"The measuring and folding of the cloth of time itself" - Paul Graham

- when you form the meaningless world into photographs, then form those photographs into a meaningful world -
Paul Graham - The Unreasonable Apple

(Paul Graham from "Troubled Land")

Last month photographer Paul Graham gave a presentation at the first MOMA Photography Forum that deserves to be widely read by creative photographers as well as those who promote and curate photography.

It's certainly one of the most succinct and clear arguments I've come across in recent years about the place and value of creative (or "art") photography.

In particular Graham makes an unapologetic case for the importance of "...photography that is taken from the world as it is" (my emphasis), as opposed to photography that is constructed from an artist's vision.

The text of the presentation can be found on Graham's website and deserves to be read in full, but here are a few extracts.

"...there remains a sizeable part of the art world that simply does not get photography. They get artists who use photography to illustrate their ideas, installations, performances and concepts, who deploy the medium as one of a range of artistic strategies to complete their work. But photography for and of itself -photographs taken from the world as it is– are misunderstood as a collection of random observations and lucky moments, or muddled up with photojournalism, or tarred with a semi-derogatory ‘documentary’tag".

What I find so refreshing about the whole presentation is that Graham essentially says is that its not an argument about the photography world versus the photography world. This form of photography is as creatively important as painting or sculpture or whatever and it's simply time for the curators and the critics to unblinker themselves and wake up to the fact. And it's also time for the best of them to bring their skills and intelligence to bear on conveying to the wider art world and the public at large what it is that such photography is about:

"I have to say that the position of ‘straight’ photography in the art world reminds me of the parable of an isolated community who grew up eating potatoes all their life, and when presented with an apple, though it unreasonable and useless, because it didn’t taste like a potato...

...The point is that we need the smart, erudite and eloquent people in the art world, the clever curators and writers, those who do get it, to take the time to speak seriously about the nature of such photography, and articulate something of its dazzlingly unique qualities, to help the greater art world, and the public itself understand the nature of the creative act when you dance with life itself - when you form the meaningless world into photographs, then form those photographs into a meaningful world."

Graham concludes with a final statement which he correctly (in my view) describes as an astonishing description at the heart of creative photography:

"So, what is it we are discussing here - how do we describe the nature of this photographic creativity? My modest skills are insufficient for such things. However let me make an opening offer: perhaps we can agree that through force of vision these artists strive to pierce the opaque threshold of the now, to express something of the thus and so of life at the point they recognised it. They struggle through photography to define these moments and bring them forward in time to us, to the here and now, so that with the clarity of hindsight, we may glimpse something of what it was they perceived. Perhaps here we have stumbled upon a partial, but nonetheless astonishing description of the creative act at the heart of serious photography: nothing less than the measuring and folding of the cloth of time itself."

So go read it, email it around and print it off and stick it on the wall by your computer.


(and thanks to Terri Weifenbach for pointing me to this)

Unhappy Hipsters and the deadpan aesthic

"Drink in hand, he settled into the numb nothingness of his self-imposed isolation".

(Photo: Daniel Hennessy; Dwell, November 2006)

On a mildly serious note, over the last few years it's been interesting to note how the "deadpan" aesthetic in photography - applied to both people and places - has eventually made its way from the edges through to illustration and advertising. From the New Topographics by way of New Colour and the "Dusseldorf School" etc. it has been showing up more and more often in ads and magazine articles. Nowhere is this more so than in the case of architecture, design and "lifestyle" magazines.

At first seen mainly in the more hipster magazines such as Azure or Dwell or ID or Wallpaper this style is now found in even the most staunchly traditional architectural magazines. Check the architecture and design magazine section at Chapters, Borders or Barnes & Noble and you will find no end of articles apparently illustrated by the combined team of Thomas Struth (huh - I can't believe I've never done a full post on Struth), Rineke Dijkstra, Joel Sternfeld and Stephen Shoren Ltd.

We are presented with models or owners - not a smile among them whether adult or child - with their deadpan gaze lit by diffuse and slightly unsaturated colour, as is the rest of their dwelling - usually on an overcast day - seen fair and square by the camera. Rarely pretty or beautiful or stunning but always understated. Somber and mildly sublime but never harsh or bold or brash.

Now this happens to be a look and a type of photography that I actually quite like. At first I was excited as I started to see it effecting main stream commercial photography and especially as it started to fracture the dominance of a style of architectural photography that had been in place since sometime in the 1970's. But now I'm coming to realise that it can become rather tiring in such quantity (if not downright depressing) after flicking through the third or fifth or tenth magazine with article after article illustrated in a similar deadpan style - even if meticulously executed, as they usually are.

