August 2006 Archives
I always assumed big-time photographers would have good collections, created via exchanged prints, gifts, etc. But they buy prints, too. The Times recently profiled the late Richard Avedon's collection, which is being sold to benefit his foundation. (Seems a bit sad to sell off the collection and uncouple this grouping. Which brings up the old question - can a collection be a work of art, too?)
Aug 30 to Sept 6 at Pace MacGill Gallery
32 E57th St, 9th Flr
(212) 929-7000
(assuming this is at the Chelsea location, but the Web site is unhelpful in answering it and the gallery is closed today, so I can't get an answer by phone)
Oct 5 to Nov 25 at Fraenkel Gallery
49 Geary St, 4th Flr
San Francisco
(415) 981-2661
If you're a big Candida Höfer fan, check out "Hot Library Smut" (a misleading and pandering blog entry title if there ever was one) for a great collection of decent-sized examples of her work.
How do you differenitate between her representations of these striking spaces and the spaces themselves? Do you get the same sense from standing within them as you do viewing them through Höfer's lens? Probably not, but I can't help but think that 80% of the effect is in the subject.
It's a joke that Time included PhotoMuse in its recent "50 Coolest Web Sites", but overlooked the new site for the Smithsonian Photography Initiative. Both sites are a bit anemic on content or instructions, but SPI shows some real promise in terms of innovative use of collaborative tagging and storytelling using archive photography. Apparently PhotoMuse will have a major new release next month.
UPDATE: More detail on the SPI from the Smithsonian's blog, Eye Level.
Jason Kottke has grabbed a few examples from the Library of Congress' "Bound for Glory" online exhibition of 1930s color photography and applied some Photoshop kungfu (color correction) to bring a sense of "taken today" to these photographs. Striking and I'm embarassed I hadn't thought of it before.
From an interview with Rinko Kawauchi, a Japanese photographer I am unfamiliiar with, comes what is possibly the world's worst interview question:
Miss Kawauchi, your photos bring me into a world of quiet contemplation, your camera captures the most intricate details of every day life, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary and revealing a lyrical rhythm to our daily lives and surroundings. Before I go into your motifs and motivation, may I start by asking you what cameras you use?
I tried reading this question out loud to my wife but was so lost in laughter by the time I came to the actual question that I could hardly finish it. To start with such a sycophantic statement that would make even Charlie Rose or James Lipton blush only to follow with "what cameras do you use" makes me marvel that Ms. Kawauchi finished the inteview at all. Glad she did. Apparently she's "the next upcoming photographer - even in London"!
I suppose its frequently unavoidable when you're following the "Kodak rules", take your picture with your back to the sun, but I really hate it when the photographer's shadow ends up in the picture. Ran across a post about the shadow's presence through Thingsmagazine this morning. Oddly the post doesn't mention Lee Friedlander, who raised that particular mistake to an art form.
