Some Thoughts on the Image Stream by Tom Griggs on fototazo

Last week Tom Griggs posted an essay titled, Navigating the Stream - Part I on his blog fototazo, which is sure to be followed up with another insightful and thought provoking essay dealing with the many issues surrounding the ever-shifting nature of photographs in an on-line environment. He concludes Part I with an important distinction between the relatively thoughtless manner of gathering and disseminating images and more carefully considered and challenging presentation strategies.  

He writes,  "I’m talking about the encroaching idea of posting image after unconnected image on Tumblr or wherever as an “artist” and never moving to make something with the images beyond that....ever.  Selecting, editing and curating your work creates meaning and moves photography beyond the superficial, beyond just the aesthetic..."

You can read Griggs' full essay HERE.

A Well Deserved Return to Philip-Lorca diCorcia's "Hustlers"

I was pleased to come across this today on Conscientious.  I'm in agreement with most, if not all, of what Colberg has to say.  I've long admired diCorcia's work, and especially this series.  You can read the essay HERE.  I highly recommend it.

Image Credit:  Philip-Lorca diCorcia (Sourced from:  Conscientious)

Opposing Perspectives on Jimmy Nelson's Project, Before They Pass Away

Image Credit:  The Maori, New Zealand. © Jimmy Nelson BV Courtesy teNeues. (Sourced from feature shoot)

I came across an article extolling the power of Jimmy Nelson's portrait series, Before They Pass Away, on the blog feature shoot last week.  I have mixed feelings about this work, and was immediately a bit put off by the overly slick, commercial feel of the images.  But, I was more bothered by the assertion that this work served to "document the last remaining indigenous people of the world." (See the article, Powerful Photos of Vanishing Indigenous People Across the Globe, by clicking HERE.)

I had a suspicion that it wouldn't be hard to find an article that was critical of Nelson's approach, and came across a thoughtful essay on Salon by Elissa Washuta, "The Wrongheaded Obsession with 'Vanishing' Indigenous People." Washuta makes a number of strong points about the work and rightly questions the romanticized aesthetic in relation to the artists "predefined notion of indigenous authenticity, which doesn't align with the realities that have faced indigenous communities since time immemorial" (Washuta).  

I encourage those interested in this work, or in representations of indigenous communities in general, to read over both articles and think carefully about Washuta's suggestion that, 

"Nelson’s evaluation of communities during his lifetime fails to account for the flux experienced over thousands of years. Too often, onlookers expect indigenous peoples to remain static for the entirety of their existence, failing to consider their long histories of change before contact with outsiders."

Narrating War

Such is the title of an upcoming exhibition/program at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.  Students in Photo II might find interest in this considerate approach to the content of war, especially as it relates to our recent reading in the Wells text on traditions of documentary, historically and now.

Image Credit:  Krieg erzählen | Foto: Sebastian Bolesch (sourced from HKW)

Below is an excerpt from the press release on E-Flux:  

In Narrating War, Haus der Kulturen der Welt deliberately does not take the great catastrophes of the 20th century as its point of reference. Rather, it places conflicts of the recent past and the present at the center, from the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia to the wars in the Middle East, in the Gaza Strip and in Syria. The year 2014 marks not only the centenary of the start of the First World War, but also the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. And, not least, it is the year in which Germany will begin to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. How are the stories of these wars told today? And what is kept silent? Who is allowed to speak, and what fissures, gaps, formulas, and clichés arise when they do?

Reporting, the ur-technique of dealing with information, is not a neutral process. It smooths out and filters, abbreviates and expands on its subject. What formats in texts, pictures, and films are suitable for conveying extreme experiences in war? At what cost? Why do objectifying reports so often fail, and why do so many reporters choose subjective perspectives? Narrating War brings together war correspondents and photographers, editors and academics, soldiers and human rights activists, filmmakers and witnesses from war zones and conflict areas. In roundtables, in panels, and one-on-one, the participants will discuss doubts and fears, errors and the unspoken, coincidences and taboos—the “making of” behind professional reporting which normally remains hidden from news consumers. The discussions will be complemented and contrasted by readings by actors and a selection of extraordinary documentary films put together and commented on. 

Darren Campion on Thomas Albdorf

Much of this article should resonate for students in Photo II in relation to our (all too brief) conversation on theoretical frameworks of/for photography.  Writing about the works of Albdorf, Campion suggests:

"However disparate these works may initially appear, concerned as they are with various sorts of photographic production, the sum of what Albdorf has created is a study of the medium that can grapple with its diverse and often contradictory uses. As photography does not submit to a unified aesthetic identity, any response to the sort of questions being asked here will necessarily have to contend with that characteristic evasiveness. If assuming that he is solely engaged with the investigation of photography as such is perhaps to define Albdorf’s work too narrowly – and indeed to misunderstand the wider consequences of photographic representation – reading across his various projects, it seems instead that they are a sustained effort to build a composite image of photography as a means of making the world visible, with each advance being a part of the whole. Albdorf’s diverse approach is ideally situated to untangle the mesh of possibilities that make photography what it is – and which, in turn, determine how it is used."

