternoon will feature presentations by David Chickey, acclaimed book designer and Radius publisher, and noted photobook expert and editor, Darius Himes, coauthor of the new book, Publish Your Photography Book. This will be followed by a panel discussion led by David and Darius about the making and publishing of photobooks, which will end with an in-depth Q&A with the participants.
Throughout this intensive weekend, this workshop will explore a variety of photobook related topics through discussion, presentations, and an editing exercise, including such issues as how to find the heart of your photography book, how to edit and sequence a photo book intuitively, how to figure out what’s left to photograph for your book, how to choose a writer for your book, how to select the right title for your book, how to decide on the right size for your photo book, how to choose a cover image, how to work with a designer, what to expect when you go on press for a book, how prints in a book differ from prints on a wall, and how to publish your photobook.
Alex and Rebecca are handling all of the applications: photographers must submit 10 small jpgs (72 dpi, no more than 8 inches on longest side) from their project, and a short statement about it (no more than 250 words), as a Word doc (if possible) to Alex and Rebecca at this address: rebeccanorriswebb@yahoo.com
More info here, on the Magnum Photos website.
In my previous post, I outlined some specific thoughts related to the Photography Book Now competition as it enters it’s 4th year. There’s $25k up for grabs for the best in self-published photography books.
Beyond that, I hinted at the “extremely rich moment” we are witnessing in the history of photography and books. Unparalleled resources and tools are available for artistic expression and the possibilities for distribution, primarily of self-published books, are growing. I want to mention these a bit more in-depth.
Topping the list are the efforts of Andy Adams of Flak Photo and writer Miki Johnson, who, on Saturday, June 4, traveled to the Flash Forward Festival Boston to participate in a panel discussion that “explored the state of photobook production, consumption and distribution in the Internet Era.” They presented the results of (and furthered the conversation around) a crowd-sourced blog post on the Future of Photobooks that took place last year with bloggers and contributors from around the world participating in the flow and exchange of ideas. A fantastic video of their event is available here:
The Future of Photobooks: Flash Forward Festival Discussion
Also, Andy is compiling a list of online photobook resources on his website. I won’t repeat that full list here, but want to add some other pertinent resources and developments. (But to continue that conversation head over to Flak Photo’s Facebook page!)
I really can’t emphasize how fantastic I think this is. The brainchild of Larissa Leclair, who has singled-handedly (with an intern or two thrown in occasionally), the Indie Photobook Library is an ever-growing accessible resource and archive for self-published photobooks. Her goal is to eventually gift the collection to a major institution. In the meantime, she has been traveling the library around the continent (and is open to suggestions about fellowships and workshops for the Library).
Bruno Ceschel is to be commended for all his work in promoting the roaring river of great self-published photobooks. (There’s also Self Publish, Be Naughty, a brilliant little side show.)
ABC Artists’ Books Cooperative
The Artists’ Books Cooperative is “an international network created by and for artists who make print-on-demand books.” Simple enough. It is a membership based group of artists, in true cooperative fashion, that promotes and distributes print-on-demand books. (Membership information here.)
Foto Book Festival, Kassel and the “Dummy Award”
Each year the Foto Book Festival in Kassel awards Best Books, based on a jury of figures in the field. It also hosts a competition for photobook “dummies”, proposals for future photobooks. The jury this year for the dummy award consisted of Yoko Sawada (Tokyo), Gabriel Franziska Götz (Amsterdam), John Gossage (Washington), Jeffrey Ladd (New York), Frank Seltmann (Lüdenscheid), Andreas Müller- Pohle (Berlin) and Markus Schaden (Köln). An amazing line-up!
Supporting the overall scene
As the interest in the photographic book form has blossomed, I want to take a moment to emphasize how important it is to support the overall scene. The arts have always required patronage; traditionally it was the Church and Crown. Now, quite literally, it’s us. Just as the Internet is connecting us globally in real-time, so too must we connect with the bricks and mortar component to these resources.
That means both sending your self-published book to the Indie Photobook Library as well as purchasing books through the Self-Publish, Be Happy store. It means going to workshops and festivals and book shows. This growing, ever-morphing, loosely knit community requires our creative input and our $$$ to survive.
How? Check out these links:
Distributed Art Publishers online resource: ArtBook.com
Markus Schaden is the best bookseller in Europe: Schaden.com
Where to drool in NYC: DashwoodBooks.com
The hardworking folks in Santa Fe: photo-eye Books
If you really want to geek out for a moment on some amazing photo book spines, check out this microsite for the Robert Adams archive at the Yale University Art Gallery. Sweet!
Lastly, over the past 3 years, Mary Virginia Swanson and I have been working on a book titled, Publish Your Photography Book (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). It’s now available! And we like to think it has some useful information in it (along with 50+ contributors from across the industry).
—Darius Himes
San Francisco, 2011
(And remember, to continue this conversation head over to Flak Photo’s Facebook page)
[All photographs courtesy Mickey Smith. View her website here.]
