adam b. bell | photography

Cold Souls

2009-06-28T12:30:00.005-04:00

About a year and half ago, I was fortunate enough be the still-photographer on the upcoming movie Cold Souls (dir. Sophie Barthes, Samuel Goldwyn). Produced by Journeyman Pictures and Touchy Feely Films, the movie is finally coming out August 7th - and looks great. A cross between Woody Allen's Sleeper, Godard and Gogol, the movie is a black comedy with a sci-fi twist. Unfortunately, I missed the movie at the New Directors/New Films Festival, but am excited to finally see the film.

A lot has already been written about the movie since it first screened at Sundance, but here is an interesting article with Sophie Barthes, the director.

UPDATE: The official site is now up here.

Ahorn Magazine - Issue 2

2009-04-13T19:30:00.007-04:00

The most recent issue of Ahorn Magazine is now online. Created by Daniel Augschoell and Anya Jasbar, Ahorn is a great collection of reviews, portfolios and essays. I was honored to be asked to include a book review in the latest issue. Having recently discovered the strange and enigmatic work of Bertrand Fleuret, I choose to write about his most recent book - Landmasses and Railways (J&L Books, 2009). Also included in the issue are the photographs, writings and reviews of Shawn Gust, Daniel Shea, Ben Alper, Andrea Diefenbach, Ian Aleksander Adams and Nicola Kast.

Check out the essay here along with the rest of the magazine.

© Bertrand Fleuret and J&L Books, All Rights Reserved

Lay Flat 01: Remain in the Light

2009-03-16T16:59:00.003-04:00

© Ed Panar — featured in Lay Flat 01: Remain in Light

I just received my copy of Lay Flat 01: Remain in the Light and it looks great. Shane Lavalette and Karly Wildenhaus have both done a great job bringing the project to fruition. The essays and interview are an especially nice addition to the well-curated collection. I also like the fact that the photos are loose. Unbound, the magazine and its images feel rooted to their online origins. Ready to enter the world as postcards, frame-ready prints, or however else their owner sees fit, the pictures are free to circulate widely. Hopefully, they will make it far.

If you haven't already, get your copy here.

a shimmer of possibility, redux

2009-02-11T10:29:00.012-05:00

© Paul Graham, All Rights Reserved

The other night Paul Graham gave a talk at the School of Visual Arts in collaboration with Dear Dave Magazine. I missed Graham's talk at Swann Auction Gallery earlier this year because I was teaching - so I was excited to hear about his work and most recent project - a shimmer of possibility. The work is currently on view in a modest show at MoMA, which is fantastic and well worth the trip. The book is also being re-released as a single volume paperback this spring by Steidl. The lecture was sponsored by Dear Dave, a great new photography magazine, and the BFA Photo Department at SVA, who are beginning a series of monthly lectures/conversations with photographers that looks promising. The next conversation is scheduled for April with Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin.

I should prefix my final comments by saying I am a big fan of Graham's work. I think he is a smart conceptually-minded documentary photography - who has contributed greatly to the medium. Although well-received in Europe, his work lacks the critical and appreciative audience it deserves in the US. I especially admire his courage to challenge his own work and practice, and not retread past successes by repeating himself. I wrote about his recent book, a shimmer of possibility, when it came out and think it is a complicated and monumental achievement that will contribute greatly to the medium.

Part of its success lies in its ruthless contemporaneity. Discarding the 'great moment' photograph, the seemingly banal sequenced shots reveal the shabby but beautiful world, and its flow, as it is. As he noted in his talk, we often forget that photographers like Eggleston and other 60s and 70s photographers, were ruthlessly contemporary and often dismissed at the time because of this fact. We look at their work now, not only with a recognition of their prescience and an acknowledgement of their artistic greatness, but also with nostalgia for the material surface of the past. At the time, for many viewers the work of Eggleston, Shore, Adams etc... often looked awkward, ugly and strange. To be truly contemporary requires "piercing the now," as Graham noted in his talk, and not merely retreading visual models of the past. Graham's radical approach succeeds in this regard.

