Keith Arnatt - I'm A Real Photographer

I’ve been meaning to write about Kieth Arnatt for ages, but now Christian Patterson has beaten me to it. I first saw some of Arnatt’s work years ago in England and at the time it left me somewhat bemused, but I think it obviously had some effect, because I kept coming back to it over the years. I’m specially taken by his Notes from Jo - photographic records his late wife’s Post-It note messages, usually left for Arnatt on his return from the pub.


Martin Parr wrote a good little article on Arnatt in the Guardian:

"Keith Arnatt was a well-known conceptual artist in the early 70s - his films, installations and photo records were exhibited at the Tate in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. One show, at the Tate in 1972, became notorious: he displayed the enrolment cards of all the staff members - they then had to be taken down because security guards objected to their photographs being displayed without permission. It was the kind of fuss Arnatt enjoyed; he liked the unpredictable and acts of provocation.


Then, in 1973, he was introduced to the work of Walker Evans, August Sander and Diane Arbus, and never looked back. His colleague, David Hurn, at Newport College of Art - where Arnatt was teaching sculpture - had opened a department of documentary photography. Arnatt was intrigued and inspired by the images. For the next 30 years he worked as a photographer, first in black and white, then changing to colour in the mid-80s. He was prolific - making some 20 series of photographs - until forced to give up in 2004, dogged by illness. All the while he continued to earn his living by teaching, as he sold his work only rarely.


It is difficult to categorise Arnatt or place him in recent photographic history; he approached projects with the curiosity of one immersed in the art practice of an earlier generation. Yet his images appear very modern. Notes From My Wife is a case in point. They are jottings and reminders written by his wife, Jo, in the early 90s. Soon after, she was struck down by a brain tumour and Arnatt nursed her until her death in 1996. He decided to collect the most poignant of the notes and photographed 18 of them. Taken out of context and blown up, they become surreal. This was Arnatt's strength as a photographer: he understood how the smallest detail or observation could be transformed by the act of isolation….


Arnatt's driving force has been more conceptual than documentary, and a decade or so later his artistic strategies are flourishing. Even so, his photographic work has remained largely unrecognised. He has not enjoyed the benefits of gallery representation or high-profile exhibitions since his days as a conceptual artist - the only exception being the British Council, which regularly toured and displayed his photographs. What a pleasure it is, then, to see I'm A Real Photographer, Arnatt's new exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery. It provides a timely opportunity to explore and understand what an important artist and photographer Arnatt is, and how his ideas have changed from outsider practice to mainstream thinking."

Arnatt also made striking still-lifes from things collected on the local rubbish dump, among other things. There is a simple straight forwardness to Arnatt’s work, and yet each time you look at one of his pictures it opens your eyes to something. His concepts seem at times so obvious and yet you find yourself going: huh – how come I never thought of that or looked at those things that way before. There’s also a book produced in conjunction with the recent show at the Photographers Gallery – “I’m a Real Photographer – Keith Arnatt Photographs 1974-2002”

A little bit of Whimsy

Every now and then something like this gives me a chuckle. Too much and the cute factor overloads, but I don't think this quite gets there yet.



From a site called Minimiam (one of those Flash hunt for the elusive dote sites...) via the wacky Dark Roasted Blend site:

"who hasn't dreamt of diving into thick chocolate mouse...

or digging a hideout in a piece of cheese or fruit..."

I also like the care that has gone into hand making the little figures, as well as the somewhat sly imagination into the individual pieces.

Evidence of previous churches

BLDBLG (an excellent site for anyone interested in the built environment) has an intriguing post on a new art museum just opened in Cologne.

The Kolumba museum is built on the site of St. Kolumba's church which was virtually destroyed by allied bombing in WWII.

As Geoff Manaugh writes:

"The backstory, briefly, is that the church – called St. Kolumba – was "reduced to rubble during the second world war," but, we read, "[a] wooden Madonna survived the bombing so, after the war, local architect Gottfried Böhm built the small octagonal chapel on the site, dedicated to the 'Madonna of the Ruins'. In the 1970s, excavations revealed evidence of previous churches, not to mention vaults filled with human bones." Evidence of previous churches! Such a beautiful phrase. Finding evidence of other buildings – older buildings – inside the building you're now standing in.


Or perhaps you find evidence of a newer building, inside the building you're standing in – and you realize, stunned, that someone is replacing the building, slowly and in secret over the course of several years, in bits and pieces, here and there, leaving traces, evidence, clues.

In any case, Kolumba, with its swirling foundations on top of foundations on top of crypts, now houses religious art. In 650 years, someone will build another museum atop its wreckage."

