The Kindly Ones

"The real danger for mankind is me, is you. And if you're not convinced of this, don't bother to read any further. You'll understand nothing and you'll get angry, with little profit for you or me."

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littel

A strange, controversial, intriguing, sometimes obscene and yet mesmerizing book.

"Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened. I am not your brother, you'll retort, and I don't want to know. And it certainly is true that this is a bleak story, but an edifying one too, a real morality play, I assure you. You might find it a bit long--a lot of things happened, after all--but perhaps you're not in too much of a hurry; with a little luck you'll have some time to spare. And also, this concerns you; you'll see that this concerns you. Don't think I am trying to convince you of anything; after all, your opinions are your own business. If after all these years I've made up my mind to write, it's to set the record straight for myself, not for you. For a long time we crawl on this earth like caterpillars, waiting for the splendid, diaphanous butterfly we bear within ourselves. And then times passes and the nymph stage never comes, we remain larvae--what do we do with such an appalling realization? Suicide, of course, is always an option. But to tell the truth suicide doesn't tempt me much."

Unique photographs of the Battle of the Somme

A shell bursting some 10-20 yards way on the Somme Battlefield, 1916. Photograph from the album Lieutenant J.S. Purvis, 5th (T) Battalion (1916-1918). RICGH:2005.31.6

I just came across some quite amazing and unique pictures of the Battle of the Somme courtesy of the Darlington & Stockton Times in NE England (btw I love great how you can read articles from small regional papers like this now).

They were taken by Lieutenant John Stanley Purvis of the 5th (T) Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards) on the first day of the Battle of the Somme as he and his men began advancing across no man's land towards the enemy trenches. The photographs are now in the archives at the Green Howards regimental museum in Richmond, N. Yorkshire.

A unique photograph from the second line trench of troops advancing from the forward trenches on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1st July 1916. RICGH:2005.31.2

These are so unique because there are so few photographs of the actual combat in WWI. Most photographs we see are either some way behind the front lines or once the fighting has moved - showing the desolate shell pockmarked landscapes and so on. But there are very few show troops actually out of the trenches advancing to contact. For one thing, taking a picture under the withering enemy (and sometimes friendly) fire would - I think - put most photographers off. For another, Lt. Purvis could have been Court Martialed for taking photographs in the front line (if I recall correctly, keeping personal diaries was also prohibited on pain of Court Martial).

Other photos (there are 43 in all, still well worth looking at) taken by Lt. Purvis - more typical - though equally horrifying - show scenes of the battlefield such as "Soldiers digging into freshly made trenches in Delville Wood, October 1916" where the woods now merely consist of a few shell blasted stumps. I know there is at least one well know picture of "combat" in WWI that was used numerous times as a magazine and book illustration but was later found to have been taken during training. But of Purvis' pictures it is these two or three pictures that for me capture the eye and the imagination.

The scene of the Somme Battlefield, July 1916. RICGH:2005.31.5

What a fool, you might think, taking pictures while shells landed 10 or so yards away and rifle and machine gun fire was most likely coming in in your direction. But remember that an officer's main job was to make sure his men continued to advance into all that. Many did so armed with nothing more than a walking stick (an officer's pistol was of little use until all that ground was crossed and you were nose to nose with the enemy). So, I suppose, why not take a couple of moments to stop and take a photograph... I guess there was nothing you could do about it one way or the other....

From the paper:

"IT was the most terrible day in the history of the British Army with more than 57,000 casualties, of whom almost 20,000 were killed.

But the first day of the Battle of the Somme - July 1, 1916 - was just the beginning of a four-month operation that would end with more than 1.5m casualties.

The shattered fields of northern France ran red with blood and to this day the countries that took part remember the events with abject horror.

Now unique photographs of that first day have been made available for all to see..."

Purvis survived the war and although he went on to study at Cambridge and eventually become a clergyman, I think he had a real eye as a photographer:

A new type of barbed wire used by Germans in 1918. RICGH:2005.31.40

Oooh - I want one of these...

The Nissan Land Glider concept. From LikeCool:

"Nissan has unveiled the Land Glider Concept at the upcoming 2009 Tokyo Motor Show. The Land Glider is two-seat electric vechicle, features the range of 160km (100 miles) in a full charge. It can lean into turns like a motorcycle, and sci-fi looking cabin, all full of monitors displays and a steering wheel which looks like twin joysticks."

More pictures (and a somewhat boring video) at LikeCool as well as at the Nissan site.

