Eugene de Salignac

There was a bit of a buzz about Eugene de Salignac's photographs a few months ago and now there is a nice article about him and his work in the Smithsonian Magazine

Salignac was a municipal photographer for the City of New York (and in particular the Department of Bridges) who died unheralded in 1943 at the age of 82 and took over 20,000 photographs (mostly 8x10 or so glass plates apparently) of the growing city between 1903 and 1936 - a period of massive and rapid growth in the city.

His work, as a whole body, was only re-discovered in 1999 by New York City Municipal Archives photographer Michael Lorenzini who realized that many of the photographs he was scrolling through in the microfiche records were obviously the work of one eye and hand.

Aperture published a book of his work earlier this year New York Rises: Photographs by Eugene de Salignac (and have a few more images up on their site). There also a short article and slideshow at the New Yorker. From the Smithsonion Magazine:

De Salignac's time as a city worker coincided with New York's transformation from a horse-and-buggy town into a modern-day metropolis, and his photographs of towering bridges, soaring buildings, trains, buses and boats chart the progress. "In this remarkable repository of his work, we really see the city becoming itself," says Thomas Mellins, curator of special exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York. "During this period, New York became a paradigm for 20th-century urbanism, and that has to do with monumentality, transportation systems, working out glitches, skyscrapers, with technology—all of the things that emerge in these photos."

De Salignac's photograph of the Staten Island ferry President Roosevelt coming into port, made in Lower Manhattan in June 1924 with a bulky wooden field camera, typifies his ability to stretch beyond straightforward documentation. "This is not your typical municipal photograph," says Moore. "There's a sense of anticipation—that perfect moment where the boat is about to dock, and a sense of energy, a flood about to be unleashed." Adds Lorenzini: "It shows him thinking like an artist."

De Salignac's pictures have been reproduced in books, newspapers, posters and films, including Ken Burns' Brooklyn Bridge; though largely uncredited, his work helped shape New York's image. "He was a great chronicler of the city, in the tradition of Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Stieglitz and Berenice Abbott," says Mellins. "The fact that he was a city employee may have made it less likely that people would think of his work in an artistic context, but these images indicate that he really takes his place in the pantheon of great photographers of New York."

Lorenzini still isn't satisfied. "I'd like to know what he did for the first 40 years of his life, to see a photograph of him as a grown man," he says. "Where did he learn photography? Was he formally trained? Did he consider himself an artist?" Information about him, and prints by him, keep trickling in. Not long ago, a woman mailed to the Municipal Archives ten photographs of New York that she'd bought at a Texas flea market; Lorenzini immediately recognized them as de Salignac's. And a cache of 4,000 de Salignac prints was recently unearthed in the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan. "There is definitely more to the story," Lorenzini says...

Bernd Becher by Andreas Gursky

Published in The Art Newspaper, a letter from Andreas Gursky to his teacher, mentor and friend Bernd Becher on his passing (I think this fits somewhere in Alec Soth's recent musings on teaching art):

Yesterday I received the very unexpected news of your death. This news is made all the more painful for me as we did not get to see each other in the past year. You do know, however, how enormously important your influence was—and is—not only to me, but also to a whole generation of younger people.

You and Hilla have produced an invaluable and multi-faceted body of work that has served as an invaluable point of reference for us. We adapted and developed many stylistic characteristics of your technique. Yet, in my opinion, there is another crucial factor that ensured the uniqueness of the Becher School: teacher-artists can be found anywhere, but only a few succeed in transmitting your kind of drive to their students.

You were never a power-hungry man, abusing your international fame for political or institutional influence, but, instead, you stoically endured the criticisms of your academic peers. These made you all the more determined to pursue your unconventional teaching methods, which included affording absolute priority to your own and your students’ artistic visions.

When your students came to you with their work, you often reflected upon it late into the night, and took the time to comment, using apt art-historical examples. By the end of these private tutorials, not only were your floors covered with books, but books were also perched on top of the many red-labelled Agfa film cartons, tripods and ladders that were strewn about your studio. A permanent chemical odour signalled the authenticity of your work and living space—where, for the lifeof me, I cannot remember ever seeing a comfy sofa. Having spent my childhood and youth in over-designed advertising studios, it was a key experience to have such an insight into your world. I still remember my tipsy walk home—through that enchanted gateway in front of your studio, past that red van, which was packed with your heavy ladders of all sizes.

