Continuing an earlier stream of thought...

As promised, below are urination photos submitted by readers. Thanks to everyone who sent in images.

Matt Roth

Justin Cook (via Peter Earl McCollough)

Michael Morris

Craig Semetko (via Stu Egan)

Ellen Jong (via Microcord)

Robert Doisneau (via Hernan Zenteno)

Luc Rabaey

Ben Levine

Chris Bentley

Krass Clement (via Zisis Kardianos)

Hernan Zenteno

Mezz Davies

Stan Banos

Emmet Gowin (via Stan Banos)

I Love Lucy

Text from Parr by Parr, pg. 38. Artwork by Charles M. Schulz.

The end of photobooks

This conversation has gotten me started thinking about the end of photobooks. Not The End, but how certain books end. One passage in particular caught my attention:

Colberg: Just in general, for you what makes a good photobook? If you think about your favourite photobooks what is it that you like about them?

Meeks: This is subjective, of course, but a book has to be tightly edited. But for me the most important thing is that it has an open-ended quality, that it doesn’t feel like you close the book, and it’s somehow resolved.

I'd been spending a lot of time with Iowa recently, so when I read this I immediately thought of that book. The final image is pretty memorable just because it is so different from what comes before.

White Sky · Chauncey, Ohio · 1976
Talk about open ended! I think that qualifies.

It got me wondering, what about other well-known books? How do they finish?

On the one hand it's a superficial question. There's more to a book's lasting impact than the final image. Still, I think the last photo often carries extra weight. When you come home from a concert you don't remember the 5th song (deadheads not included), you remember the encore. For me it's the same with photo books. The last thought is the one we're left with, and presumably the photographer or book designer plans accordingly. So what can we learn from those images?

Probably the most famous final photo is the last image in The Americans. In one fell swoop it sums up Frank's months on the road while putting his own very personal imprint on the entire project.

US 90 en route to Del Rio Texas, 1955, Robert Frank
Frank derived much of his inspiration from Walker Evans, not only in terms of documentary style but in his careful attention to sequencing and editing. Frankly the final shot in American Photographs has never resonated with me. It looks like a photo you might see at a state fair. But I know its placement must be no accident. What was Evans thinking?

Tin Relic, 1930, Walker Evans
The last image of Immediate Family sticks with me as much because of its caption as the image itself. It puts the cap on things while dredging up all sorts of new thoughts.

The Last Time Emmett Modeled Nude, 1987, Sally Mann
Maybe Mann had Exiles in mind? Its final photo has a similar structure to the Emmett shot. The last image in Koudelka's book seems to hint at the future direction of his photography, away from Gypsies and toward Chaos.

from Josef Koudelka's Exiles
While the last photo in The New West shows where we're all headed eventually.

Pioneer Cemetery. Near Empire, Robert Adams
Or perhaps we'll just wind up as piles of bones, like the last photo in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. This photo works well but it's hard to know how intentional its end position was, since Ballad is basically the printed version of an ongoing slideshow with no firm ending.

Skeletons Coupling, New York City, 1983, Nan Goldin
Goldin's photo makes a good companion to the final image in The Animals. I have to say I find this photo pretty boring. There are so many classic images in that book and he chose this one? Knowing Winogrand he may not have paid much attention. His life was more a stream of photos than of individual projects. Maybe with this photo he's saying it could've ended with any one of them, and it did, though no one knows which one exactly.

New York, 1969, Garry Winogrand
The final image in Eggleston's Guide is typical Eggleston. It's so banal it almost seems meaningless. Yet I've always found this picture loaded and menacing. Peaked hoods in the south creep me out. I wouldn't make this my last image before bedtime.

Near Jackson, Mississippi, 1970, William Eggleston
Maybe the last picture in Social Graces would work better. It closes the door on a warm upbeat note.

Pat Sabatine's Twelfth Birthday, Larry Fink
American Prospects? Not so upbeat. But if Sternfeld was forecasting the decline of empire back in 1983, his prediction has proven fairly accurate.

Kansas City, 1983, Joel Sternfeld
If any book manages to capture that post-decline zeitgeist it's Sleeping By the Mississippi. For such a symbolically loaded book it ends on a surprisingly literal note. The last photo below is one of only two in the book depicting a bed and the title river.

Venice, Louisiana, 2002, Alec Soth
I can't tell how Friedlander's Self Portrait finishes. In my 1997 copy it's with this photograph.

Canyon de Chelly, 1983, Lee Friedlander
But I know that isn't the original ending. It's too recent. Perhaps the next-to-last photo below used to be the finale? Or did he rearrange the entire book? Hopefully someone with a copy of the first edition can chime in here.

Haverstraw, NY, 1966, Lee Friedlander
I've got the same problem with The Decisive Moment. I have no idea what the last photo in that book is because it's impossible to find, even in most libraries. There used to be a website faithfully depicting every page in the book but it's been pulled, presumably under legal pressure. Excuse my rant but this situation is completely ridiculous!! One of the most important books ever made and few people know exactly what's in it. Pardon my French hero but that's fucked up.

