Two for the Photo-Book Library - Benson and Eggleston

If you are an addicted photo-book collector, here are a couple of good sized tomes worth getting for the reference section:

First, The Printed Picture by Richard Benson. This is actually a quite beautiful book, most likely because Richard Benson cares to the Nth degree about the presentation and printing of pictures - especially photographs - in books. Benson, who teaches at Yale (and was Dean of the School of Art for a number of years), has also printed some of the most beautifully done photo-books out there such as the gorgeous four volume The Work of Atget as well as the incomparable Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company - probably the finest example of the combination of the photographer's and the printer's art . Among others, he has had a long standing partnership with Lee Friedlander, printing a number of Frieldander's books

The internet aside, I think it's true that we see the majority of the photographs we look at in the form of printed books or in magazines and this book is literally an overview of the printed picture going through the history of how pictures, mainly though not only photographic, have been reproduced, printed and presented. From woodblocks through to inkjets and digital technology with everything important in between. But the book is not overly wordy or academic and the pictures chosen as examples of the different techniques are frequently left to do a lot of the talking for themselves. Benson is both a photographer as well as a master of the printing press and it shows. The book is informative, intriguing and visually beautiful. And Benson is also able to describe these processes in a very straightforward yet complete manner. Definitely one for the bookcase and to thumb through again in the darkness of winter. (There was also a sort of precursor exhibition treading the ground of this book called The Physical Print: A Brief Survey of the Photographic Process, which was well reviewed on 5b4)

The second book is William Eggleston, Democratic Camera : photographs, and video, 1961-2008. This is the catalogue of the large Eggleston retrospective at the Whitney that ended earlier this year (I recently came across a very good review of the show here). It's a fairly heavy duty book and gives a pretty good overview of Eggleston's work along with a quiver full of essay's by Elizabeth Sussman, Thomas Weski, Stanley Booth et al. There's nothing earth shattering about the book or the essays, but if you haven't been able to gather together some of Eggleston's books such as Democratic Forest or Ancient & Modern or Los Alamos or Eggleston's Guide (grab the reprint while you still can...) - some of which are getting pricey these days - then it's a good way to view a fair chunk of his work.

One thing I did feel going through the book is how much better the majority of the photographs work in the context of their original book form rather than in a big retrospective book like this. I didn't get to see the exhibit, but have a feeling it wouldn't matter so much looking at a cross section of Eggleston's prints on the gallery wall - because many of them also stand on their own as well. But somehow, taken out of the overall context of say Eggleston's Guide or Democratic Forest and put together in one large compendium many of the pictures seemed at least a little diminished which makes me think of how important the grouping and sequencing of a set of photographs can be, where the whole is very much greater than the sum of the parts.

Either way, a good book for the shelf, although as I got this one out of the public library, I might be tempted by his new book on Paris instead (though I wasn't too keen on the Dunkerque book... it almost felt like he was a little lost in Basillico territory). Oh and if you come across a cheap copy of Election Eve, let me know!

Crosspostings - design, art and other stuff

I've been doing a lot of reading and looking at areas outside of photography recently - art (books and blogs and shows when I can), design - everything from clothes to industrial to goodness knows what. As well as things like fountain pens and paper products (in my last job as an archivists I was sort of known at the tech go-to-guy, so it tended to amuse people when I turned up at meetings with a Filofax and a fountain pen instead of a Blackberry...) - and I must say I do have a fondness for cool and funky looking office stuff, like cast aluminium pencil sharpeners from Denmark or industrial looking bookends from Japan or soft chrome magnetic paperweight planes that catch your paper clips as well....

So, just putting you all on notice that I'll be doing a bit of cross-posting on here every now and then when I come across something that takes my fancy.

For today, here's something from the UK designer Paul Smith. Rhodia notebooks from France are often to be found in the offices of architects, film directors and graphic designers (indeed, the paper is of a rather nice quality). Their mouse-pad/notepad is one of the most handy things I have on my desk.

Anyway, Paul Smith has taken the standard classic orange Rhodia cover and added his own twist to a limited edition run. I also thought them quite suitable for the photog crowd - although you would have to order them from the UK...

