Review: Winogrand, Gary. Figments From The Real World. NY: MoMA, 1983.

Winogrand is something of an oddity in that his epigrams on the craft – or the art, if he would allow – are often more impressive than his images.  Statements such as

“I photograph to find out what things look like photographed.”

“Good photographs get made despite, not because.”

resonate more deeply than pedestrian images redolent of contemporary vernacular shots reproduced over and over again on blogs and photo sites across the internet:  a head in a car window, a baby on the beach, two pairs of walking feet.  There are, of course, the iconic shots that show up in surveys of photographic history and which retain a special power: the couple in the zoo holding chimpanzees, the laughing girl with ice cream cone, girls on a park bench at the World’s Fair.  But seen as a collection, the overall impression left by much of his work is uninspiring.

Szarkowski provides an informative essay summarizing Winogrand’s career, portraying the New York native as something of a “city hick” suspicious and even contemptuous of the institutions that supported his work after the decline of the photo magazines – the galleries and the academy.   He produced only four photobooks during his lifetime, none of which enjoyed any commercial success, but experienced greater recognition and some middling fortune in the galleries and as a university lecturer.  The end of his career was a slow fade into obscurity, in which he shot, but left unedited, a third of a million images.

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Review: Curtis, Edward and Christopher Cardozo, ed. Hidden Faces (Native Nations Series). NY: Christopher Cardozo, 1997.

Actual book cover (does not include text)

I found Hidden Faces in the university database and put in a request without examining the book description.  I was a bit disappointed when a couple of days later the librarian handed me a volume I could carry in my hip pocket.  The book features approximately 50 images of mostly Navaho and Kwakiutl, the two tribes that produced and used ceremonial masks.  As the title makes clear, this is a collection of concealed faces, mostly by masks, though a few painted visages are also included. Bits of text lifted from The North American Indian describing the actor or the ceremony provide bite-sized bits of context.  In a volume this size, there is little more that can be offered.  Paper stock is weighty enough that printing on reverse doesn’t bleed through and the quality of image reproduction is quite high.  Still, this is not really something one might buy for a collection so much as an inexpensive gift.

Unfortunately this is the only volume on Curtis in the country’s university library system.  Having a poke around the internet I found a torrent of what appears to be scans of images from all 20 volumes of The North American Indian, Curtis’s monumental document of late 19th and early 20th century remnants of Native American tribes of the western United States.  What is most striking is the number of images of objects such as pottery, clothing, paintings, bags and satchels, dwellings, and flora.   Most reviews or collections – like Hidden Faces -   feature portraits, men on horseback, or dramatic landscapes.  For examples, click through for the rest of the post.

Review: Egan, Tim. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. Boston: Mariner Books, 2011..

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher is one of those rare nonfiction works that capture a time, a place, and a person so well it is a bit like reading fiction.  It helps that I am drawn to characters such as Edward Curtis, men given to wanderlust and noble – often lost –causes.  Author Tim Egan paints a rather romantic portrait of a self-taught photographer and anthropologist whose life work was to roam western North America photographing, filming, audio recording, data collecting, and writing on the remaining tribes of Native Americans.  Any hint of liaisons with Indian women, for example, is left to near the end of the story, and Curtis’ only fault seems to be his obsession with his project, leading to the ruin of his finances and marriage.

There is no question that Curtis’ three decades of intense labor is a monumental and genuine gift to humanity, a 20 volume document of the last days of the western Native Americans, The North America Indian.  Egan provides a few examples in Shadow Catcher’s final chapter of how modern descendants of several tribes have used Curtis’ data to reconstruct languages and practices entirely or partially forgotten.  Scholars have used Curtis’ oral accounts to reconstruct and rewrite important events in US history, such as the Battle of Little Big Horn, the last great pitched battle between Indians and Anglos.  Apart from more utilitarian applications, though, is the sheer aesthetic effect, the poignancy of haunted images of a land and a people forgotten by time.   Curtis clearly had great affinity for his subjects and devoted his life that we might see them as they might like to be remembered.

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Review: Nachtwey, James. Inferno. Phaidon Press: 1999.

Having finished Linfield’s Cruel Radiance, in which James Natchwey was the subject of an entire chapter, I was inspired to investigate Inferno, his tome to suffering in the 1990s, with a particular eye on my emotions.  Linfield argues that many of us are dishonest to our feelings when discussing images of cruely and suffering.  They make us feel uncomfortable and so we call for the images to be banned or restricted, or accuse the photographer or media of being pornogrpahers.  What we rarely do is ask how to resolve the situation depicted in the photographs, or how to deal appropriately with our feelings.