Bernd, I thank you for this important time in my life and hope that you will continue quietly to guide me through today’s art circus with your dry humour and carefree attitude.

In friendship,

Andreas

An conversation with Mitch Epstein

I mentioned Mitch Epstein a while back and I notice that Joerg Colberg has an interview with him up on Conscientious:

Jörg Colberg: Before talking about any individual project of yours let me ask you something about photography in general. You have been working as a photographer for quite a while, and you have covered a wide range of topics, all the while both contemporary photography and the world at large have undergone fairly large changes. I would be curious to learn about how you think your role as a photographer and your interest in what you wanted to record have changed?

Mitch Epstein: I don’t think in terms of having a ‘role’ as a photographer, nor do I consider my purpose to “record.” I am compelled to interpret, not record the world around me...

...What I want to photograph changes with time. The stakes are higher for me both humanly and artistically, as I get older. I have a family now and a more acute consciousness of the world as a welcoming or non-welcoming place for my child. I have thirty years of photographing behind me, and I’m more demanding with myself than ever — I want those years of experience to support my more mature engagement with making art. I feel like I’ve been building up to or training for a kind of high wire act. I’m using decades of experience to balance me while I try out a way of working (large-format landscape) that is totally new to me. Each picture is now made in a slower, highly deliberate manner that I couldn’t have imagined using twenty years ago...

JC: Coming to your own work, there is one question which I like to ask simply because it touches something that many photographers are struggling with: How do you decide what project to work on, what subject matter to pick?

ME: I never pick my projects, my projects inevitably pick me. I don’t mean that
glibly. I’ve learned to listen to what moves and troubles me, and that leads me to where I have to go next.

I have been through many hellish periods where I don’t know what’s to follow after finishing a body of work – a kind of post partem. But I’ve learned that it is helpful to remain patient, open, and necessary to allow myself to relax and pursue other interests beyond photography during these periods..." more

There also some good stuff in there on Epstein's book and project Family Business (which I think is one of his best), as well as American Power

The Joy of Parking

For anyone interested in the built environment - especially it's under-noticed aspects, BLDGBLOG is a must read. In a recent post he points to a new book (and articles on it) The Architecture of Parking.

I must admit, these kinds of places fascinate me, both as part of our social structure and also photographically. And while the book itself appears to be an interesting if enthusiastic paean to parking structures, I like the slightly darker take on them from BLDGBLOG:

"Building Design takes a look at the "joy of car parks" – including this beautifully faux-classical quasi-Piranesian garage, the Parc des Célestins, built in 1994 in Lyon.Unable to resist the obvious, however, when I hear someone say "the joy of car parks" I have to quote J.G. Ballard: "Take a structure like a multi-storey car park, one of the most mysterious buildings ever built. Is it a model for some strange psychological state, some kind of vision glimpsed within its bizarre geometry? What effect does using these buildings have on us? Are the real myths of this century being written in terms of these huge unnoticed structures?""

(I'd also add that for anyone photographing the modern city, reading J.G. Ballard is also essential...)

Finally, I know this last example first hand from Chichester where I grew up. I must say they certainly highlight it's features in the photograph, mirroring the medieval/roman wall of the city. But finding your way along the "battlements" to your parking spot with an 18 month old in typical British Autumn rain is more like advancing across the Somme. Which is to say that while I do find such structures fascinating, I have rarely found one that is pleasant or innovative to experience - but more usually oppressive and frustrating.

As for the futuristic "Matrix" style car park they show, I have trouble enough worrying I'm going to stop in time when I go over the little wheel ramp in a car wash, never mind some thing that's going to hoist my car into a sort of automobile filing cabinet.

(And then there's Martin Parr's photographs of parking spaces - a book I'm not quite sure I want to fork out for)

half awake and half asleep in the water

I'm intrigued by these photographs by Asako Narahashi. There's something about them that's at once both slightly frightening and strangely comforting about them (okay, I once spent some time floating around in the English Channel as part of the training for an offshore rescue boat...).

"half awake and half asleep in the water by Tokyo-based photographer Asako Narahashi. A suite of fifteen 20" x 24" photographs, showing images with half of the photographic surface covered with water. The water looks dark and poetic, and would naturally call in images of sleep and the subconscious.