But to finish on a more sombre note - I don't quite get the whole US political dynasty thing, but here is what is imo one of the best Ted Kennedy photos - quite wonderful - by Dave Burnett (and, I'm guessing here, is probably a result of his Speed Graphic/Aero Ektar setup?)

(Photo - David Burnett)

Man-bags and stuff

I'm sure there are many readers of this blog who are also charter members of the camera bag a month club... I have what family refers to as my "camera bag mountain".

Well, I've actually been doing a lot of reading, writing and research lately (about the archive, photographs, Derrida, visual literacy and more) and I've been looking around for a nice hip (I need all the help I can get...) bag to transport around all the notes and books etc. Sure I could just use some clunky old messenger bag - but hey, a cool bag is a cool bag. And a re-purposed camera bag might do the trick if my old Domkes weren't so worn that the bottom has just about come out of them; my 26 year old canvas Billingham seems to have gone mouldy in the garage and the more recent bags were all for carrying around an 8x10.

I haven't found the holy grail of man-bags yet, though I did see one in a local store that sells everything from flowers to fountain pens to laser cut aluminium decorations to French pocket knives. Lovely black oiled leather bag, but it turned out to be by an "actual" Italian/French designer and cost nearly $600.00 - yeah, right.

(bag - Isaac Reina)

However, hunting around on the web I did come across these folk in Vancouver, BC - Palmer & Sons. Not the kind of bags I actually want right now (and probably not my price range either), but I just love that there's someone in Vancouver in this day and age making these kinds of beautiful hand-crafted pieces. Kudos to them for even making the effort! (On their blog, you can also see how they put some of them together).

Either way, my search for a cool murse continues...

How long is a photograph able to sustain our gaze - Exergue

(Thomas Nozkowski - Untitled)


I read two things in the last few days that both seem to come together and point to something I've been thinking about regarding the nature of photography:

About Painter Thomas Nozkowski in a Globe & Mail review (by Sarah Milroy - note: G&M articles are time limited) of his show at the National Gallery of Canada:

"....As well, he abandoned the anonymity of concept-driven art. “All of us are interested in having an un-alienated life,” he says. “What is the point of having a craft if you cannot use it to speak about the things that interest you outside the studio?” His art would be rooted in his own life experience."

and

"...So, I ask him, what can painting do that nothing else can?

“Oh, that's easy,” he says, his voice relaxing affectionately. “There is no other tool that can unite images and emotions so efficiently, that can bring together what you see and what you feel about it. Painting is really about pursuing what you desire. I mean, we all walk down the street, but we see completely different things. Here we are, sharing DNA and two million years of evolutionary history. Why is it that you are looking over there and I'm looking over here?”..."

(Jon Feinstein)


From Jon Feinstein talking about his work Pure Aesthetics:

"Pure Aesthetics rejects the tendency to find meaning and substance from superficial visual experience. Building on Clement Greenberg's ideas about abstract expressionism and the need for a tactile and purely visual perception of artwork, the images have little concept beyond their physical properties. Shiny, colorful, ostensibly inviting materials are laid flat and rendered into abstract patterns that at times appear to descend back into space or contain some code of visual complexity. While the "critical" viewer may demand a layered concept, there is actually nothing to explore beyond the purely physical surface."

Both of these sets of words raise issues about the nature and meaning of photography that I hope to explore over two or three posts to come.

(btw Clement Greenberg, when asked if he thought photography was an art or a craft, considered for a moment and then replied; "I thought it was a hobby?"... which isn't necessarily a bad thing)

Being a designer...

Sometimes - just occasionally - I wish I was a designer.

It's when I come across something like this:

Late one recent hot northern evening I was turning off the lights and saw this moth flitting around the house and I quickly became enthralled by it's patterns and colours.

The only camera I could lay my hands on was our little family Canon Cybershot. So it was direct flash and trying to figure out how the macro worked as I followed the moth around (it was still around next morning, but I only got a shot of its upper wings before it flew away into the garden).

