Fortes #4

Two photographers in their own words

"...Secondarily, the geometric patterns of home and community begin to take on an archetypal quality which imbues the image with a charge which derives its potency from the precarious balance of the human and the familiar, with the disturbing otherness of the austere or baroque abstraction of those familiar elements..."

— Jeff Krolick describing his project Elemental Neighborhood in the current F-Stop Magazine

"...The actual moment of my discovering toy camera photography was a fairly prosaic one. I saw a hand written flyer, made a phone call, met a man on the north side of town who claimed to be holding and we made the exchange beneath a purple sky in a Circle K parking lot. It was a small cardboard package, plastic wrapped goods, smelling slightly of laudanum and black earth. Cost me ten dollars. A dime bag. And it was highly addictive..."

— Gordon Stettinius recounting his early Holga days in a blog post 2/22/9

I know which statement I find more inviting. How about you?

Teachable moment? Binh there, Danh that

Photographers in Eugene should make a note to see Binh Danh's talk this Friday, June 5th, 3 pm at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum. The lecture coincides with Danh's current photography show at the museum featuring his brilliant daguerreotypes and several chlorophyll prints using a unique process that Danh invented. I've signed up for Danh's daguerrotype workshop on Saturday. I have no idea what to expect which guarantees that it'll be interesting. The workshop is booked but observers are welcome to watch from the sidelines.

(6/4/9 Addendum: Bob Keefer has a review of Danh's show in this morning's Register Guard)

Angkor Wat, 2008, Daguerreotype by Binh Danh
Courtesy of the artist and Haines Gallery/San Francisco

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Speaking of Eugene photo shows, the censorship bug infected our sometimes smallminded town last week. A proposed photography show at a local elementary school was cancelled Saturday because it included an image of a transgender person.

Tobi Hill-Meyer, the transgendered subject of the photo in question
I may be fairly libertarian when it comes to censorship but I agree there are boundaries. Some types of images are inappropriate for a school setting. Photographs of weapons or conflict, racial disparagement, or hardcore porn are a few that come to mind.

I don't think a portrait of a transgender person belongs in the same category. Transexuality is part of the world. It's not evil or good on its own, but it's out there and we may as well recognize it. The main reason to object to such a photo seems to be that it is exotic material which might cause kids to raise uncomfortable questions about sexuality. Parents want to reserve for themselves the right to introduce such subjects, so they cancelled the show.

My hunch is that any parent who objects to such material in their school is unlikely to introduce it at home. Can you imagine the scene at the dinner table? "So, Johnny, sit down a minute. Did I ever tell you about cross dressing and sex changes?" Sorry but it ain't gonna happen.

A primary opportunity for such a kid to be exposed to those issues in a positive setting —unlike violence, racism, drugs, or porn which every kid will encounter in their own sweet time— is probably at school. That's what makes the decision to pull the show so disappointing. Puritan censors can put another notch in their belt while the rest of us parents can focus on raising responsible exhibitionists.

Fortes #3

Rephotographing Marten

My Shore post has gotten me thinking lately about rephotography, so I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon Michael Marten's show Sea Change last week at Blue Sky in Portland. Marten is a one-man rephotography project. He records scenes along the British coast like this one:

Perrenporth, Cornwall, Michael Marten
After an interval, he comes back to shoot the site from the exact same vantage point. Here is the above site rephotographed.

Perrenporth, Cornwall, Michael Marten
These two photos look so different that you might think they were shot years apart but in fact they were shot on consecutive days, the first at high tide and the second at low tide. Here are some more examples from the show:

Grain, Kent. Low water 5 pm, high water 1 pm
20 and 21 February 2008, Michael Marten
Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall. High water 4:30 pm, low water 2 pm
25 and 31 August 2007, Michael Marten
Lynmouth, Devon. Low water 12:45 pm, high water 7:30 pm
17 September 2005, Michael Marten
High tide. Low tide. Martin's schtick is simple but it doesn't wear thin. I found each pair of photos fully entertaining. There is a lot going on in each individual shot, but the real fun is in moving back and forth between the two searching for shared or missing landmarks. I think one of the great pleasures of rephotography is that it provides its own context. In a normal photo the viewer needs to fill in a lot of information on their own, but in a pair of rephotographed images each photo gives information about the other. We can look back and forth noting the similarities and changes. What stays the same over time and what has shifted?

With Marten's photos the emphasis is on change. Looking at his work I found it incredible how radically a scene can change over just a few hours. Marten's subtle use of color and atmosphere reinforce the dissimilarity, as in this pairing:

Perranporth, Cornwall. Low water 12 noon, high water 8 pm
29 and 30 August, 2007, Michael Marten
Blue Sky's show was the first public display of Sea Change. It's scheduled to go to Italy next. If that's too far to travel, many of the images can be seen on Marten's website.