B

Reject

2012-01-26T06:38:00.000-08:00

2012 is off to a roaring start. January is barely over and I've already been rejected for 2 shows. At this rate I'll surpass last year's total by June. The worst part is I can't even save the rejection letters. Instead of the nicely typed form letter they used to send (which I collect in a large file), rejections now come as generic email: "Dear _____, We received many bla bla bla...and yours was not bla bla bla..." Not really worth saving. In fact it feels pretty good to delete.

One of my more entertaining rejection letters, 2005, from Lenswork
Oh well. Rejection is part of the artistic process, right? Nothing ventured nothing gained. It's just that it seems to be happening a lot lately. I can't actually remember the last time a submission of mine was approved.

Truth be told I may have a bit of a self-destructive streak. I don't have much patience for applications. They usually ask for a Resume or CV. I don't understand why. What could possibly be less important in judging someone's photos? It's like asking someone what color eyes they have. So lately I've been like, fuck it, I may as well submit the resume I want to, which turned out to be this:

I, Blake Andrews, do solemnly swear that I have checked off the requisite requirements for an artistic resume, having been included in a suitable number of approved gallery shows, publications, collections, bla bla bladity bla bla bla…

BORN Berkeley, CA 1968

EDUCATION Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla 1992 bla

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS The usual places, and some unusual ones too

HABITS I strongly suspect that I am stuck being a photographer for good

LIVING SITUATION In Eugene with wife, kids and four chickens. I have brown eyes.

In addition to a resume most applications ask for photographs to be titled. My photos don't have titles, at least not when they're not being submitted somewhere. Lack of titles can actually work in one's favor, since it's a golden opportunity to label photos Untitled. Or better yet a passive-aggressive nontitle that actually is one, Untitled (Woman Sleeping at 4 am by a Quiet Brook) or something. Curators love that shit.

I tried labeling a photo Untitled just to see how it fit. Perfect. But I didn't want every photo to have the same name. That might be boring, and the last thing I'd want to do is bore a curator. So I played with the word Untitled and came up with some anagrams and other variations.

Then came the artist statement. Since I didn't really have one I decided to borrow from Robert Frank's 1954 Guggenheim application. I figured if it worked for him I might have some luck using it.

Guggenheim Application, 1954, Robert Frank
But Frank's application was a bit wordy. That style may have worked in the fifties but people don't really communicate like that anymore. I think most curators nowadays are looking for something short and sweet, something that cuts to the chase. So I submitted a condensed version:

Project goals: To photograph freely throughout The Willamette Valley, using the Diana camera exclusively. The making of a broad, voluminous picture record of things in the valley past and present. This project is essentially the visual study of Western Oregon and will include caption notes; but it is only partly documentary in nature: one of its aims is more artistic than the word documentary implies.

This was a fairly accurate description of my project, plus it paid homage to a living legend. When I submitted the thing several weeks ago with photos, titles, and resume, I thought my acceptance would be a slam dunk. But no dice. Rejected. I guess I don't know curators so well after all.

OK, so I sabotaged my submission and I have no one to blame but myself. Although I'm still sorting out my exact motivations, I think part of me didn't really want a show. All that time and money that I would've spent printing and spotting and matting and framing is now freed up. I can get back to sipping daiquiris by the pool. So in one sense it's a bit of a relief, one less thing to worry about.

Another rejection letter from my large personal collection
But it does raise the question of why anyone would bother. I look at photographers who have show after show after show in all parts of the world, sometimes multiple shows at once. How do they do it? It's a full-time job just prepping the photos, not to mention the rest of it. Then the show goes up, you hear no feedback, you wonder if anyone sees it, nothing sells. In a few weeks you take down the show and put it all back in the closet. Talk about a treadmill. And for what?

I'm guessing many photographers have asked themselves the same question. Doug Brewer raised the issue directly on FPN last week:

"Here's a serious question: Should I give up?

After decades of frustration, rejection and being ignored, I've finally come to realize that nobody likes my photography. I know we're supposed to only do this for ourselves, and yadda yadda, and I do, but we also want to share work with others, but at what point do I accept that others don't want me to share with them?"

Doug's post generated all sorts of interesting comments, mostly supportive. Keep at it, Doug. Follow your heart, Doug. That sort of thing. Which is fine in one sense. If you really feel your calling to do something, you've got to chase that star no matter what.

But the broader issue, not really addressed in the FPN discussion, is What if the star you're chasing is in fact a dud? What if you've devoted your life to something you're actually not very good at, but you don't realize it? I see a lot of photos in galleries made by people who probably believe in themselves, but that doesn't mean the work belongs in a gallery. But the thing is, the photographer himself can't tell. Everyone believes in their work. I feel great about my photos, but so does every other Joe Shmoe on Flickr. Maybe I am Joe Shmoe.

This is where outside arbiters can be very valuable. If one meets with continual rejection it might be a sign. Then again it might not be. You can't be sure.

I don't know what the answer is. I keep telling myself I'm done submitting to all these calls. Then sure enough I go and do it again. But if one continues to submit over and over again in the face of rejection, expecting the result to change, isn't that the very definition of insanity? That thought's occurred to me many times over the years. Yet I still reject it.

Snowman

2012-01-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

Shot this in a bar a few nights ago with the Fuji. The hazy character is Faulkner Short, a damned good photographer in his own right, but this time he was on the receiving end. He looks like a snowman here with charcoal buttons but the black spots didn't actually exist. They're just Clayden Effect artifacts reflected in the pint glass. Or maybe I was on the verge of blacking out and my camera was already anticipating what was about to happen. Sometimes it's two stops ahead.

2012-01-22T10:14:00.000-08:00

Google Trends for various photo related keywords

2012-01-21T10:43:00.000-08:00

Kodak

Darkroom

Film

Digital Photography

Street Photography

Photobook

Photoblog

Flickr

Facebook

Twitter

Tumblr

Instagram

Hot Tub Time Machine

Ridiculous Nesuptilno

2012-01-20T13:08:00.001-08:00

I get a lot of email, most of which I delete immediately. Which is how I wound up accidentally erasing a message in November that turned out to be very important. It was a renewal notice for my website's domain registration which was due to expire 1/14/12.

But I didn't know that at the time. In fact I didn't realize it until last week when someone asked me if I'd seen my website recently. Here's how it looked last Sunday:

That's a generic placeholder for expired sites.

Honestly I'd been considering revamping my site for a while. And this new site did offer a certain elegant simplicity. It wasn't quite what I had in mind —a little heavy on the ad/content ratio— but maybe I could work with it. So I spent a little time exploring. My first stop was the irresistible "Jesus You Are" link, which brought up this page:

Gee whiz, low cost car insurance and Bible study, all in one handy location. How convenient is that!

But that was just the start. The site also came complete with all sorts of other stuff. Baby name listings, for example.

And IRA information:

It seemed to have just about anything a person could want on a photo site. It had my name. It had a revenue stream. It had Jesus. And the best thing was it was free. No action was needed on my site to keep this placeholder up.

It was very tempting but I wasn't quite ready to pull the trigger. Not without sleeping on it. I decided to leave the new site up there for a few days and ponder the situation. Maybe I'd get some feedback that would help me with my decision.

From Sunday afternoon to Tuesday evening the new site stayed online while I thought about it. I got a few emails but they were mostly unhelpful. "What the hell's up?" asked one. "Hey, your site's down," said another. Fine feedback but not well researched. I could tell they hadn't explored the new site in any serious way, so I had to discount those comments in my analysis.

One thing was clear. I needed a site. Although my blog is probably the core of my online presence these days, I still depend on my website for certain functions. It's a sort of backlog of past photo projects, not to mention it's my main repository of baby names.

After a few days my decision became clear. I wanted my old site back. I tracked down the company, paid my renewal, and within a few hours my original website was back online, though still needing a revamp. It was almost as if nothing had changed.

When I'm not choosing baby names, I'm diving for loose balls
In addition to my blog and photo site I have a variety of other online pursuits. Keeping current with all of them can be a constant juggling act. Last week for example I starred in this hardcore gay porn flick (Warning: Do NOT open at work), which was fun to shoot but very hard. I also occasionally moonlight as a stage hypnotist, an employment lawyer and a part time soccer goalie.

A discussion thread at Forum.hr
With all of these online activities it's hard to pick a highlight, but if forced to choose I think the greatest honor was when my name made the rounds a few weeks ago at Forum.hr, a site most readers should recognize. After all it's one of the top 20 online photo forums in the Balkans. I've transcribed the relevant passage below. I'm not sure if the language is Croatian or Serbian or something else, so my Google translation may be slightly off. But as far as I can tell it went something like this:

Person A: "All are excellent, but only few of them 'play it in your head that people see and unwashed' totally I like to move the humor in them."

Person B: "I will not go into whether the quality, I can only say that I totally neinspirativne, what are the worst when I see photos supposedly good photographer. I do not know, I do not understand what's so great about them."

Person A: "Man who has photos or prejebeno subtle, or completely ridiculous nesuptilno. Now, if you watch them as photos etc then people look wrong. Watch stacking geometry, lights, shadows, lines, shapes and things that resemble each other."

Couldn't have said it better myself. And maybe I did.

Anyhoo, I'm mostly back to normal now. My main photo site is back up. The only snafu is that while it was down I did not receive any email through my site. So if you sent a messages earlier this week, chances are I did NOT receive it. Hopefully it wasn't anything important like a domain renewal.

Praying Hands

2012-01-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

I recommend viewing these photographs while listening to the Devo song. You know the one. Good luck not getting it stuck in your head.

Mr. Frank's debut

2012-01-18T08:02:00.001-08:00

Continuing its recent run of strong shows by emerging photographers, the Blue Sky exhibit this month is by Robert Frank. Before this show I'd never heard of him. Apparently he is Swiss-born but has been living in a remote part of Canada for the last several years. At the age of 87 he is older than most emerging photographers. But even though he is a relative unknown, Mr. Frank's photography belies his inexperience and shows great promise.

Untitled by Robert Frank, currently showing at Blue Sky Gallery
The current exhibit is comprised of 48 Polaroid images shot by Mr. Frank at various times over the past few decades. They show all manner of common sights from household utensils to snapshots of friends. In today's concept-centric photo world, these might seem unremarkable. Yet Frank displays a rare ability to elevate these simple scenes into sharp prophetic visions. Time and again Mr. Frank is able to transform the most mundane subjects into beautiful images. He is a true talent, and after viewing his Polaroids I'm curious to see how he might approach more socially involved material, e.g. black and white documentary or perhaps some type of visual travelogue.

We'll have to wait and see on that. In the meantime I congratule Mr. Frank on a very auspicious debut. I suspect this won't be the last we hear from him.

Inappropriated behavior

2012-01-17T12:17:00.000-08:00

On the heels of this article a few weeks ago, I've been thinking recently about appropriation in photography. I'm not a huge fan of Richard Prince's work but I do hope his appeal is successful, since enacting a legal restriction on such an integral artistic tool would seriously crimp the creativity of all sorts of people.

My opinion on the Prince case is based on an objective evaluation of its legal arguments. That said, I admit I have a small personal stake in the matter since I've set up a side business selling copies of Richard Prince's Marlboro Man photos. I've had great success with this one in particular.

If you buy the photo above from Prince it'll set you back several thousand dollars. In comparison, I think most will find the $19.99 price of my appropriated version quite reasonable.

I'm not the only one who's been pondering copyright and appropriation. Slate Magazine devoted a large profile to the topic of artistic plagiarism last week, helpfully linked to by Jörg Colberg. Both articles are available from me in limited edition print form for $14.99.

Aperture's recent Photobook Review also addressed the issue. In a transcribed conversation with Charlotte Cotton, Joachim Schmid wrote

"The Act of appropriation is no longer an issue. It's one of the things artists do without questioning the practice any more. However, it is a very vital practice. For me appropriation is the obvious form of modern realism. If the world has turned into a world of images it is the job of the realist artist to pay attention to this image world, to reflect upon it, to research it..."

Schmid walks his talk. His work pays very careful attention to the image world, in particular his books Other People's Photographs. The series collects photos found on publicly shared websites and publishes them as categorized material. There's a Faces in Holes book, a Fauna book, Feet, etc. There are 96 books in all.

Other People's Photographs by Joachim Schmid
If you buy these titles from Schmid each one will cost you 36 Euros. However, I've taken the liberty of appropriating his idea for my own series, and I believe mine are a far better deal. My series Another Person's Books is available for only $8.99 per title, or 3/$20. I needn't point out that for less money the buyer receives multiple appropriations of the same material. For fans of appropriation it's a no brainer.

Another Person's Books by Blake Andrews
"Roaming virutal streets has outdone street photography," says Schmid, a reference to the recent spate of Street View books such as A New American Picture. "Is there still anyone out there with a camera, except for the ubiquitous, digital-snapshot pest?" A very good question. Why bother making new photos when old ones can be reshuffled just as easily? By the way, the full transcription of the Schmid/Cotton conversation can be purchased from me for $2.99, or else just $4.99 for the entire issue of Photobook Review.

These are all fine but the king of appropriation has to be Eric Doeringer, an artist who's based his career on re-interpreting wellknown artworks. For years he sold bootlegs of famous paintings on the street in NY's Chelsea District.

Bootlegs by Eric Doeringer
This is only one example in a long career playing with appropriation. Everything from Conceptual Art recreations to Destroyed Iraqi murals to Tattooed moles can be found on Doeringer's site.

To the uneducated layman this might seem like blatant copying, but in the art world it has become accepted as a type of guerilla appropriation. The act of replication is the art. Gradually Doeringer's copies have become established on the art festival circuit and are now collected in various museums and galleries.

Three Ed Ruscha books by Eric Doeringer
For photographers, his Ruscha book series is of particular interest. Copying the exact sequence and layout of three Ruscha photobooks from the 1970s —Real Estate Opportunities, Some Los Angeles Apartments, and Records— Doeringer tackles appropriation head on.

To make the first two titles Doeringer rephotographed the exact locations depicted in Ruscha's books. For Records, he methodically collected and then photographed every record in the Ruscha book. Not a simple task by any means.

Records by Eric Doeringer
These copies are a godsend for anyone who wants to study Ruscha's style and sequencing. Ruscha's books long out of print and sell for hundred of dollars on the secondary market. In contrast, Doeringer's can be had for $30 apiece.

I have one on order now. When it comes in —hopefully this week— I plan to copy every page methodically and then offer my own version for sale. I think I can get the price down below $15. If you're interested in this book or any of my other artistic appropriations mentioned above, email an inquiry and I can get your order started. But please do so soon while it's still legally possible. If Prince's appeal is unsuccessful I may have to suspend the offer.

The Front of the Bus

2012-01-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

Shooting film is like sending a message to yourself in the future. Sometimes you don't even know what the message was until you receive it later. For example one winter day back in 2003 I was wandering around Portland taking photos and this message wound up on the roll.

