Conscientious

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  Diane Meyer

  Posted: 6-May-2013, 5:34pm EDT by Joerg Colberg

  

  According to the artist, Diane Meyer's Time Spent That Might Otherwise Be Forgotten "is based on photographs taken at various points in my life and arranged by location. Sections of the images have been obscured through a layer of embroidered pixels sewn directly into the photograph. The embroidery deteriorates sections of the original photograph forming a new pixelated layer of the original scene. The project refers to the failures of photography in preserving experience and personal history as well as the means by which photographs become nostalgic objects that obscure objective understandings of the past."

  

  
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  Review: Naked by Rimaldas Viksraitis

  Posted: 3-May-2013, 4:04am EDT by Joerg Colberg

  

  A few years ago, Rimaldas Viksraitis won the Discovery Award at the Arles photography festival for his work in the Lithuanian countryside, depictions of scenes that for many critics and viewers brought to mind photographers like Boris Mikhailov or Richard Billingham. With work like Viksraitis' the topic of photography and exploitation is never that far. It's not clear to me how useful such discussions really are, especially since they usually omit the topic whether the photographer himself is not being exploited by the larger photography art world that discovered him and then parades him and his images around. I should also add that the photo art world might want to re-visit the topic of exploitation in light of the kinds of images people - willingly - put up online. (more)
  

  Thus I don't necessarily want to go there. That said, Viksraitis' photographs have left me slightly concerned, in much the same way as I have been concerned about, for example, the art world's celebration of Miroslav Tichy. Anyway, here's Naked (scroll down), a book that contains photographs of, well, naked people. Some of them might already be known, others might be previously unpublished. I'd like to throw another name into the reference mix here, to somewhat broaden the discussion about Viksraitis' work: Sergey Chilikov. Given so many of the photographs in Naked are obviously staged or constructed (at least they look that way), Chilikov's work might just add a different way to think about these photographs.

  Much like Chilikov, Viksraitis often delights in what one could call a staged absurdity. I suppose one read that into more or less all of his photographs, and a critical reading is always just that, a critical reading. But the photographs in Naked appear to be somewhat more focused, with the element of documentary (in the loosest sense) mostly absent, so that the reading might come with less cross-cultural baggage. When I wrote "staged absurdity" I'm mostly thinking of a vodka-fueled, Eastern European magical realism, where the magical isn't quite so magical (it's more than just a tad mundane actually), and let's not even talk about realism.

  But still... the whimsy might be very hung over, and the proto-/pre-Christian imagery might be rooted in a way less magical - and thus much scarier - paganism (at least from the point of view of someone with a US/European background), but approaching both Chilikov and Viksraitis from that angle appears to offer an opening for, well, a different approach, one that somehow circumvents all the markers that make the reading of the work so conveniently simple.

  There then would be my reading of this work, which, I reckon, might get rejected by both those who went gaga over Viksraitis before, and by those who would want to keep the term for where it's usually used: This is magical realism. The magic might not look so magical, and the realism might only be all too real, but then you can't always get what you want.

  Naked; photographs by Rimaldas Viksraitis; 96 pages; Heden; 2012

  

  
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  Redheaded Peckerwood, III and some thoughts on photobook editions

  Posted: 2-May-2013, 3:43am EDT by Joerg Colberg

  

  It appears that about every ten years (give or take a few) a photobook manages to capture the imagination of large numbers of photographers, resulting in an unavoidable flurry to emulate if not imitate. Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi provided this "gold standard" of photobooks until Christian Patterson's Redheaded Peckerwood came around (pardon the hyperbole, you can use the term "marker" instead).
  

  I have the feeling that despite the explosion of photographers traveling the land with their view cameras and lists, Mississippi was a boon for educators, since a whole generation of students had to learn how to work precisely and carefully with those large cameras. With Peckerwood, I already notice students throwing all caution overboard, aiming for hundreds of different image sizes all over the page, with different styles of pictures thrown in for good measure.

  Ironically, while in the past I found myself wanting photographers to be less conservative, my task now is to tell photographers to be more conservative, since lots of different sizes and styles produces a hot mess unless it's done very, very well.

