DariusHimes

All around the country, editors and writers have agonized over their list of favorite books from the previous year, publishing them** as guides to gift-giving for the art-lover on your holiday list. But the official shopping season is now over. Money has been spent, gifts given, bellies distended from all of Mom’s cooking.

For the truly obsessed book hound, however, the time to linger over, to covet and dream about the next photobook purchase*** never really ends; indeed, visions of sugar-plum-colored books are only a click away.

What follows is my own personal list of favorite photobooks of 2007. Some will be familiar because they were featured during my tenure at photo-eye; others will be less familiar simply because they are brand-spanking new. I’ve decided to keep the reviews short and sweet–generally 2-3 sentences–with links to the website of either the publisher or gallery that published the book. Enjoy!

A Shimmer of Possibility, by Paul Graham. Published by steidlMACK, Gottingen. $250.00
In November, Blind Spot and Fred & Associates co-sponsored a day of panel discussions on art, photography and commerce at the New York Public Library. It became clear during the last panel discussion that Paul Graham was someone who has thoughtfully considered the state of contemporary photography, it’s historical roots, the kinship it has with literature and film, and a host of other topics. In short, he’s articulate and careful with words, along with being a brilliant photographer. A Shimmer of Possibility was featured on the cover of the Fall issue of the photo-eye Booklist, and Paul was interviewed by Richard Woodward inside. It was one of my favorite pieces to publish along with being my absolute favorite book (set of books, really) of the year.

Parking Spaces, by Martin Parr. Published by Chris Boot, London. $130.00
Parr is a modern-day “man of letters”, an intellectual and an aesthete, a critic of contemporary life, of society’s hopes and foibles, always mirrored back to us with the sly humor of one who betrays a deep concern for individuals, above and beyond the biting critique and poignant jabs at theories and politicians. My advice: if Martin has a new book out, go get it.

Putting Back the Wall, by John Gossage. Published by Loosestrife Editions, Tucson. $75.00
Gossage is a thinking man’s photographer, an artist, alchemist and trickster who combines a complex visual language with a wry approach that is at once disarming and inviting. This new volume is the follow-up companion to his massive (and brilliant) Berlin in the Time of the Wall, from 2004.

The Nature of Photographs, by Stephen Shore. Published by Phaidon, London. $39.95
I’ve said it before elsewhere: if I could make all students of photography read only two books, this would be one! The other? Charlotte Cotton’s The Photograph as Contemporary Art, from a couple years ago.

Fireflies, by Gregory Crewdson. Published by Skarstedt Fine Art, New York. $45.00
Crewdson’s elaborate stagings are grandiose and self-important regardless of the captivating nature of their visuals. Before he arrived at his present state, however, Crewdson played around with–and photographed to great effect–fireflies in the countryside of upstate New York. There is wonder and mystery here, untainted by big budgets.

Passing Through Eden, by Tod Papageorge. Published by Steidl, Gottingen. $60.00
This is the first monograph by one of photography’s most legendary educators and essayists. It is an elegant book that allows the strength and poetry of Papageorge’s street work–all made in and around Central Park in the 70s–to shine through.

Shaolin: Temple of Zen, by Justin Guariglia. Published by Aperture, New York. $40.00
The essence of any martial art and, indeed, of any discipline that involves monks, is a spiritual philosophy. And conveying this inner truth through photographs of an outer reality is a challenging proposition. Guariglia’s photographs shine with clear intent, and the editing and sequencing by Aperture’s publisher Lesley A. Martin makes for a book whose total is greater than the sum of its parts.

Eyes in His Eyes, by Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Published by Rose Gallery, Santa Monica. $50.00
Manuel Alvarez Bravo is legendary for many reasons, not least of which is his dedication to his country and to photography as a thoroughly modern and powerful means of communication. His experimentations with color photography, in the autumn of his life, is handsomely packaged by the prestigious Rose Gallery.

Snowbound, by Lisa M. Robinson. Published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg. $60.00
Gracing the cover of my last issue as editor at photo-eye, Lisa Robinson’s photograph of ice-covered signs on the southern edge of Lake Ontario is mesmerizing and ominous. Her first monograph elegantly distills the essence of quiet winter.

