Harvey Benge

errata editions - NEW EDITIONS

2012-01-25T16:56:00.006+13:00

Founded in 2008 by Valerie Sonnenthal, Jeffrey Ladd and Ed Grazda, errata editions publishes books, in fact republishes books, with a special focus on rare photography books which are unavailable to a new generations of photographers.
To date, twelve books on books titles have been published featuring among others, luminaries such as Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, William Klein, David Goldblatt and Paul Graham.
Four new titles are to appear this year. #13 Ed van der Elsken: Sweet Life / #14 Keld Helmer-Petersen: 122 Colour Photographs / #15 Nobuyoshi Araki: The Banquet / #16 Krass Clement: Drum.

errata editions make wonderful books, you can see more HERE

ROME POCKET GUIDE

2012-01-23T18:47:00.001+13:00

When I was in Rome last October I met with Marco Delongu director of FOTOGRAFIA Festival Internazionale di Roma. Marco had just produced Alec Soth's commissioned book project La Belle Dame Sans Merci which follows commissioned series on Rome by Guy Tillim, Anders Petersen, Martin Parr and Tod Papageorge.
Alec's oversized book was a mastery of design and production. I decided in my week in Rome to make some pictures and a bookwork that was at the other end of the scale, simple and unadorned. And well, a pocket guide to Rome.....

Here it is. The bookwork is a signed and numbered limited edition of 50 copies, and contains 48 photographs over 48 pages, printed on 150 gsm art paper, 158 x 108mm.

Copies can be obtained directly from me at: harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz
Prices are, €25 / £20 / US$30 / NZ$38, which includes packing and postage. For payment you can simply log on to my PayPal account using my email address above.

Andreas Schmidt - The Lonely Christmas Tree Picture Album

2012-01-22T12:30:00.001+13:00

John Gossage Harvey Benge

A few weeks ago London based photographer Andreas Schmidt invited other shooters to post on a dedicated facebook page their pictures of "lonely Christmas trees". Andreas has now put together a superb collaborative photobook work.
He writes: a must have book for any Christmas tree lover and photobook collector alike this book gathers the finest Christmas tree photographs by world renowned photographers and is undoubtedly going to be the best photobook 2012 in the Christmas tree photography category. No need to buy a tree anymore. Just buy the book.

You can have a look and buy the book HERE.

FotoBook Festival Dummy Award 2012

2012-01-22T09:58:00.001+13:00

This year the Kassel Fotobook Festival moves to LE BAL in Paris and again this year photographers are invited to present their so far unpublished photobooks to an international expert jury. The best 50 books will be exhibited as part of the festival in Paris. From these 50 titles, the winners will be awar...ded at the location. The first prize is a complete book production by publishers Seltmann+Soehne. The registrations costs are 32 Euros. Entries close on 31 March 2012. Entries for the Photobook Dummy close on 5 April 2012 (post marked).

The 50 exhibited books will be selected by a pre-jury. This pre-jury comprises Markus Schaden (Bookseller, Publisher, Cologne), Sebastian Hau (Le Bal Books, Paris), Inga Schneider (International Photobook Festival, Cologne), Laurence Vecten (Lozen Up, Paris), Dieter Neubert (International Photobook Festival, Kassel).

The main jury comprises Gerry Badger (Critic, Photographer, London), Todd Hido (Photographer, USA), Markus Schaden (Bookseller, Publisher, Cologne), Dieter Neubert (International Photobook Festival, Kassel), Oliver Seltmann (Publisher, Berlin), Diane Dufour (Director Le Bal, Paris), Andreas Müller-Pohle, European Photography, Berlin), Sebastian Hau (Le Bal Books, Paris), Laurence Vecten (Lozen Up, Paris).

The winning book will be produced by printing and publishing partner seltmann+soehne. This work will also be presented in the art magazine European Photography. The 2nd and 3rd prizes will be supplied by our partner blurb: the 2nd prize is books to the value of 500 Euros, the 3rd prize books to the value of 300 Euros.

You can find an entry form HERE.