And while I know that many of the photographers also pursue their own personal projects alongside their commercial work (wherein the latter has become a happy subsidising side-effect; making hay while the sunshine lasts) I find that once this approach moves too far into the commercial realm it also seems to take on a deadening effect. Whereas the personal work, the art projects, may appear deadpan and impassive they are often in fact suffused with a sense of real irony or genuine affection or fascination or criticism or even subtle humour. Yet with most of the commercial work this more often seems lacking and all we are left with is the austere, sober deadpan.

Which is why I was happy to run across the site "Unhappy Hipsters" - subtitle: "It's lonely in the modern world" (thanks for the link Shafraz). The (anonymous??) author takes a sample of these pictures and adds his own humorous (though often highly believable) take on them by adding his own captions. Some are gut-achingly funny. Most are wry. Some beautifully satirical. Many are tellingly accurate - at least as far as the current urban middle class condition goes.

"The emotional distance was immeasurable.

(Photo: Noah Webb; Dwell, February 2007)"

Really, I enjoyed the site as just being very funny but it did prompt me to do a bit of musing on photographic style as well as (a mildly humorous take) on meaning in photographs - how images contain a multiplicity of meanings independent of the original creator (I know adding captions to change meaning - intentionally or unintentionally - is nothing new, but this seemed a particularly well done example). So just enjoy Unhappy Hipsters

"He deeply resented her insistence that their wardrobes coordinate.

(Photo: Stephen Oxenbury; Dwell, March 2009)"

BTW the competition posts (they start about halfway down the page), where readers were invited to send in their own captions had me creased up in part because of the wonderful brilliance of the subject photograph by Gregg Segal (who must have a beautifully humorous sense of irony):

(Photo: Gregg Segal; Dwell,
October 2009)

And a couple of sample captions:

Zen had come easily to him—sparse interior, shaved head, “rug-garden.”
It was motorcycle maintenance he was having problems with.
-Sebastian Biot

He knew she would be happy that he had adhered to the “NO SHOES ON
THE CARPET” policy. Finally, he was getting their relationship right.
-Brilliant Anonymous

He had no intention of ever riding it, or even fixing it. But he decided
from this moment forward, all visitors would enter to find him in
exactly this position.
-SteveZ.

Binder Clip cable catcher

Off-topic (well, sort of), but this is so blindingly (bindingly?) simple I had to post it.

How many times have you crawled around in the dust bunnies under you desk trying to find the business end of a scanner or printer USB cable, external hard-drive cable, camera download cable, ipod cable, charger cable etc etc.

Well, here's the solution - using cheap and ubiquitous binder clips (or foldback clips as I think we called them in the UK?)

Now, why didn't I think of that - doh

(via Lifehacker - where I also learned how to make fantastically tasty but very quick - 5 minutes a day - and easy to make artisan bread...)

Terry Richardson accused of being cowardly, pervy. Who'd of thunk it..?

(Photo via Huffington Post)

A big DUH! moment this last week or so in the fashion and "art" photography world

In the last week various models have accused fashion/"art" photographer Terry Richardson of being a pervy old man. Model Jamie Peck is quoted as saying:

"Before I could say "whoa, whoa, whoa!" dude was wearing only his tattoos and waggling the biggest dick I'd ever seen dangerously close to my unclothed person (granted, I hadn't seen very many yet). "Why don't you take some pictures of me?" he asked. Um, sure."...

(Check out a bit of this issue of Foil Magazine - NSFW though)

Supermodel Rie Rasmussen started it all off by confronting Richardson about his creepy approach, and his use of photographs of her, at a recent Paris fashion event; adding the "cowardly" label after Richardson "...ran out of the bar and called her modeling agency the next day to complain. She called his actions "the most cowardly thing I have ever seen."".

Since then more models and "subjects" have chimed in with their own tales and confirmations adding that the "establishment" - the art directors, editors and agencies (and gallerists?) are all well aware of "know full well Richardson's predatory behavior," but that he "is tolerated because the industry folk are just sheep."

Huh - Well who'd of thunk it? It's always the ones you'd never suspect - like creepy old tattooed uncle Joe out on probation after being inside since 1978, wearing the same clothes he went away to the Big House in 30 years ago, polaroid in hand offering to baby-sit his nieces...