But those patterns - the black and cream on it's upper wings and then the wonderful orange/red on it's under-wings. I just felt like I need to design a shirt or a dress or a book cover or fabric wall coverings or something - to take those patterns and colours and translate them into something else. Of course I'm not what you might call a designer, so I didn't... (you really don't want to see me draw or even try and design the dogs house).

But the pattern and colour still flits around in my mind.

BTW, it's a Tiger Moth.

a shimmer of possibility - Paul Graham

Last year I got rather bummed out when the pre-publication order I placed with a well known bookstore for the original edition of this book/collection never got filled. And when I looked around elsewhere it had already gone out of print.

Because it was such a popular book (for a photobook that is) Steidl decided to reprint it in a new, softcover, somewhat cheaper, all-in-one edition and, having come across my blog, were kind enough to send me a copy of the new edition. You may remember that the original was published as a set of twelve thin hardcover books together in one case - which, although I have never seen a set first hand - looked quite elegant and seemed a very suitable way to present the work.

Now, as I had only ever seen the original set in the catalogues, and hadn't read all the little technical detail, for some reason I had come to assume that this was a set of smallish books in a case. So imagine my surprise when this all-in-one version arrived in a rather large package which, when opened, presented something as large as the yellow pages for a metropolitan city and which was quite a bit heavier as it's 375 pages were made of nice, heavy, glossy paper.

It was only then that I looked back to the original version in the catalogue and realised that the individual books were about 9.5" x 12.5" in size. Aha... now it makes sense.

Anyway, this is a very physical book due to the size and heft, which makes it materially different from the original edition which, while still presenting the same size of page real estate, is made up of the the twelve individual books.

Physical appearance aside, the photographs are much as I had hoped. In one sense, this is pretty much postmodern street photography at its best (zenith?). And yet the blurb around the book also indicates that Graham was inspired by Chekov's short stories. In many ways I can see that their form is indeed inspired by Chekov's 201 short stories, but in terms of content it is very much Chekov by way of Don DeLillo.

There is a whole play and interplay not only between the "narrative" content of each individual story, but also between the stories themselves. I hesitate to use the term "narrative" because to me there is a certain implied forward motion in that word whereas these photographs (as with almost all photographs) not only look back, but their meanings also comes from complex interrelationships which move both backwards and forwards within the book form as well as between the books - and which is probably even more apparent in this one volume set. Their nature is in many ways very different from the textual story or narrative form. It is the sequencing, and the ability of the viewer to manipulate the sequencing, that gives these photographs much of their power and potential. And as the two different editions allow for different levels of manipulation by the viewer I would suggest that they allow for two different sets of meaning making. In essence, they aren't quite the same book.

If I hadn't seen the list of widely varied locations at the back of the book I might have titled these photographs "Walks With My Dog". Not in any negative sense, but in the sense that they really do illuminate the ordinary in a way which so many photographers attempt and yet fail at. Like DeLillo's stories they depend absolutely on an acute observation of the everyday. Yet like many of Chekov's short stories they take an ordinary event and find the one small spark of the other that so often permeates what we frequently fail to notice around us.

As Graham says:"I know it seems crazy, but I'm asking you to trust me and enjoy this quiet journey. Just slow down and look at this ordinary moment of life. See how beautiful it is, see how life flows around us, how everything shimmers with possibility."

My only wish would be that Steidl publish them/this in a smaller sized edition - a set of the 12 books but produced around the size of a regular - if thin - paperback. Perhaps a bit bigger then the Photo Poche series, or about the size of Moleskine's bigger notebooks. Big enough to still be able to read the pictures easily, but small enough to fit two or three of the individual books in a pocket or messenger bag pouch. I think that would probably be the best edition of what would then be three. Perfect jewels.

(All photos Paul Graham)

Richard Mosse - Saddam's Palaces (or my old Phillips 8x10 goes to Baghdad...)

(Al Faw Palace, Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq 2009)

A couple of years ago I sold my Phillips 8x10 Explorer camera to a young Irish photographer - Richard Mosse - while he was still at Yale.

