The Online Photographer

A Second Note from New Mexico

Ansel Adams, Georgia O'Keeffe and Orville Cox, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, 1937

By John Camp

On Friday morning, a friend and I walked over to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, because she’s a great fan of O’Keeffe and because I wanted to see a new exhibit on O’Keeffe’s tools and inspirations. If you like O’Keeffe, and are in Santa Fe, the show is definitely worth seeing.

As it happens, I don’t particularly care for O’Keeffe. I think she was a distinctly minor talent whose reputation has grown because of a cult that has sprung up around her, based more on her independent lifestyle than on her art. To me, her art seems inane and derivative; even her technique seems crude, and not deliberately so. A critic whose name I can’t remember once said something to the effect that O’Keeffe’s art gets better in reproduction, and the smaller the reproduction, the better; that her natural métier is the postage stamp. I agree. But maybe that’s just me.

Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz

In any case, while my friend worked slowly through the show, in thrall to O’Keeffe’s painting, I zipped through it, winding up in the last room, which was a collection of photographs of O’Keeffe.

Now I was astounded. In my opinion, it was by far the most interesting room in the show.

Everybody knows that O’Keeffe had a notable love affair, and perhaps a less notable marriage, with Alfred Stieglitz, which produced one of the more famous books of American photography. In the back room of the museum, and later, looking through the gift shop, and a few minutes after that, talking to a guy in a nearby photo gallery, I found that she had also been photographed by Ansel Adams (many times), Arnold Newman, Irving Penn, Paul Strand, Yousef Karsh, Phillippe Halsman, Todd Webb, Carl Van Vechten, Myron Wood, Laura Gilpin, and Tony Vaccaro, and by John Loengard of Life magazine, for a photo essay.

Georgia O'Keeffe by Yosuf Karsh

Karsh’s reputation has suffered since his death, but the huge silver print of O’Keeffe displayed in the museum is magnificent, and as far as I could see, flawless. Adams took some extremely perceptive snapshots of her, and Strand took a great off-hand portrait. Arnold Newman took one of the more iconic shots—with horns from a dead animal (left)—and the Irving Penn is one of those he took of people jammed in a corner. Few of the photos are really "casual"—there is a deliberation about the poses that speaks of a serious artistic effort on the part of both the photographer and the model.

In any case, the woman may not have been much of a painter (IMNSHO), but she was a magnificent photographers’ model from the time she was a young woman through advanced old age. She was apparently willing to spend quite a bit of time on it, and is usually carefully costumed in her iconic black dress: she worked the camera.

Georgia O'Keeffe by Philippe Halsman

If she is, as I propose, the focus of an artistic cult based more on lifestyle than on her actual art, then the cult was in a great way enhanced by the fact that she willingly made herself the subject of some of the greatest photographers of the pre-war period. Is there any other model, male or female, from any period, who has been portrayed by such a collection of greats?

Georgia O'Keeffe by Laura Gilpin

If you think here that I’m speaking of the elevation of a minor talent through brilliant publicity, sort of like, well...Britney Spears...perhaps I am. (I can only hope that my friend doesn’t see this post, lest I wake up some morning with a paring knife in my chest.)

A final note: The Andrew Smith Gallery of Photography is just a few steps up the street from the O’Keeffe Museum, and is well worth a visit. They have some very nice work on display, and I was much happier there than at the O’Keeffe show, truth to tell. I was going to try to make it to Photo-Eye, the bookstore, but ran out of time.

JC

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "John, you do realize that there is a whole lot of feminist art theory that frames Georgia O'Keeffe's career, especially her late work before she started going blind. I like her earlier Precisionism/Cubist Realism NYC work a lot; it's too bad that most of her early paintings are literally falling apart. Think of her in the context of Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, and Ralston Crawford rather than Judy Chicago and she seems a lot stronger. I think that her best-known work is far from being her strongest work. The paintings that look good as postage stamps and postcards are obviously the ones that get reproduced on postage stamps and postcards, and thus are the only ones that are famous."

Featured Comment by Jeff: "John, as Hugh rightly indicated, one must place O'Keeffe in her proper feminist context. In this light, perhaps you fall among the other men O'Keeffe wrote about. From my copy of her 1976 book, Georgia O'Keeffe, she writes about her painting, 'The Shanty' (subsequently called 'My Shanty'...

Courtesy Phillips Collection

'...the clean, clear colors were in my head, but one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty, I thought, "I can paint one of those dismal-colored paintings like the men. I think just for fun I will try—all low toned and dreary with the tree beside the door." In my next show "The Shanty" went up. The men seemed to approve of it. They seemed to think that maybe I was beginning to paint. I don't remember what the critics said about it, but when Duncan Phillips saw it he bought it for the Phillips Collection. That was my only low-toned dismal-colored painting.' You need to let loose your feminine side."

Featured Comment by latent_image: "I think the Karsh portrait of O'Keeffe is a knockout. Bear in mind this was not done in the comfortable environs of his studio. The guy had chops."

Alec Soth Does the Hardest Thing

...The hardest thing being to make it in your home town. A short video about Alec's new show at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, from PBS Newshour.

(This is a screen shot; you have to click on the link to see the video. I hope it's available outside the U.S., but I don't know.)

Note a few things: his workspaces; the amount of work he has; and the form it's in (prints, some big).

He also gets the gestalt of the view camera..."My favorite thing about it is actually looking through it." There are a lot of great things about photography c. 2010, but one of the sad things is that so few photographers today have ever seen a lens image on the ground glass of a view camera.

Mike
(Thanks to John S. Krill)

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Josh Hawkins: "I think my iPhone has an app that reproduces the look of 8x10 ground glass."

Featured Comment by HT: "I've seen the show at the Walker and I'm a sad to report that the physical conditions of the exhibit itself are somewhat maddening. As you can see from the video, the Walker's walls are white and the lighting is quite bright which results in a heavy reflection when you're looking at the photographs behind glass. This is very apparent at 4:16 in the video when Soth's reflection is clearly visible. I'm not exactly a museum connoisseur but I don't recall ever seeing this issue (or at least to this extent) at other photography exhibits at different museums."

Featured Comment by John Krill: "Speaking of the first time viewing through a ground glass, there is an article at The Digital Journalist in which David Burnett tells of his experience using a Speed Graphic on the bus with John Kerry in 2003. It makes for interesting reading. It's not mentioned there but David did say that he had never used a Speed Graphic before. That got a good laugh from me. For David and I are almost the same age and I've used a Speed Graphic since high school."

Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "Whether or not you enjoy Alec's work you should know that he loves photography. All of his recent promotion and becoming 'Gagosian-ed' are secondary distractions to the real pleasure he gets from making photos. I've met few people as engaged with the camera as he seems to be."

Featured Comment by Richard de Lhorbe: "That's why I still use a wooden 4x5 field camera...I just really enjoy the whole completely manual process of using it, and I like 'sensing' the composition while it is upside down and reversed on the ground glass."

How to Judge a Photo Contest

I've had to oversee a number of photo contests in my time, but there was only one where I got to set the rules and parameters myself. In that one, we had several judges, but my decree was that each judge got to pick his or her own first-place winner, with no interference from any of the other judges. Each judge picked a radically different picture—in fact, radically different kinds of pictures—but even after the passage of well over ten years, I still think all the prizes went to very good photographs. And, because each co-winner was chosen by a single judge who bore sole responsibility for the decision, the judges' defenses of their choices were articulate, positive, and impassioned.

I still think that's the best way to run a photo contest. Committees might not always make bad decisions—sometimes what you want is caution and consensus—but committee decision-making doesn't suit the exercise of aesthetic judgment. Time and time again, I've watched as committees of judges wrangled and disputed over their preferences. Strong advocacy is often counterbalanced by strong negativity. Everyone has to make concessions. What ends up happening is that a compromise is reached that everyone can live with...but unfortunately it's also often a choice with which no one is 100% happy.

It's different with juried shows. There, the jurors tend to become political, and to reach accommodations with each other—"I'll let yours in if you let mine in." That's a function of having more slots available. But I'll bet if any four of the people who write for TOP had to agree on just one picture to single out for a prize, we'd have a lot of trouble.

Here's an exercise in delectation. Let's say you're a contest judge with a prize of, say, $2,500 to bestow on some lucky photographer. And whatever you choose will be seen by thousands of people who wouldn't otherwise see it. You alone are charged with finding, from any source, a single photograph that you think is remarkable enough to deserve such special distinction.

What would you choose? Anything come to mind?

I'm not sure I'd know where to start.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Joe: "I was a judge several times in two different national photo competitions—coming to a consensus to pick three to five winners each time—and I came to the opposite conclusion from you, Mike. I found that it was bracing to have my choices challenged and have to defend them. And I found it really valuable having to articulate my disagreement with another judge's choices.

"At the very end of one competition, when we were down to the very last few candidates, another judge and I were baffled by the third judge's choice, and we spent quite a bit of time debating our stances. I probably learned more about my own prejudices and preferences in a half hour that day than in the year that came before.

"I've developed a better appreciation of photography through those experiences—I would hope all the judges felt the same way.

"But actually your complaint was more about the results of the judging process, right?

"I do think the results of those competitions were better for the discussions we all had. Each time I've judged, 90% of the rejects were easy and quick, and we always ended up with a small group of excellent photos from which the winners were chosen. Though picking the winners was always hard, that's a testament to the high quality of the finalists. I was really glad to have others to compare notes with, and bounce ideas off. I've judged where I could have tossed a coin to select three winners from six or seven final contenders, because they were all so fine. A little discussion was very helpful in that case."

'Laughs Parr'

Talking about Alec and Carmen Soth the other day brought up the subject of the Brighton Photo Biennial, this year curated by the irrepressible Martin Parr. Guy Lane at Foto8 provides a brief wrap-up / overview of this year's show.

Martin Parr, younger, unblemished, more colourful and
endowed with something of a sheen

The two words titling this post were, I thought, a succinct summing-up of Martin's views toward the unusual and (somewhat) controversial Alec/Carmen father-daughter collaboration.

Mike

UPDATE: Rats, actually I think this is the retrato pintado to which the otherwise unintentionally funny quote in the caption above actually refers:

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Ctein in Minneapolis

Ctein showing prints last night in Minneapolis. Photo by John Camp.

Ctein is in Minnesota for, among other things, his Dye Transfer Series show (at the link, look lower left) at the Mpls Photo Center, 2400 North Second Street, Minneapolis, on the second floor of the Northwind Lofts. The opening is tonight from 7 to 10. Here's how to get there. If you can't make the opening but can get to Minneapolis, the show is up through the end of the month. Do not miss!

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

A Child Prodigy or 'A Giant FU to the UK'?

I'll let APhotoEditor tell the story. And they link back to the Guardian article. Bottom line: a 7-year-old is going to be exhibiting photographs at the prestigious Brighton Photo Biennial...except that there's more to the story than meets the eye, involving a famous father and something about a work visa. And further collaboration from a certain cannily open-minded curator we all know.

(Although I always enjoy "APhotoEditor" when I visit, I must say I was surprised at the reactionary tone of some of the early comments. I mean, referring to Alec Soth as "Sloth"? That would never fly around here. I didn't read very deep into the comments.)

Incidentally, and this is apropos, my two most recent book purchases were this and this. I think I'm going to buy this too, to go with them, just to make myself good and depressed. (Where's Ralph Steiner when you need him?) More about the new acquisitions after I've spent more time with them.

Mike
(Thanks to numerous tipsters)

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Meeting Shimon & Lindemann

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann. Photo by Art Elkon.

Last night there was an Open House for all the galleries in the Marshall building in downtown Milwaukee (on the corner of Water and Buffalo Streets, which has got to count for something), and I got to meet Shimon & Lindemann at the Portrait Society Gallery. On view was their Real Photo Postcard Survey, a generous subset of several hundred postcard-sized platinum/palladium portraits they've made over the past three years or so that actually get mailed out as postcards (although I'm not entirely clear to whom they're sent).

Julie and John charge to make the portraits—most of them, anyway—although it's not a straight fee but rather more in the nature of a request for help in subsidizing the art project. They also make an effort to neutralize the troublesome subject/photographer relationship by making the portraits collaborative—the subjects come the way they wish to be seen and stand the way they want, but then they cede the final picture selection to the artists. Each "side" relinquishes a little power and control. It was interesting seeing many of the subjects of the portraits there at the Open House. I had an interesting talk with Drew V.

I also got to see Vanessa Winship's first American show—she's one of my favorite contemporary photographers, on the basis of her Black Sea work—in a small room at the Portrait Society. Most rewarding was hearing gallery owner Debra Brehmer talk about how her relationship with Vanessa's pictures grew over the month they've been on her walls. She has a large and humane take on them, and hearing her insights distilled into a few sentences opened my eyes to things I hadn't seen myself.