Or "Uncle Roy" from SNL:

Gabriele Basilico redux

I'm glad that there have been a few posts in the photo-blogoshpere in the last week or so about Italian photographer Gabrielle Basilico. It's also a reminder of how parochial the North American photo-scene can be. I'm frequently surprised at the number of important photographers whose work is often not at all well known across here because they aren't based in N. America

As far as I'm concerned Basilico is one of the more important photographers of the last 25+ years, especially in the whole area of city and urban photography. Not only does he make great photographs, he also brings to his work an extremely sophisticated understanding of, and vision of, "the city". He is acutely aware of the changes that have taken place in what a city is - especially over the last 50 or so years - and of what the city now means. Changes in the centre, the edge, the suburbs, the terrain vague - the space that holds it all together.

While much of his work can stand strongly on its own as single images it is his ordering of images - often in dense sequence - that can often be most effective. Still one of the best examples of this is his book Interrupted City; Italy - Cross-Sections of a Country. Through his work Basilico has been an important influence on many of the current crop of cityscape/urbanscape photographers as well as architects, planners and urban theorist.

(Other books by Basilico which I particularly like are Cityscapes and Beirut (both the original and the "revisited"). The Phaidon 55 book is also fairly good. My two favourites though are L'esperienza dei luoghi and Porti di Mare.)

If you want a bit more info about Basilico, I've written about him several times before - here are a few posts, which include plenty of other links:

Gabriele Basilico

Gabriele Basilico - Workbook 1969-2006

Gabriele Basilico - Silicone Valley - 07

From the recent postings this last week, I was pleased to finally find a link to some of his more recent colour work - which is quite stunning (for the longest time - with the possible exception of the Beirut work - he was very much a master of black and white pictures. He is now showing the same with colour).

(All photographs - Gabrielle Basilico)

On Plagiarism Pt. II

(Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds)

(NOTE: Some very good responses since this was posted - below as well as on the related posts, especially the very first one. Check E.E. Nixon's and Struan's in particular.)

After my post yesterday there was a comment on both that and the earlier post which I wanted to respond to (note that it is listed under the first post).

"REB" writes:

In the first instance, Burdeny's work is not plagerism, by definition and as others have stated.

If Leong would have his way no one could produce an image in the same style as his. In photography, with digital camera and photoshopping, that will be an impossible conclusion.

The copying of an idea and execution of an idea, if limited to the originator and if applied across the spectrum of mankind and the evolution of ideas would lead to one of each idea and nothing else. The use of an idea and/or execution of an idea is neither copy written or trademarked.

Ideas that can demonstrate technical specifications mat be patented, however, I am sure that an image of some element of the World is not in that category.

The other element of this blog, is the individuals who are so quick to be critical, but even here they are plagerizing Leong and his idea that Burdeny did him wrong. His idea by those standards are his alone and should be expressed by others.

God forbid, in our society, if ideas become the sole property of the first who expresses the idea.

Tim's comment of Burdeny's lazy approach shows that he doesn't know Burdeny's work ethic.

Tom G. says “The images are photographed with an 8”x10” view camera and printed as chromogenic color prints, Each image offers a finely grained density of visual information, rendered in the broad range of tonality only made possible by the 8”x10” inch transparency..."

This description has always been evident in ALL of Burdeny's work.

By Tom G. standard, the use of any format would be owned by the initial user. Bluntly stated... Get a Life.

I'm not going to respond to every point, but I wanted to highlight a few:

In the first instance, Burdeny's work is not plagerism, by definition and as others have stated.

I've left it up to people to decide whether or not Burdeny's work is plagiarism. The Oxford English Dictionary's ("The definitive record of the English language"...) definition in yesterday's post is as clear and straightforward as any other I have come across. A work, portion of a work, idea or concept can be plagiarized.

The copying of an idea and execution of an idea, if limited to the originator and if applied across the spectrum of mankind and the evolution of ideas would lead to one of each idea and nothing else. The use of an idea and/or execution of an idea is neither copy written or trademarked.

This seems to come from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of plagiarism. I don't believe the first point to be true at all. And as for copyright and trademark - plagiarism is essentially a moral and ethical issue not a legal issue. As a concept, plagiarism has been around for a long time - since at least the 17th Century and probably longer. It hasn't yet seemed to have had the sort of stifling effect on creativity that REB fears.

Tim's comment of Burdeny's lazy approach shows that he doesn't know Burdeny's work ethic.

I'm not concerned with anybody's work ethic - rather that plagiarism displays a certain intellectual and creative laziness. Many plagiarists seem to work extremely hard. Imagine the amount of work - the time and effort - that goes into writing a full length book. Several years of writing and editing, finding a publisher and so on only to have the whole thing shredded at the end of the day because it was found they plagiarized someone else's words or novel. What an expensive risk to take (see final OED quote).

