By the Glow of the Jukebox

My backordered copy of Jason Eskenazi's The Americans List finally arrived a few days ago, and I've been slowly pouring through it. It is a dense book, 83 pages exactly (!) of thick text printed at maybe 4 pt fontsize. I can only do 4 or 5 pages at a time before I get brainfreeze. I know what you're thinking. Ugh! Do we really need another book about The Americans? How many is that now? And how many blog posts? Trust me, none of them are quite like this one. For starters, this one is only a few bucks and fits in a pocket.

Like The Americans, there are all sorts of ways to interpret this little volume. I think Eskenazi's intention is probably as an homage to Frank's book. By getting various photographers to speak about their personal connection to various photographs, the cumulative effect is revelatory. This is the inside dope on The Americans. What makes it tick? What parts do people react to and why? 

As a casual fan I am amazed at how vividly I can recall most of these images. I'm not a huge Frank-o-phile, just your average photojunkie. The Americans isn't even a particular favorite of mine. But its photographs have penetrated photo culture, and even someone like me, to the point where a simple number and description brings to mind pretty much every photo. If I say Trolley, Elevator, or Diner Waitress you all know exactly what I'm talking about. So for just about every photographer, this book is personal.

Nevertheless the stat junkie in me wants to use the book as raw scientific data. Granted, the results aren't strictly scientific. I have no idea how Eskenazi chose his sample pool or which portion responded. But the sheer mammoth feat of polling and compiling all of this data in one place provides a very rich resource. I don't think any poll this large has been conducted before on any photo book, and certainly not one involving so many prominent photographers. Probably the closest example I can think of is Building a Photographic Library published by Texas Photographic Society in 2001. I wrote a little about it back in 2010. That book, also a gold mine of data, compiled lists of favorite photobooks by a wide range of photographers with brief personal descriptions. The runaway choice for most popular book, not surprisingly, was The Americans.  

Data miners will want to pay closest attention to the first 6 pages in The Americans List. This is where Eskenazi lists all of the photographers together with their choices, matched to plate number and brief description. It's an informative data set but also a fairly static one, with no cross-referencing or analysis. But it didn't take long for me to do a simple tabulation of the results. Here are the book's most popular photos, according to Eskenazi's data (276 votes cast):

1. Plate 83 (U.S. 90 en route to Del Rio, Texas)
(28 votes, including Venessa Winship, George Georgeiou, Donald Weber, Christopher Anderson, Jeff Jacobson, and Graciela Iturbide) 

2. Plate 18 (Trolley - New Orleans)
(24 votes, including Paul Fusco, James Nachtwey, and Ed Kashi, Carl de Keyzer, Bruno Barbey, Donna Ferrato, and Wolfgang Zurborn) 

3. Plate 44 (Elevator - Miami Beach)
(16 votes, including Alex Webb, Paolo Pellegrin, Antonin Kratochvil, Juliana Beasley, David Carol, Gerry Badger, and Amy Elkins) 

4. Plate 26 (Hotel window - Butte, Montana)
(15 votes, including Bruce Gilden, Alec Soth, Mark Cohen, Bertien van Manen, and Christian Patterson) 

5. Plate 36 (U.S. 285 - New Mexico)
(12 votes, including Jeff Mermelstein, Bill Owens, Moises Saman, and Richard Sandler) 

6. Plate 35 (Car accident, U.S. 66 - Arizona)
(11 votes, including David Turnley, Alex Majoli, and Jon Lowenstein) 

7. Plate 1 (Parade - Hoboken)
(10 votes, including Eugene Richards, Nikos Ecomopoulous, Ernesto Bazan, Misha Erwitt, and Boogie) 

t8. Plate 13 (Charleston, South Carolina)
(9 votes, including Mary Ellen Mark and Carolyn Drake, ) 

t8. Plate 29 (Bar - Gallup, New Mexico)
(9 votes, including John Vink, Cary Conover, and Anders Petersen) 

t8. Plate 55 (Beaufort, South Carolina)
(9 votes, including Larry Fink and Peter van Agtmael) 

t8. Plate 72 (San Francisco)
(9 votes, including Luc Delahaye, Martin Parr, Charles Traub, Ben Lowy, and Robert Frank himself) 

That's 152 votes for the top 11 photos, leaving the other 72 photos to fight over the remaining 124 votes. Seventeen photos received just one vote and twenty-six received none at all. That's more than half the book which isn't attracting much attention. 