I was most charmed by a wall of modern Shimon & Lindemann portraits juxaposed with actual antique full-body portrait postcards (on the left wall, above). Julie and John—who, between them, share a single teaching position at Lawrence University in Appleton—have a highly developed curatorial sense in their art, and I loved the side-by-side old and new portraits—the echoes, resemblances, variations and differences the artists discovered between two photographs taken many decades apart. The idea didn't grab some people I talked to, but fascinated me.

Two of the lifesize portraits.
(Both installation photos courtesy Shimon & Lindemann.)

In another room were a series of large color portraits from the same portrait sessions. On their blog they write that "A series of lifesize portraits from 8x10 transparencies made with an 11x14 Deardorff studio view camera came out of the project. The scale (72x28") emphasized the physicality of the body and the presentation of self. Scanned at high resolution and output on an Epson 9800 wide format inkjet printer on canvas, the portraits reference Rembrandt and Van Dyke paintings whose subjects were royals and the petite bourgeoisie."

I've written about it before, but another plug here for a recent favorite—Unmasked & Anonymous: Shimon & Lindemann Consider Portraiture, the only one of Shimon & Lindemann's five books I've seen. A description of the exhibition on which the book was based: it "juxtaposes 43 of their original photographs...with 54 portraits from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Collection, including daguerreotypes, as well as photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, and Larry Clark, among others, to present new perspectives on one of the oldest artistic genres—portraiture."

It's a modest book but it encapsulates an enormous amount of work. It took them two years to go through all of the portraits in the Milwaukee Art Museum's holdings to make their selections for the show and book—they believe they saw virtually every photographic portrait the museum has. I have friends who are disc jockeys and film directors who make expert mixes to share music, and my take is that Unmasked & Anonymous is like a well-made mixed tape or CD—a tasty program. Lots of enjoyment here, in this small book.

Home is where the pictures are
Photographers have to go where their pictures are. John Shimon and Julie Lindemann met in college, moved to New York City to be artists, and promptly moved back when they realized they had to photograph what they knew best. One way or another they've been photographing Midwesterners ever since.

Mike
(Thanks to Art, Kate, and Deb)

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Chris Norris: "I had my portrait taken by Julie and Jonnie. I woke up god-awfully early on a Saturday morning, kissed my girlfriend (now-fiancee) goodbye and drove from Madison to Manitowoc. I got there early and walked around for a while, making the occasional picture. When my time rolled around, I made my way to their studio. They are two incredibly nice and engaging people and I really enjoyed my time there. For me, it was a big transitional period in my life and I'm glad to have a portrait that represents that time. The money spent was well worth it, as I now have a bunch of postcards and two platinum/palladium prints. I had never seen a Pt/Pd print before this.

"So to answer an earlier question, the postcards go out to whomever the sitter wants to send them to. I sent one to J&J at their request and have been musing about what to do with the rest. While I was at their studio Julie showed me a number of old postcards they had collected, with writing on the back. People marking important times in their lives, letting their families know how they were doing, etc. It's interesting to see how people will use their postcards in this digital age."

The Henri Cartier-Bresson Show

I unshackled my leg from the desk yesterday and escaped to Chicago, where I saw the Henri Cartier-Bresson show with Ken Tanaka.

Ken, who started out as a fan and a booster of TOP, has become a friend. We first met at the first show we saw together, the great Eggleston retrospective earlier this year. Ken lives a hop skip and a jump from the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), and he's involved with the institution in some sort of way I'm unable to accurately report, so he knows the curators and gets to attend a lot of the insider events and so forth—and I kid him that the AIC is actually his private collection, as by his own admission he spends so much time in the building. He was seeing the Cartier-Bresson exhibit for the ninth time when he saw it with me. Seeing photographs is always good, and seeing lots of photographs is even better, and a visit to the Art Institute is always a pleasure. But to see a show in the erudite, engaging, and yet completely unpretentious company of Ken Tanaka greatly amplifies the experience. A fun day, well worth the drive and the Chicago traffic.

Brass tacks
I'm afraid I have to give the show itself a decidedly mixed review. Although the public response has been extraordinary, it's really an exhibit "by scholars for scholars," rather than a show for popular delectation. From an aesthetic standpoint, the selection is deep but in some ways puzzling: despite being overlong by twice, a lot of the great pictures are missing, and a large number of second-rate ones are present. There are plentiful "extra value" components, most notably a completely magnificent map of the world showing Cartier-Bresson's lifetime travels in glorious detail, and a single Magnum print presented next to a good reproduction of its own backside, showing all of the publication marks, stamps, and notes that it accumulated over its lifetime as a press photo. Fascinating.

The biggest disappointment by far is that many of the prints are just horrible. It is "vintagism" taken to an absurd extreme when truly great—I mean great—masterpieces are presented only in early repro prints that were originally fully intended to be ephemeral, two paper grades too soft and fogged and dimmed by time. It's one thing when the photographer is an independent artist and you're showing his or her original thoughts about a new work; it's quite another to pretend that the initial work-product of a working photographer has any of the same import or presence, or adequately reflects his intent. Really, the fastidiousness of scholarship has overwhelmed the viewer's interests—and good sense—in many cases here. I wouldn't say that bad prints predominate—there are a lot of adequate ones and some good ones too*—but if you get the catalog, I think you'll find that the catalog reproductions are far preferable to many of the original prints on view! A strange reversal of the ordinary case.

From memory, this is my impression of what the print
of this picture looked like in the show.

So: recommended, but with real reservations. To reiterate: it's good to see photographs, and great to see H.C.-B. photographs. Lots of good and interesting things here; rewards on every wall. I'm certainly not sorry I went, and I doubt anyone else would be. But it's a deeply flawed show. It makes a weak case for H.C.-B. as a dominant artist in our field, although it's probably more interesting for those who already know he is. And it isn't what today's public deserves as a celebration of his greatness. Show me half as many pictures in their best printed form, even if it's not their earliest printed form. I'd take that any day.

Although I'd still want to see that marvelous map!

Mike

*I don't know this for sure, but, although there is a wide range of prints in the show that probably originated from many different sources, I'd bet there are very few Voja Mitrovic prints in this particular show: that is, they're not the prints M. Cartier-Bresson would have had made when a collector would wish to buy one from him or from one of his galleries.

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "Indeed, as Mike and I discussed at the exhibit, many of the prints are unimpressive, particularly prints from the earliest pre-war periods. I suspect that few, if any, of these were originally intended for exhibition. Most of the later prints (1954+) are more exhibition-quality.