Having read a couple of interview with Graham and read about the work online and in print, much of the conversation about the work was familiar, but still engaging. In addition to comments about the work's inception and creation he talked at length about his relationship to photography. Expressing his affinity and admiration for post-WWII American photography, he offered the interesting insight that much of the constructed, or tableau, photography that has dominated the art world owes much of it success to the transparent nature of its creation. In contrast to the work of Winogrand or Frank, who "just captured a fleeting moment," the work of Jeff Wall or Cindy Sherman clearly reveals it authorial intent and artistic mark in its very staged or constructedness. I think there are other issues at play, but this is certainly a factor and aptly put.

When pressed, Graham was reluctant to over analysis his work for fear of pinning its meaning down. This is greatly appreciated. Too often artists speak too much and either end up diluting the complexity of their work or, especially in the case of photographers, digressing into discussions about the history and academic discourse about their subject-matter. I don't need a lecture on the history of the suburbans etc... At the same time, I was also a little disappointment because one of the problematic aspects of the work was avoided.

a shimmer of possibility clearly deals with issues of race, class and social inequality in the United States. Looking through the books, one immediately notices that a large number of the subjects are socially and economically marginalized, and/or African-American. Graham's last book, American Night, clearly and bluntly dealt with issues of race in America. Contrasting harshly blown out images of marginalized, homeless and physically distant African-Americans on the outskirts of American cities with full-color images of suburban McMansions, SUVs and other iconic symbols of affluence, the work addresses the racial and economical inequalities of America in the 21st century. I appreciate the fact that Graham choose to address this difficult subject, but the work is far too blunt in its declaration for my taste. While the poetic structure and innovate approach of shimmer are often highlighted, its exploration of the racial and social reality of America is often minimized, or secondary. To be fair, the work is relatively new and there is not a lot of critical discourse around the work.

Although Graham was asked about this aspect of the work, he chose not to answer the question. Citing the time limits, the fact that he had not showed his American Night work, which could help him adequately frame the discussion, and the general complexity of the subject, he deferred the discussion to another time. Since I am conflicted by this aspect of the work, I was disappointed. I do not believe, as a white Englishman, he is barred from or incapable of addressing issues of race in America, but I do believe it must be dealt with frankly and honestly. While some of the subjects are clearly aware they are being photographed, others are not. This is not always a problem, but when the subjects are poor and socially/economically marginalized it strays into dangerous territory. There are one or two sequences in particular that are not only painful to view because of the social reality they reveal, but disturbing for their placement within Graham's artistic construct and the manner they appear to have been taken. As challenging, provocative and important as the work is, it is diminished by failing to critically confront this issue. As the work enters the world and gains a broader audience, hopefully, these issues will be addressed and discussed.

P.S. Graham will also be showing work this month (March) at Salon 94 Freemans and Greenberg Van Doren Gallery.

Wounded Cities

2008-12-15T11:51:00.006-05:00

As a graduate student, I had the great fortune to work with Leo Rubinfien my thesis year. I was already a huge fan of his woefully under-appreciated book, A Map of the East, and was just discovering his insightful essays on Winogrand, Robert Adams and August Sanders written for Art In America. Leo has a fantastic new book and traveling exhibition, called Wounded Cities, which combines his talent as a photographer and writer. Just published by Steidl, and currently showing at the Corcoran, Wounded Cities begins as a personal meditation on the psychological wounds of 9/11, but broadens to a larger exploration of cities, their inhabitants and the trauma of terrorism, religious violence and urban anxiety.

© Leo Rubinfien, All Rights Reserved

Having moved to downtown Manhattan in the shadows of the Twin Towers less than a week before 9/11, Rubinfien reflects on the violence that unfolded on the doorstep of his new home, its effects on him and his family, but also the lingering wounds and political anguish of the years to come. As he writes,

...I found myself searching the faces on each street corner where, as people waited for the light to change, masked as at any other time, I would hope to discover indications of who they really were... to peel out of this stranger here or the next one over... some foretelling of what — if I extrapolated madly — was going to happen...

Rubinfien moved from searching and photographing the faces of New Yorkers, to traveling to cities like Tokyo, Karachi, Bombay, London, Madrid, Nairobi, Tel Aviv and others, which had similarly been affected by acts of terrorism.

