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next year in toyko
Dean Kaufman, "Fly"
This is my favorite series of the past few months. These photos remind me of the look you get using a Kisekae—they're very, very soft. The flat processing creates a literally hazy mood, which is almost enough to make you forget how painful an experience flying can be.
A gift especially for you
An artist statement which appears to be written by a live, warm, human being. We knew it was possible!
I took this picture at the childhood home of Hank Williams, Sr. This was his boyhood bed, though the curtains were posthumously donated to the home (it's now a little museum/shrine). The curtains were handmade and show the lyrics and music to the song "Your Cheatin' Heart." There's a really wonderful lady who tends to the home and the souvenirs and things. Also, once a year out back, they have a concert of people singing like Hank Sr.
Some amateur photoblogs
A highly readable type of photography blog comes from Asia, in the form of amateur photography blogs. Many of the ones I've found are hosted on free services, with default layouts that make for a breath of fresh air. Although Google Reader has a built-in translation function—you do use Google Reader, right?—the thoughts contained in the writing become pretty obscure by the end.
Still, these blogs are notable for the highly personal images which come across them.
Not me
某姑娘
NERORISM
肉博 @_@
睡在布边边
hibernating little V*
I haven't seen any American blogs of this type. Then again, I have barely been posting photos here myself...
Moriyama-san and amateurism
Tensions everywhere we look! Amateur vs. professional, serious vs. light, digital vs. analog!
In the end, I may be considered a "professional photographer" only if that category includes blurred images.
another blogger-style re-blog
Mu Ge + happy links
I thought of posting a small screed about why I don't read i heart photograph. Then I thought better of it. So here's some stuff I like, photographs by Mu Ge from the series The Yangtse River Side and a bunch of links to things which I have enjoyed over the past couple of months.
Jin & Jam by Hellen Jo
Maya Lin
My favorite albums of the year
Eddy Current Suppression Ring
S.C.U.M.
Shaq's twitter
HARDCORE BUNNY PHOTOGRAPHY
She has sought to discover and illuminate the consequences of modern life, confront cultural mythologies, and challenge what we think we know.
Through bunnies, that is.
An online Wakaba Noda book
Wakaba Noda has a book up online which you can browse for free. It is part of a larger collection of free photography books. Just click on that dog to get going.
From Tibi, Sasha, Tarou
Does the square format work for snapshots? There's so much flash here.
Your brain as camera (alpha release)
Japanese scientists are working on a technology which monitors your brain, and reconstructs the images you see on a monitor:
They say this could eventually be used to record your dreams for you, in color no less. Blurry black-and-white first, color later. That reminds me of something.
What does this mean? Can I get this implanted in my brain with a 3G wireless chip for automatic flickr uploads? How long before we start reading impassioned pleas to save the antiquated but noble digital camera? But, for now: THIS IS ANOTHER BODY BLOW TO FILM. STAND STRONG. (but what if they develop brain-reading technology which can approximate neopan 1600, or portra 400nc...)
Suzanne Mooney [via Conscientious, as a Google Reader shared item with comment]
"Make Love to the Camera (2004 – Ongoing) is an expanding collection of diagrammatic drawings found in photographic manuals and glamour/fetish photo books depicting how to photograph the female nude. Each image depicts a diagram of a naked or semi-naked woman in a studio set-ups surrounded by lights, cameras and props. Instead of following the instructions of the diagram, I photograph the diagram itself. The work denies the erotic charge that the photographic images may have, and becomes a humorous but disturbing comment on glamour photography." - Suzanne Mooney (found via The Sonic Blog)
MCV MCV moves to Tokyo
It is set, I am moving myself to Tokyo at the very beginning of this coming January. I am hoping for many things from this move, including more exposure to gallery exhibits and photography culture in general. Of course I hope to take some good pictures as well, and to report on photographic things on this blog.
I plan to set up some other blog to post day-to-day photos. That will be announced here, once it's up.
