Swann auction galleries in New York held a “photographic literature and photographs” sale on May 15 and the results just ended up in my inbox. Go take a look at what was sold and for how much here.
Gallerist and art dealer Gavin Rooke is the brains and energy behind The Society of Photographers, which is comprised of “a collection of contemporary photographers based across the globe. The Society operates on a unique system of anonymity and invitation-only membership to ensure that only the best work is revealed to the general public.” (Sounds mysteriously exclusive.)
For the past two years, however, Gavin has organized an invitation-only contest which is followed by a publication and traveling exhibition. In 2007, the book/exhibition was called TEN. Photographers submitted portfolios of ten images and the ten winning entries had their work published in a handsome volume. The various comments by the judges–which consists of society members and guests, such as myself–were also published in the book.
This year, the project and exhibition was titled 6×6. Once again, by invitation-only, photographers submitted six images and the winning entries were each published in their own small book with all six gathered in one slipcase.
This years’ chosen photographers include Erika Larsen, Paula McCartney, Ian Wolstenholme, Sasha Rudensky, Dave Jordano, and Shawn Records.
The guest judges this year were more extensive than last year and included:
ROGER BALLEN More
SHEYI ANTONY BANKALE More
DANA FACONTI More
MICHAEL FOLEY More
JASON FULFORD More
CLARE GRAFIK More
MATTHIAS HARDER More
DARIUS HIMES
KRISTEN LUBBEN More
STEPHEN SHORE More
And to see a complete list of the photographers participating in the traveling exhibition (which goes beyond just the 6 selected entries) click HERE.
The 6×6 book is now shipping and available in the States. Get yours today!
This past February, the editors of FOAM magazine asked me if I would interview Kathy Ryan, picture editor of The New York Times Magazine for their Spring issue. To which I happily said “Yes!” The New York Times Magazine is one of those weekly doses of information, energy and creativity wrapped in a smart little package that arrives at your doorstep without much fuss.
Kathy Ryan has been picture editor at the magazine for over a decade and has come to be regarded as an iconic figure within the photography community. This Spring she is participating in The New York Photo Festival in a curatorial role. My task was to ask her about the work she chose to include.
Excerpts from the interview are posted below. The entirety of the interview can be found ONLY in the printed version of the magazine, which, of course, is available at fine bookstores and newstands near you. Enjoy!
KATHY RYAN INTERVIEW Thursday February 22, 2008
The exhibit includes new works by Roger Ballen, Horacio Salinas, Stephen Gill, Katherine Wolkoff, Julian Faulhaber, Lars Tunbjörk, Alejandra Laviada, and Andreas Gefeller.
The New York Photo Festival
New York City is the acknowledged worldwide nexus of commercial and fine art photography. A sprawling galaxy of galleries, magazines, museums and auction houses all dealing in photographic arts cover Manhattan and Brooklyn, and artists are scattered throughout the five boroughs, giving the photography community a pulsing, vibrant feel.
It is surprising to note, then, that there has been a long-standing void in the photography landscape of the City that Never Sleeps. There has been no annual large-scale event dedicated to photography in recent memory. All of that changes this Spring. The inaugural New York Photo Festival (May 14–May 18, 2008) is poised to celebrate contemporary photography in a big way. Four prominent figures in the world of photography have been commissioned to curate exhibitions. The curators include Magnum photographer Martin Parr, The New York Times Magazine picture editor Kathy Ryan, Lesley A. Martin of the Aperture Foundation, and Tim Barber of tinyvices.com. Running concurrently with the curated shows will be a range of activities, including seminars, book signings, workshops, portfolio reviews and live performances.
In February, I had the chance to speak with Kathy Ryan. Her tenure at the New York Times Magazine has been lauded by both photographers and critics, in addition to the masses of readers that receive the magazine on a weekly basis. For the New York Photo Festival she has decided to curate an exhibition of contemporary photographers all of whom she sees as being in dialogue with the disciplines of painting and sculpture. The exhibition will include new work by Roger Ballen, Horacio Salinas, Stephen Gill, Katherine Wolkoff, Julian Faulhaber, Lars Tunbjörk, Alejandra Laviada, and Andreas Gefeller.
DARIUS HIMES Kathy, I’m curious about the genesis for this show. You mentioned that you wanted to bring together a group of photographers who you felt were having a dialogue with the disciplines of painting and sculpture. How did that idea evolve for you?
KATHY RYAN When Daniel Power (of powerHouse Books) and Frank Evers (of the VII Agency) approached me about curating a show, there was a period of a couple months when I simply pondered what I would do. I’m new to curating exhibitions, although being a picture editor is all about bringing photographers together in a single venue.