© Leo Rubinfien, All Rights Reserved

It is worth noting that Rubinfien never includes the rubble or any physical evidence of the attacks in his images and instead looks to the witnesses, the survivors. Projecting the complexities of 9/11 and other terror attacks on the inscrutable expressions of strangers photographed in passing is problematic at best. However, Rubinfien makes no attempts to account for their expressions or their meaning, which he admits could reflect any of a miriad of different personal worries. As actors, they become witnesses to terror - grappling with it's aftermath. Like the essay in which Rubinfien reflects on the personal effects of the tragedy, the anonymous faces on the streets become a mirror reflecting Rubinfien's conflicting emotions and struggle for meaning in the face of unspeakable horror and lingering terror - where did we go wrong, how did this happen?....

© Leo Rubinfien, All Rights Reserved

While the images are all striking and evocative, what binds the work together is the book's unique format and eloquent writing. As a traditional monograph with an essay, the book would have failed and lacked the personal and emotional weight necessary to carry the heavy subject. Instead, the book is essentially a personal essay, divided into four chapters, with over 80 gate-fold portraits interspersed. The first chapter considers 9/11 and events it triggered; the second chapter reflects on the the generation conflicts and political turmoil into which Rubinfien was born; the third chapter reflects on Islam, jihad and the predominantly young men who are drawn to groups as disparate as al-Qaida, Hamas etc...; the final chapter reflects on the 9/11 lingering political consequences around the world and the growing divisions around the world.

Largely influenced by Japanese photographers, Fukhase and Tomatsu come to mind, Rubinfien's personal and poetic exploration of the events surrounding 9/11 elevates the work above a mere document of the tragedy, making it one of the best, and most evocative, photobooks to deal with 9/11 and it's aftermath.

© Leo Rubinfien, All Rights Reserved

Wounded Cities is currently up in the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC and Robert Mann Gallery in NYC. The book can also be purchased here and here.

Try To Praise The Mutilated World

2008-11-20T10:52:00.002-05:00

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

Adam Zagajewski
Translated by Renata Gorczynski

Darker Diamond, the work of John Opera

2008-11-19T11:52:00.006-05:00

© John Opera, All Rights Reserved

I discovered John Opera's work the other day when looking at the forthcoming MP3 book by Aperture this spring. Combining Romantic landscape and modernist abstractions, Opera's photographs toy with the historicized themes of the sublime landscape and modernist abstract photography. While mixing these two disparate modes of photographic representation may seem odd, or jarring, at first, together the different images highlight the messy convergence and construct of both the exterior, natural world, and the interior, personal abstracted world.

Like artists such as Walead Beshty or Florian Maier-Aichen, the work cleverly draws on and critiques historical modes of photographic representation to explore and challenge the medium. As Opera states in an interview,

There is the photo ghetto: the photo world that folds in on itself that is only really serving itself. It’s associated with the grand failures of photography in the twentieth-century, and it includes the whole feminist critique of photography being a machismo mode of representation, or the myth of the “decisive moment,” or staging. There’s part of photography that’s still closely connected to failures in late Modernism that most other art forms have recognized and moved on from.

Find out more about his work here and here.

© John Opera, All Rights Reserved

© John Opera, All Rights Reserved

spring book spring

2008-11-13T15:14:00.009-05:00

© Doug DuBois, All Rights Reserved

Being an unrepentant bibliophile, I can't resist being excited about the latest crop of Aperture books. They've just released their Spring Catalog, and they've got a number of cool books coming out. Among the books are Thomas Ruff's book JPGS, The Edge of Vision (Lyle Rexer's exploration of contemporary photographic abstraction), Vol. 2 of the MP3 Project (Curtis Mann, John Opera and Stacia Yeapanis), a Magnum compilation on the effect of AIDS wordlwide, and a book called Photography After Frank, an essay compilation which explores Robert Frank's neverending influence.