If you live in Tokyo, or know friendly people who do, please get in touch! I'll want as much help as I can get at first, especially with respect to employment and general acclimation.
Getting excited for my first Yakult Swallows game...
PHOTOGRAPHY SMACKDOWN
I have no "wide eyes" for Ilfochrome having made probably 10,000 prints on the material, including at least 2,000 16x20's. So while you might dazzle the nimrods at the local photo club who couldn't figure out where to find the switch on a colorhead - I'll work with an inkjet and make far better looking prints.
I forgot about photo.net for a while there. Who knew it could get so spicy?
"Barrel of truth," "rock your eyes"
Possible new contender for the flickr stars series:
More excellence here. [Update: it appears as though these screenshots may the last we ever know of this elusive genius. Because we're definitely not following him to deviantart]
In a far away place...
nb, this is a reblog a la bloggér
This is from the introduction to Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers. The emphasis is mine, to make this post "more bloggy":
Even the youngest emerging photographers in Japan often find publishers for their work. In no other country do photographers so easily issue monographs; this is partly because, until the last three decades, few outlets other than books and magazines existed there for serious photography. Today, museums and galleries in Japan offer constant venues for fine art photography, and exhibitions abroad steadily increase. Established Japanese artists have worldwide audiences for their photographs. Still, most Japanese photographers prefer books as the ultimate "vehicle" for their projects. Often, they write the texts for their books, as well as magazine articles about their own work and that of other photographers. These opportunities to publish texts as well as images mean that their words have often been as influential as their photographs. Some essays have sparked controversy; others have set parameters for evolving aesthetic alliances, and have established lineages of influence.
I would like to align myself with this tradition.
Five blogs I don't read
Five blogs I don't read:
A Photo Editor, Whats the jackanory, We Can't Paint, I heart photograph, Shane Lavallete's blog
This list may mean nothing to one part of my audience, or quite a lot to another part.
On the internet, "read" [intransitive] means "subscribe to RSS feed," or "follow," as some websites have neatly named this activity. With the exception of I heart photograph, I don't read these blogs because they don't write enough posts which are relevant to me. I know I won't spend the time looking at their feeds to find the good stuff.
If you share items through Google Reader (or any RSS-friendly system) with any content from these blogs, we should be sharefriends. Email me. Sharing on the internet is our form of education.
Factory-generated artist statement #2345
I generally look to 20x200 for highly bloggable artist statements, but please let me know if you know of another good source. I'm open to fresh, life-affirming artist statements, not just ones like these which make me shudder:
This image is from the series Paradise, an exploration of areas where the contrast between nature and development is at an extreme. I am specifically interested in revealing the inconsistencies between modern occupation of a rural landscape and the suburban infrastructure that comes along with this habitation. By utilizing aesthetic techniques that have roots in mid–19th century painting, namely the Hudson River School movement, it is my intention to confront the contemporary landscape with an unencumbered eye.
Translation: "I like to take pictures of the places where man made stuff and nature stuff meet." You know, that's totally cool! The image is pretty nice! But the writing is so ponderous that the image can't possibly support it. This cannot be the way forward, can it?
Back to the academy
There's an open listserv associated with Joerg Colberg's Conscientious blog. If most of the discussion on the photo list at my workplace is centered around ship dates for the latest and "greatest" Canon gear, this list is like a class discussion in a graduate seminar in "fine art" photography.
That's not always a good thing of course, but it strikes a good balance with the work list, and is another source of stimulating information and discussion online.
Shomei Tomatsu as Jorge Luis Borges
If I could, I would want to see everything: the affairs of others, the scene of a murder, the pygmies in the African rain forest, the super-rich of Wall Street, the face of the man who stole three hundred million yen, the Sydney Opera House, the graveyard of ships in the Sargasso Sea, the tail of an orca, the plankton of the deep ocean, the inside of Prime Minister Satō's belly, Mao Zedong, Mars, Cape Kennedy, Antarctic blizzards, the animals whose name is "sloth," the pudendum of Marilyn Monroe. My eyes are infamously greedy;... to me, the stuff other photographers substitute for seeing is nothing but a kind of pessimism.
