Adobe Acrobat 8 - rolled in by a dung beetle...

I used to have a full version of Acrobat 5 or 6, but it seemed like it wasn't tying up with all the new Acrobat options so I tried installing the trial version of Acrobat 8

What a bloated piece of crap!

Back to Acrobat 6 now...

Is Gursky spent?

(Note - see the follow up post here)

I took the latest Modern Painters with me to read at the cottage a while back, optimistically thinking that with a 3 and a 5 year old, the lake ice just melted, bugs, frogs, porcupines and bunnies everywhere, dead-falls to clear and plumbing to fix I would actually have time to read it...




So, I finally got down to reading the glowing article on the new Gursky work yesterday (there's also a good little piece on Boris Mikhailov). And today I find a link at Winkleman to a somewhat (though not entirely) critical review in New York Magazine - "It’s Boring at the Top" - of the new Gursky show at the Matthew Marks Gallery (and here):

Is Andreas Gursky—the highest-priced photographer alive—running out of ideas?

The German über-photographer Andreas Gursky was the perfect pre-9/11 artist. He excelled at portraying the border-to-border, edgeless hum and busy obliviousness of modern life, what Francis Fukuyama ridiculously declared “the end of history,” George W.S. Trow called “The Context of No Context,” and Rem Koolhaas dubbed “Junkspace.” Not only did Gursky seem to be critical of all this, but his handsome images of trading floors, hotel lobbies, raves, and landscapes were charged with a visual force and intellectual rigor that let you imagine that you were gleaning the grand schemes and invisible rhythms of commerce and consumption. His amazing picture of a convenience store brimming with goods, 99 Cent II, Diptych (2001), which recently became the most expensive photo in history when it was auctioned for over $3.3 million, fizzed like cherry cola but packed the formal power of a Monet.

Unfortunately, as smart and deft as this artist still is, that fizz has gone flat, the power has run low, the former buzz has become a drone. The times have changed, but Gursky is still trying to render purring pre-9/11 space, where commerce ticked along without an undercurrent of fear. But his rigor and criticality have been replaced by grandiosity and theatricality; figures feel frozen; compositions are stagy; structure devolves into carpet like pattern. Gursky’s new pictures are filled with visual amphetamine, but now they’re laced with psychic chloroform. He’s such a serious artist that this amphetamine is singular enough to sometimes offset the deadening effects so that his pictures occasionally impart a poetics of numbness and stupefaction...

...Gursky has digitally pieced together numerous shots from various locations, including his studio, making F1 less a photograph than an invention, and what’s tedious about it is how coyly self-referential it is. Directly above the pit crews are onlookers in a glassed-in observation deck. Many of these folks take photos; a few have their hands against the clear surface of the skybox. Thus, the frontality of the image and the idea of multiple views of one subject is stressed. Standing between the crews is a sexy blonde in lace-up leather stilettos, hot pants, and a skull on her low-slung belt buckle, which is conveniently positioned almost at the center of the picture. Is Gursky implying that men are drones and women are merely saints, sluts, sirens, or fodder for fashion photography, cheesecake, and pornography? Or maybe he’s admitting that he’s out of ideas.

In this I tend to agree on the whole. I remember the excitement when I first encountered Gursky's work - leafing through the books and articles several times - renewed when I saw my first massive Gurskys at the Tate Modern, but I haven't felt the same rush for some time now, while still enjoying - and being inspired by - that first big section of work. What now it seems? As Ed Winkleman says in a slightly different context "He used to be so bleeding edge, and now he's really just riding that wave, churning out signature work with a seasonal/fashionable update every so often."...



BTW, for my money, Thomas Struth's less flamboyant working away at his various projects is still bearing fruit and seems to have much more staying power. Though I also hope Grusky gets his rhythm back and gets back in the groove with something new and good - there is still something about his work - even this new stuff - that can mesmerise you.





POSTSCRIPT: I notice Joerg at Conscientious has picked up on the comments about the new Gursky show (which, of course, almost none of us have seen first hand...). He seems a little worried that we are in danger of treating artists like entertainers. Leaving aside for now the strong argument that could be made that regarding artists as entertainers is nothing new and sometimes appropriate, I want to compare the response to Gursky's new work with that to Thomas Struth's new Museum work. Struth takes an old theme of his - people and museums - and works it deeper and more effectively. On the whole the reviews of Struth's new work have been positive (extremely positive in many cases) - Adrian Tyler just described the Prado show to me as "exquisite", but Struth is essentially doing the same thing here as Gursky in terms of artistic process. Expanding the work of an existing them. Yet as far as I can tell, Struth seems to been much more successful at doing so.

