Walker Evans

What else is there to say about Walker Evans other than he is probably the greatest American photographer of the Twentieth Century... Okay - there is plenty more to say.

It's hard to tire of Evan's work - whether it's his early work from Cuba, the extensive Depression era work with the FSA, his subway project or any of the other work he produced from Florida, Northeast architecture or his very late colour work.

Evans' work pretty much defined a whole American approach to photography - indeed American Photographs is probably one of the most important books of photography published in the last century in North America - defining both Modern photography in particular and photography books in general.

A recent word from John Szarkowski:
"Probably the most misunderstood important photographer in American photography is Walker Evans. You know, people think he was photographing the Depression, people think he was photographing poor people or tried to promote social change. Walker was less interested in social change.... But what he really was photographing was something else. Very seldom did he photograph anything that he didn’t think had some kind of quality. Even if it was the record of a failure, it was the record of a failure in which there was some kind of poignancy, some kind of memorable ambition. Some kind of artistic intention, even if naive or cut short. Noble failure was a constant interest of his. A piece of stamped tin ornament thrown away in the junk pile — it’s a record of an artistic ambition that was for some reason cut short, thwarted, died stillborn, of course naive, but nevertheless, on some level, moving."

and from a recent exhibition review:

"...He combined Hemingway’s economy with Cummings’s wit and Eliot’s urbanity. His laconic scrutiny defined an American visual poetry stripped of Victorian charm and propriety and easy bohemianism. It’s there in the rhyming circles of the windows of the houses echoing Lombard’s shiner on the poster, in the haphazard geometry of the telephone wires and in the tumble of abandoned Model T’s, like tombstones, collected at the base of a grassy hill. The last is akin to one of Brady’s Civil War photographs, silent and eternal. Evans’s mordant dispassion let him see destitution and the everyday in all its ready-made eloquence, short-circuiting our pity and condescension."

Interestingly the Library of Congress holds many of Evan's negatives and prints from the FSA work. A lot of this has been digitized and can be found at the American Memory site. While they have links to a few of his most popular photographs up front, if you hunt around (and you do have to hunt) there are a significant number of hi-res files of Evans' work. You can download these and they a certainly good enough to produce your own 11x14 or so print - such as the one below.

While I was hunting around the web for images I was also delighted to find a recorded interview with Evan's at the Getty here

More on Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan's work that I mentioned in a couple of earlier posts here and here was very much the beginnings of an experimental project.

He recently put up a new addition (above). I think he's really getting closer to what he wants to do here.

"I just posted a new one on my website, depicting 1.14 million paper supermarket bags (the quantity used in the US every hour). This is not a mosaic like a couple of the previous ones; this one I assembled manually in Photoshop from hundreds of photos I made in my studio of a small quantity of supermarket bags"

Alec Soth - portraits

(Mary, Wisconsin 2005)

Alec Soth is certainly the wunderkind of the moment - though deservedly so imo. Sleeping by the Mississippi was good. I think Niagara was actually better - though as much as I enjoyed them I must say I find both mildly depressing.... But it wasn't until I hunted around his site that I came across his portraits. The two books just mentioned include quite a few portraits, but most of these seem a little different. They seem to be a combination of commissions and work taken in the course of other projects. I must sayI really quite like them.



(Günter Grass & Gerhard Steidl, 2004)

There's a freshness about them as well as a vitality - you feel like you could get to know most of these people. There's also the clarity that comes from using 8x10, which isn't purely visual, and comes across even on the web.

There is an essay about the portraits on his site:

"Soth is most interested in shooting what is new to him. Rarely does he photograph friends, family, or familiar surroundings. His vision is driven by curiosity. He credits his solitary wanderings for heightening his awareness—for his ability to spot the right person, even in a crowd. On a recent assignment in China, he waited at the entrance of a subway. “I probably watched five hundred people pass by the tunnel entrance,” says Soth. “I knew the instant that I saw this one young man that I wanted to take his portrait.”