From Yomiuri shimbun, April 24, 1969
Compare to this passage in "The Library of Babel," or to the climax of "The Aleph" (search for the word 'Soler' to find it). A reminder that this blog takes its name from Borges' world.
Guess who?
Click through for much bigger versions.
Give up? OK, it's Daido Moriyama shooting the cover story ("France") for JAL's domestic in-flight magazine. He's everywhere!
Inspirational interview with Hiroh Kikai
There are too many good pull quotes to list here, interview with Hiroh Kikai from Lens Culture really pushes my buttons in a good way. Obviously he's a Japanese photographer so I'm interested from the beginning. But I appreciate his esoteric approach to photographic method, both in a career or life sense and also with respect to the momentary act of "apprehending an image," as he calls it.
An aside: there are useful and not-useful uses of this kind of language, i.e. "apprehending" an image, "commemorating" an ice cream truck. On the whole I would say that it has something to do with the (always legible) substance of thought behind the words. Kikai doesn't play around.
On the beginning of his life in photography:
I started off by taking several manual labor jobs: truck driver, dock worker... and I was able to survive on half of my salary. I was aware of the fact that I lacked photographic experience. I was still immersed in my philosophy studies at the time, and I began to think about the following concept: the essential thing was not the camera but the act of looking.
Things did, of course, eventually work out for him. I like hearing about people who find their way through unorthodox paths.
A man watching the horse races on his portable television set, 1999 by Hiroh Kikai
He thinks of his subjects outside of any context at all:
It is not the place that matters, it is the people. It is not the fact that these people are Japanese but the fact that their face and their body tells a story, whether they are Japanese, French, English or Martian...
These ideas might ring a bit zany to some audiences, but the images are there. Onward, philosophically motivated photography!
Blogroll maintenance
I made some modifications to reflect my reading habits.
Added:
- B (Blake Andrews) - thoughtful musings on film and shooting in general from a photographer in Eugene, with some great running features like this one asking photographers to recount what they were thinking when they took a particular photo.
- La Pura Vida - strongly curated photos and links from around the internet, including the highest quality stuff on Flickr.
- Lens Culture - blog of very on point online photo magazine.
- ithoughtiwasalone - online gallery, wrote about it here.
- Totem Pole Photo Gallery - Tokyo gallery, wrote about it here.
Removed:
- A bunch of blogs that don't update anymore.
Like Northern California in a bottle
If you're ever far from home and want to remember what Northern California feels like, just look at this set from Mikael Kennedy:
[from La Pura Vida]
I, I, I
In a culture that is permeated by consumerism and easily lured by status-enhancing symbols, I find beauty in derelict cars and unkempt buildings. As the urban industrial landscape around me continues to evolve, artifacts like these are often overlooked.
In this particular series, I commemorate commercial vehicles inundated with graffiti and rust. Removing them from their everyday context, I place them on a solid color field giving them portrait-like importance. With devoted attention, I paint every imperfection and sign of age. Isolating these objects allows me a chance to document a time and place, and to make still a part of the ever-changing urban environment.
See the resulting work here. I can only read the words "I commemorate" in a breathy, faux-hippie voice.
Only Diptychs
If you're looking for some Golden Half inspiration, or just want to look at, well, diptychs, check out Katie Shapiro's Only Diptychs blog. She just started it this month and has already been posting up a storm.
[Redacted] with Suze Rotolo in 1963, by Don Hunstein
This totally meets all the criteria for being a "photograph taken by a jerkoff." Yeah look at how straight the lines are! So annoying that you can take a picture of any random dude on the street and call it your "photograph."
Photographers suck!