He also links to a longer Guardian article "The perforated palace" which picks up on the museum's architect Peter Zumthor:

"There is no floor, only a red wooden walkway that zigzags through the half-light, past stone stumps and concrete columns that reach up to the ceiling like new shoots. Below this walkway, disappearing into the depths and the darkness, are the excavated ruins of crypts, vaults and foundations. And, barely audible above the traffic passing by outside, comes the sound of wings flapping and pigeons cooing. Where are they? None are visible.


This, the cavernous ground-floor room of Cologne's new Kolumba art museum, is a place of mystery and awe. You enter it from the museum's airy foyer, through thick leather curtains, and are instantly transported to another world. It is dimly lit, but fresh air and dappled sunlight spill in from honeycomb-like perforations high above. Embedded in the light brick walls are the blackened windows and arches of a ruined gothic church, onto which this new building has been grafted. To the right, a blue-green glow emanates from the stained-glass windows of a small, octagonal chapel that has been swallowed by this space. We're looking into it from the outside. It sounds like there's a lot going on here, but it doesn't feel like it. Instead, the sensation is of a sacred space: calm, powerful, unforgettable. Time seems to stand still; thousands of years of history are visible all at once. And audible, too - the pigeons turn out to be a sound installation by Bill Fontana, a ghostly memory of the birds that once lived among these ruins....

Zumthor's handling of the lower level is so striking, it's easy to forget about the galleries. From the foyer with the leather curtains, a narrow path of plain white travertine stone leads upstairs, winding through the two levels, widening here and there to form larger spaces, and opening onto separate rooms.


Fittingly, Kolumba's exhibition philosophy is to mix it all up. Rather than go for a dry chronological layout, works are linked thematically or juxtaposed engagingly. One room is lined with Warhol prints of coloured crosses on black backgrounds. Standing in the middle is a lone, carved Christ figure from the 16th century. Some rooms are tall, lit through opaque high windows, others are long, low and windowless. There's even a darkened room lined with black velvet displaying religious silverware. In keeping with the building's anti-Bilbao exterior, there are no distracting labels to tell you what you're looking at. If you want to know what something is, there's a booklet.


The result is serene yet stimulating. In fact, so seamlessly executed is the whole that, at times, it's hard to separate the building and the art. You might just as well admire the wood-panelling in the reading room as the Rhenish Madonnas on the wall. Or marvel at the way the huge windows are positioned so as to create a glow of light around each corner, and also capture views of the cathedral and the surrounding city..."

(I couldn't find a credit for the photos except the Kolumba)

Risaku Suzuki again - "Yuki Sakura"

I mentioned this work briefly in the post the other day but I just saw Risaku Suzuki has a new book due out from Nazraeli looking at two traditional aspects of the Japanese landscape - snow and cherry blossom. The book is called Yuki Sakura.

Pictures are up on the Yoshii Gallery site from the Cherry Blossom side of the project:

"The Sakura Celebration commences in early spring and has inspired artists since the reign of the Emperor Saga in 8th century Japan. The impressive blooming of the trees after winter symbolizes hope and strength, but as the petals fall, one is reminded of the fragility of beauty and life itself. Suzuki's painterly photographs evoke the sensation of passing time within the permanence of the photographic frame. Suzuki captures the trees without a context or narrative, grasping the physical structure as the essence of the symbolism. The viewer is engaged with a place beyond the visible.

By abandoning the ground and concentrating on the relationship between the blossoms and the sky, the works possess a weightless and effervescent air. Tight framing and large format printing eliminate the distraction of neighboring objects, yet maintain a vast landscape for the viewer. Attention is called to the world of motion beyond the frame, intimately connecting the photograph to an individual's wandering gaze. The focus is pulled from various branches to clusters of flowers and clouds, granting the viewer an opportunity to ruminate on a fleeting moment. Memorializing the perspective of a quick glance enables one to glimpse with a duration and depth impossible to realize in person."

I like the way they are done, although they are verging a little too close to "pretty" for me (mind you, I think Lee Friedlander is the only one who has managed to photography cherry blossom without falling into that trap...). And i could only find a couple of really small jpg's of the "snow" aspect, which looked as if they may well provide a good counterbalance to the cherry blossom.

The Genius of Photography

I just started watching the six part BBC series The Genius of Photography. I actually jumped in at episode 4 - Paper Movies - which covers everyone from Robert Frank to Gary Winogrand to Tony Ray-Jones, Joel Sternfeld, Ed Ruscha, Robert Adams, John Gossage and Martin Parr etc.

It's actually pretty good so far. No great revelations, but you do see many of the photographers at work. And for the general viewer, I think the whole series gives a pretty good overview of some of the best of photography.