I don't remember taking the photo. It's possible it was just an accidental shot between frames, or maybe I was actually focusing on something in the scene which I've long forgotten.

From the background I know I was on the corner of SW Park and Market. The Number 6 bus doesn't normally go by that intersection. It stays mainly on ML King Jr. Blvd on the other side of the river before making a brief swing through downtown a few blocks north of Market. But on that day for some reason there it was and I shot it.

It's an unremarkable photo in most ways. It wouldn't even be worth mentioning if it weren't for the fact, which I realized the next day developing the film, that it was Martin Luther King Day when I shot it. Message from the past received, loud and clear.

Butt-ugly cameras

2012-01-14T08:41:00.000-08:00

I'm not really a gear guy but I'm quite intrigued by prototype photos of the Fuji X-Pro1. You don't have to know anything about photography to recognize this tool is a serious instrument. The design is gorgeous. I want one just to put on the window sill and stare at.

Some people would say big whoop. It's not the look of the camera that matters after all. It's the feature set. And to a certain extent they're right.

On the other hand, I think design does matter. One of the legacies of Steve Jobs is that every part of a tool is integral, from design to function to durability to tactility. Today you can see that in all Apple products. They're beautifully designed, and that aesthetic appeal promises that their insides are just as efficient.

The other end of the spectrum is something like the U.S. auto industry in the 1980s. You don't have to drive a Buick Slyhawk to know the entire industry was in crisis. One glance says it all.

I'm not claiming cameras are like cars. Most current models work just fine regardless of aesthetics. But some designs leave me scratching my head. What were they thinking?

Pentax Q
I'm guessing the Pentax Q was designed by committee. Is that a control wheel on the side or a set of mini grain silos? And who designed the telescoping flash, Dr. Suess? Props for using Leica font on the front dial, but I wonder. Does any camera really need a control that goes backwards from 1 to 4? WTF is that for? And this is the nice version. In beige the camera's textured facade resembles the leading edge of an attack mop.

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Samsung PL 120
A screen in the rear is one thing but on the front too? Have we reached the point where every surface in the world needs an LCD? I don't know if TV reception is possible on this but if not I'm sure that's coming soon. I guess the idea is to show subjects what they look like as you're taking the photo, but it just seems like a distraction. Look here please. No, over here. Don't look at that. So why'd you put in on there?

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Fuji XP20
The Fuji XP20 might've fit into the decor on a Seinfeld set 20 years ago, or perhaps an old Jules Verne novel, but nowadays it's just plain bizarre. Comes in a variety of hot colors, all equally repugnant. The awkward design and lens placement are partly warranted by the fact that it's submersible. But just because it goes underwater it needn't be shaped like a bar of soap.

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Also in the underwater category there's the Lumix DMC-TS3.

This camera is seemingly modeled for the modern Hummer owner looking to accessorize. Batten down the hatches. This baby's ready to be driven down even the most challenging suburban cul-de-sacs. If you can't remember which camera is yours, comes with remote clicker.

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Sony NEX-5N
Whoever designed the Sony NEX-5N must've been looking at too many Pamela Anderson videos. The camera as shown above with 18-55 zoom is one of the most visually disproportionate gadgets I've seen. Maybe it's modeled after sports shooters who plunk a tiny body on the end of their 500 mm telephoto. Works OK for the pros but try squeezing this thing into your pocket. Are you just happy to see me or have you been watching Pamela Anderson videos again?

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Ricoh GR IV (White)
Call me old fashioned but I think the color white should be reserved for instruments that are infrequently touched or else cleaned often. A light bulb or a sink for example. A camera fits neither category. Four or five months of frequent use would make this camera admissible as fingerprint evidence in most courts.

La Brea during La Niña

2012-01-13T14:09:00.000-08:00

Following up on this post from last month, here's a recent photo of La Brea and Beverley by Lisa Gidley taken in December.

Does anyone out there have their own photos of the intersection? If so, please send them my way. I'm starting a collection.

Mysterious sun of a beach

2012-01-11T07:50:00.001-08:00

In response to yesterday's post about the Clayden Effect, Jack Nelson sent me this black sun photo he shot in the 1970s.

We've solved the black sun problem but why are there two suns? Jack has no idea. I have no idea. I thought I'd throw it up on the blog and see if someone can decipher it.

According to Jack he shot this on either a cut film negative or a paper negative using an old folding camera. Beyond that he can't remember details. It was the 1970s after all, a crazy decade in many ways. Yet if I recall correctly, a decade with only one sun.

How about it. Can anyone explain this photo?

French bowling instructors, Donkey Kong,and the Clayden Effect

2012-01-10T08:12:00.000-08:00

In one of the very first Simpson's episodes Homer gives Marge a bowling ball for her birthday. She's never bowled in her life. Homer's plan is that she won't want the ball and he'll inherit it. And in fact the ball already has his name engraved.

But the plan backfires. Marge is pissed. Determined to learn bowling to spite Homer, she takes lessons, falls for a French bowling instructor named Jacques, and almost breaks up their marriage before finally reuniting with Homer in a parody of the final scene from An Officer and a Gentleman.

This past Christmas I tried to pull the same stunt. I bought the kids a camera thinking they would quickly get bored with it and then I'd have it for myself.

The camera was a Fuji Instax 210, a modern update of the old Polaroid Instamatics. I'd seen one recently at a friend's house and it was love at first sight. The image quality is fantastic. Tack sharp snapshots, unlike the Polaroid 600 I got for the kids a few years back.

But I couldn't really justify buying myself yet another camera, especially another "toy" camera. However Christmas was coming up. It might look good under the tree. It might look really good with my name engraved.

OK, I didn't actually engrave my name. But I did buy one for the family as a holiday gift. I put it under the tree Christmas morning. Then I sat back and waited for them to get sick of it. And it all would've worked out if it hadn't been for those meddling kids. The problem was they fell in love with it.

Most of their shots were of plain household objects. For a kid there's a simple pleasure in walking around with a camera and pushing the button just to see how a thing looks captured that's just fucking awesome. I love to see that spark. I wish everyone had it.

I suppose you can do the same push-button experiments with a digital camera but the Fuji Instax 210 spits out a real object. Then you get a few minutes of waiting as the images slowly develops. "Better than a deed, better than a memory," to quote Jacques. "The moment... of anticipation!" People always talk about their first time in the darkroom watching their photographs magically emerge in the developer. To me an instant photo is even better. You can handle the thing as it develops with no drips, no stinky chemicals. It's magic every time.

I followed one morning. "What are you shooting today?" I asked.

"I'm taking photos of random things because that's what you take pictures of," said Emmett.

"Ok, well what qualifies as random?"

"Like a piece of paper or a fork or something."

"What makes that random compared to something else?"

"Um. Shut up, Dad. Do you have more film?"

Ah yes, more film. Unfortunately the camera is based on the same economic model as inkjet printers. The body is only $80 but every shot costs $1. This makes it hard to sit there and watch your kid burn through a 10-pack in five minutes. I mean, that could've paid for 20 seconds of college. The camera came with 100 sheets. After we went through 50 the first morning I began rationing. "What's that you want? More film? I'll have to check and see if we have any."

Meanwhile I was sneaking the camera into my backpack to try it for myself. If they wouldn't get sick of it I'd have to take matters into my own hands. I drove out to Grid E7 in Springfield to try it on some display windows.

Not bad. Love the tonality. Later that night we went with friends to the BYOB vintage arcade downtown. On the way I took a few shots from behind the wheel.

The license plate on the dash was torn off in one of our recent fender-benders, can't remember which incident exactly. But anyway I just love the image it reflects in the windshield. I couldn't stop looking at that on the drive, trying to combine it with outside elements. The Instax 210 makes a great car camera.

We stopped at Ninkasi for a few pints. I shot their patio fire.

Then we took a few beers around the corner to the arcade and I shot there. I felt a like a kid shooting a fish in a bowl.

Here's a look inside the fishbowl.

Below is my alltime favorite arcade game. I scored over 300,000 once during my serious playing days back in fifth grade.

That's my son Emmett, 6, at the Donkey Kong controls, with Zane, 11, right behind. The guy on the right is Geoff who I've known since I was 8. I don't mean to sound like an old fogie but arcade games now really suck in comparison. They're all the same guns and bullshit. No charm.

This shot took me a while to decipher.

Most of the photo is normal but in the center of the photo where the flash reflects off some metal surfaces the picture is dark. I've circled the areas here in red. Those dots aren't painted. They should be brilliant white but they're not. Weird.

If you look closely at the fishbowl photo above it shows the same effect. The center of the hottest white area is dark black.

What's going on is the Clayden Effect. As far as I can understand it's a bit like solarization. When exposures jump far outside the normal range all hell breaks loose. The emulsion can become partially desensitized and the image is sometimes reversed. Ansel Adams played with the effect in this famous image.

The Black Sun, Owens Valley, California, 1939, Ansel Adams
He describes the process of making it in this book. Apparently the effect requires a thick emulsion film, the type that was more common in Adams' era but is rare nowadays. This may be why the technique is relatively unexplored (Google Clayden Effect for scant results). Even Adams didn't pursue it very far. The only other recent project I know of is Harlan Erskine's Black Sun series (good description here). Maybe there are others?

Reading up on Clayden I realized that the Instax film I was using had a very thick emulsion. So by chance I'd stumbled on something. Aiming the camera directly at a mirror I tried to capture the effect as clearly as possible.

Bingo. The effect worked, and I could repeat it when I wanted. Great. On the other hand, meh. The photo is sort of interesting as a scientific experiment but it doesn't do much visually. But it's set the table. Maybe I can shoot the sun or something. Or look for shiny surfaces.

Unfortunately those experiments will have to wait since I'm currently out of film. The kids have gone through it all. I have film on order and when it comes in I'm going to set aside a secret stash for myself. Then I think I'll play around with the Clayden Effect, if I can sneak the camera away from those meddling kids.

No relation to Redford

2012-01-09T08:34:00.001-08:00

I wrote about John Ryan Brubaker's internet explorations last summer. Now he's conducting a new experiment called Visages. I'm not sure where it's leading but I imagine it's someplace interesting. If your monitor has a webcam you can take part here.

Reptilian want

2012-01-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

Aperture's Photobook Review is great. Definitely a welcome contributor to the photobook world.

But... a journal celebrating real-world books distributed mainly in electronic version? Am I the only one who considers that ironic? Yesterday I found myself downloading yet another computer application, installing it, and entering personal info into little boxes before I could get a good look at the thing.

How I experienced Photobook Review
After it opened on my desktop the interface was cumbersome. The type is very small so I had to enlarge beyond the window to read it, then use scroll bars to move my eye around the page. Not a very pleasant experience. I can't recall any real-world books giving me similar difficulties. Here I am reading along as Gossage and Meeks and Soth discuss the inadequacies of viewing something on an iPad...and I'm doing it on a computer screen. Something's wrong with this picture.

I realize there's a real newsprint version. I think it's available in New York or Paris or somewhere. Would it be too much trouble to distribute it to locations where Aperture is sold? Or maybe mail it to subscribers?

This isn't meant to reflect on the material. The actual substance of the thing is fantastic. The writing is thoughtful and the design is beautiful. But we're talking about books here, right. Real objects that you can hold in your hands, objects that'll be found in the stacks of a used bookstore in 20 years. I want to handle Photobook Review and have its ink run off on my fingers. I want to smell it.

Seemed like a good idea on paper

2012-01-06T12:31:00.000-08:00

I'd never really given much thought to postcards before, but in recent weeks I've become more and more enamored. Luc Sante's Folk Photography and John Jakle's Postcards of the Night helped me see the light. Then yesterday at Ampersand I spent a while with Jeff Rosenheim's Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard which contains many interesting groupings from Evans' 9,000 card collection.

The cards feature all sorts of vernacular photos. Those are fun to look at but I find the backs even more interesting. Evans corresponded with a huge range of photographers and he seldom threw anything away. The book contains personal notes to Evans from Frank, Arbus, Friedlander, Winogrand, and many other photographers. The correspondence reads a bit like short emails or Tweets. Most messages aren't complicated, just a few short sentences to say hi and check in (it seems everyone checked in with Evans). But something in the mundane day-to-day nature gives a window into that world that can be elusive in long-form writing.

Postcards from Walker Evans' personal collection
I'm wondering if someone will come along in 30 years and publish the digital ephemera of some famous photographer. The Collected Tweets of Martin Parr or something. I doubt it but who knows.

So anyway, now postcards are nearly a thing of the past. In 1903 the U.S.P.S. handled 700 million cards (about 9 cards per capita). Today few people send personal mail of any type. The Post Office is bleeding money and threatening mass closures.

I want to do my part to help them out. I've made postcards out of some Holga workprints. If you want one email me your address and I'll send you a handwritten card. May the future be on paper...

Addendum 1/8/12: Thanks to everyone who responded. I will get your cards out but it may take several days. Some asked to reciprocate so if you want to send a postcard my address is 85528 Christensen Rd. Eugene, OR 97405.

I've been sent some great links to other postcards. This one is quite amusing. And this project looks great. Below is one from my own collection. I love the passive-aggressive tone.

Yet another year-end book list

2012-01-04T08:03:00.001-08:00

As many have noted, 2011 was a banner year for photo books. It seems there were more published last year than ever, and also more year-end lists than I can recall before, many of which have been compiled by Marc Feustel here.

Although Feustel's summary is a good general monitor of popularity, countless deserving books still flew under the radar. Here are 8 of my favorites from 2011 that I felt deserved more recognition.

Calf / Dick McRill

A meditation on minimalism, loss, and the fleeting tangibility of natural objects, McRill's Calf conveys more in its four simple pages than many books do in ten. With no explanatory text the viewer is invited to wonder about these four simple photos until the cows come home. The images are wonderful but the real reason this book will be remembered is for the elegant calf-skin cover with tipped in C-Print. Truly one of a kind.

Red Barn / Jane Cooper

Cooper approaches the seemingly tired barn genre with the fresh young verve of an oil company harvesting seemingly depleted tar sands, with equally fascinating results. Red Barns never offers solutions, only questions and riddles. A truly compelling and at times sardonic look into this exclusive world, not to mention a poignant meditation on images and memory, and what it means to rely on the latter more than the former in cases when the former is lacking in the latter but not poignancy nor, tragically, oil.

Book 127 and Book 128 / Elliott Erwitt

Ever since Erwitt went to sequential titling for his later monographs, the sheer glut of his books on the market has been easier to track. These two titles are no exception. Their remarkably clear and concise labeling makes them exceptionally easy to track amid the sheer glut of his books on the market. For just $45 apiece these books can be bought and made sequentially yours.

Lost Keys / Bert May

An outstanding contribution to the growing genre of real-world investigation photobooks. Based on a real life situation in which he actually lost his keys one morning, May meticulously recreates the scene and documents his house in mock photojournalistic fashion as he attempts to find his keys. Anyone who's misplaced their keys before will be under Mays command as they relive the events of that morning through his stunning photos. Lost Keys deconstructs a morning's search and in the process creates a beautiful and necromantic puzzle about loss, desire, hopelessness and the quest for penetration.