In the end, the Street Boners article I linked up bashing photography is an example that a sure-fire way of getting noticed on the internet is to flail your arms and scream loudly. (Then Kottke links to someone who links to you and you're legitimized) The post is over the top, *but* it does have something resembling a point—at the most basic level, it's easy to get caught up in trends which value silly stuff. For example: how long is the color medium format + flash + foliage meme going to continue to have currency in the internet photo scene? (Huge bonus points if the photographer happens to be Swedish, by the way) I do also think that *what* you take a picture of is important, a point which the author makes in a blunt fashion.
So maybe that article hasn't sated your desire to read online anti-photography screeds. If so, be sure to read what the SF-based, self-proclaimed "not a photographer" photographer Merkley??? says about photographers. Here's a highlight:
Photographers have strong opinions about Terry Richardson.
Photographers get upset about cropping.
Photographers like the anticipation, surprise, expense, delay, grain, smell, challenge, discipline, texture, and overall unpredictable "magic" of analog, soo opposite of effing digital.
And yeah, I do have strong opinions about Terry Richardson.
Method
Blog sporadically, shoot sporadically, process sporadically, edit sporadically, look constantly.
At the end (I think): do everything all the time. I'm feeling the blog right now.
Polaroid afterlife
Was it inevitable? Here's Poladroid, a program you can download which will take a photo and degrade the color + add slight vignetting + add fake fingerprints + "mount" it in a Polaroid-sized white frame. Note that this is only available for Mac users (of course).
photo by jacopast on Flickr, it was the only half-decent one I could find after wading through the generally abominable pool
I've never had a Polaroid camera before, so this doesn't make me sad/nostalgic or anything like that. I just want to know when can I get a Lomo version of this! I know I know, it already exists for Photoshop or something... But how about a Golden Half version? IN SHORT: who needs that silly film anyway, when our computars [NB: not a misspelling] can simulate it for us?
At the end of the day, digital is the way of the world. As an amateur, analog is a matter of choosing a different experience of taking pictures—not necessarily a "better" one, you geeks—and, yes, choosing to pay a premium for it.
[from Monika]More or less...
If you are taking pictures of something that’s FUCKING INCREDIBLE, your photograph will then be better than the best picture that the best photographer can take of a piece of dogshit.from Street Boners + TV Carnage
Totem Pole/family
I checked out a few photo galleries when I was in Tokyo, and my favorite by far was Totem Pole, in Shinjuku. There was an excellent exhibition up called "Blazing Heat" by Sekiguchi Naoki, who I think is also a part-proprietor of the gallery. I can't say for sure, but judging from the website it seems that Totem Pole is run by a strong group of photographers who regularly exhibit work. The work is of a very high quality, I would certainly make a point to visit again. Here are some of my favorites from what's on their site.
Sekiguchi Naoki
Fukuyama Emi
Kishiyama Hiroyuki
The current exhibition is of Fukuyama Emi, it goes up today but closes in just two weeks! Looks like is standard practice for Tokyo exhibits, you've got to act fast to catch stuff I guess. If you're going to be in Tokyo sometime and want to check it out, be sure to look at its entry on Tokyo Art Beat. It's in English, will tell you what's on display and also link to excellent maps which you must print out if you actually want to find it.
Photography in Japan
This is a rather long essay, but worth reading for a summary of photographic tradition in Japan:
In Japanese, the word for “photograph” is “shashin”. It is made up of two ideograms, “sha” meaning “to reproduce” or “reflect” and “shin” which means “truth.” The Greek etymology of the word “photograph” is to write (graphein) with light (photos). Therefore, in the Japanese mind, the process itself consists in capturing the truth, or the essence of the matter and “making a copy” of it on a surface. Consequently, the result will always contain a certain element of truth. Since the advent of photography, this way of seeing things has become commonplace throughout the world, but in very few languages is the concept expressed with such clarity.
The essay is hosted by Lens Culture, I found it on their excellent blog.