I suppose any random sampling will clump in similar patterns. But I found the wide variation intriguing. Maybe if these results were known to Frank during editing he would've left out the non-memorable ones. Department Store, Lincoln, Nebraska, anyone? Or maybe it's just the opposite. Maybe the non-favorites serve as required filler to balance the strong photos. They're like the 99% of our DNA which is nonfunctional, yet still seems to be vital for some unknown reason.

Here are the voting results in chart form. Reading left to right it's like an EKG of the book's progression, showing which ones excite and which don't. Or maybe it's like the skyline of Manhattan where Frank was living in the 1950s.

I think there are a few things happening here. 

First, I don't think it's any accident that many people chose Plate 83 as their favorite. One, it's a great photograph. It sums up the road trip, shows us Frank's immediate environment, and personalizes all the preceding images. So people would probably remember U.S. 90 wherever it was in the book. But I suspect it's even more memorable simply because it's last. I've written before about final images and how that's a very powerful position in any editing sequence. It's the one that sticks in your mind later, because there's nothing afterward to clear it out of there. If photo books came with palate cleansers like a wine tasting, I'm not sure Plate 83 would garner the same vote tally.

Plate 18 (2nd in voting) also intrigues me. For several editions of the book, this image serves as the cover image, and I think that position probably guarantees it some memorability. Several of the voters who chose this image declined to write about their choice, which leads me to suspect it's a subconscious choice. They've seen the book a lot, that image is always front and center, and when some poll comes along it's the first one that pops into their head. 

My edition (3rd SCALO, 1995) shows Plate 1, Hoboken Parade on the cover (7th in voting), a photo which is also on the cover of Looking In by Sarah Greenough. And of course it is the first photo in the book which probably helps implant it in many brains. I have to say I don't get much out of either of these images (Plates 18 and 1). So maybe I'm just looking for plausible ways to explain their popularity. 

There was a story a few years ago about the lady in Plate 44 (3rd in voting) discovering herself years later in Frank's book. Very touching, and who knows? Maybe it helped propel that image up the rankings a little.

Plate 26 (4th in voting) is one that I've run through the wringer on B. When I first viewed The Americans many years ago, this one gave me the most trouble. Because I couldn't figure out what the heck it was doing there. A damn hotel room window? WTF? It makes more sense now. In fact I think I like it just for that reason, because it's such an unlikely image, especially for that time. When I wrote about it a few years ago I wasn't sure what the story was behind Soth's rephotograph. But now I see that it is Soth's favorite and that he probably sought it out.

I've found myself examining the lists of who voted for which photo and trying to draw some connection between them. Is it a coincidence that Parr and Frank chose the same photo? Or Mark Cohen and Bruce Gilden? Or Fusco and Nachtwey? What joins them? Or is it just a matter of odds?

Oh well. I guess I'm being too analytical. Trying to turn The Americans into a statistics problem isn't going to help me with the book. It's not going to help me pick a favorite. I don't think I could ever do that.

Nineteen to One

The phrase "photographer's photographer" gets thrown around a lot. In the case of Ken Josephson I think it's quite applicable. His photos aren't so much about documenting the world or some conceptual premise. They're about messing with the form itself, playing with ideas in front of the camera just to see what happens. What's real? What's represented? Where is the line? Yeah, I know it's Photo 101 stuff. But Josephson ain't a beginner. In the current show at Hartman, his mastery is indisputable. I think most photographers will find his images just plain entertaining.