Eping by the Mississ / Harvey Kenmore

A clever re-interpretation of one of the most beloved photobooks of the past decade, Kenmore square-format cropping of Soth's images manages to be didactic without being pedantic, donnish yet not doctrinaire, faithful to the original yet also free swinging when it needs to be. The individual photographs, shown in Soth's original sequence, are hard and spare and engage their rectangular antecedents in a conversation which is anything but sleepy. If there is any justice, this book should make Kenmore a household name.

Lune de Miel / Jacob and Visarro

Published in a small run of 20 books, each of which was presold to important photo tastemakers like myself, chances are you'll never see this book. But everyone agrees it's good. The first picture is some kind of dog near a red wall, then the next one looks like Instanbul at night or something. I don't know. Anyway I can't describe every photo without removing the shrinkwrap all the way but just take everyone's word for it. Lune de Miel is one for the ages.

Konikukuwa / Yashiro Tatayo

Working closely with master papermakers to produce this exquisite object, Tatayo's Konikukuwa truly exemplifies photography's current bookmaking renaissance and carries the spirit safely forward into the millenium. Each page is stitched from handmade ricepaper and knit to the binding with (humanely harvested) sharkskin lacing. A silk slipcase adds the needed texture of softness to counter the bold, brash ricepaper, and the inclusion of eight actual photographs across the center spread can only be considered a bonus. Combined with marbled endpapers and Maiti-Kukunuji binding, this book fits comfortably equally in the dojo or the home bookcase.

The Wandering Eye / Iris Stein

2011 saw the further encroachment and domination of Google Street View, with photographers manipulating the tool in many ways to create various interesting projects. In The Wandering Eye Stein smartly turns the Street View gaze on itself, using it to document addresses where recent Street View projects have been researched. Rickard's LA apartment is documented, as well as those of Wolf, Rafman, Henner, and 32 others, showcasing an exotic subculture which is rarely disclosed to outsiders.

Iowa Voter's Guide

2012-01-03T09:08:00.000-08:00

Seen near Seattle Center, November 2010

Another way to photograph the louvre

2012-01-02T08:10:00.000-08:00

Brian in the Cabana, Puerto Juarez, Mexico, 1982, Nan Goldin

Purge

2012-01-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

New Year's Day. Tis the season of purging old crap. We're going to edit the basement hard this month. I'm also cleaning out desktop folders on my computer. I thought I'd unload some old headers used here in the waning days of 2011 before I delete them for good. I guess in the end these things prove as ephemeral as the passing years.

52 from 2011

2011-12-30T08:47:00.001-08:00

1. Bryan's sink

2. Denver Airport

3. Augusta, Maine

4. Redwood National Park

5. SE 10th and Clay, Portland

6. Jonah Wolf

7. Trees of Mystery

8. NW 6th and Davis, Portland

9. Oregon Zoo

10. W Burnside, Portland

11. Emmett / Willamette

12. Vancouver, BC

13. NW 10th and Everett, Portland

14. Zane

15. Boy Scout Jamboree

16. No idea where

17. Matt Court

18. OMSI

19. Hilyard St., Eugene

20. Portland Saturday Market

21. Skowhegan, Maine

22. I-205 Tunnel near Gateway

23. On the way to a violin lesson

24. SW 2nd and Alder, Portland

25. SW 5th and Stark, Portland

26. Deschutes River

27. SW 6th and Morrison, Portland

28. Autzen Stadium footbridge

29. Sam and Jack, Maine

30. PDX Airport

31. Powell's

32. Quebec City

33. Arcata, CA

34. Tugman Park, Eugene

35. Broken finger

36. SW Park and Washington, Portland

37. W Amazon Dr., Eugene

38. SW 10th and Alder, Portland

39. Putters, Eugene

40. Bus Mall, Eugene

41. Alton Baker Park, Eugene

42. Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portland

43. San Francisco

44. Oak St., Eugene

45. Maine

46. Convention Center, Portland

47. Vancouver, BC

48. Alley behind Turtle's, Eugene

49. Monster Dash

50. Sunset Bay

51. Arcata, CA

52. Kesey's Magic Bus

The five classical positions of photography

2011-12-28T10:09:00.000-08:00

Before being formalized by master Pierre Beauchamp, photography positions were a chaotic jumble. People shot from all sorts of poses using all manner of heavy cameras, and often threw their backs out in the process.

Beauchamp codified photography posture in a clear and concise manner. It's a tribute to his foresight that even in the modern era of 6 ounce point and shoots, his methods are still as relevant as they were when he developed them. The basic five positions of photography are still the first thing any beginning photography student learns, and will be instantly familiar to shutterbugs. I realize that for most this information is needlessly repetitious. But perhaps for some it will prove insightful.

•
First Position (Premiere)

This is the main photography position that most of the shots you practice as a beginner will start from, so it’s important to get it right. Put heels and knees together with legs are turned out from your hips as far as is comfortable to make a V shape.

Victor Hasselblad demonstrating first position
Keep your arms nice and relaxed, and roughly the width of your face apart. Your hands shouldn’t be touching your thighs. Keep them just an inch or so in front of you gently resting on your camera. You must keep your stomach in and stand straight with your spine straight. Then shoot.

•
Second Position (Deuxième)

From 1st Position (above), slide one foot away from the other. The space in between your feet should be about one and a half footlengths. Keep your feet comfortably turned out. For the upper body this position is similar to first position but your arms are straight out and they are rounded slightly. They should form a smooth line as Larry Burrows demonstrates below.

Larry Burrows crosses a stream
in second position during the Vietnam War
Don’t do the ‘Dead Bird’ thing here. Your elbows should be facing behind. Extend your hand comfortably and keep it relaxed – no pointing! You may shoot two cameras.

•
Third Position (Troisième)

Bringing one arm only in front if you, leave the other in 2nd position. This position means that you will keep your legs turned away from your hips. As you cross one leg in front of the other; they will touch each other in the middle. You will also move the corresponding arm out. Now slide your foot back to touch the other, but instead of touching heels together as in 1st, this time bring one foot further across the other. The heel of your front foot should be touching the area of the arch of your back foot as the tripods legs do in the photo below. For the upper body, do whatever. Just make it look graceful.

Photographer Joe Clark (a.k.a. "Hill Billy Snap Shooter")
moving into third position
•
Fourth Position (Quatrième)

In this position you will keep the same first position and then place one foot in front of the other one with one foot forward and the other foot directly behind it; you will have about 12 inches or so between your feet.

Four photographers moving into fourth position
Now you're going to raise the camera arm above your head in a semicircle so that you have one arm raised and one arm in 2nd. The arm that is raised should be opposite to the foot you have in front. So if your left foot is in front, you raise your right arm. Or not. Whatever. Note that from fourth position you will not be able to see through your viewfinder.

•
Fifth Position (Cinquième)

Keep the fourth position and then place one foot in front of the other with the heel of your front foot against the first joint of your other foot (at the big toe). The 'ideal' of this position is to get your front foot so far across your back foot, that you can't see the back one. You are so turned out that you are standing front toe to back heel, and back toe to front heel. But to execute this perfectly takes years of training.

Moving into fifth position
Now lift your arms overhead and move them in a soft circle shape. As with all these positions, make sure that it is your arms that are raised, and NOT your shoulders. Arms should look smooth with your elbows and hands softly rounded (and definitely no pointing). You are executing photography positions, not directing traffic!

(Adapted in part from this and this)

The eighth night

2011-12-27T17:22:00.001-08:00

I have candles on the brain. Seems I've been staring at them all week. Oh well, tomorrow offers respite.

Hiroshi Sugimoto had the same fixation. To make each of the images below he lit a candle, opened the windows of his home, opened his camera shutter, and let the let the wind and flame mingle. Several hours later he closed the shutter. The resulting images, from Sugimoto's 1998 series In Praise of Shadows, show that candles are a bit like snowflakes or movie theaters or holidays. No two flames are exactly the same.

In Memoriam: Photoblogs 2011

2011-12-26T12:13:00.001-08:00

2011 was a rough year for photoblogs with many falling by the wayside. A few were killed instantly in one post through the heart. Most passed away quietly in their sleep. Some were abandoned in a state of suspended animation, and now haunt the blogosphere as the living dead. And a few rose like Lazarus from the beyond.

Let's take a moment now to remember those who fell in 2011. May their short lives be a reminder to other photobloggers. If you're considering snuffing your blog in 2012, just remember that someone cares. Someone is reading you. Choose life instead!

•

Nowhere Man (2010 - 2011) — A true original, Andrew Stark's writing was as fresh and wacky as anything online before it ended this spring as suddenly as it began.

Amy Stein (2006 - 2011) — One of the original oldschoolers, Stein's blog has slowly faded as she's migrated to Twitter/Facebook. No posts in the past 5 months, it can only be presumed dead. (Update 12/30: "Reports of my death are mildly exaggerated!" tweets Stein, whose blog absence is explained by her recently becoming a mom)

Exposure Compensation (2006 - 2011) — Cause of death unknown. Miguel Garcia-Guzman was going every day like a rocket before suddenly dropping off the face of the blogosphere.

5B4 (2007 - 2011) — Although last rites have not yet been read, 5B4 hasn't had a pulse in several months. Big changes for Jeff Ladd as he had a firesale of books, moved to Cologne, and his writing was elevated to print form. A void in the blogosphere which has yet to be filled.

Down Or Out (2006 - 2011) — Mikael Kennedy put to rest the online version of his ongoing Polaroid series, now archived under Passport to Trespass. Some books still available but no new posts.

Words On Photography (2009 - 2011) In poor health for most of its short life, Tom Leininger's interesting blog finally succumbed in 2011. (Update 12/27: Tom explains why he stopped)

Photo Musings (2006 - 2011) — A few years back this was daily reading, but it has faded. Tim Atherton made a few stabs at resuscitation in 2011 but it's now a ghost of its former self.

Kurt Tuck (2009 - ?) — False Alarm. Pulled a Lazarus on us all.

Darius Himes (2007 - ?) — Same deal. Appeared lifeless before miraculous Christmas Eve revival. Himes has a lot of plates in the air.

Manchester Photography (2007 - 2011) — Mark Page wrote more than 1500 posts before petering out this year. Officially bit the dust 2/21/11, sort of. He will be missed.

Mark Power (2008 - 2011) — Never a very regular poster but when he did write it was some of the most, er, powerful commentary on the web.

Shane Lavalette (2006 - 2011) — For a while Lavalette was on a run, reviewing photo books left and right, but it never turned into an ongoing thing and the blog now appears dead.

Rachel Hulin (2008 - 2011) — Hulin suspended her blog for maternity leave, and it's still in limbo. A new baby tends to put priorities in perspective in a hurry.

While Seated (2007 - 2011) — During the glory years Michael David Murphy consistently churned out quality pieces. His archives are still a rich resource of past articles, especially for street photography, but new posts are no longer being generated.

Daniel Shea (2007 - 2011) — A blog recounting Shea's various photo projects and adventures, this blog gave great insight into the daily workflow of a fineart photographer. When Sheas' Plume finished the blog was killed off.

Because It's There (2010 - ?) — One of the undead roaming the blogosphere. Philippe's blog may still be revived but hasn't moved in a few months.

Touching Harms the Art (2006 - 2011) — Stick a fork in it already.

Photography Interviews (2009 - 2011) — A tragedy this one died so young. It showed promises of great content but never made it out of the crib.

A Photo Student (2009 - ?) — James Pomerantz was going strong for a while. Not sure what happened, or even if it's dead for good. School demands? General waning of photoblog culture? (Update 12/27: Pomerantz says that most of his energy is now going to The New Yorker's Photobooth blog)

Facebook (2004 - ?) — Tough to forecast the future of a 7-year old but at this point it appears bound for immortality. May convert the rest of us into zombies in the process.

•

If you know of others which should be added to the list, or if I've listed any here in error, please let me know.

Window dressing

2011-12-24T08:08:00.000-08:00

Christmas tree in a living room in Levittown, L.I., 1963, Diane Arbus
One of Arbus' few photographs without people, I think this image says it all. Follow that distant star, people. Happy holydaze from B.

Feeling Baldessari for myself

2011-12-22T09:00:00.001-08:00

The final leg

2011-12-21T09:56:00.000-08:00

I caught up with Pete Brook for beers last night at Sam Bond's in Eugene. Pete was on the final leg of his epic Pachinko ball junket across America and back. 90 days, 13,000 miles, and (most amazingly) 65 interviews in the can. Wow! Today is a bit of breather as he lays low on a 5000-mile flight from Portland-to-Amsterdam, then eventually home to Chorley, England for the holidays.

Before last night I'd thought of Pete as a blogger and a human rights activist. Which is a good description but not very complete. Turns out Pete is one of those social glue guys that everyone seems to know. Not only did he visit prison photographers on his journey but he dropped in on much of the online photo community, even the ones not yet incarcerated. The trip has transformed Pete into a sort of Kevin Bacon figure, the nexus, the only one of us online denizens that has actually gone out and met the others in person. We'd barely gotten through beer number one when he was threatening to put me on the phone with person x or person y. I don't like phones so I quashed that. But you get the idea. Pete's social glue.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...social glue!
And glue can put a roof over your head. Between his online photo network, friends of friends, couchsurfing.org, and the occasional prison cot, Pete couch surfed cross country and back only camping out once. Impressive. If you're reading this now and you're a blogger or have a felony conviction there's a good chance he was recently sleeping nearby. And he has photos on his laptop to prove it. After seeing the inside of all your apartments I have to say I'm jealous. Everyone's studio looks way more hip and spacious than mine. Oh well, I guess it beats a prison cell.

So he's got 65 interviews which exist only in audio form. A beautiful history of prison photography. The next task is to get them transcribed. Supposedly there's a place in India which will do it inexpensively. Maybe the same crew which sent out his recent batch of cards? I told Pete it sounded sketchy but it's up to him.

Once he has some transcribed he will pull dropquotes for the upcoming prison photography book. Then an international exhibition of prison photographs in The Netherlands in February 2012 co-curated by Hester Keisjer (Hester, sorry for the 6 AM drunken Skype). Then, eventually, the prison photography book to end all books, a massive documentary history of the subject using his interviews as source material. Does his life sound like a Pachinko ball to you? Like one big gloriously busy Pachinko ball?

The good news is that upon returning in January from the UK Pete will be my new neighbor since he's decided to settle in Portland for the foreseeable future. So hopefully last night was the first of many tipsy bull sessions. I'm sure I can help with some of those transcriptions after 6 or 7 pints. In the meantime, happy travels, Mr. Brook.