Tom G. says “The images are photographed with an 8”x10” view camera and printed as chromogenic color prints, Each image offers a finely grained density of visual information, rendered in the broad range of tonality only made possible by the 8”x10” inch transparency..."

I don't believe Tom.G was commenting on the use of camera format as a form of plagiarism (interesting concept...), but rather on the extremely close correlation between the wording of the two artists statements.

As most readers probably know, since it's inception the OED has sought out and included examples of historical and contemporary usage of the words it defines. I'll leave you with two from it's entry for plagiarism:

1753 (Dr.) JOHNSON Adventurer No. 95.

9 "Nothing..can be more unjust than to charge an author with plagiarism merely because he..makes his personages act as others in like circumstances have done".

1820 W. HAZLITT Lect. Dramatic Lit. 257 "If an author is once detected in borrowing, he will be suspected of plagiarism ever after".

On Plagiarism

(Eugene Atget)

From the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary:

plagiarism, n. The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own; literary theft.

plagiarize, v. Originally of writers, later also of composers, artists, etc.: to take and use as one's own (the thoughts, writings, or inventions of another person); to copy (literary work or ideas) improperly or without acknowledgement; (occas.) to pass off as one's own the thoughts or work of (another)

[<plagiarius person who abducts the child or slave of another, kidnapper, seducer, also a literary thief (Martial 1. 53. 9), in post-classical Latin also (adjective) concerning plagiarism (15th cent.) < plagium kidnapping...]

There were some interesting responses to the recent post on David Burdeny and Sze Tsung Leong. PDN's story, as well as being discussed across the photo blogs, was also picked up outside our narrow little world by the LA Times among others.

The two bookend quotes here from the OED and Emerson sum up my take on plagiarism quite clearly. What follows is a slight diversion.

If newspaper and internet reports are anything to go by, plagiarized work might seem to be increasingly in vogue, especially in the world of writing as well as in the Universities. But I doubt there has been a sudden huge increase in the number of plagiarists out there. Rather in this day and age it is simply just so much easier to spot plagiarized work. As more and more books, theses and papers are digitized Google oh so easily lets you quickly search for similar or exact phrases rather precisely. Software lets professors quickly and easily find which students cut and pasted their essays.

Much of the focus seems to be on the dishonesty of the practice. And while it is quite obviously dishonest (and at the college level quite simply cheating), when it gets to the level of published or exhibited work, what seems more important to me is that it is about two things. It isn't the stealing or appropriation of words or ideas that strikes me, but rather the lack of creativity or imagination and laziness. (Of course the perspective of the original creator of the work is different and I'm sure the theft aspect looms larger).

Very early in his career in 1929 and 1930 Walker Evans got to spend time with the hoard of Eugene Atget prints and negatives Berenice Abbott had just brought back with her from Paris after Atget's death (Evans shared Abbott's darkroom while she was working on them.). He was both stunned and terrified. Stunned for the obvious reasons - he was seeing for the first time Atget's incredible work long before almost anyone had heard of or seen it. Stunned that it fully confirmed the direction his own work had begun )and in good part defined where has was to go as an artist). But also terrified by the clear and unique vision he saw and how close - to him - it seemed to his own. I recall reading that he was afraid that once Atget's work became well known (which didn't really happen for perhaps another twenty or thirty years) that people would simply accuse him of copying, plagiarizing Atget's work and ideas. And so for a good many years Evans often denied ever having seen Atget's work until quite late on in his career.

Of course Evans was wrong. Certainly we can see the influences Atget's work most probably had on Evans after that. And Evan's later acknowledged his own debt to Atget. But this is really the opposite of plagiarism. The subtle influences one unique vision informing another - which is the way art essentially works.

Which is also just the opposite of laziness and a lack of creative vision or imagination.

Walker Evans Saratoga Springs 1931

"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present
every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation;
but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous
half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can
teach him."

Ralph Waldo Emerson "Self Reliance" (via Little Brown Mushroom)

Caveats:

1. imo plagiarism of expressed ideas or concepts can also quite obviously take place as well as the more obvious copy-catting of a particular single image or scene or sentence.

3. There are also many grey areas - homage, satire, artistic "play", conceptual projects (successful or not...). But in almost all such cases there is usually a certain obviousness to things or some explicit form reference.

2. In the area of commercial work in photography with studio or staged work, quite obvious plagaristic theft of images or concepts does take place - e.g. an almost identical photoshoot. In those cases copyright and legal remedies usually come into play and the courts decide what's what.