Romania:  The pain from having to sleep on cots with no mattresses, only wires to hold blankets.  The cold.   The poor food.  No empathy.

On the Beach by Richard Misrach

In response to the last of my Assignment 2 images, my tutor recommended this series by Richard Misrach.  I was quite taken with them as they do something I admire:  depicting the scale of individual human experience and existence.  These images of lone people or lone couples on a beach speak to how tiny our experience is in relation to our environment.

And perhaps inspired in me a new series, shot from my rooftop.  Let's see.

In one of my recent reads, Susie Linfeld argues that photographs are. like every other representation of reality, incomplete.  They are only a glimpse of our experience, and to be completely understood, they have to be properly contextualized.  When I read about Misrach's work here, though, I was disappointed to find the writer - and even the photographer - ascribing something sinister to these images, a hovering, lurking, anonymous presence.  They were made, it seems, shortly after the events of September 2001, during which time Misrach was in New York to visit his son.

Review: Nakano, Masataka (2000). Tokyo Nobody. Little More: Tokyo.

Tokyo Nobody reminds me of New Year 1989.  I had been in Japan less than six months and wanted to get out of the small city where I was living for a visit to Tokyo.  What a better time to visit than New Year, when there would be all kind of excitement in such a huge international city.  It turned out to be quite the opposite and a wonderful learning opportunity.

Japan celebrates the same year end holidays as in the west.  They make a big to-do about Christmas, even though their traditional holiday is the new year.  Appearances, though, can be deceiving.  In spirit, the holidays are reversed:  New Year is the quiet family holiday spent at home with family and relatives, while Christmas is a time for parties, friends, and colleagues.  Had I known this I wouldn’t have been so eager to visit Tokyo.

Review: Cotton, Charlotte. (2004) The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Ch 7

Cotton concludes in Chapter 7:  Revived and Remade surveying work that builds on existing work, either through some form of imitation, or through combination.  This work is highly self-referential and often somewhat cynical, as if to demonstrate wit or cleverness.  She cites as a seminal example the work of Cindy Sherman, who mocks photographic conventions by recreating them in carefully staged images featuring herself as model.   The work of Nikki S Lee is compared as somehow similar, but Lee’s anthropological approach – spending time getting to know and blend in with different subcultures before shooting herself in these guises – seems more authentic than Sherman’s mockery and seems also less concerned with form or style and more with content.

Review: Gregory Crewdson's Photography - Capturing a Movie Frame (2012)

This 30-minute short from The Reserve Channel goes behind the scenes to look at the creation of Crewdson's carefully crafted images.  Most of the work depicted here is the siting, lighting, and decorating of sets.  We see a little of the post-processing work of selecting images for blending, but none of the actual computer work. The film includes interview footage with Crewdson discussing his motivation and interests, as well as some of the processes that go into the creation of his images.  There is unfortunately as well an art critic on hand to reassure us how important Crewdson really is. This is a good introductory film as it doesn't lag nor make any pretense of being an art film about an artist.

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Review: Have A Nice Book

Richard Billingham // Ray's a Laugh from haveanicebook on Vimeo.

As a requirement for my photography course I was making my way through The Photograph as Contemporary Art when I came across a reference to Ray’s A Laugh, a photobook equivalent to an episode of The Jerry Springer Show.  Digging around a bit I found the book (published in 2000) now out of print, with used copies selling in excess of $150, more than $1.00 per page. Ouch.

Review: Cotton, Charlotte. (2004) The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Ch 5-6

Billingham:  Ray's a Laugh

Chapter Five: Intimate Life reviews the rather ironic affectation of a vernacular style as an attempt to convey a sense of the opposite – the real, the genuine, the unaffected.  What sets this apart from the typical vernacular is atypical subject matter.  Where family snaps create a sense of normalcy through images of rites of passages and moments of celebration,  the photographers described here point the camera at disjuncture, failure, addiction, illness, anomie.  The work of American Nan Goldin is cited as seminal, a decades long project recording and exhibiting relationships with family, friends, and other intimates.    Her intention was apparently genuinely vernacular in the sense that she did not aspire to a career as an artist but simply to share work with her subjects.  Aesthetically I find little attractive in her images, but appreciate her bravery in exposing herself, as well as her commitment to an extended period of recording.   I would love to see a copy of Ray’s a Laugh, a precursor of reality TV in photobook produced by British artist Richard Billingham as source material for his painting and chronicling the life of his dysfunctional family, all shot in vibrant color with lots of hot flash, reminiscent of William Eggleston (who surprisingly doesn’t rate a mention in this chapter).  The book is now out of print and commands $150-200 used.  Please.  One other project here that struck me was Breda Beban’s Miracle of Death, a series of images of her husband’s boxed ashes, a rumination on death and grieving. This doesn’t seem to have been published in book form (Cotton’s citation does not include a book) and aside from a handful of small images doesn’t appear much in internet searches.