Photographers whose work I like - No16/ Christopher Ecclestone

2012-01-20T11:12:00.003+13:00

Chris Ecclestone is a photographer based in Cheshire in the UK whom I've never met except in cyber space. A few days ago Chris asked me to look at his work, and I really like what he is doing.
With some of his pictures I find myself responding "I wish I'd made that." Here's a selection of his photographs. You can see more on his SITE. Have a look you will not be disappointed.

Pieter Hugo shoots Zoë B

2012-01-19T18:45:00.002+13:00

Two years ago when Rineke Dijkstra was here for the St Paul St workshop she made a lot of pictures of my daughter Zoë. It seemed only natural at that time for Rineke to make some instant pictures. And she did. The year after Todd Hido also photographed Zoë and this year Pieter Hugo continued the tradition. Here are the photographs.....

Pieter Hugo and Quentin Bajac workshop at St Paul St Gallery, Auckland

2012-01-18T10:29:00.005+13:00

Pieter Hugo and Quentin Bajac

An intensive but laid back three days ended last Sunday with photographers from all parts of New Zealand and Australia taking part in the annual AUT St Paul St Gallery workshop, this year with South African photographer Pieter Hugo and Paris based curator Quentin Bajac. Following the successful format established with the first workshop six year ago Pieter and Quentin talked about their respective practices and then participants presented work for review and discussion.

Some unsolicited comments:

Thanks again for organizing the course it was very thought provoking.
Melissa C

I thought Pieter and Quentin were fabulous and asked just the right questions...very constructive and honest feedback. Pieter was spot on and very sharp with his comments, not in any way brutal but brilliantly thought provoking. So was meeting everyone else and seeing their drive, work and interest. Fantastic!
Kathrin S

For me, I think one of the really interesting things was the power of the critique.
Malcolm Mc

I loved the course though. I learnt a huge amount about photography and really valued meeting everyone. Quentin and Pieter were fantastic.
Kriselle B

Just want to thank you for organising another great Photography workshop - it was great in all respects. Thanks for bring Pieter and Quentin over, I really enjoyed their presentations and their critiques, and as always you did a great job!
Dieneke J

The course certainly ticked the boxes for me and I would be interested in the next one as well. Thank you, it is a real quality investment for us here so far from the photographic communities.
Lester B

Thanks Harvey, Pieter and Quentin's remarks and suggestions have had a major impact on me....I'm feeling much more encouraged (and confident now) to carry on doing my self-directed projects.
Jan Y

I have hardly been able to sleep since the weekend, so much going on in my head and I have so many ideas re 'intentionality'. The feedback was terrific for me, I wish I had recorded it!
Wendy B

The workshop has definitely given me some things to ponder and ideas to nurture, as well as lots of studying to do! Thank you for inviting me to participate and for the time and thought you put into the workshop.
Jade A

Rineke Dijkstra - A retrospective at The Guggenheim NYC

2012-01-11T18:39:00.000+13:00

Rineke Dijkstra, Kolobrzeg, Poland, July 26 1992

Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective is the first U.S. mid-career survey of this important Dutch artist’s work in photography and video. Dijkstra came to prominence in the 1990s with her celebrated Beach Portraits, large-scale color photographs of children on the verge of adolescence posed on beaches around the world, from South Carolina to the Ukraine. From that point on, her sensitive and visually riveting portraits have documented individuals caught in transitional states, sometimes due to physical exertion, for example after giving birth or dancing, or charted over time through series. Along with other Western European photographers such as Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff, Dijkstra has been a leading innovator in the production of large-scale color images, which came to define contemporary photography in the 1990s and have transformed it ever since. This comprehensive retrospective will feature the Beach Portraits and other early works such as the photographs of new mothers and bullfighters, together with selections from Dijkstra’s later work. It also includes series that she has been working on continuously for years, such as Almerisa (1994–2008), which documents a young immigrant girl as she grows up and adapts to her new environment. Dijkstra’s work in video will be fully integrated in the exhibition.
Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective is organized by Jennifer Blessing, Senior Curator, Photography, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Sandra S. Phillips, Senior Curator, Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition which runs June 29 - October 3, 2012, will be accompanied by the first comprehensive monograph on the artist’s work to be published in the United States.

