March 2007 Archives
From the review of Alan Trachtenberg's Lincoln's Smile, in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Photographs, Trachtenberg writes, elegantly and eloquently, are "not so much a guide to reality as a uniquely modern means of questioning reality." They are locked in an eternal present, where something is always about to happen. Appearing at the intersection of image and speech, photographs present the paradox of "things appearing while disappearing, apprehended just in time, in time" - to "expire into new life."
(via Photo Kaboom)
Two James Nachtwey shows are reviewed in today's NY Times.
Beauty is a vexed matter in scenes of suffering, cruelty and death. The difference between exploitation and public service comes down to whether the subject of the image aids the ego of the photographer more than the other way around. The two are not mutually exclusive.
I recently commented on War Photographer, a documentary about Natchwey.
The Sacrifice
401 Gallery
401 West St
(212) 633-6202
World Free of TB
United Nations
Visitor's Lobby
E 46th St & 1st Ave
(212) 963-4475
This Thursday, ICP is presenting a panel discussion on the radical changes technology has brought to photography, particularly photojournalism. Entitled "Photography 2.0: A New Paradigm?", the panel will cover trends arising from the rapid development of digital photography and the ever-present camera phone, enabling the rapid, easy sharing of amateur photography. What does this mean for the long-term value of professional photography? What does that mean for our presumed standards of quality and thoughtfulness associated with the professional photographer?
This panel is sponsored by Getty Images, which just purchased Scoopt, an agency for "citizen photojournalism", so to speak. Getty's news director, Pancho Bernasconi, is on the panel.
Moderator: Fred Ritchin, ICP Associate Chair, Dept. of Photography Director, PixelPress
Pancho Bernasconi, Getty Images
Jake Dobkin, Gothamist (and fellow NYU Stern alum)
Kenny Irby, Poynter Institute
Mark Lubell, Magnum Photos NY
Jeffrey Scales, The New York Times
Adam Seifer, Fotolog
March 29th
New York University
Cantor Film Center
36 E 8th St, Room 200
$5 admission, registration recommended
I applaud the spirit of learning in-camera techniques over applying a collection of Photoshop filters, but an in-camera cliche is still a cliche.
The Guardian asks, with the rise of so many photo-specific fairs, "is photography being spotlighted or ghettoized?"
As far as I'm concerned, keep photography separate. I was supremely irritated when the New Yorker decided to lump all the photography shows in with the other art shows and now I have to sift through the whole section, which is mostly stuff I don't want to see. (Have I said that before? If so, then you know how much it irks me.)
2point8 has posted a few links to other Charlie Rose interviews with photographers, in addition to the one with Taryn Simon that I posted about this morning. Bresson, Avedon, Liebowitz, Natchwey, among others.
Last Friday's Charlie Rose featured an interview with Taryn Simon on the occasion of her new book and show, "An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar", now on view at the Whitney.
Interview starts at the 11:41 mark.
It's funny how once you get a meme in your head, you start seeing it everywhere. Simon talks about he inspiration for her project "The Innocents", a photographic family album of sorts featuring exonerated death row prisoners in the environs of their supposed crimes. She talks about how the initial concept had to do with how mug shots, through repetitive viewings, can eventually supplant real memories in the minds of crime victims. More on the Innocents on Frontline.
An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar
Through June 24 at the Whitney
945 Madison Ave (at 75th St)
(800) WHITNEY
Last week's Aperture panel "Fine Artist or Commercial Photographer?" apparently turned into a "advice for the young photographer" session. Pop Photo's "State of the Art" blog has posted some tips from Charles Traub, the panel's moderator and chair of the MFA Photography department at School of Visual Arts.
The hobgoblin of my little mind sees an interesting contradiction:
"Do something old in a new way.
...
Don’t use alternative processes—if it ain’t straight, do it in the computer."
Before you know it, 35mm will be an alternative process.
Late last night I ran across a link to Chad Muthard's Photo March Madness tournament bracket and just had to spend the next half hour figuring out how that would play out to the Final Four and eventual champion. I had a few issues with the initial seeding, but in the end my Final Four played out to be Jeff Wall, Harry Callahan, Edward Burtynsky and Walker Evans. Evans and Callahan in the championship game with Evans coming out on top.
Alternately, Christian Patterson has proposed a monumental undertaking, the Photography Family Tree, inspired by the Jazz Story Family Tree. I've seen another similar one done for the history of rock and roll music. Perhaps for a PhD thesis.
I have many and assorted thoughts on portraiture which I have been feverishly typing up, but not feverishly fast enough. I can't wait any longer to post the long screed, but will get to it eventually.
There are two closing shows that you should go see that have been feeding my thoughts on this, one by Suzanne Option and the other by Helen Van Meene. Also, Benjamin Donaldson is opening a new show of portraits at jen bekman gallery, so go check that out as well. (Congratulations to Ms. Bekman on the gallery's fourth anniversary!)