Oh, Inverted World

2011-12-20T08:24:00.000-08:00

San Francisco, 1960, Henri Cartier-Bresson

from Any Objections, 1998, Mario Testino

Making a list, checking it roughly eleven and a half times

2011-12-19T08:54:00.000-08:00

That time of year again. Here are the titles in various categories which gave me the most satisfaction in 2011 regardless of publication date.

Books

1. Just Kids, Patti Smith (2010)
2. Black Hole, Charles Burns (2006)
3. Repeat Until Rich, Josh Axelrad (2010)
4. Life, Keith Richards (2010)
5. Colors of the Mountain, Da Chen (2001)
6. A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson (1997)
7. Empire of the Summer Moon, S.C. Gwynne (2010)
8. Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, Christina Thompson (2008)
9. Noodling For Flatheads, Burkhard Bilger (2000)
10. Townie, Andre Dubus III (2011)

Photography Books

1. New York Photographs 1968-78, Paul McDonough (2010)
2. Chapalingas, Rosalind Solomon (2003)
3. Parr By Parr, Martin Parr and Quentin Bajac (2011)
4. Photographs, Oraien Catledge (2010)
5. Boulevard, Adam Bartos (2008)
6. Playgrounds, Peter Friedl (2008)
7. Folk Photography, Luc Sante (2009)
8. Lapdancer, Julianna Beasley (2003)
9. First Doubt: Optical Confusion in Modern Photography, Chuang, Zucker, and Chasanoff (2008)
10. Postcards of the Night, John A. Jakle (2003)

Films

1. Marwencol, Jeff Malmberg (2010)
2. Exit Through the Gift Shop, Banksy (2010)
3. The Parking Lot Movie, Megan Eckman (2010)
4. Catfish, A. Schulman and Henry Joost (2010)
5. Super 8, JJ Abrams (2011)
6. Hesher, Spencer Susser (2010)
7. Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Paul Mazursky (1969)
8. Bill Cunningham New York, Richard Press (2010)
9. Page One, Andrew Rossi (2011)
10. Meek's Cutoff, Kelly Reichardt (2010)

Music

1. Whokill, tUnE-yArDs (2011)
2. Are You from Dixie?, Blue Sky Boys (1963)
3. Mirror Traffic, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks (2011)
4. Flowering Spade, Sean Hayes (2007)
5. Grotesque, The Fall (1980)
6. Flight of the Conchords (2008)
7. Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder (1976)
8. 69 Love Songs, Vol. 3, Magnetic Fields (2000)
9. The Soul of O.V. Wright (1992)
10. So Beautiful or So What, Paul Simon (2011)

Speaking of wanton excess...

2011-12-18T09:05:00.000-08:00

"It's nominally unremarkable on the surface of things, cast in a resolutely ordinary steel gray light, snatched from the back of a delivery van on what I imagine to have been a nondescript street, taken at the point at which everything of value has already been removed so that what remains - like the morning-after residue of a bustling rave - seems wretched and dejected, seems an accusing index of some wanton excess. It's a picture of a faded blow-up cutout selling some unspecified Britney Spears merchandise, and she's framed dead centre in a quiet and profoundly desolate isolation - the forlorn and forgotten Belle of the Ball, a lonely Mona Lisa Smile. She is an outsize figure, truncated, bruised, scratched and lassoed, tied fast to the wooden slats that form a ribcage from which to hang troublesome produce as it's carted about the city."

—from a recent review of Brian Ulrich's photo project Copia

The millionth pebble

2011-12-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

This photo is almost a year old but I thought of it recently when it topped Lightbox's list of favorite viral photos of 2011.

I think it's an amazing picture. Reynaldo Dagsa was photographing his family and inadvertently shot his murderer in the process. Boom. Gotcha.

You never know quite what a camera is going to turn up. It brings to mind the Friedlander quote:

"I only wanted Uncle Vernon standing by his own car (a Hudson) on a clear day. I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack the dog peeing on the fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It's a generous medium, photography"

Very generous. In this case the extraneous material included a gun in the background which was enough of a visual clue to eventually track down Dagsa's killer. Pretty freaky.

I took a similar photo a few months ago.

I was driving north on I-5. As usual I had my camera in the car and was shooting the passing fields and other cars and whatnot. In this shot I believe I was looking across the highway to the southbound lane. I didn't notice the truck barreling down on me.

After the accident I don't remember anything. My memory is blank for the next two weeks. In fact don't actually remember taking the photo, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't shooting the truck. I believe I was looking off to my left.

Fortunately my camera somehow survived the wreckage intact. After I left the hospital I was able to salvage the roll, and this photo helped me piece together what had happened. It was also enough evidence to eventually track down the truck driver. The large W proved very identifiable. The driver was convicted of driving on the wrong side of the interstate. Reckless endangerment. Boom. Gotcha.

You never know quite what the camera is going to turn up.

Be It Resolved

2011-12-16T08:43:00.001-08:00

Results have been tabulated from last week's Typeface ID quiz. The winner is Melissa Lyttle with 27 points. She wins a pack of cards and a print. Congrats to Melissa and thanks to all who sent in entries.

Answer key below. Note: typeface names are those used here. Some slight variations in naming may exist.

1.Berling Roman

Immediate Family, Sally Mann

2.Same Old English (approximate)

Last Days of W, Alec Soth

3.Europa Grotesk SB-Bold Extended

The Americans (French edition), Robert Frank

4.Century ST-Book Italic

Iowa, Nancy Rexroth

5.Typewriter (approximate)

Self Portrait, Lee Friedlander

6.Cooper Black Swash Italic

The Animals, Garry Winogrand

7.Hadrian Bold

Sidewalk, Jeff Mermelstein

8.Futura Medium

Aperture Magazine

9.Vectipede Ultra Light

Exiles, Josef Koudelka

10.Mediaeval SB-XBold

Tulsa, Larry Clark

11.Industria Solid

Bystander, Westerbeck and Meyerowitz

12.Clarendon No 1 URW T Bold

Conversations with the Dead, Danny Lyons

13.Handwritten (by Matisse?)

The Decisive Moment, Henri Cartier-Bresson

14.Dom EF Casual

Carnival Strippers, Susan Meiselas

15.Vibertus

In the American West, Richard Avedon

16.Nimbus Sans Extended Black

Subway, Bruce Davidson

17.Stymie SB-Bold (w/ altered A)

Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Ed Ruscha

18.Cheltenham Bold Condensed

William Eggleston's Guide

19.Caslon Titling MT

American Photographs, Walker Evans

20.Geometric 15 Black

Annie Leibovitz 1970-1990 (spine lettering)

21. (extra credit)

The title of Diana Arbus' 1972 monograph was hand-lettered by designer Marvin Israel in the style of Linofilm Janson, 12/16, a 16th century French face.

The journey so far

2011-12-14T08:21:00.000-08:00

Today marks the centennial anniversary of Amundsen reaching the South Pole December 14, 1911 (recounted in this fantastic book). Back then photos were proof of something, so among all the other gear he carried a camera. In this photo by Amundsen the tent covers the pole.

Here's a plot of his team's journey compared to Scott's.

And here's the plot laid on a contemporary inverted satellite photo of my house, taken in early summer just like Amundsen's.

Here's a "visually similar" photograph according to Google Image Search.

When I woke up this morning I had no idea I'd soon be staring at a photo of a truck bed a hundred years after Amundsen.

Shades of Bill Burke

2011-12-13T11:01:00.001-08:00

I really like the Type 55 portraits that Bobby Abrahamson has been making lately on the streets near his home in North Portland. Many more can be seen on his blog Rabbit.

David Warren

Meghan

Jake

Ardy and Penny

Francisco and Walt

Jeffrey, Lindsey, Jasmine

Lex

Lila

Meridian Leeward

2011-12-12T08:39:00.000-08:00

I want to take a moment to write about something unrelated to photography.

My friend Faulkner —aka DJ Folklore— hosts a radio show Monday nights at 8 pm Pacific. Although the station is based in Portland it's only available online. You can either stream or download podcasts here. If you have an adventurous sense of music I encourage you to listen tonight.

I sat in on the show last week (along with Bryan Wolf) and we came up with an eclectic playlist including some Christmas songs, some twisted tunes, and a generally even mix of material from each of the past six decades.

Even if you can't or won't listen to Faulkner's show I encourage everyone out there to listen to and support their own local noncommercial radio station(s).

Friends, we all know commercial radio sucks the big one. You know it. They know it. Let's not pretend. And lots not pretend XM or Sirius or any of that satellite crap is any different.

But noncommercial radio is different, and vitally so. Why? Simple:

1. It is one of the last expressions of the vernacular. In a society increasingly headed toward homogenization, increasingly bent on smoothing over regional variations, local noncommercial radio stands out as a voice of regional taste. Faulkner's show is different than a show in Mississippi or Montana or Brazil. If you hate Walmart, listen to local radio.

2. Local noncommercial radio is one of the last unmediated expressions. On a station like Faulkner's, which has already been booted from the airwaves by the FCC and exists only on the internet, there is absolutely no oversight. He plays what he wants to. In a way it's like a blog. The only reason I write B is because I can write whatever the fuck I want to at any time. I can write iksolf ertay upgraun quirtnest Kubla Khan if I feel like it. If that aspect was ever compromised it would be all over. Radio is in the same boat, along with photography, writing, and all arts. I believe quality and mediation are ALWAYS inversely proportional.

DJ Folklore (right) in da house. Someone's house somewhere or other
Here in Eugene I'm fortunate to have three excellent noncommercial stations. I can generally count on good music always being available on at least one of them. I know many places don't have that luxury, but most communities have at least one noncommercial station. Please listen to yours today and support it. You're helping photographers out.

OK, that's my rant. Back to regular blog programming....

Linear Action

2011-12-11T09:26:00.001-08:00

Found a good used book last week by Enrico Natali called New American People. I don't know much about him beyond the basics. He was born in 1933, shot for various magazines in the 1960s, won a Guggenheim in 1971. The book, presumably shot during his Guggenheim year, was published in 1972. After that he sort of dropped out of sight although he still maintains a somewhat thin website.

But anyway the book is quite interesting as a document of early 70s Detroit and also as a nice collection of B/W street shots. Made in the era before photography styles became more specialized, it's an interesting grab bag of whatever caught Natali's eye. Mostly portraits, both strangers and friends, candid and posed, a few street grabs. Just a weird mix. It's not a classic and it'll probably never be reprinted. But it's a nice artifact and one which street photo junkies may want to look for in the used bins.

High school prom

Newsmen at a public demonstration

Auto Show

Running of the Photobooks

2011-12-10T10:15:00.001-08:00

For the Leica owner

2011-12-08T08:18:00.001-08:00

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Two tiered trophy with screw mount acme can be used as tripod in the field or as showpiece above the mantle. Either situation lends a touch of class to your next Leica outing. Converts any Leica into an award winning camera. Telescoping legs allow easy transport and storage. Available in blue, red, or gold, or distressed brass.

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The end is near

2011-12-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

Yikes. Is it time for year end lists already? 2011, we barely knew you. Sigh...

I think this list has some interesting photos, especially this image:

Ras Lanuf, Libya. March 11, 2011, Yuri Kozyrev
Holy crap what a photo. The in-your-face limbs and shapes shooting off in all directions. The smoldering smoke in the background. Pretty rad, man, pretty rad, and definitely streety. It would be a great shot under any circumstances, but the amazing thing is that Yuri Kozyrev saw this while in a war zone with bombs raining down around him.

So is it a street photo or a photojournalism, or both? I think it hits the sweet spot right between. It reminds me of a timely anecdote I recently read by Susan Meiselas:

"Early one morning, near my home and on my way someplace else, I crossed paths with Santa Claus. Now, I don't usually make surrealistic images. Another photogrpapher might have done that. And if I were a street photographer, I might have made a humorous photograph of the Santa Claus surrounded by other people in their work clothes, on the subway or in the street, and left it at that. But I wanted to know who this guy was. Where did he come from? Why was he in my neighborhood?"

I think this very nicely describes the difference between street and photojournalism. Meiselas sees herself as the latter, and the fact that she can very accurately pigeonhole the former makes her stronger as a photojournalist. She knows what she isn't looking for.

I think most documentary images of people fall more easily into one or the other, street or photojournalism, and generally it's tough for an image to excel at both. Kozyrev's shot above is a nice exception. Ironically some of Meiselas' photos also do both.

from Carnival Strippers, 1976, Susan Meiselas
That's my main problem with another year-end list, Buzzfeed's 45 Most powerful photos of 2011.

Photo by Nevine Zaki, one of Buzzfeed's Most powerful photos of 2011
The photos are nice but they are entirely photojournalism. Nothing wrong with that per se. We need photos to describe history. We need them to be "powerful". I just don't find them as entertaining. For me a series of photos needs that streety sense or I find myself tuning out. Just me. Personal bias, I know.

I was happy to see Stephanie Gordon's Space Shuttle photo wind up on the Lightbox list. It's an incredible shot, and I love the idea that an iPhoned snapshot through a plane window by an amateur can muscle out contenders with stronger pedigrees. But I think they chose the wrong photo. Gordon shot three images of the scene. Lightbox showcases this one:

Space Shuttle Endeavor, May 16, 2011, Stephanie Gordon
I would've chosen this one instead:

Wayne Tilcock's shot of the UC Davis pepper spray incident is included in the Lightbox list.

UC Davis, California. November 18, 2011, Wayne Tilcock
I think it's an interesting image, not necessarily because of the photo itself but what it reveals about contemporary photography. To me it's a photo about taking photos. I count at least 13 people with cameras in the photo and I'm guessing that's only a fraction of the number actually there. In fact the Buzzfeed list includes another photo of the same event from virtually the same spot, and indeed it's unclear why Tilcock's image was chosen by Lightbox over that one or any of hundreds of others which presumably exist. I think it works as photojournalism, not so well as a street shot.

Together with the Space Shuttle photo, the multiplicity of these "iconic" images is a very contemporary problem. Many events are shot multiple times by multiple people. Which ones will carry on in history? Who knows? Maybe the best way to ensure a photo will be remembered is to mix in a little street attitude, as in Kozyrev's. But there are no guarantees.

In any case, the Tilcock photo has inspired my own top-ten list. Here are my top ten people taking pictures in a top ten photo, circled in red.

More lists to come in upcoming weeks. I've still got some time until the end...

Always hunting season

2011-12-06T18:50:00.000-08:00

Some good finds at the local flea market lately. These snapshots are from the quarter bin of a vendor last weekend, scanned and assigned Santa reindeer names more or less at random:

Dasher

Dancer

Prancer

Vixen

Comet

Cupid

Donner

Blitzen

Rudolph

Quiz #28: Typeface ID

2011-12-05T08:55:00.001-08:00

OK, photo book junkies. Here's your quiz. Can a photo book be identified without photos, using only typeface? We'll find out.