I mentioned the Modern Painters review of the Gursky work - I came away from it empty. It very much felt as though the writer was having to go through all sorts of convolutions using ancient Chinese concepts of blandness (which in itself might be an interesting thread to follow) and quoting Barthes in order to try an justify Gursky's work. Indeed I'm sure the Gursky work is impressive first hand. I'm just getting the feeling it isn't as good as what he's done before and is a bit of a misstep.

Finally the Guardian, while slightly more restrained about the Gursky work, was not exactly enthusiastic:

...In his most recent work, Gursky has employed digital technology, resulting in even more crisp detail as well as the potential to manipulate the image. Kamiokande (2007) portrays an underground chamber designed to detect the smallest-known particles in the universe, the extraordinary architecture and scale of the chamber determined only by two tiny figures at the bottom of the picture. Elsewhere, the extraordinary natural poeticism of the James Bond Island images seduce, even as you try to spot Daniel Craig in his swimming trunks.

Gursky has visited Japan, Thailand and Korea in preparation for this show, apparently in pursuit of new subject matter to satisfy the potential of new technology. It makes you nostalgic for the ordinary everydayness of his earlier work, whose honesty seems to have been lost in the quest for the more extraordinary image.

Richard Mosse, Phillips Explorer 8x10 and Thomas Struth

This post isn't quite the mishmash it appears to be from the title...

I'm reluctantly selling my lovely little Phillips Explorer 8x10 (starving artist mode for the next few months - gotta buy film and feed the kids...). It's up on ebay and I ended up getting an email about the sale from a young Irish photographer Richard Mosse who is studying at Yale.

I found his website and it turns out he has some funky stuff up there. I'll be interested to see how his work develops over time.

Oh - and Richard also told me that Thomas Struth gave a talk at Yale recently and when asked, replied he uses a Phillips Explorer - aww man - did he have to tell me that - talk about separation anxiety...

(this last picture - Struth - from Paradise)

China Watch update

(FENG Bin)

I recently mentioned some of the photographers emerging out of China and being noticed in the West. As a result of FotoFest Beijing, Chinese photographers seem to be on everyone's radar - and rightly so imo - I find all this "new" (to most of us anyway) photography pretty exciting.

(SHUM Dustin)

Joerg (who has been tracking Chinese photographers for some time now) has a good selection of links.

(Birdhead)

Photoeye/Photoeye Galleries is involved with the website linked above "new Internet platform for contemporary Chinese photography"

(LUO Dan)

There's definitely some good stuff in all this


(LI yu)

Kodak Duabubble lens at Coney Island

Cool - okay, so I have a love hate relationship with Flickr (well, closer to hate hate...). As Martin Parr said, there's an awful lot of rubbish to wade through to find anything half decent. There's a side of me that enjoys this playign around with clunky/funky old lenses (or almost lenses) and obscure processes

Via Joe Reifer, this few picture by J.E. Piper. Piper (aka Raven Cat.. those Flickr names are one of the things that are like chalk on a blackboard for me...) says:

"Experimenting with photo processes from the 1840's, and a homemade camera that has a Kodak Duaflex viewfinder glass "bubble" as the lens. This is my first attempt, looking up at a tree outside my window."

Along with one from his Camera Obscura with Magnifying Glass Lens. I'm going to keep watching for more.

The naked truth about Tunick

From the Grauniad (Guardian) Art & Architecture blog - The naked truth about Tunick:

Criticise a popular artist like Spencer Tunick and you're inevitably accused of snobbery, but I'll come clean - I really don't believe anyone can mistake his sensationalism for art.

Tunick has just persuaded 18,000 people to strip off in Mexico City, for the latest in a series of mass nude photo shoots around the world. Well, good for him. He's got the publicity, and the participants doubtless enjoyed themselves, maybe even found it therapeutic.

But so what? Tunick's work isn't art, and no one who actually considered it for a moment would say it was. There's no interesting "thought" underlying his work nor is it a provocative challenge to what art is. His photograph-stunts are on the same level as a wacky advertising campaign. I find it contemptible the way Tunick is applauded for something so blatantly cynical.

I think many people secretly hate art. Not so long ago, it was perfectly respectable to express that loathing, at least for modern art, but nowadays art takes such a prominent role in our culture that most people feel obliged to pay lip service to it - yet the old loathing survives under the surface..." more - go add a comment

I'd pretty much have to agree. It's Christo without the class..

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen

I love serendipity. A couple of days ago I was hunting for a book on my shelves and saw one of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's there and thought to myself "I haven't looked at that for years, I must get it out some time". Then today, Struan Gray across in Lund (somewhere I've always fancied visiting) mentioned her in an email.