Andy Adams and the FlakPhoto network

2012-01-11T18:18:00.001+13:00

Andy Adams (whose website you can look at HERE) is a Madison, Wisconsin based photographer, photo-educator, writer, blogger, curator and web-master extraordinaire. With his many web-based projects Andy does more than anybody else I know to connect the diverse yet very singular contemporary photographic world.

Andy says this, I'm passionate about working with digital media to promote arts and culture experience. For the past five years, my projects have explored the intersection of online publishing, social media, and community collaborations in contemporary photography. In my spare time I publish FlakPhoto.com, an online art space that celebrates the culture of image-making by promoting the discovery of artists from around the world. One of the best parts about producing FlakPhoto.com is connecting with photographers that I admire - and helping them get their work seen by a wider audience online. The Internet connects the world, and in doing so, is fostering the growth of a global online photographic community.

As if FlakPhoto isn't enough Andy Adams has also has created two Facebook photography groups. Flak Photo Network, and Flak Photo Books, which as I write have memberships of 3294 and 936 respectively.

You can check out FlakPhoto.com HERE

Eve Arnold at 99 dies in London

2012-01-06T09:50:00.001+13:00

Eve Arnold in 1997

NEW YORK, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Pioneering American photojournalist and portrait photographer Eve Arnold, best known for her intimate shots of Marilyn Monroe, has died at the age of 99, Magnum photo agency said on Thursday. She died peacefully in her sleep at a nursing home in London, said representative Jonathan Bell of Magnum Photo Agency, of which she was a member. Arnold made her name from photographs of a variety of people from rich and famous to poor and unknown. Her revealing and intimate shots of Monroe over a ten year collaboration gave her prestige, as well as her photographs of the likes of Queen Elizabeth, Jacqueline Kennedy and Malcolm X.
But the Philadelphia-born photographer was equally interested in those not in the public eye. Her first story documented fashion shows in the 1950s in segregated Harlem, New York before moving to London in 1962.
She worked at publications including London's Sunday Times and captured life in the Arab world in the late 1960s and early 70s before later in the decade going on to become one of the first Westerners to document China.
"I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives; I am a woman and I wanted to know about women," Arnold once said according to her 1976 book, "The Unretouched Woman."
She has been widely exhibited and received numerous prizes, including the lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers. She published of over 15 monographs, including her 1997 book "In Retrospect."

Marilyn Monroe during shooting of The Misfits 1960

At what age do you make your best work? Assuming you're capable of making any "best work" at all....

2012-01-05T14:38:00.003+13:00

Pablo Picasso, 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973

I've just come across a post by Alec Soth on his Little Brown Mushroom blog, HERE. where Alec sites the ages of those photographers who topped the Best Photobooks lists, they were: Christian Patterson (39), Rinko Kawauchi (39), Yukichi Watabe (34 in 1958), Ricardo Cases (40), Valerio Spada (39), Gregory Halpern (34), Alex Webb (59) and Guido Guidi (70) tied for 7th place. This follows a previous post HERE by Alec where he suggests that the age where photographers make their peak contribution is 25 to 35.

Martin Parr posted this reply:

Hi Alec
I just came across this posting and basically you are right. However I got bored with reading all the responses from aged 40 plus photographers telling us they were about to hit their peak. No-one really addressed your question, they just bored us with their own inadequacies. You need that raw energy and excitement that feeds into new and exciting work, associated with the 20s and early 30s. Very few achieve even that, let alone sustain this into their long careers. I once said in an interview that I thought my best work was probably behind me, and this now is quoted back to me everytime I do another interview. What is so shocking about this? You personally may never better ” Sleeping by the Mississippi”, but of course accepting this is problematic. OK we keep going, trying to be fresh, but we know too much, are too comfortable, even if you fight laziness by working hard. It doesn’t mean you cannot make a useful contribution later on, but it ain’t going to have the edge that the early work, so often delivers. There of course honorable exceptions, and on this front, I always site David Goldblatt, who is now 80 and has constantly refreshed his way of understanding South Africa through photography. He only turned to colour at the age of 65, and this is some of his best work.

