Photographers: December 2006 Archives

Great interview with John Szarkowski in LA Weekly.

Some photographers think the idea is enough. I told a good story in my Getty talk, a beautiful story, to the point: Ducasse says to his friend Mallarmé — I think this is a true story — he says, “You know, I’ve got a lot of good ideas for poems, but the poems are never very good.” Mallarmé says, “Of course, you don’t make poems out of ideas, you make poems out of words.” Really good, huh? Really true. So, photographers who aren’t so good think that you make photographs out of ideas. And they generally get only about halfway to the photograph and think that they’re done.

(via MAN)

I am in London for the week, then back to NYC for a week before heading off to California for Christmas. Not enough time to see everything (anything?) on this list, but there are some great shows to catch before the year is out.

Harry Callahan
Nature
Pace/MacGill Gallery
Nov 30 - Jan 6
32 E 57th St, 9th Floor
(212) 759 7999

Patrick Harbron
Desert Sea Shores
Gallery FCB
Nov 9 - Jan ???
16 West 23rd Street, 3rd Floor
(212) 727-3635

Zoe Crosher
Out the Window (LAX)
Nov 17 - Dec 20
DCKT Contemporary
552 W 24th St
(212) 741 5052

Martin Edgar
The Diminishing Present and The Accidental Theorist
Nov 30 - Jan 13
Betty Cuningham Gallery
541 W 25th St
(212) 242 2772

David Maisel
Oblivion
Nov 16 - Dec 23
Von Lintel Gallery
555 W 25th St
(212) 242 0599

Gail Albert Halaban
This Stage of Motherhood
Nov 30 - Jan 6
Robert Mann Gallery
210 11th Ave (btwn 24th and 25th Sts)
(212) 989 7600

Don Burmeister
Ancient Earthworks of North America
Nov 24 - Dec 23
Safe-T Gallery
111 Front St, Gallery 214
(718) 782 5920

Imagine the meeting where the funding for "Newton, Natchwey, LaChapelle: Men, War & Peace" show was approved. One hopes it was an inscrutably byzantine, but ingenious, argument that made the case, but realistically it was probably the bastard child of some high placed donor committee. "Wisdom of the crowd", as they say these days.

Through May 20 at Helmut Newton Foundation
Jebensstrasse 2
D - 10623 Berlin
+49 30 3186 4856

Long, long interview with landscape photographer and sometimes photojournalist Simon Norfolk. over at the architecture blog BLDGBLOG. Rambling interview covers current political ramifications of war coverage, efficacy of photojournalism, the impact of military activities on our daily lives even in the most innocuous ways. The guy's a bit sour, as you can detect from this quote:

I got fed up with the clichés of photojournalism, with its inability to talk about anything complicated. Photojournalism is a great tool for telling very simple stories: Here's a good guy. Here's a bad guy. It's awful. But the stuff I was dealing with was getting more and more complicated – it felt like I was trying to play Rachmaninoff in boxing gloves.

Take a look at Norfolk's work. I like it, but it certainly isn't "more and more complicated" in terms of explaining the effects or contributing factors to a war than traditional photojournalism. Mostly it's an after action report, beautiful, but far from impacting the causes or closures of war. Result of burnout? Maybe. I imagine it's tough to be constantly engaged as a caring observer in some of the most hopeless situations the world sees and the urge to find something beautiful in all that mess is probably a powerful one.