Below are twenty samples of typeface used in titles on photography book covers. The samples use generic letters but several clues remain. Color, texture, and spacing are generally the same as the original titles (with some compression to fit into a small graphic). In addition, word length and sequence are the same. For example the first graphic, "POCCAECAT CUPIDA" represents a title with two words of 9 and 6 letters. Although I've matched typeface to the best of my knowledge, in two cases (#2 and #5) I couldn't find an exact match and used one that was virtually identical.

The Americans, printed in 1959, 1978, 1998, 2008
Four editions, four typefaces...
These are all titles of well known books which should be recognizable to casual photo buffs. If a book was printed in multiple editions with varying typefaces (a pet peeve of mine), I generally used the first edition.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21. (Extra Credit) Identify the famous photography book whose title is hand-drawn in the style of a 16th Century typeface.

There are 100 points possible: 2 points for each book identified, 1 point for each typeface identified, and 10 points for the extra credit.

Email answers to me by next Thursday, December 15th (5 PM PST). The first person to submit the highest point total wins a a deck of B-Sides and a print of your choice from any of my online images.

(Special thanks to Lisa Gidley for quiz inspiration and research)

Announcement With Transient Random-Noise Bursts

2011-12-03T08:31:00.000-08:00

Burn My Eye is the latest kid on Pshtwawawa the international street photography block jrdsuk. I've had fun browsing images ierhson this morning. Worth spending some time there fy&ncip if you're into street stuff. Welcome to the block, BME. Keep qlipipit up the nice work. Thanks to David S. for the tip eoo9nd.

La Brea and Beverly

2011-12-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

The recent Aperture (205) contains an interesting article by Stephen Shore discussing this solstice photo:

Beverly Blvd and La Brea Ave., June 21, 1975, Stephen Shore
Not only is this one of Shore's more famous images, it's probably one of the better known photos of the last half century made by anyone. But at the time Shore made it he wasn't quite satisfied. As related in the article, he felt it might be "imposing a classical pictorial organization" on the scene. Here's how he described his thought process in a 2008 interview with Darius Himes:

So I took this picture, and after I took it … I guess this goes to interpretation and structure and the form of our time. I realized that I was structuring this in a very classical way, with one-point perspective, with things that are setting up the frame and setting up the foreground and I had fun doing it. I was going through a period of seeing how densely I could structure a picture and how far back into the picture I could look and how much I could set up all of this complex picture structure. At the same time I'm thinking, show the very age and body of the time, this form and pressure. Is this it? Or is this a structural understanding that I'm bringing to it that isn't inherent in the scene? I went back to the same intersection the next day and took this picture, which is looking this way towards the other part of this intersection.

Beverly Blvd and La Brea Ave., June 22, 1975, Stephen Shore
DH: It's a completely different picture; hardly even recognizable as the same intersection.

SS: And it feels more like the photographer is hardly doing anything.

DH: The one feels like a very complex structure and this other feels less so. More like a casual snapshot. Do you feel like this shows the form and pressure of the time?

SS: I do. At least that was the direction my thinking went for the next year or so.

The two photos are indeed very different but a little sleuthing relates them spatially:

A few comments. The first photo was shot late afternoon 6/21. The second roughly 21 hours later. This means that either Shore is the fastest color sheet-film developer ever or he went out blind the second day with an inexact idea what he'd shot already. In either case, impressive. Secondly, I can't help wondering how much the first photo is a reaction to this image:

Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas (1963), Ed Ruscha
Shore had to have known Ruscha's painting, in which case it seems too much of a coincidence that he'd include a Standard sign. When he critiques his own photo as being shot in "a very classical way, with one-point perspective," I can't help thinking he's also talking about Ruscha. Just speculation. Of course gas station images have a long tradition in photography, so he may have been commenting on the whole genre.

In any case, great intersection. Landmark photos. And how many locations can claim to have inspired their own photographic project?

That's right. La Brea Matrix has spawned a cottage photo-making industry around Shore's shot. Six German photographers have been commissioned to shoot LA in the spirit of the Chevron sign. It's been going now for a while but I only recently tuned in. One might expect some cross-pollination with this project but as far as I can tell they're two separate endeavors. I guess Germans just dig Shore.

Photos of the La Brea Project by Janko Woltersmann
Meanwhile, the original photo quietly reverberates. As far as I know Dalton Rooney was the first to examine it through Google Streetview.

184 N La Brea Ave, 2009, Streetview image by Dalton Rooney
Today the same Streetview can only be seen from across the divider:

186 N La Brea Ave, 12/1/11, Streetview
Whew. Talk about one-point perspective. Too classical. Maybe I should go back tomorrow and rephotograph.

Here's a cleaner view, a recent boots-on-the-ground reshoot courtesy of Ted Soqui for LA Weekly.

And a night view:

Chevron (La Brea & Beverly), May 5, 2011, Lawrence Solum
That's all fine and dandy but the real action is happening at the Valero Station across Beverly Boulevard from the famous Chevron (straight ahead past the sign in the original photo).

Ikurnasky
It's not so much the station itself which is interesting but the surroundings. They're dense with urban detritus.

Grand Opening (La Brea & Beverly), August 1, 2011
Danny Rodriguez
Here's a more direct shot of the pink wall:

Northwest corner of La Brea and Beverly, 2011
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin
Around the corner the station wall has been tagged by none other than the notorious Banksy:

Banksy Mural, La Brea and Beverly, Scott M. Haskins
Apparently Banksy made the mural while in LA for a wedding and got permission beforehand from the owners. Now it is slated for removal and/or possible relocation. Don't ask me how one removes a spray painted image while keeping it intact. This Streetview image from yesterday shows it covered up while powers-that-be try to decide its fate.

Actually that's only one of two Banksy murals on location. This one is around the corner:

Banksy mural, photo by JMB
Here's a Streetview photo to locate it mentally.

The green wall in back is the one near the Banksy mural. For folks that actually live in LA I think these murals must be fairly well known since there are many photos of them online.

What I'm curious about is did Banksy target that location specifically because of the Shore photo? It seems likely that he would have at least a passing familiarity with Shore's photo. And if so, maybe the paintings are some sort of reaction? Who knows. Only Banksy and he's not telling.

The alternative explanation appeals more. I like to think that Shore and Banksy found this intersection completely independently, and each reacted to it in his own way. That would imply that there's something going at that the site —some spirit of LA embodied in the matrix of wide open spaces, small boutiques and gas stations— that attracts certain artists. In all the hundreds of square miles in the city, two artists zeroed in on the same place. That's how it went down in my mind at least, but then again I've never been to that corner in my life.

Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing

2011-12-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

"I've always thought the subject comes first and then the technique second. Women are why Tichy takes his walks with his camera. They're like his mountains his cartoons his squares his zips his dots. Portraits would be the simplest description. His mind is made up. He doesn't have to think about what to take. He already knows what it will look like. That kind of knowledge can be very satisfying."

—Richard Prince on Miroslav Tichy.
•
"I've always felt that this matter has first and second techniques. Tichy is wearing a camera or his wife. This cartoon squares that dot the mountains zip. Photos of the simplest, is described. It is mind. This is not to think about. Now, as you know. Such knowledge can be very satisfactory."

—The above statement Google-translated from English to Greek to Azerbaijani to Icelandic to English.

Deliverance

2011-11-30T09:19:00.000-08:00

If you've ordered a deck of B-Sides they should arrive shortly. The first batch went out yesterday and the second batch will go out today. They should arrive within the week (slightly longer for international).

I apologize for the delay. It took a little while to get them printed and shipped from Hong Kong, and then I had to train and prep all the carrier pigeons to recognize chimneys. The cold weather causes them to lose focus. But I've got the kinks worked out now. The pigeons are chomping at the bit, and future orders will be filled without delay.

For those who've already ordered, thanks very much for your patience! Your deck is on its way.

To the woodshed

2011-11-28T18:09:00.000-08:00

I saw The Woodmans last week, which tells the story of photographer Francesca Woodman and her artsy family. It's a great film full of interviews with interesting people. Her parents in particular are straight out of art-type casting, and I think the film very successfully explores their motivations as well as those of Woodman herself. And I guess Woodman's work is having a bit of a revival now, so the film is well timed.

The problem for me is Woodman's photography. I just don't get it. In the film it's praised as ahead of its time, revolutionary, revelatory, etc. Sorry but all I see is melodramatic nudes shot in a rundown warehouse. Her work looks like what any self-indulgent young art-school student might submit for a semester's final project. Mildly interesting but far from revolutionary. If someone tried to circulate these photos today I don't think they'd be well received.

Photo by Francesca Woodman
Curious to dig deeper, I checked out a few of her books from the library and gave them a good once-over. Meh. I still don't get it. Am I missing something? Any Woodman fans out there? What's the deal with her work? If you think it's good, why?

Tranquilized

2011-11-28T11:12:00.001-08:00

My father-in-law is currently on a hunting trip in South Africa. It's a modern version of the classic safari. Instead of killing animals they shoot them with tranquilizer darts. The hunter gets the thrill of the chase and the prey gets to live. It's win-win, sort of, unless you're an animal that didn't want to be shot.

After the animal has been tranquilized it's photo-op time. The hunter hoists the beast into attack position, smiles, and the moment is forever preserved.

The company sponsoring the trip has posted many of these on their site. I find them strangely fascinating. The dress, the expressions, the way they're framed. For example, this animal's attack pose has been aided by a stick in the mouth exposing its fangs.

I think much of my attraction to these photos lies in the idea that they might be open to very diverse interpretations. To the people who've shot these animals, the photos represent a pinnacle of achievement. They've conquered the wild, and perhaps laid to rest their own demons in the process. But to someone thousands of miles away with no vested interest (me), the photos seem quite savage, and almost silly.

They remind me of tourists posing with celebrities. Here I am! And look what I've got!

They almost seem like authentic kill shots. Perhaps some of them are.

In any case looking through many of them one after another seems to have a tranquilizing effect on me. I feel a bit numb, like I've just been to the dentist. Open wide and say "Ahhh"...

Everyone Photographs

2011-11-27T09:25:00.001-08:00

SPN Instruction #4

2011-11-26T09:34:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago I was invited to submit an instruction for SPN's ongoing Flickr project. I sent them this list of possibilities, from which they chose this one:

How small can you make something in the frame and have it still be the photo's primary visual subject?

The instruction was partly inspired by this photo:

Hard-Hat Rally, 1969, Garry Winogrand
I've long been mesmerized by this image. The man shouting fills about one percent of the space. Only his head is visible, and it's in a sea of a hundred heads. Yet he magnetizes the entire thing. How had Winogrand accomplished that? It seemed like an interesting exercise.

It's fairly easy to make something small in a photograph. If you shoot a pedestrian from a distance you've accomplished the task. The tougher job is to activate that small thing and make the viewer care about it. This is a challenge for any photograph, but particularly one in which the subject is tiny. Winogrand makes it look easy but it's not.

People had two weeks to come up with images in response to the instruction. They can all be seen here. I found many that I liked.

One strategy —the opposite of Winogrand's— was to eliminate visual components. In a frame with relatively few things to focus on, something small gains attention more easily. I think the four below were particularly successful:

A Glance by Kuba Paczkowski

Sanding a SMS by Sara Nicomedi

Adam Constantine

Moor Lane by Painta
Some photographers chose a similar strategy but with larger subject matter. I think they still work well as images but perhaps not as well for the instruction. I love the use of color in these two:

School Cafeteria by Guillermo Romero

Nige Harris
Another method was to hone the viewer's attention through force of composition. I'm a sucker for images like Danielle Houghton's with cleverly layered forms. Maybe it's a bit of a one liner but when done well I find such images irresistible.

Tightrope Practice by Danielle Houghton
Vincent Smink's image also works through form. I'm not sure what the intended subject matter is but my eye keeps being drawn to that mysterious triangle in the center. It's just plain weird, in a good way.

Vincent Smink
This photo seems to have two subjects which pull on each other from opposite corners of the frame. Nice.

Hyde Park by Simone Fisher
Some folks made busy pictures. I'm not sure if these two exactly follow the instruction. I can't tell exactly what to focus on. But in any case who cares. They're great photos.

Wall Street: Occupado by Russ Rowland

Mystery Scene by John Ellis
I like this photo mostly because it was unusual in the pool. Most images showed far away subjects shrunken through distance but this one showed something close and small and spotlit via narrow depth-of-field. I think the composition fits together quite nicely.

In the Synagogue by Ilya Schtutza
I'm not sure what to make of this image, which I think is why I like it. Is is a photo of scaffolding, or a person, or weird windows? I can't tell, and in this case I think that's a good thing. It's mysterious.

Valérie Loiret
I like this image mostly because it shows radically different subject matter. While most images in the pool were made in dense urban settings, Larry Larsen showed you could go small in a wide open space.

Somewhere in Arizona by Larry Larsen
Finally, this image by Camilla Crosland is probably my favorite of the bunch. A finely captured scene, busy yet simple. The viewer's eye slides effortlessly to the smallest thing in the photo.

Sparklers by Camilla Crosland

Q & A with Gordon Stettinius

2011-11-23T08:39:00.000-08:00

Gordon Stettinius is the founder of Candela Books in Richmond, Virginia. I caught up with him recently to chat about Candela's latest release, Salt & Truth by Shelby Lee Adams.

B: Hi Gordon, I saw the article in the Times. Congrats on that. Was that a surprise for you or did you have any notice?

Gordon Stettinius: We had some notice actually. It was pushed back a couple of times and I really had to work a little to see it through.

PR like that can't hurt.

No, doesn't hurt at all!

I'm impressed with the Adams book. To me it seems like an improvement on Gita Lenz, which was also very good. But this one has a very good design sense, and more diverse spreads. And the tonality seems more subtle or maybe I'm imagining. Were there specific things you learned the first time around that you applied this time?

A sample spread from Salt & Truth
Well the idea of the design evolving is both true and untrue. In a sense, we tried to put together a book for Gita that would be contemporaneous with books that had been published by and for her artistic peers. With a contemporary artist such as Adams, we could update the sensibility a little. But since he is a very established individual with previous monographs to his name also, we didn't want to go crazy with design. But we were definitely trying to have a contemporary design sense.

So the designers were on a tighter leash with Gita really. Less so with Shelby. And we expect to let the designers go a little further out there in books three and four.

So you designed the Gita Lenz book to feel antiquated on purpose? The cloth cover?

Anitquated... hmmm... I was thinking more along the lines of reserved or classic but we were actually looking at older books for inspiration. Thinking about how books used to be designed.

Maybe antiquated was the wrong word. Of course antiquated can be a good thing.

No, I take your point. We hoped to give her the book we wish that she had been given fifty years ago - at a time in her career when it might have helped her along.

Who picked the photos for the Adams book? And sequencing?

Shelby presented us with a fairly tight selection of images, approx. 100 or so, and then gave us a short list of images that he felt strongly needed to be in the book. At that point we put together our idea of what a book of 75-80 images would look like. He tweaked and sent back and we each returned it a few times. It was actually a pretty smooth process for the editing of the images.