Ken Josephson, Chicago, 1959

I think what I find most intriguing is that he turns the emotional requirement of photography on its head. There's a common preconception that the way to make lasting photos is through the heart. You've got to feel something. And express that. And hopefully the viewer feels it too. Again and again, that mantra is drilled into photographers. Find your passion and create photos with emotional resonance. 

Well fuck that! At least some of the time. I've never made photos like that and I don't usually react to them that way. My own photos are 95% mental, and maybe 5% heart. That's just how I'm wired. And judging by his photographs, so is Josephson. His images are more intellectual exercises than tear-jerkers. As I said, he's a photographer's photographer. It's about the image, not necessarily what's in it.

Ken Josephson, Michigan City, Indiana, 1989

It's the type of photography which had a wave of exploration in the Chicago Institute of Design, but which is now considered passé. The Hartman show pulls from Josephson's early career when he was steeped in that aesthetic. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it feels like a bit of cover for us non-emotional types. It's a nice soft blanket of approval saying "It's OK. Don't worry about heart. Make all the mind-fuck pictures you want!" That's a message I don't hear too often.

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One of the pitfalls of curating a group photography exhibition is artistic baggage. There is a certain model for how art photographs should look, and it's one that curators too often slip into. Fifty years ago smallish b/w prints were hot. Lately it's been large well composed wanna-be-paintings. Early Works, currently showing at Newspace, cleverly subverts that dynamic by showing photographs which hold no pretense to being art. The authors are simply kids having fun with cameras.

Roger Ballen, Man, Dog, and Bird, 1969, from Early Works

The mixing of high and low is a hot field now, with various troves of found photos and online archives being reconsidered and recycled. Maybe there no longer is any high and low? What sets the Newspace show apart from your average found photo collection is that many of the photographers have gone on to establish careers in the field. The show offers a peek at their early development. It doesn't take much imagination to connect these primal visual impulses to later work. A little more imagination completely severs them. And yet still more imagination brings up a blue donkey smoking a cigarette in a diner, at least in my mind.

Each photo is accompanied by a few paragraphs from the photographer explaining the background. Kid versions of What Was He Thinking? Many of the stories are quite heavy, involving divorce, death, and other memorable childhood experiences. They serve as emotional counterweight to the casual snapshot. Just when the viewer is lulled into a false sense of infatuation with photos as cold documents, these pictures remind one that it's emotion that counts in photography more than intellect. Photos are 95% heart and 5% mental. That's just how they're wired, regardless of what you might read elsewhere.

Michael Jang, Willie Mays, 1960, from Early Works

The actual pieces are small reproductions of old snapshots dug out from albums. Tears, folds, and tack-holes are reproduced as faithfully as the rest of the image. Even though these aren't the originals they have a nice tactile quality. Since most photographs are no longer physically printed, this type of show will be impossible to curate 40 years from now. Or at least it will look very different. This is the first curatorial collaboration between Photolucida's powerhouse Lauras --Moya and Valenti Jelen-- since they joined forces in 2012. It's an early work and a promising debut. 

Was There Then

Put your name and date on everything. That's the first lesson every kindergartener learns in school. Drawings, writing, scratch marks, pinecone Santas, they all get labeled. Kids are taught to do this because name and date are essential in understanding any piece of content. And hopefully it's a habit that remains with them for life. If that pinecone Santa ever makes it into a retrospective, viewers are going to want to know who made it. And more importantly, when.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

This will come as no surprise to those in the art world. Generally when you see something on display in a gallery or museum, a label identifies the creator and date. Sometimes it contains other info too, but it will almost always include at least that much. 

It's the same with books. Page one lists the author's name and date of publication. And with albums, and statues in the park, and Guinness world records, and anything worth reading online, and so on. And photography is no exception.

I think there's a general sense that the artist's name is the most critical piece of information in assessing a photo. If you're buying photography as an investment it probably is. It's not necessarily about what's in the frame. If it was made by X or Y artist it's worth something. And that mentality carries through most of photographic history. When history books are written, they're usually organized by specific photographers. So-and-So did X, then another person did Y, etc. 