Interestingly, this episode is bookended by footage of John Gossage and Martin Parr together on a road trip to go visit William Eggleston in Memphis, which resulted in the book "America 2006 - Obvious and Ordinary" - which is very well reviewed (as usual) on 5B4.

(three pictures above - Martin Parr & John Gossage)

Lisa Robinson

I came across Lisa Robinson's work in one of Photoeye's emails of new books - Snowbound.

Her work caught my eye because winter has almost arrived here (had one snowfall already) and I was thinking it was about time to finally try and get out and about this year and photograph the city in winter. It's a city that spends between a third to almost half the year under snow - so it's about time I explored my own particular (peculiar?) visual take on it - we'll see.

"Photographs with the tranquility one might feel after a fresh snowfall. Five winters long, the young American photographer Lisa M. Robinson took pictures in the snow. Snowbound shows landscapes in which everyday objects-alienated and sunken in snow-"civilize" the natural surroundings. Traces of human existence set accents in the white landscape, delimiting it and often popping up in an amusing or incongruous way. A lonely hammock, a trampoline, and a swimming pool are echoes of the summer past and of personal memories. But Robinson is not interested in showing the obvious; instead, she makes use of the many aggregate states of water-ice, snow, fog, and water-as metaphors for life and transience.".

While I quite like her work, overall as a series, I find it almost a little too isolated and minimal for my own tastes. Although I think there are a enough pictures that have a little something here or there - an orange marker pole, a break in the snow fence or whatever, to break up the perfection.

(BTW, her website doesn't seem to work properly in IE6, which is what I'm stuck with...)

Accommodating Nature: The Photography of Frank Gohlke

5B4 - which has some very good reviews of photography books - has a review of several of Franke Gohlke's books, including details of Accommodating Nature: The Photography of Frank Gohlke, published in conjunction with his retrospective at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

I mentioned Gohlke a while back. Here's a bit of what 5B4 says:

This brings me full circle and to the latest book Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke. Throughout his other books, Frank has exhibited not only his talent for making images but also his remarkable talent for writing. What is an added joy about this new book is that Frank ties all of his various projects together with a running narrative of text that covers his life with photography as a near constant companion. Uncharacteristic of most retrospective type books, this one is not constructed with a strict chronological order to the images. The photographs follow the text in this regard and pleasurably serve as flash back and memory alongside Frank’s steady narration.

Gohlke is a writer of such talent that by the time we get to the two other essays by John Rohrbach and Rebecca Solnit, although perfectly fine and very well crafted, they seem superfluous as Gohlke’s voice has established itself to be the perfect guide.

If you are not familiar with the work of Frank Gohlke then this book would be a perfect introduction. It is finely printed in tri-tone and four color reproduction. The design is conservative but importantly allows the photographs to be reproduced at a good size to fully appreciate Gohlke’s technical prowess.

He also writes quite a bit about Gohlkes other books.

Interestingly it seems to have been published in paperback as well as hardback at the same time.

Finally, the Amon Carter Museum has a short couple of minutes video of Gohlke talking about the first picture (top) here:

New Pictures from Paradise - Thomas Struth

One of my favourite of all Struth's books (along with The Dandelion Room) is New Pictures from Paradise (it's also a nice big large format book).

I discovered is work after I had done a big chunk of my Immersive Landscapes project, but it certainly both encouraged and informed me. I've seen some of Struth's other work "in the flesh", but not these. I'd love to see them on a gallery wall.


From an article in Artforum:

"out from inner processes and needs and then take on a form. My approach to the jungle pictures might be said to be new, in that my initial impulses were pictorial and emotional, rather than theoretical. They are "unconscious places" and thus seem to follow my early city pictures. The photographs taken in the jungles of Australia, Japan, and China, as well as in the California woods, contain a wealth of delicately branched information, which makes it almost impossible, especially in large formats, to isolate single forms. One can spend a lot of time in front of these pictures and remain helpless in terms of knowing how to deal with them. There is no sociocultural context to be read or discovered, unlike in the photographs of people in front of paintings in museums. Standing in front of the facade of the cathedral in Milan, one experiences oneself as a human being defined by specific social and historical conditions. The jungle pictures, on the other hand, emphasize the self. Because of their consistent "allover" nature, "Paradise" numbers 9 and 4 could be understood as membranes for meditation. They present a kind of empty space: emptied to elicit a moment of stillness and internal dialogue. You have to be able to enjoy this silence in order to communicate with yourself--and eventually with others.