Describing the experience of meeting Odessa (Odessa, Joelton, Tennessee, 2004) while on assignment for Life magazine in Tennessee, Soth recalls: “Odessa was visiting her boyfriend while he played war games in Joelton. I was attracted to her the second I saw her. The attraction is not unlike falling in love at first sight. It is a physical, not cognitive, reaction. I became interested in the ‘idea’ of her.” Soth wondered what her story was. “But this isn’t the point. I’m interested in the beauty of the mystery. I’m standing here; she’s standing there. In the space between there is a gulf, a mystery, and for me, an attraction.” That is what Soth seeks to behold and to capture: the invisible gulf, the space that connects us, holding everything together...." more

(Girl with flowers, Beijing, 2004)

Now I just want to see how he got on with Cat Power... - he'd mentioned on his blog he wanted to photograph her et voilà! (so, Madeleine Peyroux, if you are reading this I'm free :-) )

(Jim Harrison, Livingston, Montana, 2004)

Jitka Hanzlová - Forest

Jitka Hanzlová is quite well known for her portrait work, but I especially like her work on the forest surrounding the village where she lived as a child. I've always been intrigued by forests and woodlands - like mountains they often seem to embody the beautiful and the sublime (in the awe-full sense of "dark, uncertain, and confused.") at the same time. John Berger has written about her work:

"...Many nature photographs are like fashion photos. This is not to dismiss them; they record and admit pleasure. Mountaintops, waterfalls, meadows, lakes, beech trees in autumn, are asked to stand there, wearing themselves and giving the camera a moody look. And why not? They are reminders of the pleasure of at last arriving after hours in airports.

Nature as hostess.

In Jitka’s pictures there is no welcome. They have been taken from the inside. The deep inside of a forest, perceived like the inside of a glove by a hand within it....

It’s a commonplace to say that photographs interrupt or arrest the flow of time. They do it, however, in thousands of different ways. Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” is different from Atget’s slowing down to a standstill, or from Thomas Struth’s ceremonial stopping of time. What is strange about some of Jitka’s forest photos - not her photos of other subjects - is that they appear to have stopped nothing.

In a space without gravity there is no weight, and these pictures of hers are, as it were, weightless in terms of time. It is as if they have been taken between times, where there is none...

In the silence of the forest certain events are unaccommodated and cannot be placed in time. Being like this they both disconcert and entice the observer’s imagination: for they are like another creature’s experience of duration. We feel them occurring, we feel their presence, yet we cannot confront them, for they are occurring for us, somewhere between past, present and future....

Return to the forests that belong to history. In Jitka’s one there is often a sense of waiting, yet what is it that is waiting? And is waiting the right word? A patience. A patience practised by what? A forest incident. An incident we can neither name, describe, nor place. And yet is there. The intricacy of the crossing paths and crossing energies in a forest - the paths of birds, insects, mammals, spores, seeds, reptiles, ferns, lichens, worms, trees, etc, etc - is unique; perhaps in certain areas on the seabed there exists a comparable intricacy, but there man is a recent intruder, whereas, with all his sense perceptions, he came from the forest. Man is the only creature who lives within at least two timescales: the biological one of his body and the one of his consciousness....

The longer one looks at Jitka Hanzlová’s pictures of a forest, the clearer it becomes that a breakout from the prison of modern time is possible. The dryads beckon. You may slip between - but unaccompanied."

Here is a cached link to the full Berger article

Arnold Odermatt - Swiss Policeman

Throughout his career with the Swiss Police, amateur photographer Arnold Odermatt took photographs both for himself and for his work.

He joined the Canton of Nidwalden police 1948 and remained with them until he retired in 1990 as Head of the Traffic Police and Deputy Commander of the Nidwalden police. It's only since his retirement that he has experienced new found celebrity as a photographer. First with his book Karambolage and now a new book On Duty.

Karambolage is about traffic accidents; "Odermatt was the first officer in Switzerland to begin documenting these tragic scenes on film, and he created two distinct bodies of work. Setting his tripod on the roof of a police van, he first shot a series of straightforward images to accompany accident reports and on-site police drawings. Hours later, when onlookers had gone and most traces of violence had been cleared away, he returned to make a final, more highly aestheticized portrait of the wrecked vehicles." At night he often photographed the scenes using a magnesium flare, turning night into day.

In On Duty "Odermatt used his camera to recreate scenes from his days in law enforcement, spurred on by the fears of the shrinking Nidwalden police force, in hopes of enticing the village youth to join its increasingly unfashionable ranks. On Duty collects these images, which are populated by Odermatt’s colleagues re-enacting their daily adventures, in a compelling sequence of colourful tableaux. It is a strange and impressive document offering unexpected insight into a hidden world".

Perhaps it's because at one time I was a policeman and took similar photographs, or possibly because I've also driven in Switzerland where the inhabitants often seem to drive like maniacs on winding mountain roads - I'm not quite sure - but there is something about this work that I like. Photography is always evidence of something, yet here, where photography is perhaps closest to being used to record "fact" it still very quickly and easily moves away from being merely evidence. And while there is a formal rigour to the work, there is also a fondness (if you can say that about accidents?) and a sense of affection and melancholy. I certainly find them strangely appealing.