All a little bit slower... and rather more cosy (and rather more green) than this - The Ariel Atom (and a video below):

Top Gear - Ariel Atom - BBC


Featured Comment from Bee (and old friend):

Okay so now I have a Moleskine, but can't think what to write in it. I already had a couple of fountain pens, but don't use them... so while those funky inks sound intriguing, I can't see myself going there. But now this. I see your taste in cars is absolutely disgusting. American Muscle circa 1970, that's cars. The future as applauded by you is just debasing. Like in the future we'll all be Mr.Bean.

:-)

fountain pens, inks, notebooks and a store

(Stylus Fine Pens - Edmonton)

Here's one of my mildly off the topic posts - about the old fashioned way of writing things and keeping notes. A fountain pen and a notebook (or in my case, several notebooks).

I bought my first fountain pen in 1978 from a small stationers in the lovely little German town of Celle. It was a Mont Blanc - bought when they were still straightforward work-a-day pens not the insane status symbols they are now (nor are they as well made now), the same company recently producing an overly ostentatious über tacky $25,000 gold and silver pen to celebrate Gandhi of all people (what the heck were they thinking!). But I still have my old original pen although the nib is getting well worn and needs re-tipping.

For a long time over the last few years I just used it for writing the odd letter and writing notes in a journal when I was on holiday or at the cottage. But apart from that, it didn't get much use. More recently though I got back into the habit of using it again along with a few of the other fountain pens I'd picked up over the years (though I found my much loved, if somewhat mainstream, Sheaffer Targa had finally succumbed to all the bangs, dents and scratches it took living in my pocket over two years or so of counter-terrorist operations... I have to see if I can get it fixed up).

I realised recently that I had completely got back into the habit of using a fountain pen for a lot of what I write, and that I was also using useful little pocket notebooks much more than any form of digital "recording device". Unfortunately this has been somewhat aided and abetted by discovering that our city has a a rather lovely little shop that specialises in pens, inks, notebooks and fine paper and other cool and funky office supplies (such as magnetic paper weights from Germany or beautifully sculpted steel pocket pencil sharpeners...).

A bit more on the store in a minute, but back to pens and paper for now. I'm finding it much more productive and enjoyable to write a lot of things out by hand - not just short notes and ideas, but longer outlines and papers. It seems a much more comfortable way of doing it. These days I tend to use one of my favourite two or three pens, usually a fairly standard Pelikan Souverän 600 or a Visconti Van Gogh midi, as well as a funky little hexagonal aluminium pocket pen by Wörther.

As for notebooks, I've always been a

Moleskine fan (although they seem to have gone nuts with products these days - which isn't exactly a bad thing) - just about all my photo projects have been recorded in a standard black Moleskine over the years - place, date, time, film, lens, ideas, outlines etc. The trouble is (and I really wish they would fix this), their paper just generally isn't fountain pen friendly. And even worse, it can vary from batch to batch. But on the whole, the ink nearly always bleeds through to the other side of the page. So for now, I've found some great notebooks from a company called Quo Vadis - the Habana (unlined of course - I can't bear the rigidity of lined pages...). Lovely paper and beautifully made - and the orange looks great. I also like some little Japanese notebooks by Apica for every day jotting - shopping lists and things to do and errands to remember. BTW, this being the digital age there are actually a bunch of sites out there with Moleskine and other notebook "hacks"

As for ink - well, that's another story. I always used to just use slight variations on blue or black. Whatever I could find easily. And while I guess there have always been fancy inks around, it seems to me - coming back to fountain pen use as it where - that there has been an explosion of specialist ink makers, as well as established makers becoming much more adventurous in their offerings. There are all sorts of funky colours - every shade and variation on red through purples and blues to sepias and siennas to greys and blacks and everything in between. Along with great names like Dragon's Napalm (meant to replicate mercurochrome antiseptic in a Vietnam War era MASH unit...) to El Lawrence - a sort of motor oil grey black to Zhivago - a deep green black that evokes the Doctor's writing deep in the ice bound dacha, to classic numbers from France such as Violet Penseé or Café des Îles. Of course this would be fine if you had to pick and chose carefully over the internet and pay for shipping etc., but as I mentioned, we have a rather nice pen shop here in Edmonton - so over the last couple of years I've been using some rather funky colours. My current favourites are Noodler's Golden-Brown which shades within each stroke of the pen from a golden yellow to a sort of warm earth burnt sienna colour. The other is the Zhivago that almost looks like a standard black and then, in a different light, you notice a tiny little touch of deep green on the edge of many of the strokes (oh - and a beautiful lavender blue from De Atrimentis in Germany). Anyway, it all livens things up a bit and stops it getting boring.