Suzanne Opton
Feature on NPR
Also on Studio 360
Vince Aletti in the New Yorker
Birkholz, 353 Days in Iraq, 205 Days in Afghanistan by Suzanne Opton
The Soldier Photographs
Through March 24th at Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art NY
511 West 25th St, 3rd Flr
(212) 827-9890
Helen van Meene
Through March 17th at Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 W 22nd St 3rd Flr
(646) 230-9610
Benjamin Donaldson
Summerland
Through April 21 at jen bekman gallery
6 Spring St
(212) 219-0166
Tomorrow evening there's a free panel discussion put on by Aperture entitled "Fine Artist or Commercial Photographer?" This topic came up recently on Alec Soth's blog, in relation to why Justine Kurland would take Jeff Wall's picture for editorial purposes, but probably not vice versa. Aperture has positioned this as a career-oriented discussion, but hopefully it will turn into something more.
Moderator:
Charlie Traub, chairman of the Photography and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts
Panelists:
James Danziger, Danziger Projects
Elisabeth Sussman, curator of photography; Whitney Museum of American Art
David Schonauer, editor-in-chief, American Photo
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 6:30 p.m.
Aperture Gallery
547 W 27th St, 4th Flr
(212) 505-5555
Admission is free.
UPDATE: the moderator of this panel will be Charlie Traub, also of SVA, not Steven Frailey. Frailey will be busy at the reception for "Mentors", also being held tonight. Mentors is a show by 71 of the graduating BFA students who have been guided by a truly impressive and LONG list of, um, mentors.
I feel bemused at why a nascent art photographer would be so openly conservative as to adhere to apparent conventions, and at my most pessimistic, I wonder if there's too much "trying-to-be-like" Eggleston, Shore, et al., and too little "creative-departure-from" the stellar standards that they have set.
From "The New Color: The Return of Black and White" by Charlotte Cotton
There is a lightly participated, but interesting forum attached to this article, as well.
Zoe Strauss and Alec Soth have had a great cross-blog conversation about portraiture, starting with an Avedon commentary about photographing Henry Kissinger. I have been meaning to write a post about the demise of the prevalence of the August Sander paradigm for photography, but these two posts underlined the other main model, which is the mugshot. Interestingly, the "professional" mugshot is designed to record the visual identity of an individual for future reference while August Sander intended to subjugate the individual in order to summarize entire archetypes in a single picture.
Jen Bekman predicts a resurgence of black & white photography. If you're interested, hike up to the Upper East Side to see the William Richardson show at Gitterman Gallery. And the Henry Wessell "moment" we're experiencing.
"Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography? The proportions of that notion seem ridiculously out of balance. Yet, that very idea has motivated me." - James Nachtwey
My wife and I watched Christian Frei's Academy Award-nominated documentary "War Photographer" a couple of weekends back. Kind of a NetFlix double feature with The Constant Gardener . The movie is a biographical profile of the the war photographer James Nachtwey, one of the co-founders of the VII agency.
The core of the film is Nachtwey's mantra, quoted above, that photography can have an effect on history. The film primarily focuses on his work in the former Yugoslavia, the Palestinian territories, and Indonesia. Nachtwey initially came across as a cold, callous intruder, pressing his lens into scenes of grief and mourning. The image above is a frame from the film and a fair amount of footage is captured with small microcameras aimed over Nachtwey's Canon SLR or tilted back into his face. This is intended to give a sense of what it's like to shoot, but its a poor approximation for having you eye pressed up into the viewfinder and the world outside the frame fades away in the intensity of looking for the right moment to squeeze the shutter release. The effect was quite odd, particularly early on. It mimics a Doom-like video game, with the shotgun replaced with a lens barrel.
So, the central question is can photography, journalistic photography, make a change as big as ending war? Nachtwey is not just interested in ending specific wars, he wants to end all war and he believes he can do that through his work. He's obviously very intense about it, forgoing the sorts of everyday comforts and relationships most westerners take for granted in order to pursue this dream. Which means he can come off as a bit self righteous at times, but maybe that's the guilt that comes with being exposed to this sort of life philosophy while sitting in your comfy little NYC apt watching a DVD while sipping micro waved hot chocolate.
From a war photography view, the film also shows how our viewpoint of war in the west has changed based which subjects the photographer chooses. Thru the Korean conflict and into Vietnam, to be a war photographer meant your focus was on the fighters and fighting. Now, in the wake of Vietnam, the armies are more wary about journalists (though interestingly, the embed program used in the early phases of Iraq seem to reverse that in ways many photographers found unnerving) and the emphasis became the civilian and noncombatant who feels the lasting effects of the war. In Nachtwey's view I suppose this is also because a dead or traumatized civilian makes a cleaner case than the equivalent soldier, that war must stopped
But the question remains, how effective can photography be in halting an activity that seems to lie at the very core of human nature? Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, a book about violent pictures, delved into this question, attacking the position that simply representing atrocity will. Evoke the proper revulsion and indignation. For some viewers, indignation will lead to thoughts of justice, retribution and revenge. Consider the varying reactions to the cellphone video of Saddam Hussein's execution. Iraqi Shiites lauded it as justice served, Europeans shook their heads at "barbarity", Iraqi Sunnis viewed it as shameful.
During the film, I couldn’t help but wonder about Nachtwey's view on image fatigue, that the volume of photos he taken of dead sons, grieving mothers, the poor, rebellious youth devolves into a heart-numbing mash. Over decades of seeing the same atrocities committed in every continent of the world and public reaction in the West generally responding as a collective shrug, it's hard to imagine Nachtwey doesn't hold onto his idealism simply as a bullwark against the realization that its all been for nothing and that we are condemned by our nature to continue to kill one another.