Jean Luc Mylayne. Published by Twin Palms, Santa Fe. $60.00
Slipping into 2007 just before the New Year, this self-titled book by French photographer Mylayne is a wonder to behold. Mylayne’s photographs of birds in his native France are bizarre and captivating, appearing to involve multiple points of focus and impossible depth of field. How does he do it? By using lenses of his own creation. This technical magic is perfectly suited to his flittering subject matter.

The Theatre of the Face, by Max Kozloff. Published by Phaidon, London. $69.95
Kozloff is one of photography’s most potent and penetrating critics. Here he takes a familiar theme–portraiture–and distills it down to it’s essential, core ideas. Then he expands that across the century, searching for the most unique and powerful examples. I’ll say no more here; read my upcoming review of this book in the Feb/Mar 2008 issue of Bookforum.

Springtown, by Rachael Dunville. Self-published, New York. $20.00
One of the things that was glaringly absent from this years’ Art Basel/Miami extravaganza was honest, penetrating, straightforward, captivating, sincere, and emotionally vulnerable portraiture. Dunville serves up 15 such portraits in this handsome little catalogue. Hopefully it will be the harbinger of a larger monograph to come.
[Full disclosure: I offered the artist some off-hand advice early on in the process of putting together this book. She then ran with it, of her own accord.]

The Book of Shadows. Published by Fraenkel Gallery. $45.00
The flea-markets and antique stores of the world have yielded some of their best and most obscure treasures to the scrutinizing eye of Jeffrey Fraenkel. In this gorgeous book, some 80-odd snapshots produced by the cameras of anonymous practitioners all have one thing in common: the photographer’s shadow plays a prominent role.

Crimean Snobbism, by Boris Mikhailov. Published by Rat Hole, Tokyo. $45.00
Ukrainian photographer Mikhailov came to critical attention in the mid-90s, having survived the dissolution of the Soviet empire and discovered to have been a prolific and creative photographer. Every couple of years, a book of either new or archival work is published; madcap quirkiness tinged with the erotic–a muse that even communist tyrants can’t erradicate–is the common denominator to most of his publications, including this one.

On The Beach, by Richard Misrach. Published by Aperture, New York City. $85.00
Purportedly ALREADY out-of-print, Misrach’s massive new tome explores the fragility of human nature, and the nature of the sublime. Stretching 16×20 inches, the book is gorgeously designed and printed. Watch for a lengthy interview between myself and Misrach to be published this Spring (publication to be announced).

Bill Jay’s Album, by Bill Jay. Published by Nazraeli Press, Portland. $50.00
Jay was one of my professors as an undergraduate in photography at ASU, Tempe, in the late 80s; he was then, as he is now, a gregarious, sprightly fount of knowledge and opinions about everything under the sun. He loves talking with photographers, and this new volume (1 of 2, I hear) features portraits of famous and obscure photographers along with biographical sketches drawn from personal reminiscences with each. Read an interview with Jay about this new book at PDN online.

Saguaros, by Mark Klett. Published by Radius Books, Santa Fe. $75.00
I’ll start with the full disclosure: I am the publisher of this book. This Fall, myself and three other creative individuals have founded Radius Books, and Mark’s work was at the top of our list to publish. But we wouldn’t have published it if we didn’t love the work. For 25 years, Klett has been photographing saguaro cacti in the Sonoran Desert that stretches from Phoenix into northern Mexico. Culled from over 300 images, this book presents roughly 70 images of the massive desert dwellers.

*Each quarter, the photo-eye Booklist ran reviews and features on some of the best books of the season. The contents of all four issues of 2007 represent a pretty full list of the best books of 2007. You can still get copies of the quarterly journal at photo-eye.

**The other “Best Photobooks of the Year” lists that I’ve found are below. Got another? Send it to me!

Richard Woodward, Wall Street Journal
The editors at PDN
The staff at American Photo
Jeff Ladd at his blog 5b4
Martin Parr contributes his list to The Sunday Times, UK, published on December 2nd.

