Mary Ellen Mark has selected the winner of this years’ Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography. The “first book” aspect is in support of photographers for whom this is their first published book of work. Jennette Williams’s black-and-white photographs of women bathers was selected as the fourth title to be published through the Prize, which is awarded biennially. Previous winners include Larry Schwarm’s Prairie Fire work in 2003, Steven B. Smith’s series titled Constructed Landscapes of the American West, in 2005 and Danny Wilcox Frazier’s absolutely stunning photo-essay on rural Iowa.
On the depictive level, the work is straightforward and thoughtfully speaks to the physical realities of aging bodies. But coupled with her unassuming approach is an elegance and quietude that is half location—Eastern European and Turkish baths—and half observer. Avoiding obvious pitfalls—photographing nude women has many pitfalls—Williams offers the viewer a chance to reflect on the presence a physical body has in the world.
PRESS RELEASE:
Jennette Williams, a fine arts photography instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, has been selected to receive the fourth Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography for her stunning platinum prints and color photographs of women at European and Turkish bath houses.
Celebrated photographer Mary Ellen Mark judged the competition and chose Williams for the prize because of her “original and beautifully rendered” photographs. “Jennette is both an excellent documentary photographer and a superb portraitist — a rare combination.” Mark also commented on the difficult decision she had to make, given the quality of the submissions. “It was a long and challenging process — especially knowing how much passion and work the photographers put into their projects.”
“What makes for beauty in women? How do we as a society perceive women as they age?” Williams writes of the bathers she portrays in these sublime and sensuous photographs. “I began with what were simple intentions. I wanted to photograph without sentiment or objectification women daring enough to stand, without embarrassment or excuse, before my camera and I wanted my photographs to be beautiful. . . . I drew upon classical gestures and poses from Titian, Ingres, and Pre-Raphaelites (to name a few) and utilized the platinum printing process to assure a sense of timelessness, as if the older or ‘normal’ woman has always been a subject of the arts.”
Jennette Williams is from New York City, and in 1994 she began making photographs of women attending exercise classes at the “once elegant, now dilapidated, indoor pool” on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where she took her children for swimming lessons. Eventually, she expanded the scope of her project “to include new sites and their bathing rites and rituals, to broaden the age range of the subjects, and to photograph the aging body usually (safely) covered from view.”
The Bathers will be published in Fall 2009 by Duke University Press in association with CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.
Chicago photographer Dave Jordano is someone whose work I have admired for the past several years, ever since seeing his images on the Photographer Showcase over at photo-eye. His first monograph, titled Articles of Faith, is due to be released later this Spring by The Center for American Places, which is now part of Columbia College, in Chicago.The project is about churches and houses of worship on Chicago’s south side. Dave goes further: “This documentary project investigates the concept of how a sense of belonging and place can influence the development of a small segment of a community and helps preserve long-standing traditions of cultural and religious belief.”
I was asked by the publisher to review the work ahead of publication and here were my thoughts, as sent to the publisher:
“The vast diversity of religious expression that is found on our planet stems, ultimately, from the vast diversity of humanity itself. Jordano’s photographs of Christian faithful and the houses of worship on chicago’s south Side are a telescopic view of the richness of spiritual sentiment and devotion that has flourished in one tiny corner of this vast, diverse landscape. The insightful and educative essay by Carla Williams is of particular note, perfectly complementing the tender gaze of Jordano’s images. Out of the specificity that these photographs of such particular places conveys rises a sense of binding unity. Worship of the Divine, no matter where it is found, is touched by the same set of universal human impulses and yearnings. The tension between the particular and universal is wonderfully captured in this book.”
Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders, the 92nd Street Y has grown into a wide-ranging cultural, educational and community center serving people of all ages, races, faiths and backgrounds. The 92nd Street Y’s mission is to enrich the lives of the over 300,000 people who visit each year — both in person and through the Y’s satellite, television, radio and Internet broadcasts. The organization offers comprehensive performing arts, film and spoken word events; courses in the humanities, the arts, personal development and Jewish culture; activities and workshops for children, teenagers and parents; and health and fitness programs for people of every age.
Jeff begins by thinking through Friedlander’s physical approach to photographing, the sense of walking and wandering and peering over and through the urban and wilderness landscape that he encounters. He then muses on a certain sense of dissatisfaction with the work. I really appreciate the line of questioning that Jeff raises, culminating in “One of the most damning questions to ask of a book” which is “Is this necessary?”
In my opinion, this question is as crucial to the experience of creating and editing a book as it is in reading and viewing it from the perspective of the audience. Jeff goes on to state the following: “When I look over Lee’s accomplishments in 33 books and counting I find it difficutl to say yes to this one. It is not because this book is without merit, I think so simply because these bases have been well covered in a few other books now. Almost every photograph here is accounted for in similar versions elsewhere.”
In many senses, I agree with Jeff. I remember one of our first conversations with Mr. Friedlander, where he bluntly told us that “This is not an important body of work, so I don’t want a big pretentious monograph.” Since the project had initially been conceived as an accompaniment to an exhibition, we felt this allowed us the chance to be more playful and creative with our approach to the design, materials and binding of the book, as Jeff points out.