"But I think it’s easy for (us) photo enthusiasts to inadvertently mis-read the curatorial objectives of this show. We see Henri Cartier-Bresson as a icon of photographic artistic talent. But that’s not what Peter Galassi, the show’s curator, is principally attempting to illustrate. Rather, the principal conceptual theme of the show is to present a wide-angled view of the enormous body of work by an extraordinarily talented and energetic man with a camera. The gigantic travel history maps on the walls at the exhibit’s entrance serve to drive the point that visitors will see photographs of history at key points during 'The Modern Century' as captured by Cartier-Bresson’s camera. Art, in this case, is a delightful but secondary feature. Indeed, Cartier-Bresson himself repeatedly denied that his camera work was art. He considered himself to be, first and foremost, a journalist with a camera. That’s why he co-founded Magnum as a news photo cooperative agency.

"So undoubtedly many photography enthusiasts will be disappointed with the flatness of many of this exhibition’s prints. It’s also true that several well-known images have been omitted from the show. (Although with 300 pieces they’re hard to miss.) And you may be correct that scholarship has sent art to the back-seat. But that was the intention. 'Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century' is designed principally to illustrate the remarkable events and inflection periods of 'The Modern Century' that this astonishing photographer witnessed and captured during his long career.

"I will say, though, that having seen the show so many times (with a few more viewings still to come) I believe that the pictures on the walls are, in this case, mainly evidential by-products. The wonderful catalog is the real gem of Peter Galassi’s curatorial work. I always encourage folks to see the show. But this is one example where, failing such an opportunity, the catalog text will more than fairly compensate you for your absence."

Featured Comment by timd: "I had a similar experience a while back at the Robert Capa exhibition at the Barbican in London—small dingy prints.

"I came away feeling that the show was neither here nor there; it was neither a show of images, because the prints were small and dull, nor an one of archival/historical materials, because there wasn't enough of that material on display and the materials that were shown weren't contextualized.

"It was very interesting to see the heroic photojournalist myth-making: old magazines featuring the work of the 'world's greatest photo journalist'; and to see how much the images were changed/manipulated when they appeared in print—e.g., elements from two photos merged into one image.

"It would have been interesting, given all of the discussion over the veracity of one of his photos, to have seen some of the exchanges between Capa and the publishers over the alterations they made to his photos—if there was any—but the magazines were just displayed without comment. (The images looked better in these old magazines from the '30s than on the wall.)"

Mike replies: I actually expend a lot of effort trying to figure out the best way to experience any given photographer—often it would be an "ideal" show, although those are rare and I get to attend very few shows in any event. Often it's an effort to find those books that have the best selection of images and the most appropriate and pleasing reproduction. Those are hard to come by too, but not as hard. Increasingly we are seeing better and better web presentations, and I'm awaiting the day when we start seeing full exhibits on the web presented purposefully. I'm always happy when I come across any "good enough" way to see a good representation of a photographer I'm interested in.

Featured Comment by John Camp: "I've known a lot of photojournalists, and I don't think any of them would want an exhibit of their photos, shown in a museum, to be selected from their first publication prints. For one thing, printers working for a newspaper or magazine or wire service tried to optimize the print for whatever printing technology was involved—and that often meant over-contrasty prints because of the poor materials (newsprint) on which the photo would ultimately be printed. And because the print itself would only be used for a few hours before winding up on a printing plate (and often ruined in that process), they frequently were barely fixed at all—just a quick shot of fixer and if it all went gray the next day, so what? You just make another. Those same photographers, when making prints for photojournalism contests (the state AP contests, etc.) would frequently spend hours making 'show' prints. Those prints, not their publication prints, represented the best they could do, and their best vision of the work....

"I think the emphasis on vintage prints is weird, and is basically just a way to monetize the product of a medium in which the potential identical copies of the product are virtually infinite. Critics and authorities argue that vintage prints best reflect the artist's original intent; but that's like arguing that Mahler would attempt to always conduct his symphonies with exactly the same inflection because otherwise, they would be inauthentic. That's absurd—any composer would try to make his compositions 'better' as the years pass, as Ansel Adams tried to make his prints better as technology improved.

"In other words, showing less than the best quality prints of HCB's work I'm sure wouldn't reflect his intent or his wishes—it simply reflects the quality of mechanical reproduction available at his time, and the need to make (deliberately defective) prints that would best utilize that machinery."

...And to Redeem the Tarnished Honor of Philadelphia...

...Comes this magnificent piece of news, via Theresa P.

(This post is a follow-up to Scoundrels of Philadelphia.)

Haverford College—which is on the outskirts of, yes, Philadelphia—has restored to its rightful owners a valuable 1641 letter by René Descartes that was only recently authenticated. It rightfully belonged to the Institut de France, from which it was stolen by the infamous (and ironically named) Count Guglielmo Libri some 170 years ago.

The last time one of the stolen letters turned up, the current owner held it for a huge ransom that the Institut couldn't afford to pay. So guess what Haverford did with theirs?

They gave it back.

"Haverford values social responsibility and commitment to community as much as we value rigorous academics,” said Haverford president Stephen G. Emerson, '74. "While we’ve certainly benefited from having the Descartes letter in our collection [...] there was really only one possible course of action: do the right thing, and offer to return the letter. We certainly hope someone else would do the same for us if the shoe were on the other foot."

Emerson gets TOP's mensch award for that. (Okay, TOP doesn't have a mensch award, but if it did, he'd get it.) Haverford, not surprisingly, has one of the oldest honor codes of any American college. What a shame that more of the movie villains from The Art of the Steal were evidently not exposed to concepts like "honor" and "doing the right thing" back when their minds were still impressionable.

(Jeez, and after all this time, I find the college I should have attended. Only 35 years too late. You know what they say: oh well.)

Haverford's president again: "In our ever-shrinking world, when strangers become friends and then partners at the click of a mouse, we want to do all we can to show, by example, what it means for scholars and citizens to collaborate for the common good."

Bravo.

Mike
(Thanks to Kent and Theresa)

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Scoundrels of Philadelphia

Quick, what do the city of Philadelphia, the dictator Hitler, and the tyrant Bonaparte have in common? They're all three among the greatest looters of art in history.

I know injustice is everywhere, but it still rankles me to hear about it. Last night I got around to watching The Art of the Steal (it's also on Netflix), the documentary film about how the immoral scoundrels who run the city of Philadelphia stole the private Barnes Collection.