"Circumstances Alter Photographs" - the first known combat photographs

Two cannons fire on Batoche during the shelling that began the battle.

In last Saturday's Globe & Mail I came across a new book called Circumstances Alter Photographs (Talon Books) abut the photographs taken by Captain James Peters during the 1885 North-West Resistance/Rebellion in Canada's West. (Be sure to check out the G&M link as it may disappear behind a pay-per-view firewall)

Funnily enough I had come across these photographs a couple of years ago while researching the Metis and the Battle of Batoche and while I found them interesting I didn't twig to their wider place in photographic history (Doh - damn you tunnel vision and deadlines...).

The book is by Michael Barnholden and appears to be an extension of a thesis he wrote at Simon Fraser University.

I find these pictures fascinating for several reasons. The main one being that as far as I am aware these are the first extant photographs taken during actual combat. Unlike the earlier war photography of Fenton and the Crimea or Brady et al and the American Civil War these were taken as the fighting took place and the bullets and canon-balls were actually flying past rather than during the aftermath of battle.

A house in Batoche burns after being hit by cannon fire.

Those earlier war photographers were limited by the cameras and film of the mid 1850's to taking pictures of static scenes - soldiers at rest in camp or of the dead on the battlefield after the battle was over. Of course some of this was very effective and lasting photography having eventually become iconic - Fenton's Valley of the Shadow of Death or Or Gardener's The home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg. But until cameras become somewhat smaller and more portable and film improved, photographing during battle was virtually impossible.

Captain James Peters with his camera

By the time Captain Peters rode into battle as part of the North West Field Force in 1885 in what is now the province of Saskatchewan, cameras and film had reached that point, just - his photographs clearly suffer from being taken hand-held, often from the saddle. And it seems that from both inexperience as well as the heat of battle Peter's admits to not being bothered too much by getting the correct exposures... Peters used a "Naturalist' Twin-Lens Camera" such as made by Rowland Ward & Co. London. But even so, these photographs show a unique aspect of what was both something of a turning point in both modern warfare and the history of Canada.

Peters was a Captain and Battery Commander in the Royal Canadian Artillery and also acted as a correspondent for the Quebec Morning Chronicle (Peters was a Militia officer) during the course of the campaign:

"On Friday, April 24, 1885, Captain James Peters took the world’s first battlefield photographs under fire at the battle of Fish Creek in the Canadian Northwest Territory of Saskatchewan. As Captain of the Royal Canadian Artillery’s “A” Battery—part of the North West Field Force—he subsequently managed to expose over seventy glass plates for
the duration of the battles at Duck Lake and Batoche as well, many of them again during combat with the enemy, both on the ground and on horseback. In addition to his photographic documentation of the “Northwest Rebellion” he was also a war correspondent for the Quebec Morning Chronicle. His regular dispatches, together with his images,serve as a pioneering addition to the history of war correspondents and are presented here for the first time in their entirety.

This watershed in the documentation of history was created by photographic technology, advanced to the point where “naturalist” or “detective” cameras, which came on the market in 1883, could be carried slung over the shoulder. Their faster shutter speed now allowed for hand-held photography. These cameras used coated plates that did not require preparation and could be stored for later development. Suddenly, the only restriction on any photographer was access to the action.

Neglected for over 120 years, these images literally shine new light on the War of 1885—particularly the second part of the campaign against the Indiansunder Big Bear, Poundmaker and Miserable Man. They are frankly astonishing in both their eerily haunting visual impact and as much by the mere fact that they even still exist." (From Talon Books)

James Peters' first photograph of battle action at Fish Creek: He shot it from his horse as bullets whizzed around him.

The North-West Rebellion (or Resistance as it is now more often described) may not be quite so well known outside Canada, but was significant for several reasons. It was the point at which the new country of Canada decided to impose it's will on the still developing western prairies, using military force to do so. This led to the effective repression of the long established Metis (mixed raced) people of the West as a homogeneous group or people along with their established (and in many ways unique) ideas for nationhood, law and settlement. It also paved the way for the removal of the aboriginal peoples from their land and into small reservations, opening up he West to much grater settlement and as destination for immigrants.

In military terms it was a fairly short, though not initially decisive, campaign. Despite their superior numbers and equipment the Canadian force came off worse in some of the initial engagements (losing the Battle of Fish Creek) and the Metis showed themselves as effective and tough guerrilla fighters. But as the Canadian Dominion government and forces manged to effectively prevent the wider spread of the Resistance and it came to a final conflict around the community of Batoche. But even then it was no sure thing and the battle lasted for four brutal days until the Metis were defeated and their leader - Louis Riel - captured, later to be hanged.