They seem spread across a variety of years even going back across years covered in his other books. Were they ones he'd been saving, or did they belong together for him somehow? I'm just trying to get a sense of what binds them and separates from his previous books.

Basically the time frame was from 2002 until last year. I believe there are 5 or so images from earlier dating back as far as 1987 I think. We were on the fence about including the older work but my sense is that these were images that for various reasons he hadn't included in previous books for editorial reasons OR he was more recently re-discovering them. I liked having them from the vantage of pointing to the consistency with which he has approached his craft. And for the most part the body of work is current or more recent.

OK, I didn't catch that. It's basically recent work [w/ 10 images from before 2002]. That makes it easy. What's been his reaction to the book?

Short answer is that he is very happy with how the book has turned out. We thought a lot about how to position the book alongside his earlier work. The "Appalachian" titling idea - Appalachian Portraits (1993), Appalachian Legacy (1998) and Appalachian Lives (2003) - used for the first three books, we could have continued with. And so, Appalachian Roots was a working title for a while and I actually rather like that one. But the suggestions that his work, which is all shot in the mountains and hollers of Eastern KY, speaks to the larger Appalachian region seems a little errant really. There are 14 states represented within the Appalachian range and so his work does speaks to a smaller place and, I felt, a more personal experience. Using "Appalachian…" in the title seems to suggest a larger survey of a region.

Eddie Wayne, 2010, from Salt & Truth
We really tried to allow his work to find its niche in the art world and world of self-expression instead of being held to some standard of depicting a region. His work is somewhat documentary in nature but it is also collaborative and conceptual in nature and I think his critics are often saying that he is making up these scenes and peddling them as some kind of distorted picture of a region. My position - and his too I believe - is that these pictures are about a culture though at the same time are about relationships and longstanding concerns of trust and respect and acceptance. These folks are really fond of him and he is protective of them as well.

The subjects all have a say in how they are photographed and in the images which are finally presented as well.

I think Adams portraits are pretty amazing. At the same time they give me a bit of a creepy feeling because they might be interpreted as taking advantage of their subjects. I know he is part of the community and they are fully complicit and aware. I just have this sense that most of the people viewing these photos won't see them as the people in them might. For people seeing them in a book or NY gallery, the subjects seem impossibly exotic. Which is some of their appeal. But I don't think the people consider themselves exotic, so it's always put some tension in his work for me.

Donnie and Aunt Sally, 2004, from Salt & Truth
There is some tension, I suppose, but I would have to take exception to the idea that he takes advantage of his subjects. I don't see that at all. The images are extremely personal. But there is a solid collaboration going on and Shelby really goes a great length to make it understood what he is doing. In fact, he has photographed some families for four generations. It would be impossible for them not to have a pretty solid understanding of his intentions.

I one time spoke with a curator about this body of work and he shared with me that he initially - many years ago - was unsettled by Shelby's work. He had grown up in the South and he knew that world - or one very much like it. He also said that he had trouble dealing with the nature of showing this work, these conditions, as an aspect of a photographer's self-expression. But the more he considered the work, over the years, the more he realized that there are so many layers within the work, dignity in the subjects, perseverance in a tough and hard-scrabble situation that he came around to seeing the work as having a more humanist point of view. The issues this curator had with the work had had more to do with what he didn't want to acknowledge in his own history or had come to distance himself from for reasons that had more to do with his own issues than what he was seeing in the photos. He writes more eloquently on the subject than I am doing here but through the years they have become a great fan of the work.

Other folks who have suggested that Adams should make photos of the more "successful" Appalachian residents... that is a very curious challenge because really if they want to see this side of things then they should consider making those photos. And the ambiguity of words such as "successful" or "positive" or what have you is sort of a moving target. There are definitely people in very different life situations in Salt & Truth. But the toughest ones stir up the most sentiment. Should we decide it is okay to look at some folks or some walks of life but not others?

They remind me a bit of Roger Ballen's work. Ballen is amazing, but I don't consider him a flattering photographer.

I love Ballen also. But he might be more of a painterly artist, I think, than a documentarian - in his construction of the more psychological images anyways. At least, in recent books he seems more a descendent of Meatyard maybe.

from Platteland by Roger Ballen
The photos seem to confirm certain stereotypes about backwoods Appalachia. Which I'm guessing are true and also not true depending on where you look.

My honest take is that Shelby is recording a disappearing culture rather than trying to make sense of the culture that is replacing it. Or maybe displacing is a better word… He is trying to show the people that he knows in a manner that they are comfortable doing. He really is struggling against stereotypes in this work. But people do not always see the work in the same way.

My favorite photo in the book is The Purse, just because it seems like such an oddball. It looks unlike his other photos, to me at least. It seems to open up other possibilities beyond traditional portraiture.

I like that one too. It has the mirror, thus the duality. It has the object, thus the history. And it has Martha & Kizzie who are old friends. So it really is in the family of images but still, you are right that the image is organized a little differently than much of the other work.

The Purse, 2005, from Salt & Truth
So back to one of my first questions. What did you learn about publishing the first time around that you applied this time?

Hmmm. The work flow for Gita Lenz was unfamiliar to me. The idea of what happens - and when - in what is a six or eight month schedule created a fairly fluid, reactive approach to the production. After we committed to publishing a book for Gita, we then had to ask ourselves now what? And so we proceeded to learn at most every turn. With Shelby, I had a lot of new questions though so it wasn't really a cake walk.

I guess the question I'm getting at is, what has been the learning curve of founding a book imprint? You've gotten off to a very good start but I'm sure it wasn't as easy as you've made it look.

I had to grow a couple of sizes very quickly because Gita's project, we considered it successful after we just saw the book in print. The fact that it worked out okay as an investment was not as relevant to us as was seeing her memory celebrated. With Shelby came the responsibility of handling a photographic body of work that I had long felt to be important. I say this all the time now that while I am a huge fan of many different photographers, Shelby is important as an American photographer. His vision is uniquely of this country, even though there are universal themes running throughout. Some great image makers are sort of unrooted in time and place and so the provenance of the work is less essential. Anyway... I felt some pressure to do right by a photographer whose work I admire. Plus we wanted to create a new tone for the work without disrespecting the previous three monographs which are incredible books.

Salt & Truth printed before assembly, photo by Gordon Stettinius
So being a fan of Shelby Lee Adams for some twenty years and then getting this opportunity to possibly publish his fourth book, I had to think about that for a long while. I told him I was definitely confident that I could produce a high quality book but I was less certain about my ability to get that book out widely into the world. So, first thing, I really needed to arrange for distribution of the book because there was no way I could effectively handle the larger print run we were considering for Shelby's book. Then I began to pitch to D.A.P. and after some back and forth, I managed to get on board with them as a publisher and then could say with confidence that I could make a good looking book that would flatter Adams' work and someone - D.A.P. - would help me get it out there.

Back up for a second. How did the opportunity to publish Adams happen?

Basically, Shelby contacted me with a proposal. He had taken his work to other publishers and was also considering printing again with the University of Mississippi Press. But because he really was interested in how the work is received out there in the world he was considering repositioning the work as fine art in nature instead of his being marketed by an academic press as making a body of work that comments upon on a geographical region. It was a cool opportunity. And I was very excited about the possibility, presuming I could sort out distribution.

I hadn't considered his work as academic. It's always seemed fairly rooted in fine art.

I think you are right. And many people would agree. But think about the book being out there as an available resource for those seeking an understanding of Appalachian culture. The titles of his previous books and the fact he has been published by a University press sort of suggests that he as an observer is trying to define an aspect of Appalachia in his work. Seeing the work in this context implies a rigid message - namely that these images are "Appalachian". Adams would perhaps argue that they are not meant to represent the whole of Appalachia but just that part that he feels a kinship for.

The scholars of Appalachia are sometimes the ones that feel his work is exploitative. Not all but some. And my sense is some of that has to do with them perceiving Shelby's body of work as too narrow in scope to be accurate about their larger culture. AND these scholars, some of them, may have a less solid tradition of reading work that could be construed as interpretive or emotional rather than literal, factual. My suspicion is that Shelby doesn't care as much about how narrow his vision might be because he is doing something personal and just between himself and the people he cares about. A concern with people with whom you feel a connection is a very different starting point than if he had started out trying to say that this is what Appalachia "is".

Fine art or not, his photos will be a valuable historic resource for academic study. But I guess you could say that about many sorts of photos. Chris Rauschenberg likes to say that if you find certain photos boring, just wait 50 years. They're all guaranteed to become more interesting.

Eagle's Nest, 2008, from Salt & Truth
I agree with Chris. Just looking at so so pictures of my kids from fifteen years back and they are all more compelling, or sweeter, or stranger or whatever.

What is Adams' living situation? I know he grew up in Appalachia but has he moved away? Or does he spend part of his time elsewhere?

Shelby lives in Pittsfield, Mass. Which is coincidentally at the top of the Appalachian range. Or perhaps not a coincidence. He returns to Kentucky for extended stays a couple times a year on average. I think his connection to the work and to the hollers is something that has evolved and clearly comes from his family connections. You might say that he wouldn't have forged the same career as an artist if he never left the hollers but my sense is that he would probably have continued to work through the same ideas and concerns he has for years been working on but maybe in a different gear. Because his family is so deeply entwined with the people who were his first subjects. And those early family friends and folks have introduced him to later subjects.

I wonder if he's photographed the people in Pittsfield.

I haven't asked that question actually. His workshops produce images but that is often at the ICP or Woodstock or Portland or elsewhere. He did some commercial work in Pittsfield I know. But I cannot say whether he has done any variant of the environmental portraiture we are discussing.

So he's from Appalachia but now lives elsewhere. So, like many of the best photographers, he might be considered an insider/outsider.

Shelby is is from Kentucky. And this work has been continuing for over thirty-five years. I am not sure I would call him a typical insider / outsider.

Did what you see when you visited Kentucky last summer look like what you expected from his photos?

What did I expect? In some ways because I have now spent a lot of time with all his books, the places were as I expected them to be. But I didn't expect the drive from place to place to be so long. He puts a lot of miles on his car. He has worked primarily in 7 or 8 different counties but it seems each trip has him shuttling around delivering photos to every corner of those different counties.

Teresa and Family, 2003, from Salt & Truth
What about visually? When you drive up to an address in some hollow, do the people and buildings look roughly like what's in his photos?

Definitely. And as you would imagine, we drove past a lot more than we stopped at. The roads into the hollers can be 5, 7, 9, miles long and some of these folks he might have met years ago through friends or at church they live all the way at the head of the holler. There is a fair amount of density along those roads really. Some places are pretty put together with flowers and gardens and some are less so. All of them homes though.

Sounds like where I grew up.

One incredible aspect, and distinctive aspect, is how slowly Shelby works. The work really looks more like visiting. Checking in with people, catching up, maybe taking some photos, maybe not depending upon the situation. The 4x5 camera is, of course, a deliberate tool but his process is still very measured.

Shelby photographed one woman when I was with him and she lived in a little place filled with angels and small keepsakes. We were there for most of the afternoon. And he took her portrait outside because the light was right outside and he did a closeup portrait of her and it is beautiful. What you don't see in that picture is what?

I don't know. What?

A lot really. There is no saying the reality beneath any image really. Does the artist have a responsibility to show the angels, or the exterior of the house or the tones in her skin (as he chose to) or which truth is the one to share?

Well, that's photography in a nutshell.

No doubt.

What to show. What not to. When to show. When not to. When to have a show...Getting silly here. Maybe we should tie this up somehow. Any last thoughts?

Well, this work is incredibly layered and is meant to be connective somehow. Shelby spent as much time, or more, trying to get the text sections of the book exactly as he wanted them. He was trying to say something in his own words about the way in which his subjects embrace their existence and their way of life and he tries to see "through" some of these surface elements of poverty or hardship and tries to recognize the spark of integrity or the sense of endurance. It is a life-long path for him. And not an easy one because occasionally people react so strongly to exactly those aspects he has looked beyond, or accepted, in some ways.

Hazel & Mimie, 2005, from Salt & Truth

Shelby Lee Adams with Hazel and Mimie, June 2011
Photo by Gordon Stettinius
His own history is so entwined with the history he is recording so there are some vibrations happening that aren't readily explainable at times.

At times, he wanted to be critical about certain aspects of new Appalachia and the pushback he gets but then he didn't want to be too general and paint with a broad brush and then he wanted to tweak this for clarity and sometimes I would scratch my head and have to ask more questions because it wasn't clear to me. The number of times we reconfigured the text... I cannot say. But he really felt he needed to say his piece and he hadn't had as much freedom previously in earlier texts.

And then, he also wanted to allude to the personal difficulties of some of his friends and subjects but wanted to do so without betraying a trust. The words were, in many ways, a far more difficult edit for Shelby than the images. He lives his work. I have met few others as dedicated as he is but that simple description would describe him pretty well.

His appreciation for the culture and its people comes through.

Good luck with Candela. It sounds busy with publishing, opening a gallery, your own studio. And all at once! I've considered doing all of those things but it's easier to sit back and imagine doing it vicariously through you.

Ha! I am busy fondly remembering my earlier, lazier self.

Thank you, Blake!

[Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. B will be on hiatus for the next few days.]

Blame it on the moon

2011-11-20T18:31:00.000-08:00

Friday, 11/18, was the crescent waning moon in the lunar cycle:

The next day, 11/19, this image appeared on 20 x 200:

Animal Locomotion; Plate 187, Dancing (Fancy)
by Eadweard Muybridge
The following day, 11/20, this one appeared on Noah Kalina's blog:

NPC National Championships - South Beach Florida
What does it mean? I'm not sure. All I know is I saw it coming.

A chat with Bryan

2011-11-19T15:25:00.000-08:00

From an online chat over beers last week with Bryan Formhals:

B: Hi Bryan, Have you got a beer handy?

Bryan Formhals: Ha. Yeah, just cracked one.

Great. I don't really have a script but I know you think a lot about online culture. What do you think is fundamentally different about looking at photos online vs. other ways?

Beer and chatting have been cultural cornerstones since prehistory
The quality is fundamentally different. And you spend more time looking at books than looking at photographs online.

What's the longest you've ever looked at a photo online?

A single photo? Maybe a minute. I go through slideshows pretty quick as well too, but I might play them back a few times. When I'm editing a body of work, I'll take more time to look at the photos. But it's more of an aggregate type situation, rather than just looking at one single photograph. Sometimes I'll find one that is weird and try to figure out how the composition works, or what's actually happening in the photo.

It's also hard to compare a portfolio from a project to a completed book. Viewing a portfolio online I mean...

I guess my question was about the nature of online objects. If you saw a photograph in a gallery you might take a while to examine it, whereas I think there's an attitude that things online require constant refreshing. The exact same image might only get 10 seconds of your time on a monitor.

Yes, also you normally see photos grouped together, like in a blog post where you might be looking at 12 really quickly.