However, there are a couple of books I'm most excited to see. The first is entitled Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 1970s, and is edited by Ryuichi Kaneko, the curator of the Tokyo's Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Riding on the success of Parr and Badger's books, as well as Roth's book, 101 Photography Books, this is another in a growing list of photobooks on photobooks. Hopefully, along with more recent re-publications of important Provoke and other seminal Japanese photobooks, this book will help fill the gap in the West's knowledge about Japanese photography and books, and their profound significance for the medium. Although I'm admittedly often perplexed by the faint trickle of tomes that make their way to the US, the wealth, volume and variety of work in Japanese photobooks is exciting. Given the often narrow range of creative influence for young photographers in the US, the variety and radically different nature of the work is welcome.

I'm also excited to see books by both Eirik Johnson and Doug Dubois. Eirik Johnson won the Santa Fe Prize a couple of years ago for his project Borderlands, which was subsequently published as a book by Twin Palms. His new body of work, entitled Sawdust Mountain, explores the fragile relationship between man, industry and nature in the Pacific Northwest. Although travelling well-worn paths, Johnson manages to offer fresh and interesting images that further probe our conflicted relationship with nature. Likewise, Doug Dubois' book All The Nights And Days, is another exciting publication by a well-deserving and excellent photographer on a familiar subject. The culmination of over twenty-years, DuBois' tender and smart pictures of his family manage to avoid the ready clichés of photographing the family while remaining evocative and touching. Began after his father suffered an on a commuter train, the work explores the subtle frailties and daily emotion struggles of a family. Sadly, we have to wait all winter to see these treasures.

Here Comes The Sun, or Obama Has a Posse

2008-11-10T12:07:00.007-05:00

Get yours here.

the past is a foreign country

2008-10-08T17:34:00.008-04:00

Although I'm a bit late on this on due to my lax and sporadic posts, but I wanted to mention the recent book and exhibition at ICP - Bill Wood's Business. Organized and curated by Marvin Heiferman and Diane Keaton, the book is a collection of the work of Bill Wood, a commercial photographer from Ft. Worth, Texas. From the late '30s to the early 70's, the Bill Wood Photo Company created a photographic record of the daily life (both commercial and private) of a rapidly growing Texas city. From store openings to evidentiary documents to mortuary photographs, Wood's encyclopedic output not only illuminates the distant, yet temporally close past, but also becomes a perplexing exploration of photography's mutable role in our culture.

© Bill Wood, All Rights Reserved

While many curatorial efforts have used photographic archives (individual or collective) to explore and make arguments about the past (Michael Lesy being the most prominant and influential example) or as part of a larger conceptual gesture (Sultan and Mandel's Evidence or Peter Piller and others), Heiferman and Keaton make a conscious effort to avoid decontextualizing or reframing Wood's work as something it is not. It is easy to see how a simple edit of the work could create something as perplexingly obtuse and wonderful as Sultan and Mandel's work, but by refusing to do so, the work emerges as somehow odder and just as rewarding. The dispassionate commercial eye of Wood reveals the distant world of the past, but his images in their encyclopedia scope point down the knotted forked paths of contemporary photography.

© Bill Wood, All Rights Reserved

© Bill Wood, All Rights Reserved

© ICP/Marvin Heiferman, All Rights Reserved

While the exhibition is down, the book is still available and worth checking out here.

Iron Fists and Trademarked Smiles

2008-10-08T13:31:00.007-04:00

About a year ago, I got the opportunity to work with Steve Heller on another book, Iron Fists: Branding The Totalitarian State (Phaidon, 2008). Photographing Steve's extensive collection of Chinese figurines and totalitarian paraphernalia was a great pleasure. Housed in a veritable museum of graphic design, pop culture and design ephemera, Steve's collection is as impressive as it is comprehensive. The latest in a long list of Heller's publications, Iron Fists, is a brilliant examination of the ways in which totalitarian regimes (Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy and Communist China) used graphic design to branded themselves and solidified their control.

From Mao's "Mona Lisa smile" and Lenin's proletarian cap to Mussolini's Futurist posters and the Hitler's infamous swastika, the visual cues, typeface, logos and jingles of the various regimes were all as carefully crafted and considered as the marketing efforts of Madison Avenue ad executives. As Heller writes,

A popular brand of frozen food or laundry detergent is not forced down the consumer’s throat with an iron fist...[nevertheless] the design and marketing methods used to inculcate doctrine and guarantee consumption are fundamentally similar.