Notable in helping turn the fight in this final battle, aside from the overwhelming numbers of Dominion troops (about 250 Metis held out against about 1,000 Canadian troops) - was he experimental use of the Gatling Gun on loan from the US Army. While it's use alone may not have been completely decisive in the battle it showed how highly effective the rapid firing weapon was, heralding the arrival of modern warfare as it moved from slow single fire weapons to such highly devastating rapid fire weapons.

Louis Riel in custody after the Battle of Batoche.

The North-West Resistance - with the added impact of these photographs - is actually a fascinating look at the development of the North American Western Prairies and has everything a good (but sadly futile) story needs: a tragic but charismatic visionary leader - part poet, part mystic, part political genius; a blinkered "colonial' judiciary; a quietly brilliant guerrilla leader; a possibly crazy yet brilliant young Anglo idealist; a weak government and a Prime Minister who gives in to saving his own butt and to the power of big money; double crossing priests, deception and double agents. Ultimately, political weakness, the power of that big money - and the overwhelming power of the Canad in Pacific Railway - led to the crushing of a dream that may well have produced a very different country had it been nurtured instead of destroyed.

Finally, returning to the photographs, Barnholden takes the tittle of his book - and as the core of the ideas he develops about photography - from words Captain Peters wrote for and article in the Canadian Militia Magazine called "Photographs Taken Under Fire":

"I am convinced of one fact, and that is that no tripod instrument would for a moment survive such a trip; nor would it do for taking pictures in action, for I found that the rebel marksmen of the far West did not give an amateur photographer much time with his 'quickest shutter', and I tremble to think of the fate of the artist who would attempt to erect his tripod where the enemy possessed such a large number of 'spotters', as they call the expert riflemen of the plains. Some of them were vain enough to allow me an occasional instantaneous snap; but their desire never went so far as to allow the planting of the three sticks or the focussing with a black cloth. I marked the sighting or focus on the side for two distances, one at twelve paces (which it is needless to state was only for dead men). For the live rebels, I generally, for fear of fogging, took them from a distance, as far and as quickly as possible. All these little contrivances, and many more are necessary when one is trying to take a portrait of an ungrateful enemy. Numbers of my plates are under timed; but I am not particular. Those taken when the enemy had surrendered, and were unarmed, made better negatives, but 'circumstances alter photographs"'. (The Canadian Militia Gazette Vol I, No. 32 p252 15 December 1885)

I think the book includes a number of Peter's dispatched and letters which are in themselves quite fascinating, especially when he talks about his photography. A pdf of the earlier, thesis version of Barnholden's book can be found at the Simon Fraser University Library and includes many of Peter's dispatches as well as copies of many more of his photographs.

(btw, I haven't actually had chance yet to read the book itself - though I have looked at a number of the photographs - I'm waiting for it from the University Library here)

Basia Bulat

Just came across Basia Bulat - a young Canadian indie singer (learn more at the CBC) - and her new release A Heart of My Own.

Love it. Full of vibrant energy, lightens and cheers the spirit. She seems to be able to move from a sound that is Renaissance chamber music to deep in the ancient Polish forest to folk/country/indie to almost, but not quite, Celtic all in one song.

Listen to tracks below plus a video (Link to her label Rough Trade here).

Bulat is on tour in Canada and the US right now.

The autoharp... who knew! (and my guess is that the album cover photo shows some of the beautiful landscape of the Yukon Territory around Dawson, heart of the Gold Rush??)

(you have to actually click on the watch "Gold Rush" link above to see it.

Interesting - "Copycat or Not" - Burdeny vs. Leong

Well I must say this is interesting. From PDN Pulse - Copycat or Not? Photographer Challenged Over Look-Alike Work with an important follow up here: Copycat or Not, Part II: A Case of Nothing New Under the Sun? - about Daivid Burdeny and Sze Tsung Leong (and to some degree, Elger Esser who, as far as I am aware, is essentially the progenitor of this sort of work).

According to PDN Pulse Leong and gallerist Yosi Milo have come out and essentially seem to have accused Burdeny of plagiarism:

“These [Burdeny] works are identical [to Leong’s], particularly the pyramid [image],” says Leong’s New York gallerist, Yossi Milo. “The scale, the feel, the look—the similarities are quite alarming.” Milo says he learned of Burdeny’s work earlier this month after it went on exhibit at the Jennifer Kostuik Gallery in Vancouver. Milo notified Leong, who contacted his lawyer.

while

"Burdeny denies it, saying the similarities arose because he happened to shoot from some of the same tourist spots. And, he added, photographers--even famous ones--often mimic each other's work. So why single out Burdeny?"