Unfortunately, neither The New York Times nor The Village Voice published a list of favorite art or photography books. With so many fantastic photography books and so many great critics and writers out there, one would have thought…. alas…

***You can find all of these books at various locations around the country (though for some you will need to be rather sleuthy)! Places to look (and please support the independents that are earnestly struggling to hold onto their dream of community based bookstores): Dashwood Books and The Strand Bookstore in NYC, Arcana Books in LA, Shaden.com in Europe, and my old haunt, photo-eye in Santa Fe. But for a nice full list of independent bookstores, visit the “store locator” on D.A.P.’s website. Happy year-round shopping.

The death of photography is rapidly becoming a weekly pronouncement, it seems. Earlier this Fall, I interviewed Bill Jay for PDN online magazine (to be published soon!) at his home in San Diego where he mentioned being misquoted about the “death of photography” and just last week, critic Peter Plagens published a piece for Newsweek magazine, titled “Is Photography Dead?”

Well, the answer is Yes. Or at least, this is what Stephen Bulger indicated to me when he announced his first exhibition of 2008, The Death of Photography. Stephen asked me to contribute a short essay for the catalogue which is forthcoming (and will be available for purchase directly from the gallery).

What I’m posting here is the twice-as-long text of the essay which I wrote for the catalogue. In order to read the finished piece you’ll have to buy the catalogue!

Cheers, darius

THE DEATH OF PHOTOGRAPHY
An exhibition at Stephen Bulger Gallery. An essay by Darius Himes.

I still vividly remember my first summer home from college when I discovered the family cat sitting quietly under a bush in the back yard, its face gaunt and breathing shallow. Death was hovering around her, and the care with which the vet euthanized her and placed her curled body in a box has stuck with me. But that was Iowa farm country, and death was everywhere, as was life, both preceding and following death as naturally as dawn follows the night.

That was the summer of ’89. I was listening to A Tribe Called Quest on vinyl, REM on cd, and Morrisey on cassette. I wasn’t wearing parachute pants any more, but I was growing my hair out. The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Spanish author Camilo Jose Cela that year, Lee Friedlander (who hadn’t yet appeared on my radar screen) had just published Like a One-Eyed Cat, and the freshmen who entered Photo 101 classes this past Fall had just been born.

That school year, I had been studying photography with Bill Jay, William Jenkins, and Mary Anne Redding at Arizona State University. They awakened me to a life in photography, and thankfully, they are all still alive themselves.

But photography is not. It has since died. Or at least, that’s what Bill Jay told me the other day when we were working on an interview together about a new book of photographs he has just published.

“This past summer,” Bill related over a diner breakfast, “a British magazine did a profile of my photographic life in England, which ended really when I left in 1972. They quoted me as saying that ‘I was very disappointed not to be at the birth of photography but I am pleased that I was present at its end.’” Bill chuckled at the absurdity of the thought. “I don’t remember saying that at all! But now that I’ve been quoted, I want to write a piece about why I must have said it. I think the ‘end of photography’ has been happening over the last 30 years…”

“What do you mean by ‘photography’, Bill?” I asked, and he came around to the changes in the family-like aspect of the community. “It is the end of the medium as an international fraternity of like-minded people who appreciate the unique characteristics of photography. That has almost disappeared. There is a sense that there are no masters, no standards by which to judge the merit of a photograph. I am not disparaging that, but I think it is interesting. People running the galleries and museums are not practitioners, like they once were. And I am saying that photography as a unique enterprise is over.”

***

The history of technology from the mid-19th century forward is, as we all know, a litany of birth and death. It is rumored that the US patent office infamously toyed with closing in the early 1840s, stating that “everything that was going to be invented already had.”

Shortly thereafter, photography was born to a handful of scientists and intellectuals—a group of ‘men of letters’ that indubitably included women as well. By the time William Henry Fox Talbot (b. 1800) and Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (b. 1787)—the two best known of the founders—had passed away, it was the 1880s, and over a hundred distinct photographic techniques had already come into existence. Photographers were producing calotypes, collotypes, woodburytypes and, of course, daguerreotypes, along with brown, blue, purple, and gold-toned prints. Egg whites, gun cotton, piss, glass, paper and metals of all sorts found their way into the pantheon of materials that made up the photographic arsenal. Into the 20th century, that list only continued to swell. As the number of photographer’s studios and expeditionary surveys to remote locations of the world flourished—and the public’s appetite for views of themselves and their surroundings grew—so did the businesses catering to and providing photographic equipment and materials.