Albert Barnes was an eccentric doctor who built a peerless collection of impressionist and early modern art back when it was unpopular and nobody else wanted it. He wanted the collection used for education and left the art behind arranged exquisitely in a building he had constructed specially to house it. He endowed a Foundation to care for it and left a very specific will stating his intentions for his Foundation and his paintings. Henri Matisse called it the only sane place in America to view art.

Albert Barnes

Primary among Barnes' wishes were for the collection to continue to be used for education, for public access to be restricted, and for the art to remain where it was. The film documents how the dastardly monied interests of Philly—Barnes' avowed enemies—managed to subvert his will and his wishes and steal art now worth $25 billion right out of the guy's house.

We condemn the Taliban for destroying the Buddhas of Bamyan, but the Brahmins of the Main Line have destroyed a unique artistic legacy just as callously, and with greater, and more cynical, calculation. It's a story that should enrage not only any art lover but any lover of justice. Utterly shameful. The pillaged Barnes Collection in Philadelphia is slated to open in 2012, and although it is certain to be popular with museum-goers, I hope it remains a perpetual disgrace and an eternal shame to the city of Philadelphia among those in the know for as long as it's there. The people who did this may be rich, but they are low class.

Another collection
Ironically, seeing this film comes on the heels of a particularly luminous experience I had recently that is similar to what Albert Barnes intended for his paintings. I reunited with an old high school friend who lives in Chicago now, and she took me for a visit to her parents' house in one of the city's oldest and most elegant neighborhoods. It was a lovely summer day, with high clouds and warm breezes. The house is just stuffed to the scuppers with really major art, mainly of the color field school—Kenneth Noland, Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella, and one of my own great favorites, Jules Olitsky, not to mention some more modern painters (there was a three-section David Hockney screen in the front hallway) and many other art objects such as furniture, sculpture, and early religious icons. I hardly have words to describe the experience—just being able to imagine living amidst that astonishing art every day took my breath away and left me in a state of awe, wonder, and delight. Everything seemed to fit vividly together—the tour from my friend who grew up there, her erudite yet bohemian parents, her courageous sister, the patrician old house, the balmy weather, the loyal little dog. And everywhere I turned, a painting with the presence to make your eyes widen and your stomach muscles tighten. It was one of those perfect and perfectly memorable experiences, and one I will remember always. In fact, one of the best experiences I've ever had with art in my life—and that's saying something.

I hope my friend's parents have seen The Art of the Steal.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Mat P: "The Art Law Blog has covered the Barnes move, The Art of the Steal, and the reaction to it quite extensively (for a blog)."

Carl Weese in Scranton, Penn.

Carl Weese and his wife Bettina Skor at Camerawork. Photo by Michael Poster.

Camerawork, a gallery dedicated to photography in Scranton, Pennsylvania, has announced “Working Pictures: The Pennsylvania Series," photographs by Carl Weese.

Show dates: August 6, 2010–September 28, 2010

Carl's been publishing a blog called "Working Pictures" since 2006. Much of the blog's content is from Pennsylvania and the pictures on exhibit are the best of that group.

More information about Camerawork Gallery and “Working Pictures: The Pennsylvania Series"

Map showing the gallery location

(Besides being an occasional (but important) contributor to TOP and the artist of our latest Print Offer but one, Carl is a longtime friend.)

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

The Eggleston Show: Take 2

By Ken Tanaka

Yeah, Mike and I had a terrific time playing hooky last Thursday, bumpin' through the Eggleston show swapping stories (some even clean!).

Regarding the subdued lighting in the main gallery of this exhibit, yes it can be something of a distraction. I'm told it is actually due mainly to preservation considerations and, in many cases, contractual obligations. This is not our show, having originated at the Whitney, and the pieces were gathered from many lenders. I don't know the particular circumstances for these pieces in this show but I can say that environmental care (temperature, humidity, illumination) are often among the standard conditions cited in lending agreements. Since this is quite a long show (the Art Institute is actually its third of four installation venues) I suspect that such considerations are very much in play here.

But don't let the darkness scare you! Ours is perhaps the finest venue so far. Kate Bussard, the extremely talented curator who designed and oversaw our installation, has really done an exceptional job of filling two galleries of our new Modern Wing, plus a wall of the Griffin Court, with these works in a very thoughtful and logical design. (Plus I don't think there's anyone who knows more about Eggleston's work than Kate!)

May I also recommend the Whitney's catalog accompanying this exhibit? As Mike can attest, the reproduction quality of the plates is superb, no small accomplishment given the vast number of dye transfer prints in the show. It also presents a number of plates that are part of the exhibit but not on display here in Chicago. (Each venue has some flexibility in choosing what to display, although we're displaying the vast majority of the show's collection.)

Beyond the images, the book presents an excellent textual portrait of William, warts and all, that will certainly enrich most people's appreciation of his works.

To those who remark that they don't "get" Eggleston's work I can only nod my head in complete understanding with you. I originally didn't, either. I'd look at that tricycle shot, for example, and think, "So what? I could do that." But to those still "challenged" by his work may I offer three suggestions that might provide you with a new approach path to Eggleston's, and many others', works?

First, leave your shutterbug-ness at the door. Suspend your reflexive introspection of camera type, lenses, film type, and f-stops. Don't view the work through a photographic lens, so to speak. Just look at the images quietly. Stand in front of many of these images for a minute or two (an unusually long time for most museum visitors) and you'll feel the warm, humid breezes of the sultry Southern American summers from which so many of these image were taken. You'll begin to hear a distant cicada. These are slices of an experience rather than photos of a moment. It can actually get a bit creepy.

Second, look at as much of his work in one visit/sitting as possible. Like mosaic art where one tile means nothing, one Eggleston image represents merely a souvenir of his body of work. That's why this show, and its even more comprehensive catalog, are so significant; they present the whole mosaic in one place.

Third, please do not ignore the title of this show: Democratic Camera. It's fundamental to understanding the mosaic. Everything carries an equal visual "vote" to Eggleston's camera. A stray dog drinking from a mud puddle. Rusty lawn chairs on a dilapidated porch. The gates to Gracelend. A diffused shadow through a glass panel in a Tokyo subway. William Eggleston's eyes have no celebrity filters. Everything is a candidate to become a new tile in his mosaic wall.

If you can carry these three suggestions with you as you view this work I think you'll have a better appreciation of it. William Eggleston is not a genius, nor a artful purist. He's a fellow who has genuinely loved life, lived it to its fullest (sometimes overflowingly), and has had a nearly 50-year talent for capturing moments of that life free of technical inhibitions, with a remarkably consistent vision. As you study photography's past, and survey its present landscape, you soon discover that this is a very, very rare phenomenon.