Heller's exploration does not attempt to diminish the atrocities of the various regimes, but rather illuminates the efficacy, influence and powerful sway these efforts had over their populace. Considering the continued confluence of design, state power and propaganda, the lessons from this era have continued relevance.

It's also telling that three of the profiled dictators considered themselves artists - Hitler, a architect and watercolorist; Mao a calligrapher and poet; and Mussolini, a pulp novelist and hypermasculine sex symbol. As "artists," the state become their platform to terrible ends. Clearly influenced by (and working in collaboration with) the Futurists, the Russian Constructivists and other artists, the regimes drew upon the artistic heritage and wealth of their nations to design and wield terrible instrument of power.

pretend that you're actually alive

2008-04-27T11:38:00.012-04:00

Leigh Ledare, a freshly minted Columbia MFA, has just produced a complicated and disturbingly voyeuristic book, Pretend You're Actually Alive. Published by PPP Editions, the book coincides with his solo show at Andrew Roth, who runs the press. The work is a dark collaborative exploration of Leigh's mother, their relationship, and the damage of fame and victimization. As the press release states,

[PYAC] can be viewed as an archive of a mother and son’s shared, private moments amidst the desperate attempts to renew her identity as a dancer – this time working as a stripper in a club beside her parents’ apartment. Pretend You’re Actually Alive is also a mapping of Ledare’s mother’s efforts to commodify herself –initially through her precocious childhood talent, later through her overt sexuality, and eventually through the portrayal of herself as an archetypal victim – in efforts to find companionship, attention, financial security, and a benefactor before her youthful, marketable currencies expire.

Combining archival momentos and notes with frank and graphic photographs, the work continues in the intensely personal documentary tradition of Larry Clark (Ledare was the still-photo from Clark's film Ken Park), Nan Goldin, Richard Billingham and even Jim Goldberg. Coming home one holiday, Leigh visit his mom, who lived next door to his grandparents, and she answered the door naked -- dramatically announcing she was now a stripper. His mom, once a famous ballerina, was stripping at a local club and working through a series of abusive relationships in a desperate attempt to maintain and affirm her beauty and talent, and garner the attention and affection of wealthy patrons and boyfriends, who offered her the possibility of financial security.

© Leigh Ledare, All Rights Reserved.

I'm typically wary of personal photojournalistic work - because more often than not the peculiarities of the person's life (or their approach) rarely merit sustained attention. More recently, the trend for self-involved hipsters to document themselves getting drunk or cavorting about naked seems to offers little beyond the initial voyeuristic excitement. At the same time, the kind of self-destructive lifestyle and drama that fuels much similar work can also be a trap and misleading foundation that props up otherwise thin work. Ledare's work seems to avoid this danger and explores deeper issues of intimacy, the collapse and evolution of a mother and son relationship, co-dependency, performance and authorship. In many ways, the work is a performative investigation and collaboration btw Ledare and his mother about her and their relationship.

© Leigh Ledare, All Rights Reserved.

The book is quite beautiful and comes softbound in a slip-case. The book is divided into chapters with photographs mixed in with various typed and hand-written notes, archival photos, and diary entries that recount what are fictional and truthful events in Leigh and his mother's life. The show is up at Andrew Roth until mid-June and the book can be purchased there or here.

bye bye photography

2008-03-28T13:17:00.019-04:00

© Daido Moriyamo, All Rights Reserved

Sometimes I think the Japanese got it right all along - f*#k the print, long live the book. Having to contend with limited gallery opportunities, the photo book industry flourished in Japan and they developed innovative ways to push the boundaries of the printed image. This thought crossed my mind again when I went to Christie's in anticipation of their photobook auction next week. The previews don't open until next week - but I wanted to take a peek at the catalog - and see a few of the treasures like Yutaka Takanashi's Toshi-e, Towards a City, issues of Provoke and William Eggleston's Morals of Vision.

After looking at the catalog, I walked through the Contemporary Art Auction previews - which reminded me why I don't like auctions. Art work in all states of disrepair hung with a loose effort to create a vaguely meaningful dialog - after all it is a sale, not a show. There are a few photographs for sale - and with a few exceptions they looked like sad rejects cast off by their owners before they faded into oblivion. A relatively early Gursky (1993) had not only faded and developed a sickly jaundiced pallor but also looked like it was barely clinging to its diasec mount. It reminded me of the shock I felt at the Thomas Struth retrospective at the Met, where most of the prints had a noticeable magenta or yellow cast - suggesting their owners had placed them next to their windows and long hours of sunlight.