And as with any business enterprise, it was inevitable that, one by one, some would begin to die off.

***

***

In the common vernacular, we allude to death and killing in innumerable ways and shades, with the casually proclaimed “I’m gonna kill you…” being one of the most exaggerated and blatantly misused prefatory phrases in English. “He’ll just die when he hears this,” being another outstanding example.

Both physically and metaphorically, every- and anything can and will die. Batteries, engines, careers, romances and dairy products all expire on a regular basis. The French refer to orgasms as “little deaths.” And for every feeder goldfish and pair of gerbils sold, there are just as many children across the continent that learn about little deaths far before they know about the French variety.

Death, it would seem, is all around us. Only one of the bands that I listed above is still performing together, and the fashions I was wearing then are thrift store fodder now. Cela passed away in 2002 and Friedlander’s book is long out-of-print—all these major and minor deaths.

But to look at things this way is to stray into the realm of nostalgia about “the way things were.” To a very real extent, we have photography itself to blame for this. Were it not for the existence of photographs, we wouldn’t know what it looked like “back in the day.” The “Kodak moment” has fueled the modern affliction of extreme sentimentality for things past. Perhaps the urbanization of North America also has played its role, to the extent that the life cycle of house plants and pets is the extent that most people are in real contact with births and deaths.

Saying that death is all around us is as much a truism as saying that life is all around us. They go hand in hand.

There is precariousness to the revolutionary qualities of this medium. As photographers, we rely on a worldwide industry for the tools of our trade—no one among us can whip up a batch of Ektachromes at home, or call down to the corner store for a batch of Polaroids, or forge a f/5.6, 150mm lens in our workshop. We are at the mercy of the industry.

And that industry is in rapid flux. Unlike many other trades, a working commercial photographer cannot simply buy some equipment, develop his skills, and pursue a career for 30 years. Now, on the average of every 3-4 years, the equipment and software that one has recently mastered must be completely replaced and relearned. You cannot just own a camera, but you must have all of the attendant hardware and software to run the camera and process and store its images.

Artists in other disciplines have the luxury of mastering a skill in tandem with a particular instrument and then using that instrument for the remainder of their career. Imagine the uproar that musicians, of all sorts, would feel if they were forced to sell they’re Steinways and Stratocasters every four years—and to then be forced to learn the nuances of a completely new instrument that used the musical principles of the previous instrument only in a cursory manner. On top of that, throw in the destruction and reprinting in a different language of all sheet music every decade. Something along those lines has been happening in photography.

***

The control of photographic materials and their availability is something that is completely out of our hands, making nostalgia over commercial products risky business. Steam trains were a glorious, revolutionizing invention, yet, how many of us pine for such travel? The Edsel, the Packard, International Harvester, and Concord were also cool at one time.

Preservation and knowledge are another point entirely. On a surface level, knowledge once gained is never lost, especially in our present age of recording. Yet, as Robert Burley points out, there is a sinister irony in the current situation. Trade secrets within the photography industry have left the community with a void of accessible information on how to reproduce the very methods of reproduction that humanity has come to rely on.

The current surge of interest in “alternative photographic processes” is possible in large part precisely because the chemical formulas are simple, handmade, and above all, written down. You or I or our great grandchildren will be able to make platinum prints just like the founders. The same is not true, or has yet to be seen, for the sheer number of copyrighted, company-specific products that are rapidly disappearing from the shelves of camera stores worldwide.

Perhaps the photography we have known will return to its beginnings: a rare, magical craft clung to by a cluster of devoted men and women who hover in that middle gray (was it Zone V or VI?) between the arts and sciences.

I have long admired Vince Aletti’s writing on photography. Who, in the photography and publishing community, hasn’t eagerly looked forward to his year-end list of Top Ten photobooks produced annually for a number of years for The Village Voice, where he was editor of the art pages up until just a couple years ago? And what photographer, established or unknown, who has mounted a show in New York City, hasn’t anxiously awaited the arrival of the weekly New Yorker, praying that their exhibition was reviewed in 100 words or less in “Goings On About Town”?