Review: Gunter Rossler:The Brilliance of the Moment, dir. Fred R. Willitzkat (2012)

Gunter Rossler photographed nude women.  He photographed other subjects, including clothed women for fashion magazines, but his legacy is the nudes.  What makes him so unusual, besides the quality of his images, is that he worked for most of his life in the German Democratic Republic.  While communists thought of themselves as radicals, they were also quite prudish.  One of their common propaganda talking points against the West was the depravity of capitalism as seen in the commercialization of sex.  

Review: Cotton, Charlotte. (2004) The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Ch 3-4

Takashi Homma - Shonan International Village

Chapter Three, Deadpan, looks into a clinical aesthetic based on emotional detachment.  Cotton sees this movement as having developed in reaction to neo-expressivism of the 1980s, a measured retreat from subjectivist perspectives that sought to capture a universal viewpoint.  The movement was characterized as well by large-scale prints.  Cotton identifies the chief influence as Bernd Becherm of the Kunstakademie (Dusseldorf), who trained a large number of students working in this style.  The movement is known otherwise as Germanic, or New Objectivity, and one of the principal exponents is Andreas Gursky, who produces two meter high prints and issues photos like paintings, one-off images that rarely relate to previous images.  Much of his style was based on shooting large crowd scenes from a distance, which when enlarged to enormous prints gave one the impression of stepping into a scene.  Other photographers employ this technique of distance on subjects less crowded, even often empty, highlighting space, while others focus on people, producing portraits of people often isolated from crowds and shot straight ahead, with the subject looking back out through the photo.

Review: Cotton, Charlotte. (2004) The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Ch 1-2

I picked up this book because it is on the recommended reading list and because an electronic copy of the 2004 edition was available at no cost.  It is authored by Charlotte Cotton, an independent curator who has held a number of high status assignments, such as Curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Head of Programming at The Photographer's Gallery, London, and former curator of photography at London's Victoria & Albert Museum.  

The book consists of seven chapters, a suggested reading list, and 222 photos (192 in color).  Cotton has structured it as a survey, "the kind of overview you might experience if you visited exhibitions in a range of venues," and so as not to favor style or substance, but to demonstrate the motivations and working habits of the photographers surveyed.  

Review: In No Great Hurry:13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter (2013)

My first photography film in many months and something of a disappointment.  The subject is not interested in being filmed or discussing his work - which is admirable, actually - and spends a lot of time grumbling and wondering why anyone wants to make a film about him.  Much of the footage comes from a period when the 80-year old photographer was in the process of organizing his cluttered existence and so when he is not out walking the neighborhood with his camera, we get interior shots of the subject and an assistant digging through boxes.  Perhaps because I am unfamiliar with Leiter's work, which this film doesn't do much to showcase or contextualize, I found it slow, plodding, and largely uninspiring.  Perhaps the most amazing thing about the subject is that he has lived in the same apartment for over five decades and for a similar period documented the same neighborhood.  In two or three hundred years his work will be incredibly valuable.

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Review: Istanbul Photography Museum

I had the good fortune this month to visit the Istanbul Photography Museum, located in what looks like a middle-class neighborhood only a few blocks from the major tourist sites in Sultan Ahmet.  The museum maintains an informative website with details concerning its sponsors, leadership, and supporters, and appears to be a joint effort between art enthusiasts and government offices responsible for the promotion of the same.  Opened in November 2011, it defines its mission as “providing exhibitions, collections, publications, photography archives, electronic and standard libraries, activities, and educational projects to further develop the Turkish art of photography.”  

We arrived just as one of the staff was unlocking the front door and were welcomed in without fuss or hesitation, directed up a flight up stairs and into a lobby with a display of books for sale.  A long corridor led off this space, with doors opening into five separate galleries.  During our 40 minute stay we had the facility entirely to ourselves (something of a departure from many of the city’s often crowded museums).  

Review: Dark Light (2009) and Everybody Street (2013)

I went out yesterday determined to start shooting portraits and came home with everything but.  I can't seem to find the courage to ask strangers to model.  I can't because I don't see myself giving that permission to a stranger asking the same.  I know there are people who wouldn't mind, who might be happy for the attention, or just curious about me or the situation.  It's getting to them through all those likely to say no that seems daunting.  It seems denial is one of my fears.  How to get over it?  I guess just to get out there and do it.