A pivotal moment for me was seeing some new work of Roger Ballen’s. He had visited with me last Spring to show some of his newest work, and I was just astounded by the power of the images. He had pushed the work beyond traditional photographic portraiture and seemed, to me, to be engaged in a dialogue with Picasso’s mark-making and other cubist portraiture. Both of them have produced primal images. In Ballen’s work there is the evidence of the brush stroke and the marks on the wall; the use of old pencils and wires; cat tails and fingers coming in from the edge of the frame; spilled oil; a rough sense of sculpture and painting mixed together; all of these elements in Ballen’s work struck me as continuing a dialogue that Picasso and Georges Braque had begun early in the 20th century.
DH I totally agree with you, in that Ballen has moved well beyond the confines of traditional photographic portraiture, or anything that is even remotely traditional from a photographic standpoint, even though his beginnings are squarely within the documentary tradition.
KR Definitely. Ballen takes elements of the real world but adjusts them to the medium of photography, creating new pieces that seem to me to be more in sync with the thought patterns of painters than with photographers. Ultimately, the final objects exist as photographs, but at the moment of creation they are paintings and sculptures in the real world as much as a latent image exposed on a piece of film.
When he brought this new work in, I was immediately taken with it. They are incredibly engaging and provocative on a formal level, but at the same time they exist on a deeper psychological level. There is a playful yet nightmarish undertow to his work. I was just haunted by them in the weeks that followed. He’s like a one-man school of painting and photography. There is definitely a dialogue happening, but it’s not really with other photographers.
Roger Ballen’s work showed me how to recognize the other images that would be in the show.
… [to read more, buy the magazine!]
The new issue of Bookforum is on the stands and has mailed to all subscribers. I’m happy to have a full page review of the new Max Kozloff book, The Theatre of the Face published in this issue. What follows below is a teaser for the full review. Click HERE to read the entire piece.
Feb/Mar 2008
FACE BOOK
Max Kozloff charts the history of the photographic portrait
What could be hoped for, and what lost, when the discoveries of physics and the applications of engineering worked to change culture, politics, the economy, communications, social life and perception itself? This is not the place to enlarge on such general historical debates. I am only interested in the tone they sometimes gave to the photographic depiction of the human face.
—Max Kozloff
The first elementary school portrait day that I can recall is from the second grade. I awoke knowing exactly what I would wear. It had to be my jungle-print, polyester-blend, long-sleeved T-shirt, the one with a collage of photographic imagery that included jaguars poking their heads out from the thick green underbrush. Nothing else would convey properly who I was to posterity.
Annually, when the packet of prints arrived, I met the likeness of myself with mild disappointment, which was quickly sloughed off in the hustle-bustle of trading wallet-size pictures with friends. There was one girl, on whom I had a nine-year crush that began in kindergarten, whose tiny school portrait occupied a treasured, hidden spot in my bedroom. The photograph was my talisman of her, my stand-in for the real thing.
The “real thing,” the person portrayed in a photograph, is always a bodily thing. And according to sacred traditions, the body is itself a talisman for an inner, abstract reality—the body acts as temple of the spirit, the face as mirror of the soul. These are both common phrases that we take for granted but whose deeper implications are only just below the surface.
… [to continue reading, click here.]
In the Summer of 2006, while editor of the photo-eye Booklist, I was happy to publish a review of Instant Light, a collection of Polaroids by the Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky (published by Thames and Hudson). The review was by Krishnan Venkatesh, a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, and a fan of Tarkovsky’s films. He had introduced me to the film maker’s work during my graduate school years, and when the book came across my desk, I immediately thought of Krishnan.
A new book of previously unseen photographs by Tarkovsky has just been published by White Space Gallery, in London, in association with the Tarkovsky Foundation. It is entitled Bright, Bright Day. The images were all taken in Russia and Italy between 1979 and 1984, just two years before his life was cut short by cancer, at the age of 54. The photographs range from light-filled landscapes and tender portraits to casual images of the film maker’s family and friends. Taken together, they present a man who’s singular filmic style translated readily to the visual poetry of the still image.
What follows below are a few excerpts from Poet of the Cinema. This interview is available as a bonus feature on Tarkovsky’s film, Andrei Rublev (DVD, through Netflix or any other good source). For a more thorough presentation of Tarkovsky’s philosophical underpinnings, pick up a copy of Sculpting in Time, available readily on the out-of-print book market. These are simply a few of the most poignant passages from the interview, which is wide-ranging and mostly concerns the making of the film Andrei Rublev. They contain some gems of insight, not only into Tarkovsky’s approach to making a film, but into his life and beliefs.
Tarkovsky: The pressure Rublev is subject to is not an exception. An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn’t exist, for the artist doesn’t live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world. This is the issue in Andrei Rublev; the search for harmonic relationships among men, between art and life, between time and history. That’s what my film is all about.