My view is that you're only as old as you feel! However Martin is right, the guts of the problem is simple, we do know too much!

Andreas Gursky's Rhine 11, 1999, a world record at $4.3 million

2012-01-05T12:41:00.002+13:00

Andreas Gursky now has the world auction record for a photograph, sold for an incredible $4.3 million at Christies New York. This breaks the current record set in May 2011 by Cindy Sherman's self portrait, which sold at Christies for $3,890.000 in the Spring 2011 Contemporary Sales.

Gursky's Rhine II, 1999, is one of an edition of six photographs, four of which are in major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate Modern, London.

You can go to Christies HERE for the background.

The Gursky price also exceeded Richard Prince's Marlboro Man (Untitled, Cowboy), which sold for $3,401,000 at Sotheby's, New York, November 2007 Contemporary Art Sale. Gursky's previous world record photograph is his 99-cent diptych at $3,346,456, which was set at Sotheby's London in February 2007. Edward Steichen's Pond, Moonlight, still holds the record for a non-contemporary photograph which changed hands at $2,928,000.

Auckland - New Year, New Photographs....

2012-01-05T12:11:00.000+13:00

Here a some new pictures I made here in Auckland a day or so ago on my wanderings from my studio.....

The Lonely Christmas Tree

2011-12-31T11:47:00.002+13:00

Photographer Andreas Schmidt has started a facebook group called The Lonely Christmas Tree Picture Album.
Andreas writes: I am inviting photobook fanatics to post their best shot of their Christmas tree by following the link below. There will be a book of the best entries ready for Christmas 2012 (or sooner).
You can have a look at the fb page HERE. Why not join and post your own Lonely Christmas Tree picture....

And here are some of the photographs so far:


Laurence Vecten

Cedric Calandraud

Osvaldo Sanviti

Boehm Kobayashi

Elisabeth Tonnard

John Gossage (stolen from Monica Baltz)

Fred Free

Harvey Benge

Best Photobooks of 2011 - a list of the lists

2011-12-30T08:22:00.001+13:00

Marc Feustel who perceptively writes the wonderful eyecurious blog, which you can check out HERE, has painstakingly pulled together a total of 52 lists where he reports 313 books were nominated overall. First place has gone to Christian Patterson's Redheaded Peckerwood with 19 votes.

Here are the lists, with thanks to Marc at eyecurious:
Brainpickings, The 11 best photography books of 2011; Sean O’Hagan (The Guardian), Photography books of the year 2011; American Photo, The best photobooks of 2011; Alec Soth, Top 20 photobooks of 2011; Rémi Coignet & Maria-Karina Bojikian, Livres de photographie: notre sélection 2011; Le Monde, Ouvrages de fête à savourer (Photographie); Jörg Colberg, My favourite photobooks this year; Tom Claxton, 2011 photobook highlights; Corey Presha, Favorite Books of 2011; Bridget Coaker, Photography Books of the Year; Yannick Bouillis, Favorite photobooks; Bart Peters, 10 favourite photobooks of 2011; Claire de Rouen, Xmas Top Ten; BJP, The best photobooks of 2011; Blake Andrews, Photography Books; Conor Donlon, Favourite Books of 2011; Sebastian Hau, “books that engaged me the most”; Larissa Leclair, The Best Books of 2011 (self and indie published); Willem Van Zoetendaal, Favorite Books of 2011; Rob Hornstra, Top Photo Books 2011; Marcel Du, Best of 2011 photobooks; Photobookstore, Our favourite photobooks of 2011; Elizabeth Avedon and friends, 2011 best photography books; NY Times Photo Department, Our Top 10 Photo Books of 2011; Time, Best of 2011: The Photobooks We Loved; Photo-eye (26 contributors), The Best Books of 2011; Laurence Vecten, 7 livres photographiques du moment, à feuilleter au coin du feu; Me, Another best books of 2011 list.

At photo-eye 26 photobook experts, including publishers, writers, photographers and photo professionals pronounce their verdict. Rinko Kawauchi's Illuminance was selected 9 times and Christian Patterson's Readheaded Peckerwood with 8 selections.
You can check out photo-eye's lists HERE.