© Daido Moriyamo, All Rights Reserved

Perhaps it is the willful disregard of the "fine print" that seems refreshing in the face of over-sized megaprints. Artist's such as Daido Moriyama, Kikuji Kawada, Yutaka Takanashi and others (including American artists such as Lee Friedlander and the incredible John Gossage), have all used the book to magnificent ends. Give me a copy of Moriyama's bye bye photography (Shashin yo Sayonara) (1972) or Kawada's The Map (1965) over a sickly Gursky anyday.

© Daido Moriyamo, All Rights Reserved

Mark Steinmetz - South East

2008-03-27T11:14:00.003-04:00

Following up on his beautiful book South Central, Mark Steinmetz and Nazraeli will be releasing South East in June 2008. Although I've written about Steinmetz before, he seems like one of those photographers who is consistently present (i.e., Blindspot, exhibitions etc...), but somehow eludes wider acclaim. Perhaps the fact that he works in B/W and in a more traditional social documentarian mode, has led some to dismiss the elegant and poetic beauty of his photographs and see his work as somehow less contemporary. Photographing mainly in the South - Tennessee, Georgia, and Louisiana - Steinmetz captures a life lived on the periphery of the American Dream, yet a life that is still touched by grace and beauty.

© Mark Steinmetz, All Rights Reserved

© Mark Steinmetz, All Rights Reserved

© Mark Steinmetz, All Rights Reserved

these birds walk

2008-03-24T20:51:00.005-04:00

© Mike Brodie, All Rights Reserved

these birds walk, the excellent series of books published by Paul Schiek, has announced the next round of books in the kin series. The next round promises an exciting mix of familiar and new names - Alec Soth, Todd Hido, Marianne Muller and Abner Nolan. They aren't taking subscriptions yet, but it should be up soon.

I still love looking at Mike Brodie's book from the first round, which featured Polaroid snapshots and portraits from his trainhoppin' adventures around the US. Jim Goldberg's book is coming out shortly and I can't wait. The series received a lot of attention when it first came out, but it is worth revisiting since the next round is coming up. While much DIY efforts can be self-aggrandizing and largely forgettable, it is nice to see a project producing exciting new work that skirts the edges of the ever expanding photo publishing world.

the idea of order

2008-03-24T20:37:00.007-04:00

© Robert Adams, All Rights Reserved

The form the photographer records, though discovered in a split second of literal fact, is different because it implies an order beyond itself, a landscape into which all fragments, no matter how imperfect, fit perfectly. -Robert Adams

a shimmer of possibility

2008-02-01T10:23:00.002-05:00

From A-1: The Great North Road to Empty Heaven, Paul Graham has been incredibly adept at exploring and expanding the potential of social documentary practice. As an artist who has continually reinvented and pushing himself to explore the potentials of the medium, Graham's latest work, a shimmer of possibility, is an amazing contribution not only to his complex body of work, but to the medium as well. In a time when the photographic default, not only critically and institutionally, are often monumental images that blur the lines between cinema and the still-image, Graham's complex and subtle work has reinvigorated the tradition of social documentary photography.

At once sumptuous and nondescript, the gorgeous rainbow hued volumes contain sequences of such quiet grace that it would be easy to initially dismiss them as casual throw offs that any "serious" photography would have either never printed or deleted from their digital camera. While containing their own individual strengths, the real beauty comes from the ways in which the images are woven together in what the photographer has called "filmic haikus." Each book contains a short sequence of images that are connected thematically - from a book that only contains one amazing image of a decaying Camero to the complex ballet of a New Orleans street corner spread out over 60 images. Influenced by the short stories of Chekhov, each book is a gem of a short story that reveals the often complicated, disturbing, and at times beautiful, reality of America in the 21st century.

To read more about the books, check out these reviews: here and here.