You can read the full article HERE.

And, to see more of Albdorf's work, click HERE.

Image Credit:  Thomas Albdorf, from the series Former Writer (Sourced from paper-journal.com)

Photography, and Art, and the Archive

Nice little article with loads of nice links to recent exhibitions and individual artists dealing with the archive in their work in Artspace yesterday (How the Artworld Caught Archive Fever).  Not surprisingly, photographs play a pretty central role in much (but not all) of this work.  I hadn't heard about Ryan Trecartin's staged portraits for W magazine until just now - pretty interesting...

"Even amateur archivists today have a overload of information to choose from thanks to the democratizing power of the Internet, making available everything from Google search results to streetviews and satellite images from around the planet to books and academic archives like JSTOR—a limitless trove of raw material that is enthusiastically incorporated into projects by artists like Ryan Trecartin and Jon Rafman, who make its provenance clear in their work. (Both artists appeared in the 2012 exhibition “The Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age” at the Bushwick experimental art space 319 Scholes.)

For Trecartin’s Web 1.0: A Lossless Fall, for instance, he staged four portraits for W magazine in 2010 using extensive Internet research to completely restylize the images, for instance digitally superimposing an Acura steering wheel on a model's face, coloring one eye the hues of the Brazilian flag, and giving him a hairstyle ("ankle length micro braids") found on a hair site—all with images sourced from the Web." - From Artspace, Jan. 22, 2014

A detail from Ryan Trecartin's 2010 W magazine photos - Sourced from Artspace

And, Speaking of War (Photography)

After posting a link to WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY at The Brooklyn Museum over the weekend, as often happens, I came across an article that certainly resonated with the issues brought forth in that exhibition.  It's actually a conversation between Iain Boal and Julian Stallbrass on the eitherand blog (highly recommended, by the way).  They pick apart quite a few historic and contemporary images, addressing the issues around the making and dissemination of photographs from conflict zones.  I was particularly interested in their initial discussion of an image (and a person) that has come to be known as the "Marlboro Marine" - one very likely recognized by many.  Digging into the story around this image (and of the human being depicted) is illuminating.  Below is a screenshot of an image search of the term "Marlboro Marine" - interesting in-and-of-itself.

I was pleased that the work of late photographer, Tim Hetherington was also referenced in the article, as his worked crossed over the museum/commercial space in pretty interesting way with his Sleeping Soldiers multi-channel video piece as well as the commercially released, Restrepo.

Their conversation also turned to a mention of Roland Barthes' analysis of the Paris Match magazine cover from Mythologies which then led me to think about a video piece made by Vincent Meessen which takes the (now) mythical picture described by Barthes as its point of departure.  And then, this line of thinking led me to think of other artists dealing with the imagery of militarization in more conceptual modes, such as Harun Farocki (and Trevor Paglen, who is mentioned in the conversation between Boal and Stallbrass).

• To read the conversation in eitherand.org, click HERE.

• To read about and view Meessen's video, Vita Nova, click HERE.

• To read about Harun Farocki's exhibition Images of War (At a Distance) at MOMA, click HERE.

Hyperallergic's Take on WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY at The Brooklyn Museum

Interesting write-up on the exhibition mentioned in Photo II the other day by Betsy.

Henri Huet, “The body of an American paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border is raised up to an evacuation helicopter, Vietnam” (1966, printed 2004), gelatin silver print, 13⅜ x 8⅝ in (34 x 22.4 cm), The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase (© Associated Press) - Image Sourced from Hyperallergic

"For more than a century and a half, America’s wars have taken place somewhere else. Over the past decade, flagged-draped caskets have returned and families have grieved. Yet less than one percent of the nation’s population has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, so this pain is well quarantined; the rest of us know about the widows and amputees because we’ve seen the pictures. It’s nowhere near enough knowing, but if you look unguarded it’s really too much."

Click HERE to read the article in Hyperallergic, and click HERE to link to the Brooklyn Museum's page on the exhibition.

Another (digital) take on Robert Frank's, The Americans

I was just made aware of what I believe is a new project by Sherwin Tibayan based on The Americans via In the In-Between blog.  I'm initially pretty interested in this project, but with a bit of hesitation.  I did especially enjoy reading the artist's narrative discussing their very personal experience with Frank's seminal book. 

Image Credit:  Sherwin Tibayan (sourced from In the In-Between)

I'll have to come back to it to see whether my thoughts change, as they have regarding Mishka Henner's rendition (I've grown much fonder of these spare, abstractions over time - they remain true to the quiet, lonely quality or the originals, in many ways).

Image Credit:  Mishka Henner (sourced via mishkahenner.com)

Richard Tuschman's Hopper Meditations

There's been a bit of a lull here, but time to get posting items of interest again as I've got a brand new batch of fantastic students for the spring semester. Photo II students might find particular interest in this series by Richard Tuschmann, as it relates so nicely to their first assignment exploring color, light and narrative.  