The photo-eye list makers

Gerry Badger and the Pleasures of Good Photography Writing

2011-12-18T17:32:00.005+13:00

Nobody to my knowledge writes as profoundly, succinctly and simply about photography than Gerry Badger. His essays are a skillful balance of form and substance, enjoyable and satisfying, rather like sitting and talking with a good friend over an excellent dinner and a superb bottle of wine.

Gerry's book, The Pleasures of Good Photographs. (Aperture 2010), is an essential read for anybody remotely interested in serious photography. That is photography that goes beyond the surface.

Here are a few quotations:
That is not to say that photographs cannot be made of rocks or trees, but they will be all the better if the photographer can relate them to history, to the world of human culture rather than just the photographer's personal sensibilities. This, I believe, is true of all photography - and it can be done.

Or are the really great photographers drawn from the ranks of those who reject visual style in favor of visual sensibility, those who recognize that the medium is profligate rather than reductive, and more akin to the film or the novel then the painting? Those accordingly who put content before form.

If looking at photographs is a pleasurable activity, it is pleasurable in a complex, transformative, frequently unsettling sense. It is not pleasure unalloyed, for no profound pleasure is pure... Like many truly enriching pleasures... photography has its dark, troubling, even dangerous aspects.

The Pleasures of Good Photographs is an intellectual and aesthetic romp through the world of photography. It is a delight to read.

HERE is a link to Amazon.
This may well be the best $24.24 you have spent for a longtime.

BROKEN TRAIN - A picture game......

2011-12-18T12:10:00.002+13:00

Broken Train is a picture game played by the five members of the fiveleveninetynine photographers group, Hannah Jones, Jonny Cochrane, Samuel Bland, Simone Massera and Teresa Cos. Each day a member posts an image in response to the previous image. This might be a new photograph from a members archive but also an image from any source and from any time.
On October 31st the group introduced First Class Carriage where each Monday a guest from the world of photography contributes to the Broken Train. I was invited to contribute a photograph, one which follows the image below from John Stezaker's Third Person Series.

From Monday (Northern Hemisphere time) you can check out what my image was in response.... HERE

SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY iconic Paris bookstore founder dies

2011-12-15T10:37:00.005+13:00

George Whitman, the founder of Shakespeare and Company, the iconic English-language bookshop in Paris, has died aged 98. Whitman "died peacefully at home in the apartment above his bookshop" on Wednesday, two months after having suffered a stroke, a posting on the store's Facebook page said. Whitman "showed incredible strength and determination up to the end, continuing to read every day in the company of his daughter, Sylvia, his friends and his cat and dog," the posting read. Nestled on the left bank of the Seine River, Shakespeare & Company is a veritable warren of books, stacked with volumes from floor to ceiling. It has long been known as a haven for writers and would-be writers, whom Whitman often allowed to crash in the store.

Best photobooks of 2011 - the lists

2011-12-14T07:56:00.002+13:00

The lists of best photobooks for the year have started to appear.... here are a few links that are worth a look....

From the guardian, Sean O'Hagan On Photography HERE

From blogger Marc Feustel at eye curious HERE

From Alec Soth's LITTLE BROWN MUSHROOM BLOG HERE

Both Sean O'Hagan and Alec Soth have nominated Christian Patterson's Redheaded Peckerwood. O'Hagan describes it as "ambiguous and unsettling" and Soth says of it "like an investigator’s dossier in the age of Google Images." Certainly a book near the top of my best list for the year.
Rinko Kawauchi's Illuminance also gets a double mention. O'Hagan says, "a mix of intimacy and deceptively casual observation holds sway and the end results remain singularly beautiful." I've not seen this book yet but knowing Rinko's work I'm sure it will not disappoint.

Walid Raad - 2011 Hasselblad Award Winner

2011-12-13T07:30:00.000+13:00

Walid Raad/Atlas Group, We Decided To Let Them Say "We Are Convinced" Twice. It Was More Convincing This Way, Beirut '82, Plane III, 2005

Lebanese born (1967 in Chbanieh, Lebanon), New York-based photographer Walid Raad is the recipient of the 2011 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in photography. Through his fictional collective The Atlas Group Raad has questioned and proposed new ideas about the relationship between documentary photography, archive and history. Raad approaches the imagery of war and the way political and social conflict can be explored in art.