The chance to become deeply familiar with Aletti’s style and tone over a series of essays was first deliciously served up in 2001 by Andrew Roth’s magical tome, The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the 20th Century. Roth, a rare book dealer, collector and photobook connoisseur based in New York had decided to publish a very personal list of just that: photographic books he considered to be the most seminal of the century that had just come to a close. He enlisted a handful of essayists and artists to contribute to the volume, including Daido Moriyama, Shelley Rice and Jeffrey Fraenkel, but he conscripted both Aletti and David Levi Strauss, another prominent photography critic and writer, for the brunt of the work. They evenly split the list of 101 books, and set about writing summaries of each artist’s life, work, publishing history, as well as the contents and salient features of the book in question, all within the space of 300-600 words.

In short, these reviews are nothing short of brilliant for their lucidity, expository nature, and sheer brevity. I’ve been recommending it as a concise history of the medium to photography students (and who of us aren’t students?) since the book first appeared.

I can only imagine, as a writer, that the project must have been daunting at first; constraining oneself to a limited space is generally more difficult than an open-ended assignment. But the mini-essays that were eventually published reveal no traces of the difficulty I imagine. By the end of the task, the discipline required to begin, and the discipline surely gained from having written 50 reviews spanning two-thirds of the entire history of the medium of photography, I can only imagine had a lasting effect.

Aletti now not only writes brief reviews of shows in “Goings On About Town” (among contributing essays and interviews to various books and journals), but he is one of a half dozen critics charged by that magazine with covering the performing and visual arts in a regular column entitled “Critic’s Notebook.” These columns appear scattered within the “Goings On About Town” section and are briefer than anything from The Book of 101 Books, weighing in at roughly 150 words each.

But they are masterful. Below are my own notes made in studying one of Aletti’s recent “Critic’s Notebook” entries, (Nov. 19, 2007).

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK: Art and Soul. Vince Aletti, writing about Fazal Sheikh
November 19, 2007
[Full text]
The photographs in Fazal Sheikh’s first exhibition, in 1995, were portraits of refugees who’d fled civil unrest in Sudan, Somalia, and Ethiopia and found shelter in Kenya. His most recent works, currently on view at the Princeton University Art Museum, depict Indian widows and girls who have found themselves to be outcasts in a culture where female infanticide still regularly occurs. In between, Sheikh has worked in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Brazil, and the Netherlands, documenting the displaced and the persecuted—people whose basic human rights are at stake. A compact, engrossing survey of this work at Pace/MacGill couldn’t look less like photojournalism. Sheikh’s subjects are not anonymous victims; all but a few are identified by name. At once descriptive and loving, and warm rather than cool, the photographs are extraordinarily moving portraits in the classic mode (think Julia Margaret Camera and Irving Penn), whose aesthetic weight is multiplied by the power of their maker’s concern.

[I’ve broken out each sentence and then summarized it.]
1. The photographs in Fazal Sheikh’s first exhibition, in 1995, were portraits of refugees who’d fled civil unrest in Sudan, Somalia, and Ethiopia and found shelter in Kenya.
[1. A beginning point of some kind.]

2. His most recent works, currently on view at the Princeton University Art Museum, depict Indian widows and girls who have found themselves to be outcasts in a culture where female infanticide still regularly occurs.
[2. The current exhibition being reviewed.]

3. In between, Sheikh has worked in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Brazil, and the Netherlands, documenting the displaced and the persecuted—people whose basic human rights are at stake.
[3. The range of work that has been produced since the aforementioned beginning and the current show in question.]

4. A compact, engrossing survey of this work at Pace/MacGill couldn’t look less like photojournalism.
[4. Back to the present with mention of a second current show, and a short but powerful description.]

5. Sheikh’s subjects are not anonymous victims; all but a few are identified by name.
[5. The subject matter and approach of the work being shown.]

6. At once descriptive and loving, and warm rather than cool, the photographs are extraordinarily moving portraits in the classic mode (think Julia Margaret Camera and Irving Penn), whose aesthetic weight is multiplied by the power of their maker’s concern.
[6. Summary of the attitude of the work. This becomes the kicker sentence, where one uses the most glowing terms one wants.]

6 sentences, 154 words

What these brief columns provide is a chance to hear the voice of the critic as ‘guide,’ one of the most useful roles a critic can play. They guide one into the landscape of a genre, a medium, and in this case in particular, a truly gifted artist and his exhibition.