I think the web has turned photographs into caricatures. You look at them quickly, gain the easiest visual features, then move on. What I wonder is how much that's shaping the actual image making, if people are making simpler images just because those are the ones easiest to digest in a small jpg. I think this might apply in particular to street photos.

I think that's true. You can see it in HCSP to some degree. Then again, does that also apply to portraiture?

Hmm. Possibly. I think many portraits reveal what they're about fairly quickly.

Right. So for me it applies more to candid, documentary type work. And also certain types of landscape work. With landscape work, it's hard to really grasp the depth of the scene when it's backlit.

Harudakenuma #17, 2006, Takeshi Shikama
Currently showing in real life here
Do you think landscapes or maybe some other types are underrepresented online?

I don't think they're underrepresented, just not nearly as popular. People enjoy photographs of other people. Looking at landscapes I'd say is generally boring for most viewers. I think looking at landscapes requires a bit more attention in order to really experience the depth and detail they offer.

This brings up the bigger question of how online photography differs from the real world. You said something in an email about online culture being separate from galleries, etc, who may not really know what's going on online. I wonder how much online culture even matters, since the history of photography is being written by curators, collections, etc. Or is it?

I don't think online culture matters that much to the real world art market. The web is still viewed as primarily a marketing platform I think.

When I was at Photolucida I thought I'd recognize more of the photographers from online, but really it was a whole different segment of the photo world. Pete Brook and I were the only bloggers there. It was a bit of a reality check for me. Literally.

Right. When I go to gallery openings, I try to not even say that I'm a blogger/editor! Because nobody really cares.

Many of my photographer friends have no idea I'm a blogger. Blogger. I said it like it's a dirty word.

I maintain that online is still very much underground and on the margins. Sure, there are a few high profile blogs that some curators might check out, but not many. Mostly the web is for photographers seeking out new work, and new connections. However I think this greatly changes when you start to think about editorial photography because I think photo editors and buyers are looking online for new work.

I can see the application for marketable photography but what about the rest of it? I'm asking under the assumption that most important photos of the past century have been made for noncommercial reasons. What does the online photo culture offer? What is its influence?

Online photo culture is great for making connections with other photographers. And I think there's some decent writing being done here and there but not much.

‪What will the online photo world look like in 5 years?‬

In five years I think it'll be much more commercialized. Most major mags and newspapers have photo blogs now.

But are the magazines/newspaper sites really blogs? I tend to view them as journalist-style reporting.

Yeah, sure. I don't consider LPV a blog either.

So what is it?

A magazine.

You're also seeing the more ambitious bloggers/editors making an effort to turn their websites into a full time gig. What I'm seeing is that people are now starting magazines and blogs because they see it as a way to break into the establishment.

I think the essence of a blog is that you need to feel the person's presence behind it. I think this is why some of that has shifted to Twitter, Facebook, etc. Because those types of entries even if they're just a few words feel very intimate and personal. They're like notes passed in class.

Yes, that type of entry has absolutely shifted to Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook.

When I first heard of blogging I thought it was ridiculous. Or Twitter. Why would a stranger care about the details of another person's thoughts or life? But now I see the appeal. From the specific comes the general.

Well, most people don't care! If I have 1,400 Twitter followers, I'd guess about 25 are actually paying attention.

What about editing? The other day on LPV you wrote that online photos invite user edits. I think many photographers would like to keep that under their own control, so there's some tension there. I wonder if the cat is completely out of the bag now. Do we each just make our own big mix tape? Should photographer's expect any say in how their work is edited online?

Yeah, I think that element is fascinating. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it, but I think there's something to the idea that photographers like to assemble others' work. In fact, I've started to think of LPV as sort of a collaborative 'art' project. Meaning, I get creative joy from assembling all this work. I don't necessarily do it because I believe photographer A deserves wider recognition. I do it because I saw a selection of photos that I thought could be assembled in an interesting way...in the format we have on LPV.

But, there are far more interesting issues too. Ansel Adams is a good example. If we could access all his work, think of the edits that could be made? The interpretative aspect of online photography is interesting and something I think about often these days. Although, the way I'm describing LPV makes it seem kind of superficial :)

I saw your Ansel Adams comment on LPV, and Bremser's post, and the ones before. He's an interesting case.

That's definitely one thing that online culture has opened up that didn't exist before. All these photos out there searchable at the touch of a button. If I want a Freidlander picture I look it up in 2 seconds. Whereas 20 years ago that was much more difficult. So the mixing and matching possibilities provide fodder for blogs and Tumblrs.

You can see this sort of playing out with younger photographers who just throw up tons of photographs. Tim Barber or Jason Nocito, for example.

from Oh Brother, Jason Nocito
Even the edits are open to editing. Someone might come along in 10 years and put together a new edit of 10 LPV edits.

Yes, absolutely. I've been saying that people could start an online magazine in about five minutes. We could program four issues right now off the top of our heads. Just go look at the top blogs, and pick the work that resonates with you. Send the photographer an email, get the images, get the statement. Booom! You have an online magazine.

Maybe it would be more fun to edit those four issues into a new edit.

Are you still making photographs for yourself?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I just scanned 15 rolls. And I'm editing a series I've been working on for a few years. I'm planning on putting out a couple zines of my LA work in the next few months. Really interested in playing around with MagCloud for my personal work.

What sort of photos?

Mostly just random stuff. Looking for color, and more complex black and white scenes. Not much candid people type stuff. I want to just shoot for a long time and start to build up piles of photographs....black and white, color, medium format, just a big mix of stuff. I'd like to make some portraits but I don't know how.

Bryan Formhals, 2011
Zen mind beginner's mind. Sometimes knowledge of how to do something gets in the way.

Yes, true. But I've been with a few photographers while on shoots, and the way they work with people is just something I don't really have right now. Also, do I want to photograph strangers on the street? Friends? Physicists?

Also, and this maybe flawed thinking, but I feel there's more responsibility on the photographer when making a portrait than when they're just shooting random stuff. Responsibility to the subject anyway. I don't know. Like I said, flawed...

Yes, portraiture is definitely a skill. But skill isn't all it's cracked up to be. I guess I'm thinking of Tichy who I've been enthralled with lately. Just pursuing his own muse with no training really. And coming up with gems.

Yeah, it's really an internal battle. But I'm also not really in the mood to work with people at the moment. At least photographically....

I know what you mean. Sometimes I have a hard time shooting people, and other times it's easier. So maybe part of the "skill" is recognizing those times when you're ready to shoot certain things, and when you might be forcing it.

Snapshots don't seem to have that problem. I've been diving into flea markets recently and finding photos that are so good they make me question if I should quit. If some old snapshot is better than what I can come up with, what's the point?

Snapshot found a few weeks ago at a Eugene flea market
Yeah, I think about that often. Which is why I've stopped trying to think about projects, themes, etc. I got caught in that stream the last few years, which is fine, but I don't think it's really who I am.

I'm all about taking photos first, then finding out what the project is.

Yeah, and what I've been thinking about recently is that photos can be used for multiple projects.

But most of the time they don't wind up in projects. Just an endless stream. Which is maybe the project after all.

For example, I'm thinking of just making a big pile of my photos from the last five years and starting over completely blank. Why can't that be a different project?

Treat them like LPV would treat a Flickr stash.

Like, when I say I'm going to make a Blurb book I don't really mean a "book" as in an epic project. More like, I want these 40 photographs to be viewed together at this moment. Yes, that's what I'm thinking. Just mix them all up and try to cut the pre-existing associations they have with each other.

Do you think someone in 10 years is liable to stumble on any of the photos we're making now online?

Yes, I absolutely believe people will have access to all these photos. We may in fact just be worker bees tidying up piles for future historians and anthropologists. Really, all this photography and online culture stuff might have less to do with art and much more to do with history.

It's the raw material of history but someone has to come along and shape it.

The machines!

They'll have access to our photos but they'll also have access to 40 trillion others.

Yes, there are billions of photographs but I believe the technology to search and organize will greatly improve. So much so that we can't really even comprehend it right now.

One thing that always grabs me about flea markets is the tangible quality. The only reason I'm able to thumb through old snapshots is that someone took the time to print them. Whereas nowadays very few photos are printed.

I understand the anxiety over the tangible quality. People should print their photographs. It cost like 22 cents for a 5x7. I can make a magazine in MagCloud for about $10.

It's not really anxiety. Just reflection.

Well, I think there is some very legitimate anxiety, especially over archiving, file formats and that stuff.

In a way, Flickr is like one big flea market. But who's going to sift through all that stuff? Some of the pleasure of sifting through real prints is that it's like a treasure hunt. It's like panning for gold. When I sift through Flickr, not so much. Maybe search algorithms will improve but how can a machine create artful edits. How does a machine know what's gold and what isn't?

Sorry, had to find this article for you.

Thanks. Hadn't seen that. Erik Kessels consistently hits the mark.

I think a machine can create artful edits. Joking of course. I think as the tools become more powerful, we'll have the ability to organize, categorize, edit, aggregate all this material in fascinating ways. Maybe our creativity is evolving and we can do more than we could in the past. I really believe that there's so much art, creativity, and photography out there that we can't really comprehend it. Sort of like trying to really comprehend how ling it take to get to the next nearest star (Alpha Centauri I believe).

It makes the traditional role of photographer just wandering around viewing the world seem antiquated. Maybe the future is in Rickard style curating.

Sure, but then isn't setting up a studio just as antiquated?

Don't know. I've never used one.

Roaming around and making photographs is pleasurable.

Like the title of Badger's book.

Yeah, like Badger's book, which I should probably read! If there's pleasure to had, I think people will continue to do it. Will it have any merit in the art market? Who knows? But then again, who really gives a fuck? I think so much of this stuff becomes less interesting when it becomes about what the art market is doing or wants.

It's a bit of a quandary. We talked about writing history before and to some extent the art market writes history. It determines which photos will be remembered in 30 or 40 years. I agree it operates in an inscrutable fashion but you can't ignore it completely. That's the quandary. Who gives a fuck, but you sort of have to.

Sure, you're talking about meaning. If nobody remembers or cares about your photographs in 40 years, then what's the point in making them in the first place?

The pleasure principle.

About the art market, I'm talking more about money than meaning. In order to get curated, collected, incorporated into the canon, a photo needs to develop market value. So the market writes history oftentimes regardless of meaning.

Look at that Gursky photo which just sold for $4 million. The photo itself didn't really matter. It could've been a birthday snapshot. It could've been an old shopping list. What gave it value is who made it and which other institutions own a copy. For better or for worse that's now a photo that will be remembered in 40 years.

An old shopping list found here
Yeah, money fucks it all up. And honestly, I think $$$ is a very powerful undercurrent in the online photo world.

Well, at least this chat is free.

We Are The 99 Cent

2011-11-18T16:40:00.001-08:00

Beware: Threat levels

2011-11-17T08:12:00.000-08:00

$4,338,500 — Winning bid for Andreas Gursky's Rhein II, sold at auction 11/8/11, the highest amount paid for a photograph to date.

$4,250 — Highest bid as of 11/16/11 to commission Alec Soth to make your portrait.

$4.59 — What is costs currently to roll your own.

Beach Reads

2011-11-16T14:46:00.000-08:00

Currently 40 F and raining outside the window of B's world headquarters in Oregon. Sigh... To be reading a book on a beach somewhere sounds pretty good right now.

Ballot box recap

2011-11-15T08:17:00.001-08:00

A recounting of the right sidebar polls since early August:

8/3/11

My vote: 1964
Predicted winner: 1964
Actual winner: The Animals

It's a tough call for me between 1964 and Public Relations. Both are incredible. I think 1964 may have lost to The Animals because it's not a widely circulated book whereas The Animals was recently reprinted. No votes for the underrated Stock Photographs, oh well.

•

8/10/11

My vote: Within 10 years
Predicted winner: Within 6 years
Actual winner: Indefinite / Never

The fact that 35 mm color film has lasted this long says that there's something unique in its character. Unfortunately I don't know if that'll be enough to save it. I'm more optimistic about 35 mm b/w which I think will last several decades more.

I'll check back in 10 years to see what's happened with this. 10 years is a very long time in today's photography world. Almost as long as never.

•

8/17/11

My vote: 4-7
Predicted winner: 4-7
Actual winner: 4-7

Not a well designed poll. I should've unclustered the numbers better at the low end. As the results stand now they don't tell me much beyond the fact that photographers collect cameras like flies on...well, you know.

•

8/31/11

My vote: Quality of photos
Predicted winner: Quality of editing
Actual winner: Quality of photos

This is such a general question it's almost meaningless but I think that's exactly what makes it interesting. Would you rather see 52 nice images shuffled randomly? Or 52 mediocre images carefully sequenced into more than the sum of their parts? I tend to hate Greatest Hits compilations in any medium. Still, I had to vote for photos over editing. In the end, if you don't have strong photos you don't have much of anything. Most of photography seems headed the other direction, toward increasingly edit-based output.

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9/14/11

My vote: The Beatles
Predicted winner: The Beatles
Actual winner: Bach

Matching photographers and musicians has been an ongoing brainstorm for me. They can be matched according to influence, style, longevity, or whatever. With HCB and Bach I think it's all three. Frank and Dylan seem matched as poetic pioneers with a singular place in history. Others:

Eugene Atget: Duke Ellington
Garry Winogrand: Miles Davis
Annie Leibovitz: R.E.M.
Miroslav Tichy: Jandek
Jeff Wall: Radiohead
The Bechers: Can
Stephen Gill: Devendra Banhart
Edward Weston: Igor Stravinsky
Lee Friedlander: Neil Young
Lucas Samaras: Frank Zappa
Ralph Gibson: Ralph Gibson

•

9/21/11

My vote: Past year
Predicted winner: Past month
Actual winner: Past year

For me hand-held is the secret sauce which keeps shooting serendipitous. Sometimes in low light I put my camera on a car roof or pint glass but I haven't used an actual tripod in years. I think many B readers have a similar outlook but I'd be curious to poll a wider pool of shooters. Generally most fine art photography nowadays is not shot hand-held. A shame.

•

9/28/11

My vote: Past week
Predicted winner: Past year
Actual winner: Past decade

I've spent time in a darkroom pretty much every week for the past 10 years, part of a quickly shrinking minority. I know there aren't many regular users out there but I thought more people would've ducked into one on occasion. But the situation is grimmer than I'd thought.

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10/5/11

My vote: Photolucida
Predicted winner: Photolucida
Actual winner: PhotoNOLA

You know I don't really remember what I was thinking with this one. Maybe someone who voted could tell me? As careful blog readers will note, this poll ran during my period of heavy psychedelics, and I was also watching a lot John Wayne films at the time, so all posts and polls during this period are sort of screwed up. I think I meant to ask about heroes and evil art gods but who knows.

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10/12/11

My votes: Robert, Disfarmer, Connor
Predicted winners: Robert, Templeton, Connor
Actual winners: Robert, Templeton, Connor

This poll accompanied my post on photographic doppelgängers. The tough one for me was Disfarmer/Templeton. I like them both but for very different reasons. In the end I went with the classic over the upstart. Props to history.