His works to date include video, photography and literary essays. All, in one way or another, deal with the contemporary history of Lebanon with particular emphasis on the wars in Lebanon between 1975 to 1991. The work is also often concerned with the representation of traumatic events of collective historical dimensions; and the ways film, video, and photography function as documents of physical and psychological violence.

His works have been exhibited at Documenta 11 (Kassel), The Venice Biennale (Venice), The Whitney Biennial (New York), The Ayloul Festival (Beirut, Lebanon) and numerous other festivals in Europe, the Middle East, and North America.

He lives and works in New York, where he is currently an associate professor at the Cooper Union School of Art.

The exhibition Walid Raad – 2011 Hasselblad Winner will be shown at Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Sweden, until January 15, 2012.

In conjunction with the exhibition a book, Walid Raad – I Might Die Before I Get a Rifle, Hasselblad Award 2011, has been produced in collaboration with Steidl Verlag, Göttingen.

Hasselblad Foundation
www.hasselbladfoundation.org
info@hasselbladfoundation.org

PARIS DIARY - NOVEMBER 2011

2011-12-08T14:22:00.001+13:00

I have just completed the fourth bookwork in my Paris Diary series, PARIS DIARY, November 2011. This is the same format as the previous diaries with an edition limited to 75 copies, each book signed and numbered. There are 28 photographs, over 28 pages, printed on 150gsm art paper, 226 x 160 mm. Here are some pages.

Copies can be obtained directly from me at: harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz
Prices are, €22 / £19 / US$30 / NZ$36, which include packing and postage. For payment you can simply log on to my PayPal account using my email address above.

Dutch photographers and photobooks

2011-12-08T09:23:00.001+13:00

It is generally accepted that when it comes to photography and making photobooks nobody does it better than the Dutch. When in Amsterdam in November I talked to photographer and photo-educator Corinne Noordenbos about some Dutch photobooks that particularly impressed her. Here are just a few of the works.

Niels Stomps / 83 days of Darkness - Every winter between 11 November and 2 February the sun fails to rise above the slopes of the Alps leaving the North Italian village of Viganella completely in shadow during this period of the year. This village which is situated at the end of a narrow valley beside an 80-kilo meter road that extends to the Swiss Alps is suffering from an exodus of its population. Only the Center of town is left inhabited.
Therefore a large computer-operated mirror has been erected some 500 meters up the slope above the village just to reflect the sunlight onto the village for some seven hours a day.
In the mountain regions old laws have always reigned relations between man and nature. But now it is man that wants to prevail over it all. Working the hardest rocks or climbing the highest heights
More of Neils Stomps work HERE

Pieter van den Boogert / What We Wear - The global clothes market in three chapters, including the production in Bangladesh, the consumption in the Netherlands and the reuse of worn clothes in Ghana. This trilogy can be seen as a visual example of how western wealth and trendy consumption cannot be seen separately from poor working conditions and global market mechanisms.
More of Pieter van den Boogert's work HERE

Judith van IJken / Mimicry - Walking around in the New York neighbourhood of Williamsburg, I kept thinking I saw my father going past. Not the way he looks now, but as I know him from old photos. Nothing but young guys with great mops of black curls, moustaches and beards, 1980s-style training tops, tight jeans and often on racing bikes. Guys who looked like their fathers did in the 1980s.
In the first instance I saw this as a matter of fashion, the ‘retro’ trend that seems to move in parallel with my generation. When I gave it some more thought, I realised that this everyday phenomenon raises interesting questions about the age we live in. Questions such as: “Why is it that this generation would want to look like its parents?”, “What does that say about our time?”, “What is the relationship between these generations?” and “What has happened in the meantime?”
More of Judith van IJken's work HERE