But for me date is even more important than name. With all art this is true, but especially with photography. Because time is integral to the form. Every photo is locked into a specific moment. If I show you a photo and tell you it was made last year you will understand it in a certain way. If I then say that it was actually made 50 years ago, your interpretation may change radically. 

Keizo Kitajima, USSR 1991

Often a photograph's appearance dates itself. Looking through Keizo Kitajima's USSR 1991, for example, the title is a bit superfluous. The images feel like 1991. The way the people dress and look, and the buildings, and the style and tonal quality of the photography has an early 90s feel. You can see how relabeling these photos 1965 or 2011 might skew how they are viewed. I think today's Instagram photos have some of that same quality. When we look them in 40 years or so they will scream 2013 in ways we can't even notice now.

Sometimes works come along that seem confusing. Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon too early. The world wasn't ready for it in 1907. Looking back, it's pretty clear that the painting was ahead of its time. It probably belonged in 1920 or later. Oh well. Leave it to an   artist to fuck with history. I think Ed Ruscha's early books have some of that same quality. They look like books that could've been published last year.

You can see how date might be more important than name. To say something is "ahead of its time" is considered a complement. To say it "looks like so-and-so's work" is not. 

Sometimes the evil powers that be try to thwart this logic. It's common in the music industry to see albums rereleased under a recent date, with little or no mention of the original recording date. According to my iTunes library Tyrannaosaurus Rex's Unicorn came out in 2012, not 1969. Tragic Songs of Life by the Louvin Brothers? 2011, not 1956. Of course one can find the original release dates with just a little research. But in today's online world I suspect that doesn't always happen. The new date is swept up into the rest of the production info and becomes part of the work. 

Complete Bullshit

When I mix songs for my radio show I usually aim to have no obvious connection between any two consecutive songs. I want the show to be the antithesis of despicable Pandora. And the easiest way to do that? Mix up the dates. If there's a 20 year gap between songs I can generally count on them sounding different. Of course other things go into it too --any song by Beefheart or from 1973 will usually sequence well in any context-- but that's the starting point. So when record producers erase history my task is harder.

Can you imagine if the same thing happened in photography? What if someone took a Dorothea Lange's photo, printed a nice new inkjet, and slapped a 2013 label on it? I suppose Sherry Levine tried something similar with Walker Evans, but that was more reappropriation than redating. In fact sometimes a rerelease will be a radically new interpretation. If it's a music album it might include outtakes or remixes. In the photo world, photobook reprints often include a new essay or new edit of the work. In these cases by all means, supplement the old with with a new one. But don't replace it! 

I'm kind of anal. When I encounter any piece of creative content, I immediately check the date, and if it's not included for some reason I can't proceed. In the online world that's sometimes a problem. I had a difficult time processing this recent (?) article about Tom Wood, for example, because it had no date. And I encounter probably at least one article per day like that, hovering in undated limbo. But those incidents tend to be the exception more than the rule. Most web content includes a date. Not all but most. 

Hwy 2, Washington, July 2012, 2 weeks ago

The trend I see more and more is backdating. Instead of being labeled with a simple year or month, content is often described by how old it is. 2h or 6d, or 3 months. This is the method of Facebook, Twitter, Feedly and much of Tumblr. 

I suppose I can't complain too much, since at least this offers some time-based context. But the mentality behind it seems to arise from the same lazy muck of record producers and teen solipsists, and maybe Ram Dass. The only thing that matters is here and now, and screw any historical understanding. The unwritten corollary is that as things age they become less important. In the Twitterverse anything older than 3h is considered irrelevant.

I've been through my hippie stage. I can Be Here Now when it's required. But that doesn't mean tossing out the lessons of Kindergarten. Date is key. 

When all else fails...

Tintin and Batman take stock of Kawauchi