As for that shop, if you ever come through Edmonton Stylus Fine Pens is definitely worth a visit. And if you are in Canada, take a look as wel they will take orders and ship on line. They do have a great range of pens, but their range



of inks and notebooks and other paper products is also superb. On top of which is their rather nice range of contemporary office products (which sounds so drab, but I can't think of a better term late this evening - writing accessories?). Letter openers like El Bandito to liven up your morning, or imaginative paperweights or the classic looking heavy duty El Casco stapler. Mind you, the website only shows a portion of their accessories. Finally, the store is run by two very nice, friendly and knowledgeable people.

So, if you are wedded to your Blackberry or iPhone, think about giving it a break. Grab a pen (preferably a fountain pen - even if you have to dust it off and clean it out) and stick a notebook or two in your pocket and put all your ideas and schedules and plans in there instead.

Gotta love it...

I just love this picture that came out of the thousands generated this last week during the 60th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the People’s Republic of China

The ladies of the People's Liberation Army Militia (I wonder if the girl right in the centre will be disciplined for almost smiling...?). As one commentator noted - uniforms courtesy Austin Powers. I guess Dr. Evil must be alive and well in his remote mountain lair deep in northern China.

As Wired put it:

"Lieutenant General Fang Fenghui, general director of the parade, told Xinhua the parade was supposed to showcase the transformation of the PLA from a low-tech, manpower-intensive force to a high-tech, 21st-century one. And nothing says futuristic! like white go-go boots".

Then again, perhaps the officers of the PLA General-Staff simply enjoy classic Bond, with re-runs of You Only Live Twice and Sean Connery as James Bond?

As well as everything on AP and the other news-wires, you can check out more images on the official Xinhua news agency website. The massive array of weaponry is both mesmerising and terrifying.

Walker Evans, Atget and many many more at AmericansuburbX

(Walker Evans)

I've mentioned the AmericansuburbX site before, but it seemed worthwhile highlighting it again as I constantly come back to it. I get their regular email of updates and there's nearly always something I can't resist.

Doug Rickard who runs it constantly adds new material, which is all writings about photography and photographers, out of print magazine or journal articles, book chapters, interviews, profiles and more.

You can't find that 1998 article from Camera Arts on Emmet Gowin that you meant to clip but realise you probably never did? Lost that photocopy of the Intro to William Eggleston's Ancient & Modern you made when you borrowed it from the library - they're both here, along with half a dozen articles about Walker Evans, (including a an interview with him from 1971) and much more.

The there's a look at the last 40 years or so of Atget exhibitions and scholarship. Or a look back at class time with Gary Winogrand at UT in Austin.

(Thomas Struth)

But it's not just oldies (okay, classic) stuff. There's a 2007 interview with Thomas Struth and there's Paul Graham on "Photography is Easy, Photography is Difficult". There's Taryn Simon's "An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar" and an article entitled "Todd Hido: Art of Darkness"

I never quite know what's going to come out of browsing here and reading one of the articles. It might be renewed energy to work on my current projects. Or a brief comment in one article sending me on a hunt for traces of a never published novel based on Atget's life and work.

(Todd Hido)

Every time I browse through the site, or search a photographer's name there, I always find something to stop and read (or more often than not, to print off). It's a bit like in the "old days" when you would look something up in an encyclopaedia but never actually get to the topic in question because you got side tracked by so many other interesting entries along the way... (yep, those were the old days). Take a look, but don't blame me if you don't get back to your work until three hours later.

(Eugene Atget)

Man-bags and stuff Pt.II

Well, I may have found it... my holy grail of bags (for now, anyway). The Landscape Satchel by Tanner Goods. I don't have one in my hand as they are made to order. And the price is a little... over the top end, for me anyway (especially as I saw a women with a really nice leather messenger bag after a gallery opening the other day and it cost her all of - $70.00).

Anyway, I like the look of this one - in all three colours actually. Black would definitely be my first choice though, followed by brown. I also like the idea of the removable zippered insert - pouches for this and that or just a big empty bag.

How did I miss this...? Buffet

(Andrew Phelps - Not Niigata)

I'm not sure how I missed this up until now, but photographer Andrew Phelps has a great blog up call Buffet.

As he describes it:

The Buffet is open........

Buffet is a collection of special editions, book + print sets, artist's books, print/book trades and various interesting ways in which photographers are packaging and selling their work. Some are sold through galleries and publishers, some by the artists. The only ones I am selling directly are my own. I'm not a dealer (more of a junkie) so I am not getting a cut of these sales, I am just a photographer interested in work which is in my price range.