What's that? You want to hear Sgt. Pepper's? Sorry, but the only way to listen to that album is to pay $3000 for an original pressing of the LP. Take my word for it, it ends with a bang not a whimper.

I think I'm going to make my own HCB ending. Every day for the next week this post will conclude with a new HCB shot. Maybe it will change the dynamics of the entire post. Maybe not. Either way you're bound to find the last image more memorable than whatever that 5th photo was.

from Portfolio magazine no. 3, "Cartier-Bresson in the Orient"

Belgium, 1931, HCB

World's Fair, Brussels, 1958

Matera, Italy, 1971

Photo by John Loengard

San Francisco, 1960

Egypt, 1950 (the last image in The Decisive Moment)

Just add a little knows Greece

Alexandros Konstantinakis-Karmis has turned the tables on me and conducted a What Was He Thinking? profile about some of my photographs. There's one small catch. It's written in Greek. Hope that isn't an obstacle for anyone. Enjoy.

Pissed

I've been photographing for years and using public urinals for even longer, but until recently I'd never had any luck combining the two pursuits. Finally a few weeks ago I made what I consider to be my first successful (insert your definition here, here, or here) photograph of a urinal.


I could tell you what was happening but it's probably better if I don't. Suffice to say I was waiting in line to pee and there he was. I wasn't nervous taking the photo. It had to be taken, so I did it.

That's not usually the case. Usually in public urinals I find it very hard to make photographs. There's always that question hanging over you. What are you going to say to someone who confronts you? Some photographic mumbo jumbo about magical light and mirrors and toilet forms? Something about punctums maybe? Trust me, it won't fly. Taking a photo of an unzipped stranger is a good way to get a fat lip.

That's why a lot of my urinal photos look more like Matt Bialer's below, shot in a nervous hurry.


Don't get me wrong, this is a great shot. But it's not a calm one. The angst of the photographer has seeped into the timing, and in fact it's part of the photo's power. What if he gets caught?

Despite the difficulties, some have succeeded. My alltime favorite urinal shot is by Nils Jorgensen.


The toilet forms are beautiful, not to mention the gorgeous drum and guitar. If confronted Jorgensen might plausibly use them as cover. "They had to be photographed," he might say, and he'd be right. Maybe that would work and maybe not, but even if that explanation resulted in a fat lip it would be worth it for that shot.

Of course, as Elliott Erwitt has shown, a lot of public peeing occurs outside of urinals, outside of buildings even.

Western U.S., 1954, Elliott Erwitt
Sometimes all it takes is a dead-end alley.

Ireland, 1976, Josef Koudelka
Or a picturesque summit.

The Three Graces, 1994, Sally Mann
A row of porta-potties can provide some shelter.

The Stralsund harbor, 1997, Stalsund, East Germany, Leonard Freed
Or a simple subway wall.

Japan, 1977, Elliott Erwitt
Freed and Erwitt are just the tip of the Magnum iceberg, so to speak. Many of their colleagues have also taken on the urinal challenge, with varied success.

O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, IL, 1997, Martin Parr
Will Rogers State Beach, Los Angeles, 2000, Jim Goldberg
Calcutta, India, Raghu Rai
Byblos Discoteque, Riccione, Italy, 1996, Alex Majoli
But the king of public urination photos has to be Magnum's Peter Marlow, who seems to have a particular fascination with bodily excretions. His Magnum portfolio contains everything from public urinal shots,

London Beer Fest, 1979, Peter Marlow
To band photos,

Members of the Prague rock band, 'The Plastic People,' on tour, Czechoslovakia, Peter Marlow
To handheld closeups.

The Rencontres d'Arles, 2004, Peter Marlow
Is there nothing he won't photograph? To be honest I've taken some version of that first-person peeing shot many times. Don't act so shocked. You know you've done it too, if you're a hard-core male street photographer. It's an inevitable byproduct of carrying a camera everywhere and needing to pee several times per day. Luckily it only takes one hand to operate each instrument simultaneously. And the bonus is it's the one type of urination shot that's unlikely to result in a fat lip. If someone confronts you, you get to ask them what they were looking at.

Unfortunately it's hard to make this type of shot really work. The tendency of pee is toward uniformity. If you've seen one first-person piss shot you've seen them all. And if by some chance you haven't seen them all, there's always the next pee break.


Addendum 4:30 PM: After reading this post, Richard Bram sent along the following lovely photo he shot while living in Kentucky:


I may regret doing this, but if anyone else wants to send me their favorite (tasteful) urinating photos, either your own or by others, go ahead and email them to me. If I get enough good ones I'll publish them in a future post.

Addendum, 2/21/11: Last night I went to see Yo La Tengo at the WOW Hall downtown. I hadn't paid much attention beforehand to the full bill but when I arrived at the show it turned out the opener was none other than The Urinals, a seminal band from the early LA punk scene which is still very much alive and kicking. The Urinals were awesome! And of course so was Yo La Tengo, and yes I took some photos in the men's room during a set break. Strange the twists life takes...