  Mississippi and Peckerwood have (so far) seen their third edition each, a feat that is rare for the vast majority of all photobooks. As a consequence, copies of the books are easy to come by, and they are affordable. Actually, I wrote this before looking Mississippi up - I guess it's not true any longer. Regardless, in both cases, the artists decided to change the second and third editions. In Soth's case, the books ended up having different covers.

  In Patterson's case, other changes were made. The second edition featured an expanded booklet (the essays in the book come in a separate booklet). In addition, the printing itself was changed, to often result in somewhat more contrasty images (this is also true for the cover). The third edition introduced more changes, to the booklet (again) as well as the main book itself, plus there's a reproduction postcard that comes with the package. For the third edition, Patterson added images to the main book, leaving the teacher in me wondering which version I'll now show my students when talking about the book.

  Conceptually, an evolving book is interesting for a variety of reasons, and it is equally problematic I think. If I compare my first and third edition, what does the presence of new images tell me as far as the "story" is concerned? The addition of new images does change the story, and even if it is ever so slightly.

  I don't want to pretend I even have a clue what this all means, because I am equally attracted to the idea of the evolving photobook as I am opposed to it. For a start, the evolving photobook would not work for every book. In the past, I've considered the kinds of expanded re-issues that are so common of classic photobooks like the expanded re-issues of jazz albums - you listen to the "cutting-room floor" stuff, and you realize why it was left out in the first place. But a book like Redheaded Peckerwood does not operate like, say, Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places, so the jazz analogy doesn't apply (lest the "gotcha" crowd thinks they got something here: I actually like the recent edition of Shore's book, I'm going to stay shtum about re-releases I don't like).

  There clearly is an opportunity for photographers to think about this issue here, especially in light of some photobooks selling out quickly. Cristina De Middel's widely lauded Afronauts is sold out, which is more than just unfortunate given it still is being talked about so widely. Collectors be damned, this just screams for a second edition! (And I'm not talking about an app for the iPhone/iPad) The business/collecting angle aside, the main question is whether re-issues or second editions should be changed/modified or not, what might be gained from doing that. In other words, to what extent can photobooks be if not living entities then at least evolving entities?

  The changes in the editions of Redheaded Peckerwood are small enough to argue for either static or evolving photobooks. As I noted I haven't made up my mind, even though I have started to lean in one direction, and I might talk about that at some other time.

  
  

  

  
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  Enrico Boccioletti

  Posted: 1-May-2013, 7:06am EDT by Joerg Colberg

  

  "content aware is a collection of edited pictures downloaded from fashion blogs, where the subject is assimilated to the background using content-aware fill in photoshop." - Enrico Boccioletti

  

  
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  Curran Hatleberg

  Posted: 30-April-2013, 6:58am EDT by Joerg Colberg

  

  Curran Hatleberg appears to have an instinct to make the right picture, at the right time, often in places where you wouldn't expect to find one. See my piece on another one of his photographs.

  

  
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  Mustafah Abdulaziz

  Posted: 29-April-2013, 4:48pm EDT by Joerg Colberg

  

  Mustafah Abdulaziz's Memory Loss is filled with images that are almost too good to be true, a laconic portrait of the US and the people living there.

  

  
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  Review: Kiev by The Sochi Project

  Posted: 26-April-2013, 1:25pm EDT by Joerg Colberg

  

  The release of smaller, purely photo-centric books, has been a part of The Sochi Project for the past years now. The beauty of these smaller books is that they allow for a bit more playfulness in an otherwise often very heavy series of publications. The latest addition, Kiev, is no exception. Rob Hornstra was given a Kiev 6C medium-format SLR camera, a veritable beast of a camera, which, as it happens, I owned once myself. When they work, which often means if they work, these cameras are pretty amazing. You'll grow a muscle or two (they're huge and heavy), and you'll smell Soviet industrial smells you had no idea they even existed. (more)

  One of the tests to determine whether you're a real photographer or not is whether you can get truly excited over "vintage" camera gear (just kidding). Rob apparently passed the test easily, putting the Kiev to good use before realizing that it might be broken, which, inevitably, it was. Kiev contains the results of this exploration of Sochi with Soviet camera gear, pictures that do look a bit more touristy than his usual work. As he notes in the short text that comes with the book "I photographed things that I had never seen through the lens of my Mamiya."