So I urge everyone here, but particularly those who find William's work odd, to make an effort to see this show either here at the Art Institute of Chicago or at its next, and final, venue, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this fall. Failing that, I urge you to view the catalog. I think that, like Mike and like many others, you'll suddenly find yourself surprisingly regarding these images like old friends.

Ken

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

ADDENDUM: There are several documentary profiles on William Eggleston available. I think Michael Almereyda's William Eggleston In the Real World probably comes closest to capturing the the man's true nature. It's an amateur video style of presentation but crafted with a genuine sensitivity to portraying William as he is rather than as we might imagine him to be. I think many folks will find the first 10-15 minutes fascinating, as it's mainly just footage of William, and his son Winston, out capturing frames with his cameras. (I'm grateful to my friend John Caruso for giving me this video as a gift not long ago!) —KT

The Eggleston Show

Yesterday I flogged the new bus down to Chicago and met Ken Tanaka for a tour of the Eggleston Show.

William Eggleston has been part of the oxygen for as long as I've been involved in photography. His big splash introduction to the world came with the big MoMA exhibit in 1976, when Szarkowski famously declared that "Color photography has found its Mozart." I'd gotten my first serious camera for my sixteenth birthday three years earlier. Throughout my adult life I've seen his many books as they've come out, caught the odd exhibit here and there, seen the most famous pictures again and again hither and yon.

It's been a long time since I found Eggleston challenging, although I do remember that period. Now, he's the opposite—like photographic comfort food. Many pictures are like old friends.

Seeing the big Chicago exhibit yesterday was a delight. It was equally pleasurable to see old favorites and also to find a good number of things I'd never seen before. Ken (who has been a longtime supporter of TOP and a frequent commenter; he's written several posts and camera reviews for us as well) is involved with the AIC, and says he's seen the show more than a dozen times in various official and unofficial capacities. He got to meet Eggleston during the opening and was present at the museum's functions, both public and private, when the show began. He's not only friendly, articulate, and an insider, but very knowledgeable about the work (not to mention the medium) as well. It greatly improved my experience of the show to see it in his company.

Wish you could have been there with us. We'd make a hell of a pair of tourguides.

Over coffee, Ken showed me his E-P2 with the finder and Panasonic 7–14mm lens, too, which might be the coolest of all the possible Micro 4/3 cameras. I had the Mamiya 7 with me.

The only downside of the experience was that the low lighting level ruins some of the pictures. (And Ken says the lights were turned up during all the opening festivities! Grr.) But only a few; by no means all. The show really runs the gamut, too—work is shown from throughout the last four decades, in dye transfer, Type C, silver gelatin (black and white) and digital prints in both color and monochrome.

I need to keep reminding myself that the opportunity to see work is really what energizes my enthusiasm for the medium of photography. It always recharges my batteries. The three-letter word for this: fun.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

New PDML Annual

By Mark Roberts

For the second year in a row, we've pulled it off: We've put out a book of PDML photography. Once again, all profits will go to the National Childhood Cancer Foundation.

The PDML is the Pentax-Discuss Mailing List, an enthusiast group of Pentax photographers. The book is called PDML Photo Annual 2010.

New for this year: A gallery in Chicago is holding an exhibit of prints of images from the book. No kidding. Okay, it's a small, out-of-the way place that normally devotes itself to German cultural themes, but its curator knows one of the PDML members in last year's Photo Annual, and when she saw the book she approached us about doing an exhibit.

Dank Haus Gallery
4740 N. Western Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60625

Exhibit runs from May 8th through June 12th. There's a reception/opening from 6–9 p.m. on May 7th, open to the public (Mike's been invited). Hope to see some of you Midwestern Pentax shooters there!

Mark

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Henri Cartier-Bresson at MoMA and Elsewhere

You're probably aware that there's a major retrospective exhibition of the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, until June 28th. A few ancillaries:

• There's a fine show review by the admirable Peter Schjeldahl of The New Yorker called "Picture Perfect" that you can read online. Crisp, short, rich as chocolate, and one of the few appraisals I've read in recent years that isn't hagiographic. Critic Schjeldahl takes a rather dim view of the master. Although that is in a sense a very traditional take—the old-fashioned stance of art critics was to be patronizing of photography whatever else they did—he makes some astute points and digs up a couple of wonderful quotes. The essay is one of those rare ones that's both an opposing view and, in its own way, right. Recommended read.

• The new show catalog by MoMA curator Peter Galassi, Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century,  is now available. (Here's the U.K. link—different cover in the U.K.) If you are to have only one H.C.-B. book, or if you are new to him, I still recommend the big monograph Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer, which we are very lucky to still have in print. If that's too steep for you, I very much enjoyed Clement Cheroux's chock-a-block little pocket-sized introduction, ten bucks and cheap at twice the price. Good stuff.

• Finally, although it brings up less than pleasant memories of his rather daffy interview of Henri himself (which I reviewed here), Charlie Rose has interviewed Martine Franck, Henri's widow and the co-founder of his Foundation, which provided most of the prints for the MoMA show. The interviewed aired last night, as far as I can tell. I can't make the Charlie Rose website work—none of the links function for me—but maybe you'll have better luck.

Mike
(Thanks to numerous readers)

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Eric Rose: "Charlie Rose interview can be seen here."

European Venues for the New Topographics Show

Robert Adams, Tract House, Westminster, Colorado, 1973

A number of European readers were curious as to where the "New Topographics" show would be traveling there. The official list so far (which Geoff already reported in the comments to the book review post, but which I'll repeat here) is:

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (July 17–October 3, 2010)
Landesgalerie, Linz, Austria (November 10, 2010–January 9 2011)
Die Photographische Sammlung Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, Germany (January 20–March 28, 2011)
The Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (June 25–September 11, 2011)
Museum of Fine Arts, Bilbao, Spain (October 17, 2011–January 8, 2012)

(I've included the S.F. date because it's still upcoming.) In addition, Trinity Parker at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in Arizona, which organized the show with George Eastman House (GEH), tells me that they are working on adding the Preus Museum in Norway, but that it isn't official yet. Norwegian readers might want to keep an eye on that.

-

Nicholas Nixon, View of Cambridge from Boston University, Boston, 1975

-

Bernd and Hilla Becher, Pit Head, Bear Valley, Pennsylvania, 1974

-

Henry Wessel, Buena Vista, Colorado, 1973

-

Stephen Shore, 2nd Street and South Main Street, Kalispell, Montana, August 22, 1974

-

Joe Deal, Untitled View (Albuquerque), 1974

The JPEGs are from the CCP website. Here again are the links for the catalog, which should be arriving Chez TOP today, the Amazon warehouse and the brown trucks willing:

New Topographics at Amazon U.S.