“Will Blurb’s Photography Book Now competition award any non-Blurb self-published books this year? The competition’s credibility depends on it.” ~Twitter post
Here we are midway into the fourth year of Photography Book Now, Blurb’s annual photography competition that has, over the past three years, awarded cash and prizes to numerous photographers. I’m serving as the lead judge for a fourth year and am proud to do so.
The straightforward question pasted above was originally posted as an innocuous Tweet, but behind it is a deeper and legitimate concern. It not only deserves a thoughtful response, but it affords me an opportunity to voice my thoughts about the development and overall ethos and goals of the contest.
The most direct challenge of this question concerns the credibility and legitimacy of the contest. For the sake of clarity, I’ll state the point even more baldly: Is this truly a contest about the most current self-published photography books? Or is this simply a competition in which Blurb promotes itself and bestows self-serving awards?
I want to answer this directly. As lead judge since the inception of the contest, I’ve had the joy of reaching out to colleagues and heroes of mine in the photography community to serve as fellow-judges: Kathy Ryan, Dana Faconti, Vince Aletti, Martin Parr, Charlotte Cotton, Frish Brandt, Kira Pollack, Todd Hido, Anthony Bannon, Jen Bekman and so many others. They have all served happily and fairly in this role, and I thank them again.
I can happily say that of the books submitted to the contest, the judges have responded to and selected the most creative, the most accomplished, and those in which the artist and photographs were most engaged with the book form. In short, the judges have chosen the best books submitted.
Ultimately, this question of just what gets submitted is the key point, and leads right into the question of legitimacy. As is obvious, the judges are limited to the submissions. If it’s not on the table, we don’t get a chance to see it. At the end of last years’ contest, I was concerned with precisely this issue, that the contest was being perceived as solely the “Blurb contest”, and that the submissions were only for books produced using Blurb’s platform.* I wanted to know, could we encourage submissions from around the world and increase the number of non-Blurb produced books in order to advnace the explicit goal of celebrating all self-published photography books?
The answer is yes.
The first thing we** decided to do was look at the language used. There is a very careful use of wording this year informing and surrounding the announcement and marketing of the contest. The contest is “presented by Blurb” but supported by so many other companies within our industry: HP (who provides the Grand Prize money), Adobe, Wacom, x-rite, New Page, Mohawk, livebooks, and on and on. In other words, this is a group effort.
In the promotional material produced, as well as on the website, there is a concerted effort to avoid implying that one must use Blurb’s platform to produce a submission. The front page of the website states, “PBN is an international juried competition celebrating the most creative, most innovative, and finest self-published photography books – and the people behind them.” This should be read literally and taken at face value.
Sometimes there is confusion around the rules and guidelines, which, as we all know, are ultimately crafted by lawyers. Here, in plain language, is what we hope will be submitted: any self-published photography book by any artist (young or old, “professional” or not), using any reproduction and binding technique—from offset lithography, to web-press on newsprint, to print-on-demand, to bound ink-jet prints, to saddle-stiched Xeroxes. The point is, it doesn’t matter how you make your book, just make the best one you can and submit it!
Lastly, this year the organizers produced a series of videos with me, as lead judge, in which we explain and clarify the criteria of what the judges will be looking for in each submission and how to approach the categories. You can find those videos here, for the judging criteria, and here, for the categories. I hope you’ll find them explanatory and useful.
Friends, we are witnessing and participating in an extremely rich moment in the history of photography. This moment is quite unparalleled; the resources and tools available for artistic expression and distribution are immense. The interest in the photographic book form has blossomed over the last decade due to a variety of factors—the Roth and Parr/Badger volumes, the advent of print-on-demand (POD), the healthy flourishing of numerous small publishing houses and independent photobook distributors and libraries, exhibitions and awards devoted to photography books, and the global interconnectedness that the Internet has facilitated, to name a few. (I’ve highlighted some of these resources in a blog posting here).
The contest organizers have explicitly expressed the desire to provide a forum—the contest itself—as well as the financial capital and human resources to offer these amazing awards and parties around the world to honor those photographers that are making books that advance the medium of photography. In “presenting” this contest, they are stating a deep conviction to the book as a vehicle for ideas, for creative expression, and ultimately a belief in the arts as a means to advance human society.
Once again this year, we have an amazing line-up of judges drawn from the wide, wide world of photography: historian Gerry Badger, Chris Boot of Aperture, Matt Eich of LUCEO, photographer Larry Fink, Claudia Hinterseer of Noor Agency, photographger Henry Horenstein, Whitney Lawson of Travel+Leisure, Larissa Leclair of Indie Photobook Library, Jon Levy of Foto8, photographer Steve McCurry, Laura Brunow Miner, and Markus Schaden of Schaden.com.
If you aren’t excited about showing your book to these folks, I’m not sure who you’re waiting for.