  The book itself is a nifty production. Printed on a card stock, it's an origami-style book: The book essentially consists of one big sheet of card board, whose two sides were printed on. The sheet was then cut and folded to produce an almost accordion-style book (there are two hinges that run at the bottom of the book). If you unfold the book you get a poster on one side. In the very center of the book, a single sheet of paper is stapled in, with a little text - quite a neat way to make a very simple and effective book.

  Taking the seriousness out of some of their publications has allowed The Sochi Project to experiment with the format photobook and to explore what can be done. This kind of playfulness is very common in the area of DYI publishing/zines, but it hasn't made it beyond that niche all that much. Kiev thus is a timely reminder that there are all kinds of photobooks, and some can be made in fairly simple, yet effective and fun ways. Kudos to The Sochi Project for pushing the boundaries wherever they fall!

  Kiev; photographs and short text by Rob Hornstra; cardboard fold-out book in a photo-illustrated wrapper; The Sochi Project; 2012
  

  

  
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  Review: After the Threshold by Sandi Haber Fifield

  Posted: 25-April-2013, 1:11pm EDT by Joerg Colberg

  

  Photography is such a peculiar form of art. It's instantaneous in ways that other art forms are not. You see a photograph, and it's right there, impressing itself immediately into your brain, into the unconscious parts first and then, after a little delay, into the conscious areas. As a result, it operates in very different ways than, say, music or video, photography's closest cousin. Photography's immediacy naturally leads to all kinds of assumptions about its power, many (most?) of which turn out to be wrong.
  

  For example, we want to believe that seeing images of horrible abuse will make such future horrible abuse impossible, but that's not the case. Our consciousness, after all, will find ways to argue its way around our subconsciousness (our consciousness works much like the US Senate with its combination of meekness and deeply entrenched vested interests). But the interesting thing about photography is that it retains its power, provided it does not overplay its hand.

  Photography's immediacy allows it to operate in pairs, triplets, or even larger groups. The larger the group, the trickier it gets - after all, the human brain does require a small amount of time to take in a single image. But that amount of time is small compared with how long it takes to take in a video, or listen to just enough of a piece of music to be moved by it. Two photographs next to each other thus manage to "speak" in ways that two videos or pieces of music never could. Use three of four photographs, and you get a little sequence that almost operates like a melody, a little line of music that hints at something larger, but that (potentially) triggers a reaction that results from something beyond the individual notes.

  I had to think of this when looking through Sandi Haber Fifield's After the Threshold, a book in which each spread consists of groups of mostly four, occasionally three photographs, the the same size, presented in a row. It's a book of musical chords, essentially, done using photographs. Photographs aren't necessarily the equivalent of notes in music, but the combination of three or four photographs, as presented in this book, effectively turns each group of pictures into a chord. Just like in music, chords come in all kinds of flavours, and they do different things.

  The notes can also be played in unison or arpeggio style, one after the other. The interesting thing about After the Threshold is that you end up with both. Some sequences require a reading, from left to right, others appear to operate more like a group of photographs that all speak at the same time. Not each of the groups works equally well for me; some seem a tad simplistic (to the point of being designy). But the more interesting groups - the bulk of the book - create these little stories or moods that linger and carry a mood, much like a chord. I was almost surprised how well that worked.

  Thus After the Threshold provides a great example of part of photography's spectrum, sitting somewhere between the single image and the long, elegant sequence of many pictures. And the book implicitly tells us something about how photographs work, or maybe how what many might consider as photography's weakness - the isolated moment - might be transformed into a strength.

  After the Threshold; photographs by Sandi Haber Fifield; essay by Vicki Goldberg; 96 pages; Kehrer; 2013

  

  

  
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  Inge Schoutsen

  Posted: 24-April-2013, 5:43am EDT by Joerg Colberg

  

  Inge Schoutsen's A Bit of Paradise, but Mostly Utopia is literally that: Photographs from places named Paradise and Utopia.

  

  
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  Bertrand Carriere

  Posted: 23-April-2013, 5:35am EDT by Joerg Colberg

  

  In Apres Strand, Bertrand Carriere follows the trails of Paul Strand who in 1929 and 1936 visited the Gaspé Peninsula, which resulted in Strand understanding what he called "the essential character of a place." (more information [in English] here)