New Topographics at Amazon U.K.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

A Tune Upon the Blue Guitar

Some Giacometti figures strolling in front of a Chicago backdrop. Giacometti feels like the man of the hour, since someone recently paid $104,300,000 for one of his sculptures, the most money ever paid at auction for a work of art. I'm sure every tourist visiting the Modern Wing will take some variant of this snap showing the city skyline.

I went to Chicago yesterday, to visit family and see a photo show.

The show was "In the Vernacular" at the Art Institute of Chicago. Not to keep you in suspense...well, what's the opposite of "blockbuster"? Is there a word for that? Besides "lame," I mean. If you define "blockbuster" as a big, ambitious show organized around a good idea that is well-realized and fecund, this show...well, wasn't any of that.

There were only eight—count 'em, eight—photographs in the show I'd never seen before, and it wasn't even a show of vernacular photography—just art photography that was inspired by vernacular photography, which could be, hell, just about any photography that isn't conceptual or constructed. And it didn't even make a very strong case for its premise; the idea seemed like just an excuse to trot out a motley of treasures from the vaults. And not even a very generous motley.

Only two of the eight pictures that were new to me were pictures I'm glad I've now seen. It could be that I'm being suggestible in light of our recent discussions here on TOP, but I took one of the two to be a photograph of a model car. It's possible it's actually a real car. The SAC* in the case of this picture is an extremely long title that gives every possible detail about the car; it starts with the word "Model," so maybe that's what made my brain want to think it was a model. In any event, it might not be a model, but that's how I wanted to see it, so that's how I saw it.

Maybe I just couldn't see it well enough to tell. It's a real shame, but the Art Institute of Chicago must be running out of money, because they can no longer afford to turn the lights up all the way. The entire show was bathed in a dispiriting dim murkiness, as though you had missed a barrier and stumbled into an area meant to be off-limits to the public, like where the janitors store stuff. (I might have exaggerated it here, in this picture. I have been known to exaggerate.) I can't wait until that curatorial fad fades into its well-deserved oblivion, and museums go back to lighting their damn shows properly. Curmudge, curmudge.

Here it is is again. It's tough to show what this looks like with all the reflections from the glass (sorry, didn't have a polarizing filter in my pocket).

To complete my bad reporting, I forgot to snap a picture of the wall label, so I can't tell you the photographer's name. I think it's Christopher Williams, but all I'm really sure of is that his name is Christopher Willi-, because that's all I can see in the first picture. 

Big Color by Martin Parr. I'm slightly suspicious that this was a setup, it's so perfect. If I ever took a photograph this great I'd retire immediately and go hide in the woods.

To give you an idea just how bored I was, I enjoyed the big color pictures the most. I should write it "Big Color." Normally I think Big Color is pretentious and pushy when it's mixed with a lot of small monochrome, but the pictures by Tina Barney (A Big Color pioneer whose work is now medium sized in comparison to the Even Bigger Color which has followed it) and Martin Parr and Larry Sultan were the best things here, injecting a little life into the generally limp proceedings. Especially the two Larry Sultan pictures. I've seen reproductions of both before, but I'd never seen original prints, and they had depth and presence and carried the wall even in the funereal gloom. I came away with a new appreciation for him and a desire to see more.

To complete my dyspeptic grump (things are about to improve, though, for both of us), I wasn't carried away by the artspeak on the walls. The older I get, the less patience I have for being told how I'm supposed to feel about what I'm looking at. 

Don't get me wrong, it was nice visiting some old friends in this show—it's never exactly bad to see Winogrand and Brassai and Friedlander or the Tod Papageorge baseball picture we talked about here a while back, or what appeared to be a contact proof of a Lartigue frame with crop marks in pen on it—there were even some Warhol Polaroids—but the experience left me really wanting to see newer photography. I suspect that museums just have not sorted out yet how to deal with the very changed, and highly charged, new world of post-digital-revolution photography. Ignoring it will not remain a viable strategy forever, of course, and I look forward to seeing it begin to spill into the hallowed low-lit halls of the muse-mausoleums.

The best thing to see is usually what you see if you turn around and look the other way
So, not very satisfied by the photography and looking for something else to look at while I was there, I discovered that, if the AIC actually is out of money, there's a very good reason for that: it has just built a huge and lavish new "Modern Wing." The architecture is outstanding—unlike some recent museums it is actually subservient to the purpose of housing and showing art. The ceiling on the third floor, where the early- and mid-20th century treasures are kept, is translucent, so the light on sunny Valentine's Day was magnificent (although, strangely, there are a few galleries on the third floor without natural light, and in those, you're plunged into curatorially fashionable murk again).

I even found a black-and-white photograph on the Third Floor, in this Gino Severini still life from 1916!

If the galleries are wonderful, the art, on the third floor certainly, is even wonderfuller. Early modern art is becoming classic now, and the third floor of the Modern Wing is just chock-a-block with splendid things—stone masterpieces at every point of the compass, so much that it makes you feel like a lottery winner.

Two men being told what to think of Picasso's "The Old Guitarist," a painting which now must be worth much more than $104.3 million. There are treasures like this at every turn on the third floor of the new Modern Wing at Chicago.

I suspect that you, like me and I think many visitors in the crowds I thronged among, might not be quite as enthralled by the second floor, where the more contemporary, post-1960 art is on offer. I have to wonder about some of the curatorial choices. The interest for the eye in some cases takes a nosedive and the anxiousness of the artspeak in the wall placards ratchets way up, making highflown claims for some stuff that just ain't that good to look at. I spent some time on this floor observing not the art, but the patrons. One room, filled with plain white panels by an artist whose name has already flitted beyond the recall of my aging neurons, was getting a lot of people taking a quick glimpse at the entrance and turning right back around again. And a repetitive film showing in a darkened room was getting similarly shunned by the crowds; as I stood back and watched, people would sit down on the bench and then get right back up again and hightail it. In the Museum Store, a bit later, I noticed a book called Do Museums Still Need Objects? In places, the art on the second floor seemed to be making the point that sometimes, even museums that have objects still need objects. I'm probably just fifty years behind the times.**

There are some great things on the second floor as well, of course, including, for instance, one of the most interesting Roy Lichtensteins I've ever seen, which I spent a lot of time standing in front of. And, in fairness, I didn't do the second floor proper justice—it was my third stop and I was getting tired by then.