I first came across Konttinen and her work at the Side Gallery I mentioned a couple of days ago, in Newcaste-upon-Tyne. I was also photographing in NE England at that time - the height of the Thatcher Years and Maggie's epic battle to crush the Unions. I see the Side Gallery, now with Amber Online, continues to show and enable all sorts of good photography - I love, for instance, that there is a short set of pictures there taken by legendary Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide - but of a group of Mums & Toddlers form Newcastle - taken when she was in town for a show she had at the Side.

Konttinen has photographed in the North East for well over 30 years, since arriving from Finland. She has captured the lives and communities of the region on film, documenting the traditional terraced house community of Byker, where she also lived, before it was demolished. She has also caught the strange habits of the English at the seaside (my Aussie wife still can't understand why someone would want to go sit on the beach when you have to wear an overcoat... or even venture onto a beach made entirely of large pebbles). Lately she has moved to colour, documenting "industrial" seashores.

As Struan commented, Konttinen "has a great trick ofmaking me homesick for places I've never been". Her work is down to earth and almost gritty at times, while also having something magical and almost ethereal about it in places - as well as a sense of humour.

One thing I find about photography is how I often circle back to photographers and their work years later. I was drawn to Konttinen's work originally because she photogrpahing a place I was also trying to photogrpahing and doing it in a way the drew me in. But after a while her books sat on my shelf, not quite forgotten. But over the years, a couple of times I have come back to them and spent time with the pictures as they remind me not just of certain places and times, but also of a way of seeing things.

(Horizontal bedding of limestone in a sea stack, left behind by preferential erosion, surrounded by pit waste of iron pyrites)

Austerlitz - Max Sebald

I find there are some books (though not many) that I want to make the time to re-read at least once. Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald is one of these - although I haven't managed to get around to it a second time yet.

Sebald is a very captivating writer. Born in the Allgäu Alps in Germany, he moved to England in the 1960's eventually becoming a professor of Literature at the University of East Anglia.

His career as an internationally recognized writer was really only just beginning to accelerate when he was killed in a road accident in 2001 at 57. Although he had many books and works published, there would no doubt have been more to come.

Austerlitz is probably his best known book, and although it explicitly set out as fiction, it covers much of the same ground as some of his other books - which are sort of loose travelogues which spiral around examining collective memory, personal memory, history, architecture, writing, guilt and responsibility (especially vis a vis Germany after the War) and more. His travelogues seem as much fiction as "fact". In fact travelogue is a very inaccurate word to describe his way of writing - meditations, memoirs, prose poetry, belle lettres, history - add them all up and they would still be missing an element or two.

One interesting thing he does in most of his books (including Austerlitz) is use photographs. Often small, sometimes grainy. They seem to relate to the text, but you aren't always quite sure how. You also aren't quite sure if he hunted out the photographs (or took them himself) to fit his text, or if in some cases he started with the photographs and then developed the text and stories around them - possibly both. They certainly add another dimension to his stories.

From a review by John Banville (another excellent novelist if you haven't yet read The Sea):

"Sebald's narrative control in the recounting of this terrible tale is remarkable. The creeping horror of the fate of the Austerlitzes is communicated all the more effectively because the narrative never raises its voice. Instead it maintains a masterly and unnerving evenness of tone. The moment, toward the close of the book, when we are finally shown a photograph of a woman who is almost certainly Agáta, is one of the most moving moments that a reader is likely to encounter in modern literature. There are passages of breathless beauty in this book, as when Austerlitz describes watching in slow motion a propaganda film of life in the Terezín camp: "The men and women employed in the workshops now looked as if they were toiling in their sleep, so long did it take them to draw needle and thread through the air as they stitched, so heavily did their eyelids sink, so slowly did their lips move as they looked up wearily at the camera." Mysteriously lovely, too, is the account of a performance by a traveling circus that Austerlitz attends in Paris, at the end of which the whole troupe, accompanied by a white goose, gathers to play on a motley of instruments a tune that Austerlitz does not recognize but that moves him deeply."

"Looking back, however, it seems to me as if the mystery which touched me at the time was summed up in the image of the snow-white goose standing motionless and steadfast among the musicians as long as they played. Neck craning forward slightly, pale eyelids slightly lowered, it listened there in the tent beneath that shimmering firmament of painted stars until the last notes had died away, as if it knew its own future and the fate of its present companions."

Sebald's writings - and walking, there is a lot of walking - isn't that of the Flaneur (which is perhaps a little too light hearted and flamboyant in attitude), nor is it really Dérive (which, despite all it's intentions, is a little too contrived). Possibly a new term is required? Sebalding... (okay, that doesn't sound right).