Another important theme [in Andrei Rublev] is man’s experience. In this film my message is that it’s impossible to pass on experience to others or learn from others’ [experience]. We must live our own experience; we cannot inherit it. People often say, “Use your father’s experience.” Too easy; each of us must get his own. But once we’ve got it, we no longer have time to use it. And the new generations rightly refuse to listen to it. They want to live it but then they also die. This is the law of life, its real meaning. We cannot impose our experience on other people or force them to feel suggested emotions. Only through personal experience, do we understand life. Rublev, the monk, lived a complex life; he studied with master Radonevsky at the Holy Trinity, but he lived at variance with his teaching. He got to see the world through his master’s eyes. Only at the end of his life did he live his own way.
“Andrey, What is art?”
Tarkovsky: Before defining art—or any concept—we must answer a far broader question. What’s the meaning of man’s life on earth? Maybe we are here to enhance ourselves spiritually. If our life tends to this spiritual enrichment, then art is a means to get there. This, of course, [is] in accordance with my definition of life. Art should help man in this process. Some say that art helps man to know the world like any other intellectual activity. I don’t believe in this possibility of knowing; I am almost an agnostic. Knowledge distracts us from our main purpose in life. The more we know the less we know; getting deeper, our horizon becomes narrower. Art enriches man’s own spiritual capabilities and he can then rise above himself to use what we call ‘free will’.
“What would you like to tell young people?”
Learn to love solitude, to be more alone with yourselves. The problem with young people is their carrying out noisy and aggressive actions not to feel lonely. And this is a sad thing. The individual must learn to be on his own as a child for this doesn’t’ mean to be alone: it means not to get bored with oneself, which is a very dangerous symptom, almost a disease.
In the first paragraph quoted here, Tarkovsky states, “Art would be useless if the world were perfect.” This simple statement requires some unpacking, for behind the surface of the statement lies some deeper implications. The reverse statement would be that art is useful when the world is imperfect. Tarkovsky sees art as useful, since he tells us the condition under which it becomes useless.
In each of the three statements which form the heart of that paragraph he discusses what he sees as the motivations behind art: the artist exists because the world is not perfect; art would be useless if the world were perfect; art is born out of an ill-designed world; man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. What emerges from this tiny constellation of statements is a belief that the artistic impulse is born of the desire to seek out and create harmony and perfection. We lack perfection, we live in imperfection, and from that state emerges the artist, the harmonizer.
It is, quite honestly, a very optimistic belief, and a very traditional understanding of the role of the artist in society. Man’s true nature is both material and spiritual, and art must take into account both sides. Tarkovsky employs the word “useful” and the reader clearly understands that any utilitarian use of a film is ludicrous; it is implied that a “spiritual” usefulness is what he is getting at. In the broadest sense, Tarkovsky sees the visual and performing arts as having an educational role in society–a reminder that life is comprised of more than just the material. In short, he aspires to awaken the spiritual.
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.
***
This would have been an inconceivable artistic task in the late 1980s. What would have been the point when Azo, Kodabromide, and graded gelatin silver papers of every variety were still widely available and the norm? But at this point in our history, as news of the folding of company after company arrives in my inbox on a weekly basis, the sheer subtlety and variety of photographic surfaces and materials is lovely to behold. It both honors the material support of the medium and makes one aware of what has passed before, and now, sadly, has passed away.
A certain type of photography has definitely died.
***
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.
Dear friends and colleagues,
First, thank you for stopping by and visiting my new website.
For the past 5 years, I’ve worked as the editor of a fantastic, little quarterly magazine by the name of photo-eye Booklist. It has been a labor of love to take what had been a black-and-white mail order catalogue and slowly turn it into an international, community supported, beautifully designed object that mixes the vibrancy of a photography magazine with the depth of a literary journal. It was always my intention to make it a celebration of the “dramatic event called a book.”
So, I’d like to start off this blog–and I’ll get to the notion of “blogging” in a minute”–by thanking Rixon Reed of photo-eye, who gave me the opportunity and space to work on a journal that I am proud of. I’d also like to wholeheartedly thank all of the publishers, writers and photographers that we were able to work with at the magazine (and you are numerous).
If you’re reading this, then you’ve realized that I am currently involved with lots of various things. First and foremost is Radius Books, a new publishing company devoted to the arts, based in Santa Fe, distributed by D.A.P., and formed by myself and 3 other extremely creative individuals.
Now, back to “blogging” and writing and what you’ll find here. My life revolves, happily, around photography and books. Simply put, I like to look at photography and books and I like to write about photography and books. What you will find here will be a regular column of reviews along with occasional posts on a variety of topics.
I hope you enjoy! I’ll leave you with a favorite quote:
“A photobook is an autonomous art form, comparable with a piece of sculpture, a play or a film. The photographs lose their own photographic character as things ‘in themselves’ and become parts, translated into printing ink, of a dramatic event called a book.” –Ralph Prins
darius