© Paul Graham, All Rights Reserved

Hyena Men and Honey Collectors

2007-11-29T15:23:00.000-05:00

© Pieter Hugo, All Rights Reserved

Pieter Hugo, an incredible photographer based in South Africa, is having his first NY solo show at Yossi Milo Gallery from Nov. 29 to Jan. 12. The opening is tonight from 6-8pm. The show draws on two amazing bodies of work - Hyena Men and Honey Collectors. The Hyena Men, which was shot in Nigeria documents roaming troupes of animal charmers/performers, who use wild baboons, hyenas and snakes. The Honey Collectors was shot in Ghana and documents men, who don cassava leaves and climb the up into the rainforest canopy to collect and sell the honey. Pieter has produced a number of great documentary series on Africa and is beginning to get much deserved international recognition.

© Pieter Hugo, All Rights Reserved

Not Yet Titled

2007-11-01T15:44:00.002-04:00

In my final year of grad school, I picked up a postcard with the Susan Lipper image below and was entranced - in fact, it still sits on my bookshelf. At the time, I was working on a series of large scale diptychs and had not resolved all the issues of the work. While my work wasn't really succeeding, I was attracted to the messy, problematic inconsolability of the images. Although radically different, Lipper's work offered hope that the differences, ruptures and questions that arose from the pairing could become part of the work and enrich its meaning.

© Susan Lipper, All Rights Reserved

Lipper's series, Not Yet Titled (1999-2004), is a fascinating and thorny exploration of post-cold war angst. As she states,

Functioning as a time capsule of associations, this series is perhaps more defined by its dates than by words. The images began as a loose narrative in 1999. At the time, I found myself drawn to military and Cold War references. Equally I was seeking an unembodied vantage point, one not set in a specific geographic locale.

© Susan Lipper, All Rights Reserved

Although well-known for her book Grapevine, a portrait of rural West Virginia, her work can also be found in the excellent book Trip, which is readily available and criminally cheap. Paired with the short fiction of Frederick Barthelme, the book is a "fictional non-narrative" and follows a enigmatic road trip through the arcane corners of America. It rare to find a smart take on the exhausted road trip genre and Lipper succeeds.

Putting Back the Wall

2007-10-04T12:04:00.001-04:00

© John Gossage, All Rights Reserved

John Gossage and Loosestrife Editions have just published Putting Back the Wall, the final volume in Gossage's Berlin Series, which also includes the excellent Berlin in the Time of the Wall. Comprised of photographs from 1982-89, the book explores the psychological territory of the Berlin wall. Although documentary in the loosest sense, Gossage's poetic images "promise clarity - yet deliver only mystery or might promise invention and fiction - yet actually deliver truth."

© John Gossage, All Rights Reserved

Although the Berlin Wall is the central focus of the work, the two volumes use the wall as a touch stone to explore the forgotten and unwanted histories, the fragmented landscapes and detris that surround the wall and city. While Gossage's work began as a trip to exhibit photographs and conduct a workshop at the Werkstatt für Fotografie in Kreuzburg, it has evolved into deep engagement with the German political and social landscape.

© John Gossage, All Rights Reserved

Using the book as the primary vehicle and statement of his work, Gossage has produced a powerful and unique body of work. From The Pond to Putting Back the Wall, Gossage's work continues to explore the nature of the politicized landscape in fascinating ways. The book also includes two excellent essays by Gerry Badger and Thomas Weski. You can get a copy here and here.

On the Beach

2007-08-10T19:29:00.001-04:00

Aperture has announced its Fall line-up of new books. Over the past several years, Aperture has revived itself and increasingly published new and interesting work. As a subscriber since I was about 15, I have seen Aperture evolve, redefine, and occasionally stumble, over the past decade and was beginning to fear it would fade into photographic history and lose its continued relevance. Given the rapid change and evolution of photography over the years, the mere fact that it has lasted over 50 years, is a testament to its lasting importance.

Among the new titles are Richard Misrach's On The Beach, a reprint of Lisette Model's 1979 Aperture monograph, and new books by Richard Ross, Beate Gütschow, Matthew Sleeth, Dawoud Bey, Thomas Allen and others.