Asako Narahashi once remarked that she was not particularly fond of the ocean, rivers or lakes. She began her half awake and half asleep in the water probably in 1998, after her visit to Okinawa in the summer, and where she experienced, after a long time, snorkeling and the joy of floating in the sea. She was then working on another project and discovered in her contact sheet this vague and unclear image that she described, "just like the moon without an edge floating on the ocean, beyond everyday life." The image must have been lying in her sub consciousness and imprinted somewhere in her brain. It has now come to surface and steered her towards a refreshingly new direction.

The photographs in half awake and half asleep in the water are images that peek from this shore through to the other shore. They look candid and relax, but are the labour of courage and love from an artist who is not a great swimmer. The art critic Kotaro Iizawa has commented on this series,"The visual line does not settle and leans heavily to one side, while the calm and collected colours of the photographs seem to trip up the viewer in an unstable manner. The feeling of being stranded however, is strangely comforting.""

Manuel Alvarez Bravo

I mentioned Bravo the other day when I came across the book of his Polaroids (which I'm still eagerly waiting to see).

It's pretty much impossible to do justice to the work of Manuel Alvarez Bravo in a blog post, but here's to making at least a start on it.

I first became aware of Bravo's work close to 30 years ago when I picked up a monograph about him at a Library sale. It seemed like a good deal for a couple of Pounds and I had never heard of this Mexican photographer before.

Well, the book wasn't quite the deal I thought it was and it became apparent why the library had it in the sale... Bravo took some interesting nudes and some enterprising teenager (at least I hope it was a teenager) had drawn little penises on some of those with biro! But at least the majority of the images were unsullied (though I still can't see La buena fama durmiendo (The Good Reputation Sleeping) here without the image of a little blue penis hovering over her...).

That aside, it still suprises me that only Bravo died 2002, with over 80 years as a photographer. He is often placed alongside Cartier Bresson in the photographic pantheon - though usually on a slightly lower pedestal. Yet to my mind, Bravo's work is much more significant. He just happened to live in Mexico City, not Paris.

From John Mraz at Zone Zero:

"When Alvarez Bravo began photographing in the 1920s, the cultural effervescence that followed the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) had unleashed a national search for identity, and the question of what to do with Mexico’s inherent exoticism was the burning issue for photographers. Perhaps influenced by his relationship with Weston and Modotti, Alvarez Bravo was the first Mexican photographer to take a militantly anti-picturesque stance, and he achieved international recognition for work which reached creative heights from the late 1920s through the mid-1950s, a period during which he perfected a sophisticated approach to representing his culture. Conscious both of Mexico’s otherness and the way in which that has led almost naturally to stereotypical imagery, Alvarez Bravo has always swum counter to the stream of established clichés, using visual irony to contradict what he initially appears to saying, hence inviting the viewer to engage in the task of interpretation.

Consider Sed pública (Public Thirst), the 1934 photo of a boy drinking water from a village well. This image contains all the elements necessary to make it picturesque: a young peasant, dressed in the white clothing

typical of his culture, perches on a battered village well to drink the water which flows from it; an adobe wall behind provides texture. But, the light in the image seems to concentrate itself on the foot that juts forward into the frame, a foot that is too particular, too individual to be able to “stand for” the Mexican peasantry, and thus represent their other-worldliness. It is this boy’s foot, not a typical peasant’s foot, and it goes against the expectations of picturesqueness raised by the other elements, “saving” the image through its very particularity...

Manuel Alvarez Bravo has been a definitive influence on Mexican and Latin American photography. His rejection of facile picturesqueness, his insistently ambiguous irony, and his redemption of common folk and their daily subsistence have marked out a path of high standards for photographers from his area."

There are numerous books available about him (including the Polaroids) such as here and here along with an interesting comparison:Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson And Walker Evans: Documentary And Anti-Graphic Photographs, and also some good info at the Getty and at MoMA with a good essay on his work as well as images.

Edith - Polyfoto

Edith - London, 1935 (after Walker Evans) - click picture for a bigger view.

