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.
nouvelles impressions du tokyo
Finally, I can make the Raymond Roussel reference I've been dreaming of. Well, some readers may know this, but I am planning to move to Tokyo sometime early next year. If all goes according to plan, I'll be working in a highly photo-centric environment. I won't be quite as vague about this if/when it actually happens. There would be plenty to report on from a photography perspective, though, since Tokyo is packed with galleries (and people with cameras in general).
As a place to take pictures, Tokyo really grabbed me. It was actually cloudy and rainy for a lot of the time I was there, but when the sun was out there were so many good pictures waiting to be taken. A few pictures follow, with relevant links at the end.
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tokyo diary (words) - tokyo diary (a few more photos than you see here)
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