(Nicholas Gottland - Wild Prayer)

Anyway, there's some great stuff in here (as well as a lot of stuff I wish I'd know about which is now long sold out...). So many good photographers are now selling their work directly either as POD books, limited run prints, through small off-the-grid publishers etc which is a movement I'm pleased to see continues to grow. But it's also hard to keep track of what's out there. I found it especially rewarding to scroll back through all the old posts on the blog. There is some quite wonderful work in there.

(Sonja Thomsen Surface)

So I'm going to be keeping an eye on Buffet and seeing what comes along.

BTW - I also like his idea of trading prints for books - you might possibly see that here...?

(Todd Deutsch Chasing the Family Drift)

James Nachtwey et al

(James Nachtwey)

Scrolling through the channels last night to try and find The Policewomen of Broward County (yes, I know...), I ran across a repeat of War Photographer, the excellent documentary about James Nachtwey. Although I've seen it before, I was immediately hooked and watched the whole 90 minutes or so again.

(James Nachtwey)

After the doc finished I pulled out my battered copy of Deeds of War from the shelf and took another look through it. And this morning I grabbed the doorstep sized Inferno from the local library. I had somehow forgotten how stunning Nachtwey's work is, along with how committed a character he is. Which got me thinking about a couple of things.

(Gilles Peress)

For me, during the late Twentieth and into the earlier Twenty-first Century there has always been a triumvirate of conflict/war photographers whose work spoke more loudly, more convincingly and was nearly always head and shoulders above anything else around. Don McCullin, Gilles Peress and James Nachtwey. Now, these guys are all getting on a little bit. I figure the last two are already into their early sixties and the Don is about 73 (not to suggest they are past it or not still photographing or anything). But who can forget McCullin's searing pictures from Vietnam or the Congo or Beirut arriving in time for Sunday breakfast with the colour supplements? Or Peress' unbearable yet absolutely essential images from Bosnia in Farewell to Bosnia and Rwanda in The Silence. And Nachtwey's b&w essays from Rwanda, the Sudan, Chechnya still, against all the digital and ad-dollar odds, being published in Time.

(Don McCullin)

But who are their heirs? Who is doing work of a similar calibre, work as powerful and searing as this and getting it published? I'm sure they are out there(or at least I hope they are).

Which leads me to: where the work of this sort and calibre from Iraq and Afghanistan (and any other current spot on the globe where human beings are suffering and dying)? There was a time when I would seek out such stories in the news magazines, the Sunday supplements as well as other often not quite so obvious places and publications - but they were never to hard to find and often looked you right in the eye from the newsstand. Perhaps I haven't been quite so diligent this last few years, but where is the work? I seem to have encountered so little in published form, and while the internet has been a boon to photography in so many ways, it seems in some ways to have belittled this kind of work, robbed it of its power and rendered it impotent.

(Don McCullin)

I have, it must be said, gone to the websites of some of the big (and not so big) newspapers and other publications when I have found a pointer that led me there. In one way it has been great that the NY Times or whatever can now publish the whole of an essay online when they perhaps only printed 2 or 3 pictures in the actual (physical) paper. And yet, somehow, scrolling through a slide show, along with added information or commentary just seems to lack impact or staying power - despite how good the images may be. And though many - indeed most - are very very good, where are the excellent ones? The pictures that sear themselves onto our retinas and haunt our dreams?

(Gilles Peress)

Postscript: Having written this, I just came across the story this last week of the photographs of Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard in Afghanistan (and here and here)and words of censure coming from the supposedly open and outward looking administration in the White House. I think one essential thing McCuillin, Peress and Nachtwey all have in common is that their work was and is about pricking our complacency, about not letting us hide in our suburban middle-class ghetto's. Perhaps, in the end, they failed? Not because their work wasn't powerful enough or that they didn't try hard enough, but rather that our self-absorbed complacency was just too immense to overcome?

(James Nachtwey)

The Problem of Photography Pt.1 (The Gaze)

There is a lovely book of photographs by Stephen Shore called the Gardens at Giverny. It is very nicely done and has always been a favourite of mine. But I wonder at the conflicting emotions when the Metropolitan Museum of Art suggested photographing Monet's newly restored house and gardens at Giverny. Holy crap - what an incredible opportunity - to photograph Monet's Gardens. Holy crap - how on earth do you photograph Monet's Gardens.

The end result is a book that I feel reflects that. It is a beautiful collection of photographs giving us Shore's vision of the renascence of these iconic gardens, showing us their hidden and unnoticed details and late summer parched browns as well as their verdant lushness. A well executed collection of pictures by a major photographer. (I know of one landscape architect who keeps a copy on her desk. I also found, while looking for online pictures from it an interview with Stephen Shore where he notes that the contemporary photographer he is most interested in is Walid Raad which I find most encouraging in the light of what I say below).