"Polyfoto - The Natural Photograph.
Polyfoto is the only system of photography giving natural and truly characteristic portraits, since the sitter can move and converse freely whilst the 48 photographs are being taken. 48 photographs for 2/6d"

(More to come, I hope, of Edith (and David) from St. Petersburg before the Revolution and British Spies arrested by Trotsky, to Paris, Helsingør to the Rhineland to Italy to the East African Campaign and the battle of Asmara).

Polaroids

There's something about well done Polaroid photographs that I've always liked - especially the SX70 style.

Those cyan blue or creamy skies; the slightly weird yet entirely pleasing colours; their one off - hold in the hand nature. The fact you still regularly find a fully functioning Polaroid camera at almost any garage sale (even if you can't find the film anymore). It seems like almost every home had one - or still does - and that even though the pictures often look somewhat unnatural, it's a look which has been absorbed and accepted by our collective unconscious as "normal"

Of course like Holga work, it's all to easy to overdo the Polaroid thing (though not quite as much of a danger as with Holgerism)

I recently came across some Polaroid work from (via Amy Elkins) of Taiwanese photographer -Nan Kuo which is rather lovely (above and below).

I've also liked the work from Japan - Tokyo Polaroid Plus - that I came across a few years ago - it seemed consistently good (unfortunately he switched to a Rollei I think at a later point)

And of course there is the master - Walker Evans' Polaroid work (hard to find much online) and found in the self-evidently titled book Walker Evans Polaroids. Apart from being some of the best early colour work it is also a fascinating insight into Evans' eye and his photography

My friend Jeffrey James once said he though Evan's Polaroid photography seemed a bit like Beethoven deciding to take up the Glockenspiel - a view I was pleased to see he revised after reading Geoff Dyers illuminating writing in The Ongoing Moment about Evan's taking up with the SX70. In part:

"... Both a reprise of and addendum to everything he had done before, the Polaroids made between September 1973 and November 1974 constitute a final radiant and unexpected extension of his vision. Revisiting his favourite motifs in a series of pellucid dreams, the 2,6o0 Polaroids are like a condensation of and an extended meditation on Winogrand's claim that Evans's "photographs are about what is photographed, and how what is photographed is changed by being photographed, and how things exist in photographs". His subjects remain the ones that had always dominated his work - empty buildings, discreet portraits, signs, found language - all strangely enhanced by the technical limitations of the camera..."

There's also a heavy duty essay on Walker Evans' Polaroid work here

(hmm and on looking up the Walker Evans book, I just discovered there are books of Polaroids by both Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Tarkovsky... cool)

Chuck Close - Daguerreotypes.

"photography never got any better than it was in 1840"

This is sort of old news (but I took a pile of unread magazines away with me to the cottage this week as we watched the leaves starting to turn... and I finally sat down and caught up on some articles) but I quite like these portraits Chuck Close produced working with the daguerreotype process.

As I understand it, when they were displayed they were displayed quite small as the one-off originals that are traditional daguerreotypes (6 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches - what's that - Whole Plate size?) - almost jewel like in their detail and polished metal finish.

From a very short interview on the Guardian:

Lorna is one of my artist friends. She has a very infectious smile and very sensuous lips - I had a photograph on my wall for a long time of just her lips. I love the way her face looms out of the darkness and floats there above the out-of-focus neck and chest. I love the way she looks too - the range of things that are in her face. And then there is this sculptural quality, almost like a Brancusi or something...

The picture is a daguerreotype, which used to be called "keepers of light". They have a range from the deepest, darkest velvety blacks to the brightest highlights that reflect into your eyes. Each picture has unbelievable detail and very shallow depth of field. Photographs are often so big now that 20 or 30 people can view one at the same time, but a daguerreotype is the most intimate image made with a camera, because it is small and only one person can look at it...

I'm not interested in daguerreotypes because it's an antiquarian process; I like them because, from my point of view, photography never got any better than it was in 1840.

There is a book of them available (an earlier version is out of print I think)

Also a slightly longer piece here on Lensculture

Vincent Borrelli Books

A couple of days ago I got an email from one of my favourite photography bookshops - Vincent Borrelli - that they now have a website up.

And quite a website it is - albeit a dangerous one for anyone addicted to the fetish of photo books. He specialises in signed and also out-of-print copies of the best photography books and monographs.