Museums might not need objects any more, but museum stores still do!

In any event, there's no question in my mind that the new Modern Wing is a spectacular success and a worthy addition (literally and figuratively) to one of the best museums in the world. The trend in recent museum architecture around the world has seemed a bit errant with regard to function, I think—the Quadracci Pavilion of our own Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Santiago Calatrava, is a work of art in its own right and is quickly becoming a symbol of local civic pride, and both those aspects of it have great value. But my problem with it is that it's not all that great a space for showcasing art exhibits—the galleries seem like an afterthought and have little to do with the most distinctive features of the structure. The Modern Wing of the AIC, by contrast, is a beautiful space, an enjoyable place to be, but it's also an effective and tremendously satisfying place to view art. This is architecture to enjoy, and that I'm sure will instill civic pride in Illinoisans, but it's also architecture that works. If you ever find yourself within striking distance of Chicago, the new Modern Wing is well worth a visit. Strong work, and bravo.

Mike

*Stupid Arty Conceit

**A reference to the art critic who said that the public is always sixty years behind the times when it comes to avant-guard art. I'm being conceited and claiming I'm ahead of the public...just not by that much.

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...

UPDATE: I heard from Martin Parr about the "Big Color" photograph of the woman pumping gas. It was indeed a setup, as it was a commissioned fashion shoot. —MJ

Don McCullin's 75th Birthday Show

Photo by Don McCullin

A brief slide show with voice-over called "Shaped by War" has been posted at the BBC this morning.

Don McCullin's work is being shown at the Imperial War Museum North (in Manchester, U.K.) from February 6th to June 13th. "The largest ever U.K. exhibition about the life and work of Don McCullin, one of the world’s most acclaimed photographers, marking his 75th year. Many items are on public display for the very first time...a unique collaboration between McCullin and the Imperial War Museum, this major new exhibition contains over 200 photographs, objects, magazines and personal memorabilia."

Mike
(Thanks to numerous readers)

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...

'The Book Will Surely Prevail'

My friend and former teacher Joe Cameron, in his post "H.C.-B. in Ink" last Friday, mentioned Ralph Gibson:

But I also remember hearing the photographer Ralph Gibson suggest once that the deep rich black of printer’s ink came closer to conveying his ideas than the silver of printing paper. He was glad to sell 'original prints' to collectors but he implied that the book pages holding his images were truer to his vision.

As I often try to do when people are mentioned or referenced in our posts—I am forever casting lines into the water—I emailed the link to Ralph, saying, parenthetically, "I know you love books." Here's his reply, which came in yesterday morning:

Michael,

Apropos your invitation I will respond by adding that now, 20 years later, the digital revolution is coming of age in the truest sense. We are beginning to understand exactly what the net does and does not do... Obviously many forms of communication and research have been massively enhanced via electronic media. However it seems that the photography book is holding strong. Very strong indeed. Let's examine why this is the case.

I believe that the alchemy of light on film informs a kind of content that is not remotely duplicated by electronic imaging systems. These systems transfer information with great precision but a silver gelatin photograph transcends the subject and leads one into much higher levels of content. For this reason the photograph per se remains firmly positioned in the social aesthetic matrix.

The exact same is true of the photography book. Issues such as tactility, luminosity and rhythm on the printed page are not in any way equaled by the image on the digital display.

I don't want to sound like one of those cave-men who resented the invention of papyrus...I own several computers and love doing the layout and scans for my books as well as composing music and burning CDs etc. It's all great. I only want to state clearly that the book will surely prevail....

I only hope that these sentiments are shared by future generations.

Ever Onwards!

Ralph Gibson

Of major photographers, Ralph Gibson is even more closely identified than most with the printed page. He founded Lustrum Press in 1970 to publish his own work as well as a series of "process-oriented" technical books and monographs by other photographers, the most famous (or infamous) of which was probably Larry Clark's pioneering portrait of the drug underworld, Tulsa, reprinted in 2000 by Grove Press. Along the way, he helped make the reputations of a number of photographers who are well established now, such as Mary Ellen Mark.

A spread from Ralph Gibson's 1973 book Déjà-vu. Photo courtesy CCP.

There was a show at the Center for Creative Photography in 2007 called "Ralph Gibson and Lustrum Press, 1970–1984" which chronicled Gibson's influence as a publisher.

Where his own work is concerned, Ralph Gibson works through the medium of books—with design, sequencing, and juxtaposition—such that his printed books are essentially single artworks. Ironically, though, his website has an archive of his work that is more comprehensive than the online gallery of almost any other photographer of his stature.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...

Featured Comment by CK Dexter Haven: "I would be thrilled to have an email from Ralph Gibson. Certainly, one of my photographic 'heroes.' However, an actual letter from him would be just the cat's. Something about the luminosity of ink on paper that just can't be reproduced by pixels on screen."

H.C.-B. in Ink

By Joe Cameron

I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but to those bemoaning  the fact that they live too far away to see the traveling Cartier-Bresson show and therefore can’t experience "original prints," I would say that some photographers' images work best, and do best what they are intended to do, on the printed page—not gallery walls. I would include most photojournalists in this category, and Cartier-Bresson is a case in point.

I appreciate seeing original work as much as anyone. One of the seminal experiences of my life was stumbling into a Rothko retrospective at the Tate many years ago. It was late on a rainy London afternoon and the paintings were lit only by somewhat faint skylight. At first I was irritated that the galleries were so dark, but after sitting for many long minutes and acclimating my eyes to the ethereal atmosphere, a vast new world opened that I shall never forget, one that cannot be duplicated in the form of a book.

Brian Forrest, Mark Rothko, Installation View (Pacific Design Center, 2007)

But I also remember hearing the photographer Ralph Gibson suggest once that the deep rich black of printer’s ink came closer to conveying his ideas than the silver of printing paper. He was glad to sell 'original prints' to collectors but he implied that the book pages holding his images were truer to his vision.

Both of these examples, however, are about how important the material which makes up the image is to its impact and communication. To the contrary, it seems to me that Cartier-Bresson’s photographs (and most photographs for that matter) attempt to bypass the vehicle of their conveyance and present the actual physical world intact. And sometimes books can pull this off more effectively than the austere walls of a gallery whose purpose is to emphasize the preciousness of objects.

So take heart—for a small sum of money (the price of a book) you can enjoy the full beauty of Cartier-Bresson’s work, at its best, and in the comfort of your own home.

Joe

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...