And yet... and yet, place one or even all of these photographs beside one of Monet's paintings of his garden and they would be, I believe, immediately eclipsed (though I haven't actually stood, book in hand, before Water-Lilies or The Water-Lily Pond at the National Gallery). Certainly in many ways it's an unfair comparison, and I'm sure it was a comparison that Shore was both aware would be made and was probably constantly aware of in himself while he worked. But there is almost no other way it can be. Which brings me to what I see as the heart of the problem of photography - what I recently referred to as sustaining our gaze.

(Water-Lilies, Claud Monet)


It is one of the fundamental problems of photography that photographs rarely seem able to hold our attention for an extended period of time, never mind sustain our concentrated gaze. I find it hard to think of almost any photograph that is capable of holding a viewers gaze for even thirty minutes, never mind an hour or two or a whole afternoon. And yet I can think of numerous other works of art that can do just that.

When encountered, even a painting by a less than well known 18th Century artist - such as Gordale Scar (A View of Gordale, in the Manor of East Malham in Craven, Yorkshire, the Property of Lord Ribblesdale) by John Ward can hold our direct attention for quite some time. And yet go to an exhibition of work by say Robert Adams or Eggleston or Lee Friedlander and how long would we spend, with our gaze fixed on an individual picture? Ten minutes? Twenty minutes, thirty? I think that would be approaching unusual even for the photographically literate, to say nothing of the serious but non specialist general viewer. Possible, but rare.

(Gordale Scar (A View of Gordale, in the Manor of East Malham in Craven, Yorkshire, the Property of Lord Ribblesdale) by John Ward)

And what of travelling to see a photograph? A single photograph mind you, not a whole exhibit of a photographer's work. I can think of a good number of works of art - mainly, though not only, paintings - that I would make the time and effort to travel some way to see - to another country even (and on occasion have done so). But to do the same for a single photograph? There are less than a handful of photographs that would have the same draw (a particular Atget - tiny as it would be; possibly a Walker Evans. Maybe even something like an early Fox Talbot). For a major exhibit of a particular photographer's work, certainly I would make the effort. But for individual photographs it is hard to think of many at all.

(Parc de Scaux, Atget)

Now none of these or the following thoughts are terribly new or original, but what has prompted me to start putting them together is a growing dissatisfaction with so much of the work I see that crosses my desk almost every day in one way or another. Yes, there is all sorts of work that excels at what it is trying to do. Work that adds another little twist or tweak to a certain direction or area of photography and does so well, whether it be large format urbanscapes, deadpan portraits, large format prints, directed and arranged tableaux etc. etc. And yet almost none of it even begins to push up against what I feel are the current, long standing limitations on photography (but not inherent limitations, because I don't believe they are).

(from Sticks and Stones - Lee Friedlander)

This is what has been called "the problem of photography", and the limitation of the gaze, the holding of our attention, is the clearest symptom of the problem. As I see it there are three main causes to the problem, three main limitations, three boundaries, that photography has yet to make serious - or at least successful - attempts to break out of (and which is where I feel that so much contemporary work is lacking. I encounter little which is even pushing up against these boundaries, never mind making an effort to break through them or smash them out of the way completely).

I want to take some time in future posts to explore these boundaries and the ways they limit or restrict photography, but for now the three boundaries as I see them are:

1. The lack of time in a photograph (which is tied in some way to the minimal influence of the artists hand in a photograph). Among others, John Berger, David Hockney and Richard Benson have tried to address this problem. A photograph contains so little time because everything is compressed into a fraction of a second (and even a "long" exposure practised by the likes of Atget out of necessity or others by choice makes very little difference to this - perhaps just a little, but not enough). As Hockney put it, the imbalance between the two experiences, the first and the second lookings, is too extreme.

2. The frame. The window that seems to continually apply its internally focused tension, never allowing the photographic image beyond those borders - be they square, rectangular or circular, 8x10 inches or 8x10 feet. The photographic frame has frequently been regarded as a window (and often positively so). Yet as a window, all we can ever do is look through it. Never step through it like a door (or even break through it) to what is beyond.

3. Perspectivism. Photography has for so long been limited (from long before the invention of film) by the concept of Renaissance Perspective, a theoretical straight-jacket that photography has usually been too insecure to try and throw off, never mind break from completely. It took painting 400 years. How long is it going to take photography?

(Let's Be Honest, the Weather Helped - Walid Raad - The Atlas Group Archive)



(btw, do respond with your thoughts, criticisms or comments. Posts are moderated, but only because I kept getting too many spam and junk posts)