In some of the photographs, the picture stands like a screen in front of another, invisible image, dissolving the vanishing point that photography usually puts into focus. I made several attempts to take pictures in the old German woods close to the Czech border, but pine forests always look like Christmas. I didn't want to portray a specific place, that specific forest. Rather I was trying to feel within its primeval branchings the moment of beginning that once was the world. I also avoided pictures that would evoke exotic fantasies or look like botanical gardens. Actually, I don't even see the images as depictions of nature. The theme may play a major part, but the undertone makes the music. It's about the experience of time as well as a certain humility in dealing with things. It's a metaphor for life and death...

...I don't understand why so many people equate the notion of paradise with escapism. Paradise was never a place one could enter--though, in this global moment, escapism is no longer an issue either. The disappearance of the social debate about utopia, which the title "Paradise" alludes to, is an impoverishment and banalization. I focus exclusively on the experience of proximity. Nowadays the human being is reduced to a consumer and therefore to an instrument of a global economic mechanism. I, on the other hand, am interested in peculiarity, the individual ways of people and what goes on inside them when their historical bearings are disoriented. Certain aspects of cities now strike me as being straight out of science fiction, such as a particular intersection in Tokyo's Shibuya district, where everything revolves around the increase and intensification of information. Then I notice a growing confinement, not only in a physical sense but also in terms of vital energy. We must look elsewhere if we want to expand the individual's space. Understanding and communication have increasingly become inner processes originating in silence. As sources of air and space, the jungle pictures offer me an even deeper purchase on another of my ongoing subjects--the city."

Risaku Suzuki - Mont Sainte Victoire

There's a book I got a year or two ago that I just flicked though when it came and then put it on the shelf. But recently I've pulled it a few times and spent some time with it.

Mont Sainte Victoire (published by Nazraeli) is by Japanese photographer Risaku Suzuki and takes an extended, almost meditative look at the subject of so many of Cézanne's paintings. It's a sort of meandering exploration of the place. The light is often harsh and direct, frequently washed out - very like my experience of this part of France. But as we take various paths up and around the mountain, it;s as if we accompany Suzuki on his wanderings.

"Featured in over fifty paintings by Cézanne, the Mont Sainte Victoire in Southern France is familiar even to those who have never been there. A century later, photographer Risaku Suzuki has followed in the great artist’s footsteps, using a quite different medium to depict the landscape on the way. In Suzuki’s photographs there is a feeling of movement and progression, giving the journey a pace that ought to be at odds with a series of static images. Sometimes it is as if the camera has legs and a mind of its own as it strays from the path to take in just one more inconspicuous part of the environment – and all the while the audience is beckoned to come along too. Using limited depth of field, Suzuki focuses the lens on a tree, a piece of rock, unexceptional segments of a remarkable climb upwards." (from Nazraeli)

The book is quite large format and seems to benefit from the viewer (this viewer anyway) spending some time with it. There aren't many pictures from the book online, but Photoeye has one of their extended bookteases on the book. There is also some of Suzuki's other work here (and one picture from this below)

Special Limited Print Offer: Willow - Tin Can Hill

By popular request (quite hassling me know, okay...) I have decided to produce a small edition of prints of the photograph I mentioned the other day from my Immersive Landscapes: Boreal Forest-Precambrian Shield project - so spread the word!

The picture was taken outside Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories and is called Willow: Tin Can Hill (incidentally, this tree is very close to where a wrapped up and hidden package of 1960's bills totalling $12,000 was found... not by me unfortunately). Click on the image for a bigger view.

The print is 12"x15" and is printed on the lovely Crane Museo Silver Rag paper. There will only be 30 prints and the price is CDN$100.00 each (+ shipping & handling).

Click on the link below to pay via Paypal (blogger still seems to have trouble with the paypal html...):

Debbie Fleming Caffery

I've oscillated back and forth over Debbie Fleming Caffery forever, going from liking her work, to forgetting about it and not finding it that interesting and then going back to liking it again. Her work certainly has style. I sometimes wonder about the substance.


That said, it's extremely evocative. She could be called the master (mistress?) of shadow. I've got a couple of books of hers - one a small French imprint, and another an older but interesting exhibition catalogue.

From a short interview on Photoeye (where there are also some galleries of her work):

"...The attraction I feel to a subject whether it be person, animal, situation or place, develops into a relationship that feels like being in love. I have had a love affair with sugar cane harvesting in Louisiana since l973. I photograph the harvest every season just like the farmer harvests the cane. My work is a visual articulation of an emotional and sensual response to my subjects—to stories heard and the smells and sounds in the environment. I spend years on most of my projects; without the major ingredient of time, these intense relationships would be nonexistent. Each project flows into the other, as can be seen in my new book, The Shadows...."

I noticed she has a a couple of more recent books out - Polly, and The Shadows as mentioned above, though her book Carry Me Home about the Louisiana sugar plantations was her real breakthrough in 1985