Reading Alec Soth in Providence
I've been on a photo book kick for a number of months now. The section of a bookstore that pulls me in has changed a number of times in my life, but right now I go straight to the photography section. I spent the past weekend visiting my sister at RISD, and we spent a couple of hours in the library, she working on typography and I flipping through a stack of books which I had grabbed off of the shelves. Having access to a library with such a collection would be a great way to pass the time on other freezing Sunday afternoons.
Among the many books in the stacks, the first which caught my eye was Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi, which is considered nothing short of a modern-day classic by everyone who's involved in contemporary photography. His style is immensely influential among younger (especially large-format) photographers, and Soth was one of the first people to really embrace blogging. He built up a huge blog following before stopping, although he's now blogging again for Magnum.
"Helena, Arkansas 2002" by Alec Soth
I sometimes approach much-heralded works with a lot of scepticism; part of me wanted to dismiss Sleeping by the Mississippi as a product of hype too obviously trying to imitate Robert Frank's journey in The Americans. So what if he traveled around the Mississippi, how hard could it be to find interesting stuff there?
"Sunshine, Memphis, Tennessee 2000" by Alec Soth
Well, that thought was totally off base. The one thing that really struck me about the book is the sheer amount of work that it took to make. I'm not even talking about the difficulty involved in using an 8x10 view camera to take the pictures, which *is* impressive, sure, but I was more struck by the situations that Soth was able to access in the first place—photographing people in their homes, or lonely hotel rooms. After all that, still managing to get the ideal shot, and then processing it and getting the colors to look right.
"Joshua, Angola State Prison, Louisiana 2002" by Alec Soth
This was the image that struck me the most. It's of an inmate at a prison in Louisiana. Looking at it on a big page, I was first drawn to the man's eyes, boring out of the page. But as I looked longer, I realized that I was also fascinated by the scene behind him: one man looking off into the distance, another man leaning over to say something to someone else, behind a man who is staring straight at the camera, seeming to be entirely aware of its presence and (in my reading, for now) wishing that he was the one in focus.
I thought of the scene that Soth had put himself into. How noisy was the room? What did he do to pluck this moment out? How many exposures of Joshua did he take? I imagine that he picked this shot for the immense interest of the background, the moment at which these figures have come together to frame the subject.
Because Alec Soth is just that kind of dude, you can view all of the images from this collection on his website.
Moriyama-san taking pictures in Tokyo
There's so much that's great about this video of Daido Moriyama walking around Tokyo at night, snapping pictures. Note, it's 8 minutes long, and there's no sound. The best stuff happens at the 5 minute mark, although the whole video is worth watching, except the end where it shows him developing and printing.
Stuff I like in particular:
- snapping pictures with the camera away from his face
- at 5:15, taking a picture of a dude who looks a little bit surprised/bemused, then striding right past him without looking at him at all
- shortly after that, taking pictures of people while holding the camera at his side and looking completely the other way
- his generally calm demeanor
- the approach here seems to be not much more than, let me walk around and take pictures of interesting stuff. i'm down with that
- where's the flash?
[via Photohemorrhage]
GRD I recession
The price should be coming down on this... It's what happens when you launch a new model.
Obama sigh
People at work are all in a huff about these photos on Barack Obama's flickr, taken backstage on his (eventual) victory night. I think they're pretty interesting to look at. The problem my geekier colleagues have with them is that they're underexposed, blurry, etc. Yes, they look like the median Facebook picture... but my response to this is... who actually *cares* (besides you obviously)?
"omg worst. exposure. evar!111"
Have you seen these photos yet? Does the poor technical quality hurt you on the inside? Could you have taken better photos of this event? If so, are you secretly bitter at this poor, hapless photog?
I'm just happy to have a real (human) president for the first time in my life as a person with some political conscience. For reference, here are Callie Shell's photos of Obama, and Big Picture's set, both of which are great.
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