© Richard Misrach, All Rights Reserved

© Richard Misrach, All Rights Reserved

Shannon Ebner

2007-08-06T16:00:00.000-04:00

© Shannon Ebner, All Rights Reserved

Dan Torop, the photographer and co-curator behind last summer excellent show A Rabbit as King of Ghosts at Mitchell-Inness & Nash Gallery, recently wrote a great article on the incredible work of the photographer Shannon Ebner.

You can read more about her work here, here, here and here.

Somewhere/Anywhere

2007-08-06T14:21:00.001-04:00

© Michael Schmidt, All Rights Reserved

Michael Schmidt, one of Germany's preeminent photographers, has worked quietly for over twenty years documenting the social and political landscape of Germany. Well-known for his ground breaking works, Waffenruhe (1987) and EIN-HEIT (1991), Schmidt's work explores the long-term social and political scars of WWII and the division of Germany. Schmidt recently released a new book entitled Ingendwo (2006), which roughly translates as Somewhere/Anywhere. In this new work, Schmidt explores the small nondescript provincial towns of Germany. Carefully sequenced and grouped, the portraits, landscapes, architectural details of the book present, as Schmidt states, a portrait our subjective loss of “home as a place with identity.” Suffused with a sense of inconsolable emptiness and alienation, Schmidt's work presents a powerful portrait of modern Germany and contemporary life.

© Michael Schmidt, All Rights Reserved

Home says nothing to me. In any case, home is what you carry with you, inside you. You remember places because you spent the most wonderful or the most horrible time there during your childhood. But these places have become more arbitrary, less specific . . . There is no such thing as an objective category that one might call ‘home’ any more. Such things take place subjectively nowadays. - Michael Schmidt

Les Chambres Noire

2007-07-27T14:14:00.000-04:00

© Michel Campeau, All Rights Reserved

Michel Campeau's Les Chamres Noire (or Darkrooms) is a fascinating and idiosyncratic examination and tribute to the demise of the chemical darkroom. Reminiscent of Peter Fraser's work, Campeau explores the detritus strewn corners and the wonky analog contraptions of darkrooms throughout his native Canada. As Campeau writes,

As an agent in and witness of a pivotal moment in the history of art and technologies, squeezed between the dual procedures of analogical and digital recording, I find the utmost importance to invest the iconicity of the darkroom with the connotations of ruin and post-industrial debris . . . My investigation, iconoclastic and sacrilegious, scrutinizes the “surrealizing” incongruity of darkrooms and throws the spotlight on the bric-à-brac of plumbing and electricity, the ventilation-system engines, the posted iconography, the weirdness of “planets” envisioned at the bottom of chemical trays, the splattering of silver salts, the wear of equipment and the countdown of timers that defies the disappearance of the panchromatic spectre.

© Michel Campeau, All Rights Reserved

Nazraeli Press is releasing a monograph of the work - selected and edited by Martin Parr. The book is the first in a series of what promise to be excellent books edited by Parr for Nazraeli.

© Michel Campeau, All Rights Reserved

Looking at his work, I can't help but be reminded of the remark by master printer, Richard Benson, "Making art in a room in the dark is the stupidest thing imaginable." Working in the dark may be stupid, but it often yields magical results.

You can see more of his work here.

Susan Meiselas - Pandora's Box

2007-07-25T12:41:00.000-04:00

© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos, All Rights Reserved

Susan Meiselas series Pandora's Box is currently being exhibited at Cohen Amador and the opening is tonight - Wednesday July 25, 6-8 PM. Taken from her 2001 book of the same title, the series explores an upscale NYC S&M club. Created in conjunction with Nick Broomfield's documentary Fetishes, Meiselas' work explores the dark rituals and fantasies of the self-professed "Disneyland of S&M." Exposing the complex relationship between the dominatrix and masochist, the work not only reveals this secret world but also slowly entices us as voyeurs into the complex rituals of objectification and domination.

From her seminal work in Central America to her incredible work in Kurdistan, Meiselas is one of the most influential and important documentary photographers working today. As a graduate student, I had the great fortune to work for her and still treasure my time in the Magnum archive pouring over her contact sheets for Carnival Strippers. The show is definitely not to be missed and if you get a chance take a look at the incredible book.

© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos, All Rights Reserved