Richard certainly seems someone to keep an eye on. He's already done some very interesting work to date and last week on BLDGBLOG I came across a new project of his called Breach - Saddam's Palaces (which I notice also made it to the front page of the Huffington Post as well - which can't hurt if you are working on name recognition...).

Anyway, I've actually got no idea until I hear from him if Ricard was actually using my old 8x10, although I'd like to think so - it's the perfect camera for a large format project like this.

(Al Faw Palace, Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq 2009)


And the project itself is one I really like. I think we've all seen a few pictures - especially from the earlier days of the occupation in Iraq - of US Soldiers in some of Saddam's sumptuous (although apparently not very well constructed) palaces. But this sustained view of them a few years on as the the military has have settled semi-permanently in to these opulent dwellings is quite fascinating.

(Al-Salam Palace, FOB Prosperity, Baghdad, Iraq 2009)

There's a sense of the "almost incongruous" about these pictures which in itself builds up to be a somewhat unsettling feeling. It no longer seems strange to see western troops bedded down and with their offices in these bizarre settings, and yet in many ways it should do (the palaces in and of themselves are somewhat bizarre - home furnishing kitsch and bad taste - though surprisingly, not always - taken the the n'th degree) - it no longer seems strange, but it should do.

(Birthday Palace Interior, showing dormitories built by American GIs inside Saddam's Palace architecture, Tikrit, Iraq 2009)

And I love the way they've been colonised by the troops with standard office partitioning for cubicles, plywood cabins for sleeping or work spaces, or portakabins and so on - like a family of cartoon mice taking over an abandoned house:

"BLDGBLOG: The way these structures have been colonized is often amusing and sometimes shocking—the telephones, desks, and instant dormitories that turn an imperial palace into what looks like a suburban office or hospital waiting room. Can you describe some of the spatial details of these soldiers' lives that most struck you?

Mosse:
It was extraordinary how some of the palace interiors had been transformed to accommodate the soldiers. Troops scurried beneath vaulted ceilings and glittering faux-crystal chandeliers. Lofty marble columns towered over rat runs between hastily constructed chipboard cubicles. Obama's face beamed out of televisions overlooking the freezers and microwaves of provisional canteen spaces."

(interior of Birthday Palace, Tikrit, Iraq 2009)

...from the very good interview with Richard on the BLDGBLOG site along with some good commentary. Anyway - wonderful stuff Richard and I certainly hope we will see this as a book soon.

"These extraordinary images—published here for the first time—show the imperial palaces of Saddam Hussein converted into temporary housing for the U.S military. Vast, self-indulgent halls of columned marble and extravagant chandeliers ,surrounded by pools, walls, moats, and, beyond that, empty desert, suddenly look more like college dormitories. Weight sets, flags, partition walls, sofas, basketball hoops, and even posters of bikini'd women have been imported to fill Saddam's spatial residuum. The effect is oddly decorative, as if someone has simply moved in for a long weekend, unpacking an assortment of mundane possessions.

The effect is like an ironic form of camouflage, making the perilously foreign seem all the more familiar and habitable—a kind of military twist on postmodern interior design.

Of course, then you notice, in the corner of the image, a stray pair of combat boots or an abandoned barbecue or a machine gun leaned up against a marble wall partially shattered by recent bomb damage—amidst the dust of collapsed ceilings and ruined tiles—and this architecture, and the people who now go to sleep there every night, suddenly takes on a whole new, tragic narrative."

(Al Faw Palace, Camp Victory, Iraq 2009)

AQUINE = photo.net?

(William Eggleston 4.7)


I came across a flurry of posts recently about the AQUINE system - a not terribly good acronym for Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine - which is supposed to give "intelligent, unbiased and instant assessment of photos".

It is described as a machine-learning based online system for computer-based prediction of aesthetic quality for colour natural(??) photographs and is also supposed to shows that computers can learn about and exhibit "emotional responses" to visual stimuli like humans do.

Unfortunately, however, it seems right now that the folks at Penn State seem to have based it on the "photo.net algorithm". If you compare its top rated photographs with the top rated on photo.net, it's pretty hard to tell them apart. Among other things, lots of overdone HDR will get your picture a good rating...