Sze Tsung Leong, Seine I, 2006.

David Burdeny, River Seine II, Paris, 2009.

Sze Tsung Leong's "Horizons" exhibit, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, April 2008.

David Burdeny's "Sacred and Secular" exhibit, Jennifer Kostuik Gallery, Vancouver, January 2010.

See the PDN Pulse articles above for a full range of examples

I talked about Burdeny not very long ago and mentioned that stylistically the work reminded me of Elger Essers work. As well as general "style" I was also thinking of the particular Esser picture that is very similar to the Paris/Seine photograph as the PDN piece shows (note that the Esser photograph isn't soft focus, it's just a poor quality jpg).

With hindsight I realise that the other chord being struck was indeed that of Leong's work. But as I'd only ever looked at maybe two or three of Leong's photographs - and never seen how they were sequenced - I hadn't caught all the correspondences.

So, what do you think? Copycat? Or as Burdeny seems to be arguing (and as PDN puts it with a little help from Ecclesiastes) nothing new under the sun? Everyone just happened to be photographing the same well know scenes from the same Kodak Viewpoint?

As a postscript I find that neither Burdeny's work (nor Leong's for that matter) comes close to Esser's.

Normal Service Will Be Resumed Shortly

Due to a couple of technological meltdowns, posts to Musings have been somewhat delayed.

This has also delayed the print exchange which should now run during March (see 2. below).

1. My old Windows 2000 PC finally began gasping its last... and so I was busy making sure everything was safely back up. And we are now running as iMusings... having moved to Snow Leopard/Mac.

2. I discovered where the gerbil spent part of his recent few hours on the lam - apparently living inside my printer! So I'm seeing if various wiring can be replaced and chewed plastic ignored or a replacement is called for :-(

So hopefully more posts soon

2009 Photobooks pt. II

(Photo: Karin Apollonia Müller)

Here are another couple of photobooks from last year that I think are worth a look at.

The first one is On Edge by Karin Apollonia Müller. I wrote quite a bit about it earlier this year. Needless to say it is still at the top of my list of photobooks from 2009. If Müller's first book is anything to go by, it may also be hard to get hold of (and rather expensive) when the first edition goes out of print (thankfully now reprinted), so if it appeals to you, you might want to grab a copy while you can...

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The other book is Cover by Canadian photographer Lynne Cohen. I've talked about Cohen before a few times and she is still a photographer whose work I look to for nurturing my own thoughts and ideas.

Cover is a very good overview of much of her work and definitely worth trying to get hold of. There is also a very good online interview Cohen by George Slade:

"I have to admit I've never been much taken by technology. While it is true that many of my pictures touch on the technological world — military installations and scientific laboratories for example—I'm more interested in how aspects of this world look more like a children's toys or old fashioned game boards. For some people this might be comforting, for others the camouflage might make it seem still more disturbing. But there is another way of interpreting your question. In the late 1980's in a short review of a show I did in NYC, a critic seemed to think I had constructed the interiors that I photograph in my studio, at least introduced objects I brought with me into them. Admittedly, this was a post-modern moment when artists were constructing models in their studios to photograph. But what I photograph is a chunk of the world as I find it (with a few assists). It strikes me that if what I photograph were not more or less true, it would lose an important edge. I am not the first to find reality stranger than fiction. But I have to say that I quite like the idea that there is a question about the truth of what I photograph, that there is the sense that what I am photographing could not be true, that it must be constructed. An interesting example is a picture of an acoustic laboratory that I made the same year as Thomas Demand constructed one. If you look at our pictures next to each other, I am pretty sure you'll think the laboratory in Demand's picture looks more real than the laboratory in mine even though his is entirely hand-made in his studio and mine a photograph of a real acoustic laboratory that I came upon in England. Trying to figure out why his photograph looks more real than mine, it struck me that he makes all sorts of small corrections when building his models. He must step back to look at them, make changes, have another look, make more changes and so on, before taking a picture. In my case I set up a view camera in front of the actual site and make a photograph because I am intrigued by the many ways things in the world look off. In the case of the laboratory, I remember thinking that everything is the wrong size, the light is strange—hot and cold—that the androgynous dummy looks larger than life and has a bizarre red stopper stuck in its mouth and that the acoustic panels look hairy. Demand seems interested in getting everything to look right and making it believable while I'm interested in the many ways the world looks so wrong and unbelievable..." More here

(Photo: Lynne Cohen)

Print Exchange - heads up

Just a quick note to keep your eyes open early next week for information about a print exchange I will be launching.