After returning home I tried fortifying myself with a couple of films.  Dark Light is 30-min HBO short about the most unlikely photographers, those with little or no sight.  Two of the photographers featured grew up sighted and gradually lost most or all of their vision in adulthood.  Their practice seems to be a means of coming to grips with loss, of in fact denying loss at all.  The third photographer was born blind and seems to practice more out of curiosity and exploration of the world.  He seemed genuinely more happy than the other two, who though they produced great work seemed tense, anxious, and fearful.

Everybody Street is a 90-minute review of New York street photography featuring interviews with living practitioners, as well as reminiscences of some of those past.  What struck me most was the difference in approaches between Jamel Shabbazz, who always asked permission from his subjects, and Bruce Gilden, whose practice involves ambushing strangers, not only with a camera but often with a handheld strobe.  I could not personally do what Gilden does, and he himself acknowledges the world would be a worse place if there were more like him.  The results, though, are obvious - many of Shabazz's images appear vernacular, as if taken by the very people who are their subjects.  Gilden's are more electric and idosyncratic.

Other take-aways ES:

Review: Uncommon Places, Stephen Shore, 2005; Stephen Shore : New American Photography, dir. Ralph Goertz, 2010

Uncommon Places is the book that said, yes, you’ve been here.

Not the places, mind you, though I may have been to a few.  But the mindset of the photographer.  Here is someone who did what I’ve been doing, practiced as I practice.  I intuitively get what Shore was doing, because I’ve been doing the same.  (And I wonder now why none of my tutors, coursemates, or fellow enthusiasts referred me to this earlier.)

Here is how Shore describes his work at this time:

Vienna: Frustrated Exhibit Visits

One of the pleasures of being a teacher is long vacations.  Unfortunately, the longest one is always in summer, a time of year when lots of other people vacation and so not much seems to happen culturally wherever you might visit during June, July or August.

Case in point, I've spent the last week in one of Europe's, if not the world's, cultural capitals but have been frustrated in my efforts to view photography exhibits.

I was excited to find the city has a dedicated photo gallery/musuem and that it was exhibiting the 2014 World Press Awards.  On closer inspection I found not only does that exhibit not begin until September, but that the gallery is closed for the summer.  Damn.  A sister gallery + library has remained open for the summer, but  1. I'm not much interested in the current exhibit, and 2. it's a bit of a hike from my hotel.  The city hosts a Month of Photography event with numerous exhibits - beginning the end of October!

Walking through the city I found a small gallery with a collection of mid-20th photos representing Austrian children (pictured here) and also - closed for summer!

Once I get back to Dubai I'll probably find a few interesting exhibits, but by then I'll be so deep in work and assignments that there won't be time.  

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Review: Wynn Bullock: Revelations (Atlanta High Museum of Art, until 2015.01.08)

I had never heard of Wynn Bullock before checking the scheduled exhibits for Atlanta's High Museum of Art.  A bit of online research revealed him as one of the masters of mid-century West Coast movement, along with Adams and Weston.  It was in fact his meeting with the latter that convinced him to give up an acting career to pursue photography.  But where Weston and Adams are well-known, Bullock is largely forgotten, even though one of his two images in The Family of Man was chosen by exhibit visitors as their favourite of the collection's 500+ photos.

Scott suggests Bullock may have been ignored because he was difficult to classify, working in several genres, from early experiments inspired by Man Ray, to straight, to commercial, to late period color abstracts.   It may also be that he was ignored because he was interested primarily in exploration of experience, especially ideas of space and time, and less in particular kinds of subjects.

The last major exhibit of his work was nearly 40 years ago, presumably near the end his life, or shortly after his death in 1975.  So why an exhibit now?  And why in Atlanta?

Review: Angier, R. (2007). Train your gaze. Introduction & Chapter One: About Looking

Angier, R. (2007). Train your gaze. 1st ed. Lausanne: AVA.

Nothing in the book itself regarding the author.  I found the following at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where Angier appears to teach.

Roswell Angier (photography, Studio at Tufts) was educated at Harvard University and University of California, Berkeley. Angier has worked for commercial magazines and on numerous documentary projects. Books include A Kind of Life: Conversations in the Combat Zone (Addison House, NH, 1976), and Train Your Gaze: A Practical and Theoretical Introduction to Portrait Photography (AVA Books, 2007). His work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA. Angier's exhibitions include solo shows at Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, and Gitterman Gallery, New York. Current interests are landscape and narrative. He is currently working on Revere Beach Boulevard, a project about the sea wall.

Angier is currently represented by the Gitterman Gallery in New York City. A substantial amount of his work can be seen on the gallery's web site, www.gittermangallery.com.