From the series, Hopper Meditations by Richard Tuschman (image sourced from Explorers.com)

I came across these images yesterday when they come through my newsfeed via the Art Photo Index (a great resource).  I was immediately captivated by Tuschmann's take on Edward Hopper's painterly style - although, after a more prolonged look, I'm not sure how I feel about the somewhat pictorialist strategy employed, which seems to be unnecessarily used.  The selective focus (or post-processing blur?) calls too much attention to itself and the grainy quality reads as a bit of heavy-handed filter use (it could indeed be scanned film grain, but I'm noticing it in a way that makes it a bit distracting to me).

Overall, they just seem a bit too "arted up."  I recognize that Tuschmann is deliberately aligning these works with paintings, but for me they may be stronger without all the extra, stylistic artifice (the fabricated scenes, set design, positioning of figures and theatrical lighting in and of themselves are where the strength of the work really seems to lie).

Speaking of narrative(s)....

Two pretty interesting exhibition press releases came across my desk today from E-flux.  Worth a glance, to be sure.

Kelani Abass, Olori Nlado, from the “Calendar” series, 2013. Corrugated cardboard, laminated print & acrylic on canvas, 99 cm x 122 cm. Courtesy the artist.

Kelani Abass
Àsìkò: Evoking Personal Narratives and Collective History
www.ccalagos.org

Huseyin Bahri Alptekin, Self-Heterotopia, Catching Up with Self, 2009. Photo: Peter Cox.

Once Upon a Time… The Collection Now
www.vanabbemuseum.nl

Video/Photo Exhibition in Germany Explores Constructions of Self/Identity

Johanna Reich, Kassandra, 2008. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2013. Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt.

Per Speculum Me Video

Frankfurter Kunstverein

www.fkv.de

A press release on e-flux describes the exhibition as bringing together,

"works by nine artists who explore the construction of the self in contemporary video art and photography. Sounding like a long-forgotten magical spell, the Latin title of the exhibition underscores that self-perception and the development of the ego are coupled with the recognition of one’s own image in the mirror.

Closed-circuit installations and self-portraits have always played a central role throughout the 50-year history of video art, as a reflection on the standpoint of the viewer or as an epistemic question of identity. Today, the daily production and dissemination of moving self-portraits have become the norm in everyday life and in social networks. As a result, new questions have emerged for many video artists surrounding the visual constitution of a subject or its counterpart as well as the perception of the self in a moving image. The exhibited art works therefore offer deciphering gazes at the self and its mirror image."

Participating artists: Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Martin Brand, Manuela Kasemir, Sabine Marte, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Barbara Probst, Johanna Reich, Eva Weingärtner and Gilda Weller

Curated by Holger Kube Ventura

The exhibition is part of the B3 Parcours.

Rebecca Norris Webb @ Southeast Museum of Photography

Rebecca Norriw Webb, Badlands

REBECCA NORRIS WEBB
My Dakota

"In 2005, I set out to photograph my home state of South Dakota, a sparsely populated frontier state on the Great Plains with more buffalo, pronghorn, coyotes, mule deer, ring-necked pheasants, and prairie dogs than people. It's a landscape dominated by space and silence and solitude, by brutal wind and extreme weather. I was trying to capture a more intimate and personal view of the West. I was trying to capture what all that space feels like to someone who grew up there. A year into the project, however, everything changed. One of my brothers died unexpectedly. For months, one of the few things that eased my unsettled heart was the landscape of South Dakota. It seemed all I could do was drive through the badlands and prairies and photograph. I began to wonder: Does loss have its own geography?" - Rebecca Norris Webb
  
October 18, 2013 - February 2, 2014
 
Artist Talk, Book Signing and Opening Reception:
Friday, October 18, 6:00-8:00 pm

Southeast Museum of Photography  
1200 W. International Speedway Blvd.
Daytona Beach, FL 32114

Click HERE for more information.

50 Great Works of Video Art...

...that you can watch online.  I absolutely LOVE it when my students direct me to such useful spaces on the internet (thank you, Haley Bowen).  As the article says, "This collection should serve as a compact introduction to video art for anyone who’s uninitiated or a handy compilation for anyone who loves the medium but has some trouble finding the good stuff online."

Click HERE to access the page with video links.

Final post in fototazo's "How to Start a Project"

Mark Steinmetz

...and it's a good one.  Photographer Mark Steinmetz suggests that,

"people like to justify to themselves that the work they are doing is valid and it seems natural to use words to tell yourself that what you are doing is important and meaningful. But it’s important to not to too narrowly define what you’re doing through the use of language. People want to feel like they have a grip on things and so using words to make sense of what you’re doing might provide a feeling of relief and control but be careful you don’t make your project less interesting by having it fit neatly into a scheme of words. Images have a power that is different from the power of words and they communicate in ways that words cannot. In today’s culture, words dominate our thinking and, used in a lazy manner, they help sustain a spectrum of fundamentalist thought. Being able to accept ambiguity leads to a better quality of life and better work."

Click HERE to read the full essay.