I've been thinking about a print exchange for a while, and while I'm still not completely convinced it's a good idea - my two biggest worries being a. pessimistic: nobody will be bothered; or b. optimistic: I will get so many responses I'll be printing for months - I've decided to go ahead with it...

Anyway, it will most likely run for the month of February and full details and information should be posted early next week.

Darling Days - iO Tillet Wright

I like this girl. One of the main things I use Facebook for is networking with photographers and artists of all types - from the high and mighty to the just out of school and wet behind the ears to the on the ground and running in Haiti/Afghanistan/Gaza.

Anyway, I think iO Tillet Wright was a friend of a friend (or possibly a friend of a friend of a friend...). Either way I think she is someone to keep an eye on.

For starters, I wish more photographers could be as down to earth in their "ABOUT ME" descriptions:

I have been taking pictures, making films, mugging it for cameras, and writing about it since I can remember. Whatever inspired me, I felt compelled to document and disseminate.

There have been some wildly inspirational characters and places in and out of my world in the last few years, since I discovered film photography and dove deeper into writing, so I humbly hope that, herewith, I can bring you a taste of what I see and feel when I'm with them.

But most of all of course it's her work that grabs me. iO seems the antithesis of the young woman straight out of Bard or Yale or Sarah Lawrence with her fresh MFA, full of enthusiasm and newly inspired by her well known New Topographics, New Colour, old friend of Walker Evans/Lee Friedlander/William Eggleston, Professor while also trying to photograph a concept with her digicam (I know - someone is going to point out she actually went to Yale or wherever; which, of course, doesn't change my point at all)

From the work I've seen, she seems able to take today's (and yesterday's) flavour of the month cliché art photographs and make them her own (or avoid them altogether). That is, the sort of photographs I've grown tired of (and to tell the truth, never liked that much) - the un-ironic ironic girl and/or boy portraits of the unshaven scrawny young guy asleep on a rumpled bed/smoking in a grimy apartment. Or a young McGinleyesque nymph naked or in her cute knickers cycling in soft hazy sunlight or hanging out in the back of a truck. Or the deadpan unreal realist "I'm too hip/mentally challenged/poor to smile" portraits etc. (okay rant over...).

She's obviously at ease in a world which isn't mine (I'm more of a Berlin when it still had an East or the grey North of England in it's doomed resistance to Margaret Thatcher kind of guy, not NYC/Jersey/Brooklyn etc.). And thankfully she hasn't fallen into a Nan Goldin style grim self-absorption.

iO seems to draw elements from all of these approaches and places and then transform them into something else (for one thing, she doesn't seem afraid of feelings and humour). Her black and white work has great style and skill as does her colour work. Among other things, she has mastered the classic tri-x and harsh flash NYC look and she also seems to be able to out-Parr Parr, but she isn't stuck in trying to be the next Parr or Eggleston, Winogrand or Klein.

Best of all is that she seems able combine both black & white and colour almost seamlessly and without jarring contradiction. Something few photographers have been or are able to do. The pairing of work in either different styles (harsh/gritty + soft/"human") or in b&w/colour are some of her best work that I've seen. I think that despite the obvious surface differences in the type of media or style there is something deeper and more personal that runs through all her work and makes connections.

In her about me above she writes that she "discovered film", which I must say is both slightly depressing and a little scary... film really is a historic process now - she could just as well have said she discovered tintypes. What's great is what she seems to be learning and discovering in the process (mind you, I'm not sure if the dust spots on some of her pictures are an homage to and signifier of this old medium or simply that she hasn't managed to find a musty old book in secondhand bookstore on "The Art of Print Spotting" [found alongside "Coat Your Own Albumen Paper"]) :-)

Tillet Wright mentions that she spent some time last summer travelling Europe and took 46 rolls of film with her - what wonderful optimism. Going on travels in the days of film I would easily pack 100 or 150 or so rolls. But her attitude rather contradicts the old grumps sat around in the pub dripping beer on their Leicas and complaining how these folks with digital cameras just take thousands of shots until they get it right - "it's just luck" - not like the old days... bah, humbug.

I think (and hope) iO Tillet Wright will be someone to watch, so I hope she finds ways to continue making her work and staying excited about it (btw, she also has a blog). Oh, and did I mention she can write too. So someone out there give her a grant or a residency or some assignments or a fellowship to help her broaden her range and experience - you might be happily surprised by what come out of it...

(All photographs by and © iO Tillet Wright)