Hunting for that rare copy of John Gossage's seminal book The Pond? He has it (an affordable $350.00... ):

Lee Friedlanders Cray at Chippewa Falls ?($650.00):

Michael Schmidt's influential Waffenruhe ($1,250.00):

But not everything requires a second mortgage. He also has many still in print but harder to find books at regular prices (usually signed copies)

Such as Emmet Gowin: Mariposas Nocturnas: Edith in Panama $65.00:

or Todd Hido: House Hunting $75.00:

or the recent William Christenberry monograph (again, signed) $65.00:

And the two (of many) I lust over most...?:

Yamamoto's The Path of Green Leaves (a mere $750.00):

And Terri Weifenbach's Hunter Green (a steal at $150.00):

time to put the three year old to work :-)

And also time to stop drooling now... (and - bugger it - I just saw the copy of Billingham's Ray's A Laugh that I sold for a few bucks is now worth $650.00...)

P.S. - I'm going to be off-line for a few days. Back soon.

The ordinary heroes of HornAfrik Radio

A couple of months ago I listened to a radio documentary about three Somali-Canadians who had left comfortable homes and jobs in Canada to go back to Somalia and start a radio station in Mogadishu.

They had fled Somalia during the violence of the 1980's and built new lives in Canada. But now all three saw their homeland continuing to disintegrate into violence and chaos. And most of all they saw ordinary people as having no voice. There was no forum to begin building democracy (or even for a mother with a sick child to ask where she could get help). So, committed to civil society and the freedom of speech, they returned to Somalia and established HornAfrik radio (now TV as well).

It was essentially talk-radio for the people - news, music and interviews. The warring clans and warlords had their own radio stations - built on the model of those that incited genocide in Rwanda - which were essentially propaganda stations. But HornAfrik was different.

It allowed ordinary people to express their views. It gave air-time time to women's groups, to street children, to doctors and health programmes and eventually even to warlords.

The warlords found their propaganda stations were losing listeners in a dramatic fashion and so eventually they were forced to accept the invitations to appear on HornAfrik themselves - but they had to relinquish control and allow themselves to be questioned on-air.

Such is the power and the threat of free-speech. And sadly, if inevitably, that threat became too great.

(Canadian Ali Sharmarke (left) and Ahmed Abdisalam Adan, co-founders with Mohamed Elmi of HornAfrik, an independent news broadcaster in their native Somalia. Sharmarke was killed by a car bomb Aug. 11.)

From a documentary on CBC:

Reporter Mohamed Hassan is one of the few people to ever ask the women what's happening. "She said that we are in fear. Sometimes they come here to rape, sometimes they loot our properties. We are in fear. There is nobody who's going to protect us," Hassan says of his assignment to interview the women.

Horn Afrik is very ambitious. In a country without any government, its owners feel they have to do more than just cover the stories. They bring in community activists to help determine what collectively they could do to fix the problems exposed in the news.

Ali Sharmarke is another founding owner. He had a good job in the federal Finance Department in Ottawa before he felt compelled to return here. "We see the media as a means to do a social change, and probably I can say now Horn Afrik is one of the best instruments for social change in Somalia," Sharmarke says....

In another room, Farah Usef is working the phones for his As It Happens-style program called Today's Events. He's trying to interview warlords to ask them why they are stalling the Somali peace talks.

"The call is getting through, but mostly they don't answer. Even if they answer, mostly they speak in a very rude language," Usef says.

Usef has all their numbers as he works through his warlord directory. He has only a few hours to put together the show all by himself. So far, no interviews. Aden is more surprised that many warlords do talk to Horn Afrik and some have actually come into the studio. It makes him optimistic

"I can see people's attitudes changing from things that they never thought of yesterday that is possible today, and to me, the most powerful change comes from the mind," Aden says....

On August 11th - Mahad Ahmed Elmi one of HornAfrik's journalist/hosts was shot in the head and killed in Mogadishu. Later that day the car of Ali Sharmarke - one of the original Canadian founders - was blown up as he returned from Elmi's funeral.

This morning I listened to an interview with Ahmed Abdisalam Adan one of of the other co-founders of the station. He was in Canada visiting his family when the killings occurred. He is now planning to return to Somalia to continue the work of HornAfrik.

Ross Howard, a former Globe & Mail journalist turned journalism educator also writes here of his work with the journalists of HornAfrik: Canada Lacks The Courage of Somali Journalists.

Simply put, the work of these people needs to be recognised.