One thing I do find through is that something in Sebald's writing (or more perhaps, his approach to writing) resonates more and more with how I photograph.





POSTSCRIPT: I just came across an essay about Sebald's use of photographs with the delightful title of (from Alice in Wonderland) - What is the use of a book without pictures?

"...For his literary reconstructions of biographies – of historic or fictional characters as well as of his own – pictures are crucial, especially photos: as media that bring on or bear memories, but also as objects that overlap or erase the original memories. In Sebald’s book Austerlitz the main character Austerlitz reveals within a description of his work in the darkroom "that he was always especially entranced … by the moment when the shadows of reality … emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night"..."

Martin Parr redux

I mentioned Martin Parr the other day.

Joerg has an interesting interview with him over on Conscientious about a show he's curating on "Colour before colour - 1970's European Color Photography" .

BTW, I first came across Parr's work in the early 80's in NE England at the fantastic Side Gallery in Newcastle - by far the best photography gallery in the UK (along with Chris Killip, John Davies, Graham Smith and Paul Graham - part of what became known as the British Photographers of the Thatcher Years). Parr's colour may seem rather everyday now, but back then it was like a beacon and really in-your-face - quite amazing, and certainly for me opened up a new way of looking at colour, as well a of photographing the everyday around me.

In fact I remember picking up the 1986 copy of the Pop Photography Annual (those things were actually really good back then) in Newcastle Station and reading it on the train back to Durham. Among others it had portfolios by Martin Parr, Chris Killip and Fay Godwin - it was like Holy Crap - by the time I got off the train I had a whole new take on photography.

There's also another MP3 (44mb) interview with Parr here I just came across, which is quite extensive and interesting in places, such as where he talks about Bruce Davidson losing a job to someone on Flickr (which he feels is a good thing):

“…within five years flickr will emerge as one of the major sources for licensing imagery… the other point about flickr, is I can’t tell you how bad the most of the pictures are. I mean, we see this in the site up there (at Musee de L’Elysee) the noise of this contemporary photography is relentless and ultimately, nullifyingly boring… we have this amazing interest, resurgence in photography, a renaissance, but boy do we have to wade through a lot of rubbish in order to get to anything half-decent.”

Some podcasts and such can be really blah - this is actually very worthwhile listening to and covers a lot of ground (also makes you realise that the likes of APUG and even the LF Photography List pretty much exist in their own time warp...)

He also talks about the evolution of photography, vernacular images, thinking about your photography and the strangeness of using film on a recent project in Dubai. (Where he also came across a hoard of Saddam Hussein pottery...:

"...Just before I left I was taken to a small souk in Sharjah where they actually sell things old, not an easy thing to locate in Dubai. There, to my amazement, was a fantastic selection of Saddam Hussein plates, vases and ornaments. For those of you who do not know, I have a big collection of Saddam Hussein ephemera and in 2004 published a book with 50 different Saddam Hussein watches in.

So I returned, rather pleased with myself, with a huge bag full of Saddam pottery. I was glad I was not stopped at Heathrow, not that bringing this stuff in is illegal, but it would have been tricky to explain to a customs officer." )

I still think Parr is good (I've always liked the fond description of him by another Brit photographer - that he's a "bit of an anorak"...). And his influence as an editor and curator is equalling that of his pictures - which in itself is significant. I'm going to have to get around to doing something a bit more in depth about Parr sometimes.

(John Davies)

Leo Fabrizio's Bunkers (and new stuff)

When we used to visit Switzerland we had a game as we drove along or walked the mountain paths - "Spot the hidden bunker". The more you looked, the more you saw. Switzerland is riddled with hidden and disguised military installations. What appeared to be a rock face in a lay-by beside the road were actually steel and concrete doors painted like rock. That 4 lane highway actually converts to a runway with the hangar doors hidden in the cliffs beside it. The cute looking little chocolate box mountain chalet you are hiking towards has machine gun slits on closer inspection.