(Atget 5.0)


Bearing in mind that Ctein found at least one pretty substantial flaw in it - that if his linked photos had a frame they scored dramatically higher than if they didn't - I decided to through it few spin balls to see how it rated some of my favourite photographers. Which means for one thing I was throwing it a good few B&W images rather than colour.

(Walker Evans 42.7)


As I had guessed, most didn't do too well - poor old Atget on got about a 5 for one 12 for another, and Egglston's tricycle got about the lowest at 4.7 (that should please a good few of the folks on APUG). Most were somewhere in the 30's or 40's - Walker Evans, Struth, Friedlander, Sugimoto. After that (yes, I know they aren't photographs exactly - well, photographs of paintings), I tried Picasso, Van Gogh - again, the poor things only scored around 20 or 30. Although Turner's 'The Fighting Temeraire' - voted the most popular painting in Britain got a 70.0.

(Van Gogh 22.7)


The only three I did get with high scores were Sudek at 91.8 (not surprising when at his most romantic, plus it has a nice black frame) and, a little more unexpected, Andreas Gursky who got 85.8. Lynne Cohen also got 87.0 - but that one also had "nice" colours in it.

(Andreas Gursky 85.8)


Now I wonder, as it is supposed to learn (and I have almost no understand of the computing aspects of this kind of artificial intelligence), that if a concerted effort was made to flood it with Eggleston, Struth, Parr, Graham etc etc photos, would it start to learn and become biased towards a sort of late 20th century New Color aesthetic instead?

But for now, if you want to work out where your work stands on a sort of 1980's Photo Club aesthetic scale, I think this is the place to go.

(Sudek 91.9)

On Edge - Karin Apollonia Müller

Well, the short wait was definitely worth it. I got back after the weekend and Karin Apollonia Müller's new book On Edge was waiting for me in the mailbox.

First of all it's a lovely production by Nazraeli Press - large, but not too large (12"x15") and at 48 pages very easy to hold, which for me is important in a book of photographs. A classically simple cover in the Nazraeli style (the translucent wrapper is a nice touch), and the reproduction and colour is very very good. In fact the colour is gorgeous - in a very understated way (more on that shortly).

And no words - apart from the usual title and isbn stuff. Which is surprisingly refreshing, although me being me, I always want to know more about the work. Though as I think on it now, while I have some photo books with fantastic or important introductions and essays, often returned to, I probably have far more where the writing is somewhat helpful, but just not in the same class as the photographs.

But back to the content. In these photographs it feels like Müller has become less the visitor and more the settler or immigrant. Still not at home, but more at ease. In the course of this her pictures have become in some ways more effectively veiled while her colour has become more full (which could also be partly a function of the printing?) but still retaining the translucency that characterized her earlier book. And her eye has become both more subtle and more penetrating - even more aware of the incongruous, (though not without the odd touch of humour).

I like the way that the view Müller presents is more often than not from above ground level, sometimes far above ground level. As well, the incongruity in so much of what she sees, woven carefully into the tapestry of the overall image. Is that house on the hillside twisted and uneven because the ground has been swept away from beneath it? Or is it the result of a local architects attempt at a postmodern Gehry like design? Is that really a very large cabbage painted on the side of that building? Why does the tattered cocoon on a building under construction appear to have been put on upside down. Her photographs aren't purely - or even - didactic.

She shows us a place where people really shouldn't really be living - at least with the current constraints of our unimaginative, budget level building and construction methods, poor planning and our insatiable desire for space.

The work shows many places - in one of the worlds most well know cities - that seem entirely provisional - on edge. Dwellings that are considered permanent, yet which are anything but, and which nature (often with our unthoughtful help) quickly make transient and temporary.

Müller also shows us so many of the in between spaces, the terrain vague, of the city where nature wages a constant campaign to retake this place in whatever way it can - gradually by vegetation or rapidly by fire or erosion.

I think of some of the villages and towns in Italy and Greece which, for a few hundred years or so, seem to have managed to find ways to co-exist with such landscapes and wonder why this isn't so here.