This contest is here for us. It is here to seek out and celebrate the best self-published photobooks of our time. We have pulled together an amazing group of judges this year, all of whom represent a firm commitment to the medium, and are known throughout the photography world for their efforts.
It is up to the photographers and bookmakers to show us what they’ve got. We can’t wait!
—Darius Himes, June 2011
PS Want to continue this conversation? Head over to Flak Photo’s Facebook page and post your comments.
[All photographs courtesy Mickey Smith. View her website here.]
—–
* There have been non-Blurb books that have won various awards over the past few years. Elisabeth Tonnard’s In this Dark Wood, and Cara Phillip’s Singular Beauty to name two.
** I am not an employee of Blurb, but I consult with the contest organizers as the lead judge.
Phil Underdown, a photographer from Upstate New York (who was my curator’s choice for last years’ Hey, Hot Shot! competition, and who also received an Honorable Mention at the 2010 Photography Book Now competition), just sent me some photographs of his dummy for the series Trapper’s Lament. He made the book using MagCloud (HP Indigo press print-on-demand technology) to print the signatures, and then bound them by hand in a fairly straight forward binding, using inkjet canvas on the hardcover. It is a brilliant use of old and new technologies to self-publish. Bravo, Phil!
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields exhibition, Fraenkel Gallery, 2009
Dear friends and readers,
As of April 15, I will have a new email address: dhimes@fraenkelgallery.com.
I am thrilled to announce that I have accepted a position as Assistant Director at Fraenkel Gallery, effective mid-April. Yes, I’m moving to San Francisco.
Happily, I will continue to serve on the board of Radius Books, the (amazing) non-profit publishing company that was co-founded with colleagues in 2007; I will also continue to work on certain titles and on new project acquisitions. I’m very proud of the publishing program that we have been able to establish at Radius Books, through the hard work and dedication of the entire team. From books with recognized artists—Lee Friedlander: New Mexico was his 33rd book, and is now sold out—to first monographs with numerous artists—Colleen Plumb, David Taylor, Janelle Lynch, Michael Lundgren, Judy Tuwaletstiwa, Julie Blackmon, Otto Donald Rogers—to a whole slew of titles with artists I have long admired, such as Mark Klett, Michael Light, John Gossage, Alec Soth, Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, among others. Each title has been unique and we sincerely believe together have contributed to the great dialogue among artists and society.
The new offices for Radius Books, Santa Fe
We have published over 30 books in the last 4 years, which is an accomplishment in and of itself. We’ve also established a library donation program which gets books out to a wide range of students, libraries and institutions around the country. This kind of wide dissemination of important bodies of work is what drives us. David Chickey will continue to serve as Publisher (and Creative Director) of Radius Books, and David Skolkin remains integrally involved with production management for the company. Masumi Shibata, another designer on staff, continues to assist with creative aspects of the books and I’m thankful for his ongoing involvement.
Edward Hopper & Company exhibition, 2009
Sol Lewitt exhibition, Fraenkel Gallery, 2010
FRAENKEL GALLERY
In speaking about my impression of the Gallery over the years (and my complete awe in regards to their publishing program), I’ve often held back somewhat and simply said, “They’re the best photography gallery in North America.” But that’s simply not true (think Atget, Arbus, Adams, Evans, Friedlander, Fuss, Grannan, Marclay, Meatyard, Misrach, Sugimoto, Watkins, Winogrand and on and on…). Fraenkel Gallery is, dare I say, the best photography gallery anywhere.
Established in 1979, it resides at 49 Geary Street, a location where I have often walked in and been awed by the caliber and scope of work presented. I will never forget the “Edward Hopper & Company” exhibition of 2009 which was the best show I’d seen that year in any institution, whether public or private (see above). The artists represented by the Gallery are heroes of photography students worldwide (including myself), and the dose of inspiration regularly presented on their walls is intoxicating.
All of that is without even mentioning the book program! Many of these books I was able to review during my tenure as the editor of the Photo-Eye Booklist, where I developed a love for their attention to detail and book production (something we strive for at Radius!), in addition to the amazing content.
The team at Fraenkel Gallery operates as just that: a team. Jeffrey Fraenkel and Frish Brandt have created an environment that is professional, warm and inviting, a rare combination in any field. I’m proud to join them.
This is a big change, and one that I am jumping into with both feet. I will have a new home—a home situated in a city on a bay with an amazing history. The overlapping histories of San Francisco are legendary, forming one of the richest tapestries in the country. What is interwoven there are deep and fascinating stories that relate not only to the development of photography, but to the intersection of the East and the West and of the entirety of the Americas, as well as a history paramount to the development of this American democracy. I can’t wait to absorb, digest and share it all for years to come.
Darius Himes
Santa Fe, April 2011
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Photography: A Very Short Introduction
Words Without Pictures (Aperture, 2010)
Short Track, by Jake Mendel
Bird Watching, by Paula McCartney