A while back, Swiss photographer Leo Fabrizio produced a fascinating book - Bunkers - documenting these:

"The photography of architecture and of landscapes are pedigreed disciplines up for critical review and boundary breaking, with artists finding opportunities for personal expression and idiosyncratic documentary projects. Leo Fabrizio takes on a curious hybrid of the two: Swiss military bunkers that are hidden, camouflaged, set into outcroppings and otherwise concealing or baffling them from the sights of invading forces. Due to Switzerland’s geographical situation and neutrality, the necessity for the bunkers is intrinsic; their wholly defensive stance produces structures that are functional, but whose function is also perceptual. Ladders, doors and locks suddenly materialize out of stone; heroic bulks of rock and concrete look like the lairs of giants, not cowering humans. The dual purposes of the bunkers— to withstand penetration while also obscuring their mass—are sometimes at odds with each other. There is also the danger of working too well, and friendly forces missing their existence, as one bunker with red arrows pointing toward the portal seems to indicate. But these are only one kind of bunker; there are also structures in plain view (sometimes in urban areas) that look like outbuildings or residences with no military value. Many are totally ingenious, and the photos have to be scrutinized and interpreted, imparting a light tactical responsibility to the viewer that most projects can’t. When the artificial and natural are engineered to overlap, it is the structures that seem totally subsumed in the land which are the most successful. And the more puzzling, engaging and oddly beautiful the photographs of them are". Alan Rapp

I was just put on to Fabrizio's site by Fred Fichter across at streetphoto. There is a lot of new work up (btw Fabrizio's site is under "reconstruction" - it's worth looking at his old site, which has a lot more images and series on it)

Dreamworld is (I think...) about new urban development in Bangkok and Thailand.

Laos seems to be looking at massive rural construction projects in that country.

BTW, I'm not sure if you can still get the Bunkers book? His site says it is sold out. Photoeye seems to have some copies

Michael Wesely - Still Lifes

I've mentioned Michael Wesely before. I really quite liked his layered time-lapse photographs of all the reconstruction in Berlin - quite brilliant. But it didnt quite seem to translate when he was commissioned (?) to photograph the new construction at MoMA in New York (although one colour version I saw seemed to hit the spot).

Then he did some very minimalist almost colour field landscapes of the US and Germany. I'm not sure if they were time-lapse or blurred or what, but they felt like they were in danger of pushing the originality into novelty (although now I've looked at this one below over the last few days - even as a small jpeg- I find I've actually come to quite like it...).

Now I see he has more time lapse work - this time cut flowers - Stillleben (Still-Lifes). I don't know, flowers (especially cut flowers) have been done so many times before, by artists and photographers through the generations. But it still seems to a subject that can be done well time and time again (think Friedlander's wonderful and yet expedient Stems). In this case, I think Wesely flowers moving from fresh to decay is a worthwhile addition. They are also quite beautiful.

"This series of flower portraits, as yet incomplete, is a further stage in Wesely's persistent investigation into photographic reproduction as a temporal phenomenon. In these images he captures the blossoming and fading of flowers using exposures of five to ten days. The resulting images become memory stores with great aesthetic appeal due to their egalitarian reproduction of all phenomena. In these shots, time appears less a vectorial phenomenon than the result of spatial relations. Indeed, a time lag is inscribed into the images by the rhythm and perspective layering of the delicate, spectrally transparent petals and the stems in their whirring dance; they not only give the pictorial space more depth, but also extend the visual time necessary for every perception quite tangibly. In this way, Wesely succeeds in breaching the primacy that applies in his medium - that of the right moment - in favour of the history picture, which is, however, subject to an entirely new interpretation here."...

Parr, Fontcuberta, Norfolk, Christenberry...

Lens Culture has their archive of audio interviews and talks with photographers online (scroll down the right-hand side)

A few Highlights, Martin Parr, Joan Fontcuberta, Simon Norfolk, William Christenberry

'Every Man a Rembrandt' on Conscientious

I don't really like lifting posts wholesale from other blogs - it's kinda lazy for one thing...

But Jörg over on Conscientious has a short, sweet and to the point post this morning:

'Every Man a Rembrandt'

When I look at how Paint by Number kits' selling point was "Every Man a Rembrandt!" I just can't escape to notice similarities with current claims about photography, involving digital photography and Flickr... And there appears to be even more: Just compare how the craze about older paint-by-numbers is not that dissimilar from the one about, say, found photographs.

The post which follows it - Death by Kitsch - the Trickle-down Effect in Art is worth a thought or two as well, which also fits in a bit with Christian Patterson's post I read the other day on the old TV Guide "Art Test"... take it yourself and see how you do.

I think the incidence of Kitsch in photography - while always a clear and present danger - has increased exponentially with the likes of Flickr and other mass sharing sites, especially - as quoted here the other day: "Photographic images used to be about the trace. Digital images are about the flow..."

Finally, from the dictionary of Sixty-three Words, Kitsch is: ''the need to gaze into the mirror of the beautifying lie and to be moved to tears of gratification at one's own reflection.'' and an awful lot of what passes for art, even good art - and especially photography - is pretty much kitsch.