Commonplacing - not blogging

Interesting post on Not a blog, but a commonplace. I once came across one of these in an old rectory in North Devon, but never knew what the proper name was for them.

I like the term "commonplace" far better than blog.... :-)

Fernando Pessoa

extracts from: "The Keeper of Sheep" and other writings by Fernando Pessoa

When I look, I see clear as a sunflower.
I'm always walking the roads
Looking right and left,
And sometimes looking behind . . .
And what I see every second
Is something I've never seen before,
And I know how to do this very well . . .
I know how to have the essential astonishment
That a child would have if it could really see
It was being born when it was being born . . .
I feel myself being born in each moment,
In the eternal newness of the world . . .
I believe in the world like I believe in a marigold,
Because I see it. But I don't think about it
Because to think is to not understand . . .
The world wasn't made for us to think about
(To think is to be sick in the eyes)
But for us to see and agree with . . .
I don't have a philosophy: I have senses . . .
If I talk about Nature, it's not because I know what it is,
But because I love it, and that's why I love it,
Because when you love you never know what you love,
Or why you love, or what love is . . .
Loving is eternal innocence,
And the only innocence is not thinking . . .

~

If I could crush the whole earth
And be able to feel its taste,
Happier in a moment I'd be.
But every now and again we need to be unhappy
So we can be natural...

Not everything is sunny days,
And rain, when long overdue, is much needed.
For this reason I take unhappiness with happiness,
Naturally, like one who is not surprised to find
Mountains and planes
Rock cliffs and grass...

What is needed is to be able to be natural and calm
Both in happiness and unhappiness,
To feel like one looks,
To think like one walks,
And when the time to die comes,
To remember that the day also dies,
And that the sunset is beautiful
And beautiful is the night that stays behind...
That is how it is and shall be...

~

The startling reality of things
Is my discovery every single day.
Every thing is what it is,
And it's hard to explain to anyone
how much this delights me
And suffices me.

To be whole, it is enough
simply to exist

See also The Book of Disquiet and Poems of Fernando Pessoa

(Wild Rose - Bethicketted)

The humdrum portraits trend

I wonder when the current fad for ho-hum humdrum portraits is going to be over?

Take flat even light (such as a soft, overcast day), ordinary (or ordinary looking) people and photograph them in a deadpan way, often head on. Preferably with big film (4x5 or 8x10) - oh and if you can throw the words adolescence, pubescent or teenage in there - or a scrawny semi-naked long haired guy - all the better (though non of it even comes close to Sally Mann's or Andrea Modica's or even Lauren Greenfield's take on those first three themes).

I think that looking back it will be very easy to identify this kind of work as from a very specific time period (the early 00's?) a bit like the identification between Duran Duran and 80's music.

It's been done to death and yet every week it seems a new emerging photographer pops up with the same take on the same old stuff. It looked good the first time, in the hands of one of those listed below. But on the whole now 98% of it is - well, pretty boring.

(Note: I'm only including photos in this post by some of those who pioneered this approach, not the followers - this is the good stuff... if you want the endless copycat stuff you'll have to find it yourself)

Rineke Dijkstra perfected this and her work still stands far above most of the rest. Philip-Lorca diCorcia takes stunning portraits which simply defy this (downward) trend.

Along with Dijkstra, Struth was one of the earlier experimenters with this format as was Thomas Ruff. Both did it well, very well indeed.

Loretta Lux took it to a whole new level (and, incidentally, took one of the first truly worthy moves towards the challenge of 1's and 0's, as well as turned the whole trend on it's head) - but stand by for the tidal wave of Bell Jar clutching disciples following in her wake


Martin Schoeller developed a close-up form (used to try replace Avedon for a while at the New Yorker), put his own twist on it and again that worked pretty well. While someone like Alec Soth picks up on an earlier tradition of portraiture and successfully runs with it.


Even so, few of the whole crop of efforts succeed as well as say Sander. I haven't yet seen the colour equivalent (in terms of depth, resonance and impact) of his work. I also doubt that, with a few notable exceptions, most of these will have the staying power of a Cameron or a Sander or an Avedon/American West portrait.