The book presents us with a very contemporary sublime - not Turner's or Cozens' sublime of the awe-full, unknown Alps - but a sublime constructed of our own dreamlike fantasies of "civilization" projected onto a landscape which constantly resists our imposition.

On Edge is certainly one of my favourite photo books of the year so far.

Eagerly awaiting Apollonia

I'm eagerly awaiting Karin Apollonia Müller's new book On Edge

I've talked in the past about Karin's first book Angels in Fall - which, by the way, you no longer have to fork out $400+ as it's been reprinted and is once more affordable for us photo-peasants.

I've seen a few of the pictures from the book on websites, but I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing. One of the main things about her work that draws me into it is the way she is able to convey the quiet strangeness of the city which she knows intimately yet is still an outsider in it.

From the publisher's blurb:

"On Edge is Karin Apollonia Müller’s second monograph, and the first to be published by Nazraeli Press. While Angels in Fall (2001) dealt with the disconnect between human beings and their environment, On Edge shows the earth “crumbling away”, and our futile efforts to control or hide the subtle invasion of nature into cultivated spaces. Working in color with a muted palette and low contrast, Müller creates powerful images which evoke a sense of displacement in keeping with the artist’s “visitor status” as a foreigner in Los Angeles."

I'll give an update once I have the book in my hands.

p.s. - I love parents who give their children names like "Apollonia" (like my colleague Pandora). Possibly teased at school, but it sure is a great hook when you want to be an artist...

New Cliches of Photography #'s 7, 8, 9

More "New Cliches of Photography" from Mark Page

Teeny Tiny Shrunken Cities.............






Falling floating, jumping, folk.............



and Half in half out, folk wading.........

Love this stuff

The Grange Prize

There's a fairly new (2007) Canadian photography prize - The Grange Prize - sponsored by the Art Gallery of Ontario and Aeroplan which seems to manage to keep a fairly low profile and its light under a bushell (or at least it feels like it does), but which offers the winning photography some serious benefits. For one thing, after the short list of four photographers is chosen, the winner is picked by popular (internet) vote. Then the winner also gets a couple of good exhibitions - one at the AGO in Toronto and another with their partner institution for the year - which this year is the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City. There is also a residency included. Finally, the purse is $50,000(CDN), which is pretty damn good for any photography prize or award. Certainly enough to fund a new project for a good while without having to get a day job...

This years shortlist includes one of my favourite photographers - Lynne Cohen. I've talked about her at least a couple of times before.

As an aside, reading the bios I note Cohen has recently been photographing in Cuba. When I hear that phrase (as I did from another wonderful Canadian photographer recently) there's a little part of me that cringes. So many good photographers seem to have gone to Cuba in recent years and stumbled. Somehow they get entranced by the whole old crumbling Havana, peeling colours, 1950's old cars, Buena Vista Social Club thing and apparently manage to lose all the sensibilities that usually makes their work compelling or unique and end up producing something that would look just fine in National Geographic... but Dave Harvey has already done an excellent job at covering that base and it's been overdone ever since. Somehow everyone seems to forget Walker Evan's Cuba - among others.

I've only been to Cuba once, but did travel a bit (and never went to Havana). Where are the pictures of the isolated tourist resorts? Or the parade ground in Santa Clara built on a scale on the Communists could imagine? Or what photographer has been allowed to photograph on their own terms inside the physically oppressive yet aura filled Che Guevara Mausoleum? Or the Motorway/Freeway that just... peters out on the ground well before it does on the map - because it was designed and funded by the East Germans and work just stopped when the Berlin Wall fell?

So when I hear of a photographer whose work I like and admire photographing in Cuba, I both cringe a little bit inside as I say to myself; "oh no, I hope not...?" and at the same time there's also some excited anticipation as I think; "hmm... this could be good".

Back to the Grange Prize, the other three shortlisted photographers are Marco Antonio Cruz:

and Federico Gama:

and Jin-me Yoon:

All worthy contenders. You don't have to be Canadian to vote - so why not head over to their website and vote for your favourite of the three. You've got until May 24th to make your choice.

(P.S. I had some trouble logging on to the Grange Prize website - it may have just been my browser, but let me know if it's more widespread than that...)