•

10/19/11

My vote: Develop, don't return
Predicted winner: Develop, return
Actual winner: Develop, return

I wrote this poll the week after this actual situation happened to me. I bought an old film SLR to replace my broken Nikon. Inside was an exposed roll of color waiting for me like a present under the tree. I couldn't wait to see what was on it, but as it turned out the photos weren't very interesting. I wasn't sure what to do with the film. I wrote to the seller to see if he wanted it but he said the roll was expendable. It was just a test roll he'd used to check the camera operations, so he didn't care what I did with it. Not sure how you check that stuff without seeing the roll but in any case I was curious about protocol. Do you return film or not? And what does the inner photographer want to do?

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10/26/11

My vote: Past 6 months
Predicted winner: Past month
Actual winner: More than 3 years ago / Never

This poll was the lucky ticket for me. Shortly after posting I sold a photo to a magazine. But for a while before, I'd had a dry spell. I'd thought for sure others were doing better. It seemed like photos were flying off the gallery walls left and right. But no. Sadly, no. The good news is I still haven't given up my dream of becoming an NFL quarterback. Those guys make bank!

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11/2/11

My vote: 35
Predicted winner: 30
Actual winner: 35

A response to the Soth post which appeared a few days before this poll. I'd meant to write an in depth rebuttal but a ballot turned out to be easier. My phrasing is a bit different than Soth's (he asked about "influence") but the general thrust is similar. Does photographic creativity generally wane? I think it does.

It's been interesting to read responses to Soth and to Mike Johnston's essay on this. The vehemence of disavowal is alarming. But wait, people say. I'm 60 and doing the best work of my life. Maybe so. But one counter-example doesn't disprove the trend. It's like saying but wait, today was 90 degrees out so global warming is a hoax. No, actually it isn't. And yes, your creativity has a lifespan. Flowers wilt. Athletes retire. U2 circles the drain. Why would any of us think ourselves exceptional? Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

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11/9/11

My vote: Hedge Fund Manager
Predicted winner: Fine Art Photographer
Actual winner: Hedge Fund Manager

Wake up, hedge fund managers. Your life amounts to nothing. Of course the other occupations listed aren't adding much to society either. At least not until someone founds Photographers Sans Frontiers. As for most useful occupation, I'd go with Poet or Street Bum. Poet as a reminder of everyday beauty. Street bum as a reminder of class stratification.

Beyond rapture

2011-11-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

When I first encountered Noel Manalili's Rapture project a few days ago (via Conscientious), it seemed vaguely familiar. Why did the name ring a bell? A few minutes of internet digging turned up the suspect, a portfolio of Frank Yamrus portraits I'd seen at Blue Sky in the late 90s also called Rapture.

The projects share more than just a name. The portraits themselves are similar. Here's an example, Manalili (cropped for comparison) on the left, Yamrus on the right.

The person on the left is singing a song to himself. The person on the right is masturbating, on the verge of physical rapture. I made a game for myself out of matching up the projects. Below are some more pairings.

One take-home lesson is that there are multiple avenues to rapture. Personally I know which method above I prefer. I'll take orgasm over singing any day. No brainer. But to each his own.

Of course there are other ways to achieve rapture. Through childbirth, for example.

Washington, DC, 1990, Eugene Richards
Or revival.

from Come Sunday, 1996, Thomas Roma
Or death.

Peter Hujar on his death bed, 1987, David Wojnarowicz
These expressions all share a certain quality but I think it's an open question whether they say something deeper about the person photographed or if they're just fleeting facial gestures. To me they seem comparable to any ephemeral orgasm face, of which the web has no shortage.

The photos above were found on a site subtitled facettes de la petite mort. The similarity to death and other raptures is inescapable. They're quite expressive but not particularly revelatory. In fact I don't think any photo going back to the beginning of this post describes very well the inner life of the person depicted. What they do instead is tell what a certain person is feeling at a particular moment.

Which is fine. I think this is the most we can demand of any portrait. IMO the idea that any single image can describe some universal truth about a person is a fallacy. Maybe 100 or 200 portraits can do that, or a 10 second snippet of film footage. But I think it's very hard if not impossible for a single photo to do that. And after all, that's photography's greatest asset. The inherent limits of the medium —information bound to what's in the frame at a given moment— invite wondrous ambiguities. To look at a photo and not know if the subject is singing or coming, that's a beautiful thing.

Die Boxer, Paul Roderstein, Hein Hesse', Germany, 1928
August Sander
For me this touches on the nature of portraiture and smiling (Also discussed at length here and here). Many portraitists direct their subjects not to smile because they fear the smile will hide the person, just as the rapture in the photos above might be seen to interfere with deeper revelation.

But rapture seems to me more honest. It might hide the person's identity but at least it's a real expression of what they're feeling, which most of the time a smile isn't. Instead of saying "Cheese" maybe people having their portraits done should dream of other things. Childbirth, revival, death, a partner's face. Boxers might dream of past knockouts. A smile might be hard to supress at that point.

Bottom plate auto

2011-11-12T08:36:00.000-08:00

Climbing into the driver's seat of a car designed by Leica:

Photo credit: Kristin McMurry

But this one goes up to 11

2011-11-11T08:31:00.000-08:00

It's not very often that 11-11-11 rolls around. To honor the date I'm shooting today with one aperture only. Do you even have to ask which one?

(photo credit: Compur)
Of course 11-11-11 isn't just an interesting number. It's Veterans Day too. And f/11 isn't just an aperture. It's a Navy warplane.

Up yours, America's imagined foes! We can lick you upside down or sideways until we're blue in the airplane. However you want it.

But seriously, I sincerely thank all veterans for your service and sacrifice. I hope for a future world without veterans, a world in which the job of soldier is rendered obsolete by lasting peace. A world that rises finally to its true potential, a world that goes up to 11.

B -> W Telephone

2011-11-09T07:02:00.001-08:00

Photos by: Hiroshi Sugimoto, John Pfahl, Robert Frank, Marc Riboud, Carolyn Drake, Eugene Atget, Rene Burri, iPad, Thomas Kellner, Eadweard Muybridge, Ray Metzker, Mario Giacomelli, Aaron Siskind

Bench warmers

2011-11-08T08:52:00.001-08:00

Suggested substitute subject matter for photojournalists covering the NBA, now that the Lockout has wiped out the first few months of basketball season:

Basketmaking weave drill

Nonunionized digital avatars

Random forearms with self referential tattoos

Objects falling into nets

World's tallest man

Ballers moonlighting

Fast, gangly wildlife

Alternative court sports

Young whining millionaires

Fans upset over a lost season

B Sides Playing Cards

2011-11-07T12:17:00.000-08:00

With Halloween fading in the rearview the holiday shopping period is just around the corner. In the true spirit of the season I'm pawning merch.

I've produced a set of playing cards featuring some of my photos. They're called B SIDES, and you can purchase them at the bottom of this post. Specs:

• Standard size deck (3.5" x 2.5") contains 52 playing cards plus two jokers.

• Card front features b/w photo visually depicting the face value of the card. Card backs feature TV test screen pattern.

• Photos selected from In-Public, family shots, unseen B Sides and outtakes, and other 35 mm personal favorites.

• Made by Printer Studio, printed on 100% casino quality paper stock. Production quality is excellent.

• First edition limited to 75 decks.

• Includes clear protective case and two handmade 5 x 7 RC photos.

I think of B SIDES as a placeholder for the photo book I haven't yet gotten around to making. In some ways it's even better than a book:

• Inexpensive— A typical photography monograph costs $40+. A pack of B SIDES is $12. That's a $28 dollar savings for every pack bought. Buy 100 and you just made $2800. If you buy enough packs we could both get rich.

• Malleable— A typical photography book is carefully sequenced and meant to be read in one particular order. A pack of B SIDES can be sequenced in 8 x 10^67 ways. Don't like a certain sequence? Just reshuffle.

• Portable— A typical photography book is large, unwieldy, and precious. A pack of B SIDES fits in your pocket, protected by a plastic case.

• Entertaining— When you finish reading a typical photography book, it's done. But when you finish browsing B SIDES you'll find yourself holding a deck of cards. Play games, build card houses, do magic tricks. The possibilities are endless. And when you get tired of card games, Bingo! You've got photos to look at.

• Versatile — Photography books normally appeal only to photo geeks. But B SIDES have multiple appeal. They make a great stocking stuffer for the family shutterbug or the family cardshark.

• • •

Orders accepted now. Cards will begin shipping in late November.

Beer | Camera

2011-11-06T08:07:00.001-08:00

Fore!

2011-11-05T08:31:00.001-07:00

Today marks the fourth trip around the sun for this blog. Time for a bit of self reflection. What's the point? What do I get out of it? What lasting impact might it have? What's it all mean anyway? These are standard questions in any pursuit. The unexamined life, Socrates bla bla bla. Yet it's surprising how seldom they come up in photo blogs. A blog's raison d'être is generally unspoken and assumed. But think about it. You'd never throw a portfolio of photos out into the world without some artist statement to provide context. Why should a blog be any different?

Time for a bit of self reflection
Photoblogger Kirk Tuck addressed some of these issues in a well written post last week. He explained why he started Visual Science Lab, what he gets out of it, and what readers might take from his blog. Before reading that post I'd never paid much attention to VSL but now I've started to tune in. It can be a bit tech-heavy but the natural impetus shines through. It's written by someone who thinks about photography a lot, and the blog is a natural outlet.

Ironically Tuck wrote his post only after he'd quit blogging. Two years into it he realized he devoted many hours every week to something with no financial remuneration. The posts he cared about received few comments, and the gear reviews which he found tiresome received raves. On top of all that were the antagonistic comments from anonymous nitpickers. He didn't need it, so he quit.

That lasted roughly two weeks. That's how long he was on the blog wagon before he fell off again and VSL resumed. A die hard blogger.

If Tuck was being fashionable he wouldn't have restarted. After a banner run in the late 2000s, photoblogs have recently fallen out of style. You don't see too many starting up nowadays as people have migrated to Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook. Meanwhile, several of yesteryear's stalwart photoblogs have gone into remission. Jeff Ladd, Amy Stein, Susana Raab, Rachel Hulin, Tim Atherton, Andrew Stark, the list goes on. I'm not sure if they've officially quit or are on hiatus but either way the silence is deafening.

I can empathize. Every few weeks I swear I'm done. I can't write B forever. Other projects beckon. So I'll quit after the 1000th post, or the new year, or my birthday, or some other arbitrary point in the future. Back in February I came very close but I couldn't quite pull the trigger. So here I am four years after I started, still tied to my digital albatross.

My basic motivation has been the same since the beginning. I am often thinking about photography and I need a place to file those thoughts. So they go into a folder. At any given time this folder contains 5 or 10 rough drafts in various stages of refinement. Occasionally I get off my ass and complete one. I could put these in a private journal, which is what I did until a few years ago. It worked fine. But if I'm going to write this stuff anyway why not share? Get some feedback even.

B's Central African market penetration from 2007 (Q3) to 2011 (Q3) still lags behind industry leaders. Upward revision expected by QE2
This is where you, dear reader, enter the equation. A blog post operates a bit like a photograph. It doesn't become fully activated until it finds its audience. Tuck's essay reveals just how dependent he was on his readership for feedback. In fact it was reader response which caused him to restart VSL. I think many bloggers feel the same. We like to feel like we're somewhat in control, but really it's the forces beyond our control —the readers— who add the spice.

I know there's more to it. Tuck would do what he does regardless of audience. I would too. But it wouldn't be as much fun. A blog becomes most interesting when it's a two way street. I'd even be up for a three-way or a four-way.

All of which is to say that although I may come off as not giving a shit if you comment, I actually do care. If you have feedback, suggestions, reading tips, skincare secrets, and/or life advice, let me know (especially you, Sergei). In any case, I appreciate all readers whether or not they comment. Keep tuning in because I've got some interesting projects in the pipeline assuming I don't quit before I get to them.

Yours,

The sprig and the optimal lag

2011-11-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

True to my 4 month shutter lag, I've finally begun printing some of my sprig pictures from the summer. The problem isn't as bad as I'd expected. In most photos the sprig blends easily into the scene.

Sometimes it's more pronounced but even then it doesn't dominate the photo. If I hadn't told you what it was you might think the sprig below is a leaf in the foreground. Maybe.

Getting a bit more bothersome in the next photo. Still I can live with it. Which is good because I'll have to during the next few weeks of printing.

It's not too hard to remove the sprigs in Photoshop, especially from these low-res web jpgs. The photo below is an example. It had two sprigs. I've removed the one from the lower left corner but kept the other one shaped like a cat.

This method works fine for digital images but removing the sprig from darkroom prints is a pain in the ass. Since that's where I do my printing I'm leaving it in.

As I've hinted above, I don't actually mind it much. I've come to think of it as a sort of beauty mark. What would Madonna or Marilyn Monroe be without their moles? What would wet collodion pictures be without developer stains? It's like a negative ballistic, the way a Hexar leaves a little notch on one side of the frame or a Hasselblad leaves two. When you see these notches you know what camera made the photo. When you see my sprig you know who shot it and when. I suppose I could get the same point across by scratching a big X with a date across every negative but that takes more effort.

Bob Dylan with Suze Rotolo, 1963, Don Hunstein
Photo of the young sprig unearthed after a 45 year lag
(Note ballistic notches on left)
It might seem crazy to wait so long to make prints. After all, wasn't it just such a delay that created the "problem" in the first place? If I did things in a timely manner the sprig never would've endured a month.

But I like waiting. I think lag is healthy, maybe even necessary. Memories interfere with judgment. You have to trick them by delaying. Right now my lag is about 4 months. If I shoot something today, I won't see a print of it until next February. Hopefully by that point when I look through my negatives I won't immediately recognize them. And when that happens, Bingo! I will see them the way others see them. Which is what I want. Which is invaluable.

4 months works ok, but I've been trying to gradually extend that to a year. Right now my shooting slightly outpaces my printing. I shoot around 50 rolls per month and print around 45. If I hold to that pattern, by 2018 my backlog will be one year.

The king of lag, shot by Judy Winogrand in the late 1960s
Actually the optimal backlog is probably longer. Ten years would be great. Twenty even better. But then mortality begins to enter the equation. The thing is I need to wrap all this shit up at some point. Put a bow on it. Which means I can't have 20 years of crap in the production line indefinitely. So my goal is a one year lag, at which point I will equalize my shooting and printing to keep pace with one another.

Or maybe I'll get lucky. 2018 is still far off. I'll be inhaling a lot of darkroom fumes in the interim. Maybe my memory will be so destroyed by then that I won't have to worry. I'll look at yesterday's film and wonder who shot it. If I'm lucky the whole damn photo will look like one big unrecognizable beauty mark.