In the hands of the innovators, this approach to portraiture was somewhat refreshing. And (perhaps unfortunately) it works extremely well as a commercial look for selling fashion - or just about anything else - but in general, as a form of portraiture, it seems inherently lacking and self-limiting. I think it's also a very attractive and relatively easy form of work to take up for a whole generation of young things coming out of art school (especially, though not only, because you can use your anorexic/deadbeat/adolescent/gay/lesbian - insert word of choice - peers/siblings as an easy pool of models), but with a few exceptions, it has little staying power. Surely it's about time for something new and better to come and take its place.

As for links to examples - I'm pretty sure you can find them yourselves...

(BTW that's Boris Mikhailov in Soth's superb picture with the carrots)

more on Battleship Island

I listed the links in the previous post, but I wanted to give a few more details of Yuji Saiga's other photographs of Gukanjima Island as I think they are so fascinating.

First, the images of the of the sea wall that surrounds the island - what he calls Borderland.

And also images from the island in 1974 when it was still inhabited, but also the year it was abandoned

Lost City

Photographs by Yuji Saiga that appear as if from one of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities - an abandoned city on the Japanese island of Gukanjima. Originally known as Hashima Island it came to be called Gukanjima (battleship) Island because of the profile it's apartment buildings rising out of the sea. It was developed as a coal mining community and was populated from 1887 to 1974, eventually being abandoned when the coal ran out. In the 1950's it was apparently the was the worlds most densely populated community.

CITIES AND MEMORY 5

"Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communicating among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one. (Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities)

Also worth looking at are the photographs of the sea wall surrounding the island as well as photographs from 1974 when it was still inhabited

the Gallery of Regrettable Food

Food photography has come a long way in the last 50 years (to say nothing of cuisine...) Yep - that's meatballs in pink sauce - with the ever popular 1950's side dish of "chopped-off alien fetus pods".

If you've just had an operation, please don't scroll through The Gallery of Regrettable Food or you may burst your stitches.

But if you are a Baby Boomer you owe it to yourself to look at these and wonder in amazement at the fact we actually survived our childhood

Well worth hunting through the different 50's and 60's recipe books - especially the Knudsens Milk; Meat! Meat! Meat!; Knox cooking with gelatin - 0h and Cooking with Seven-Up - among others. A few of my favourites:

"I don’t know why, but this looks like some sort of control panel for a spacecraft whose occupants use only organic machinery. The egg slices on the left control the engines; the eggs on the right handle navigation.It goes without saying that the pea cluster is wired directly to the weapons array"

It really is Napalm-in-a-can - burns to 1120 degrees F...

"Was that a can in your pocket, or were you just glad to see me? But I’ll tell you this: there’s not a man alive who wouldn’t leap at the chance to deploy some Siz today. I mean, look at that thing. The colors. The shape. The name. No lighter run- off! Napalm with finger-tip control! It clings to each briquette and holds each coal in a clutch of fire. FLAMMABLE WHIPPED CREAM."

"Okay, here we go. It’s “Mashed Potato Surprise.” The recipe calls for a special kind of mushrooms: canned mushrooms. Which you feed to the dog. The trick is get him to throw up right in the middle of the mashed potatoes. "




Above- "Bleached, washed, plucked Scalp of Klingon"

And finally, no, you're not mistaken - that is Carnation hamburger....

And if you really enjoy the site, buy the book - for you Mum...

(all quotes and pictures from the Gallery of Regrettable Food)

Tree Roots and Trunk - Vincent van Gogh

"...this amazing painting – one of the very greatest (and least noticed) masterpieces from the founding moment of modernism – is yet another experiment in the independent vitality of painted line and colour, as well as the uncountable force of nature. Almost lost within it – as in Undergrowth With Two Figures – are allusions to and repudiations of, the exhausted traditions of landscape...

...The view is therefore bipolar: simultaneously that of the rabbit and the hawk. Colours – wheat-gold, clay-brown – tease the eye with possibilities of making sense of a field or a hill, but then scramble them into chaos. The usual aesthetic markers – beauty and ugliness – have been made meaningless. In Tree Roots the painted forms rap against the visual panes of our windows, as if trying to crash through the glass. In other paintings from these last weeks in Auvers the interior of the field – green or gold stalks – occupies the entirety of the visual field like a curtain. Without a beginning or an end this infinity of growing matter closes over us. It’s the ultimate compression of heaven and earth, a live burial within the engulfing sea of creation." Simon Scama on Vincent van Gogh's Tree Roots and Trunk"

(Once I've finished the Power of Art, I promise to stop quoting Schama so much...)