The question of what is important and what isn’t is a broad one, and ultimately a very rich one. In a world where triviality bombards us on all sides and which more often than not keeps us numb to the larger, more systemic problems facing humanity, the last thing I want to do is produce more of it. In thinking through Friedlander’s comment then, that this slim group of photographs of New Mexico was not an “important” body of work, I took it in the sense that this work is not ground-breaking. He’s not pushing the envelope, he’s not looking to re-forge a photographic identity, he’s not looking to make his name with these photographs, nor, in the end, with this book.
Friedlander has been making books since he was a young man. His first book, which was ground-breaking and did forge a photographic identity for him, and which made his name, was also, at its heart, a similar study to what the New Mexico book aspires to: a study of what things look liked photographed and what role the photographer plays in that looking.
At 74 years old, Friedlander does not seem about to change his visual vocabulary (though I wouldn’t rule it out) and in that sense, there is no new ground being broken in terms of his own personal, visual language. He likes driving in plain-jane rental cars and he likes casually wandering down sidewalks across America. He likes his super-wide Hasselblad and he likes photographing 4-5 days a week. To me, the experience of the New Mexico book is one that resonates on a level of, not only attentiveness to one’s surroundings as experienced on foot, but also to the steady, contented workings of a man in the autumn of his life who has found his voice and is happy “speaking” about almost any subject.
I like to think of each of Friedlander’s books as though they are each a poem in an anthology. And while Lee Friedlander: New Mexico doesn’t carry the same weight as his 1970 Self-Portrait or The American Monument, or even his collaborations with Jim Dine, I’m still happy for the quirkiness of The Little Screens or the visual chaos of The Desert Seen and even the sweet quietude of Stems. Were they all necessary, as books? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I’m glad he’s still steadily making work no matter where he goes, and I’m still glad he’s engaged with the book form.
[Big thanks to Jeff for all his thoughts on photobooks and for bringing his thoughts to this book!]
Photographer Richard Renaldi has just announced the launch of both a new book—Fall River Boys—and a new publishing company—Charles Lane Press. He intends to self-distribute the new book, which can be purchased (come February 2009) through the website or in a handful of art and design bookstores around the country.
Richard says, “This book is the culmination of over 8 years of photographing primarily young men and cityscapes in the town of Fall River, Massachusetts.
Fall River Boys is what I consider to be a complete vision. All of our decisions have been made with quality in mind, and we feel that we have not compromised in any way with this book. It is the mission of Charles Lane Press to maintain the highest levels of quality—from the papers we select, and the craftsmanship of the German printers we work with, to the quality of our bindings and design.”
His 2006 Aperture monograph, entitled Figure and Ground, deftly combined portraiture and landscape in a quiet and lyrical manner. I’m looking forward to seeing the new work.
Photographer Karl Baden, who runs a wonderful website called Covering Photography (which explores the relationship between photography and book covers) has just curated a show by the same name. Covering Photography will run through Dec. 31 in the Rare Books Department at the Boston Public Library (open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.). “The exhibit explores the influence of iconic photographs on book cover design by comparing book covers from Baden’s own collection that he believes were either directly appropriated or influenced by famous photographs, with book illustrations of the original photographs, as the photographer meant them to be seen.” Well worth checking out.
I’ve been thinking about Lee Friedlander a great deal this month. For one thing, we just launched Lee Friedlander: New Mexico (with Radius Books and Andrew Smith Gallery). It was Friedlander’s 33rd book, a fact that sent me back to his massive 2005 MoMA retrospective catalogue to both verify and remind myself of all the books that had come before ours.
In the back of this massive exhibition catalogue (which, after all, accompanied what was the largest photographic exhibition by a living photographer in the history of MoMA) is a section entitled Books, Special Editions, and Portfolios (compiled by Dalia Azim) and which chronicles Friedlander’s output of printed matter. The first entry on the list, Photographs & Etchings (By Friedlander and Jim Dine) is from 1969. The last entry, #46, is Sticks & Stones: Architectural America, and is dated 2004. (There are several books since 2004 that I can think of, such as Cherry Blossom Time in Japan, Frederick Law Olmsted Landscapes, and of course, Lee Friedlander: New Mexico).
In talking with Lee about his books, he told us that the New Mexico book was his 33rd book (!!) and of those, Katy Homans had designed 21 (!!). I also asked him which were his favorites, to which he ever-so diplomatically replied with an analogy—”They’re like children. How can you choose a favorite?”
Below are the spreads from the MoMA catalogue which outline his books and portfolios. Many of these, thankfully, are still in-print. Friedlander, Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Diane Arbus, and the Bechers form a sort of cadre, a set of progenitors whose actions have influenced nearly all things that have happened in the last three to four decades in contemporary photography. (Lewis Baltz and Ed Ruscha are like the step-sons of this nuclear family).
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.
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.
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!
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.”
Photography: A Very Short Introduction
Words Without Pictures (Aperture, 2010)
Short Track, by Jake Mendel
Bird Watching, by Paula McCartney