Henk Wildschut / Shelter - In the vicinity of the port of Calais there is an area of a few hundred square meters known as the "jungle". The inhabitants of this area have traveled many miles to come here and still their journey is not finished. Calais is the starting point for the last and most popular crossing. Thousands have come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and nigeria in search of a better life in england, the destination of their dreams. Not that they are welcome, as illegal immigrants are banned and excluded. While waiting for a chance to make the long crossing they build makeshift shelters: tent-like structures of waste materials found in the immediate vicinity of the camp.
More of Henk Wildschut's work HERE

Raimond Wouda / School - Between 2002 and 2007 I photographed in a large number of secondary schools in the Netherlands, both in the provinces and the Randstad conurbation. I consciously avoided photographing in classes and focused instead on places in which pupils relax between lessons and are able to be themselves. During breaks these areas rapidly fill up with dozens of pupils. I have depicted these clusters of young people from high vantage points: I placed a camera on a tripod high on a ladder and remained on the ground where I took pictures by remote control at specific moments. These pictures show groups of pupils huddled together and throw contemporary Dutch youth in a completely new light. Interaction between individuals, formation of groups, clothing and hairstyles: everything is captured in a single picture. Apart from providing a unique snapshot of a particular period, the series offers a sociological survey of young Holland in a modern variation on the traditional Dutch militia corps portrait.
More of Raimond Wouda's work HERE

Anouk Kruithof / Happy Birthday to You - From January to March 2011 the photographs in this book were made at a psychiatric institution, Altrecht in Den Dolder in the Netherlands. Ten patients were interviewed about their wishes for their birthday and in accordance with those wishes Anouk Kruithof organised and celebrated these birthdays with them.
More of Anouk Kruithof's work HERE

Charles Saatchi on the commodification of the art world

2011-12-06T06:41:00.001+13:00

Charles Saatchi

In last Fridays Guardian, Charles Saatchi the 1990s tastemaker behind the rise of the Young British Artists lashed out at the art world and particularly at his fellow, obscenely rich art collectors, calling them "Eurotrashy, Hedge-fundy, Hamptonites." "Do any of these people actually enjoy looking at art?" he wrote. "Or do they simply enjoy having easily recognised, big-brand name pictures, bought ostentatiously in auction rooms at eye-catching prices, to decorate their several homes, floating and otherwise, in an instant demonstration of drop-dead coolth and wealth…. Even a self-serving narcissistic showoff like me finds this new art world too toe-curling for comfort."
"I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and simply cannot tell a good artist from a weak one, until the artist has enjoyed the validation of others – a received pronunciation. For professional curators, selecting specific paintings for an exhibition is a daunting prospect, far too revealing a demonstration of their lack of what we in the trade call "an eye". They prefer to exhibit videos, and those incomprehensible post-conceptual installations and photo-text panels, for the approval of their equally insecure and myopic peers. This "conceptualised" work has been regurgitated remorselessly since the 1960s, over and over and over again.""Few people in contemporary art demonstrate much curiosity. The majority spend their days blathering on, rather than trying to work out why one artist is more interesting than another, or why one picture works and another doesn't."

It's sad but true!

You can read the full Guardian story HERE

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012 - The shortlist

2011-12-03T10:18:00.006+13:00


Pieter Hugo. Yakubu Al Hasan, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana 2009 © Pieter Hugo. Courtesy of Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town and Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

The four photographers shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012 are Pieter Hugo, Rinko Kawauchi, John Stezaker and Christopher Williams.
This selection showcases diverse approaches to photography, from portraits taken in the toxic waste dumps of Ghana, to exquisite images of everyday moments and the conceptual use of found imagery. The photographers have been nominated for the following projects:

Pieter Hugo (b.1976, South-Africa) for his publication Permanent Error, published by Prestel (Germany, 2011).

Rinko Kawauchi (b.1972, Japan) for her publication Illuminance, published by Kehrer (Germany, 2011).

John Stezaker (b.1949, UK) for his exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (29 January – 18 March 2011).

Christopher Williams (b. 1956, USA) for his exhibition Kapitalistischer Realismus at Dům umění České Budějovice, Budweis, Czech Republic (5 May - 12 June 2011).

The annual award of £30,000 rewards a living photographer, of any nationality, for a specific body of work in an exhibition or publication format, which has significantly contributed to the medium of photography in Europe between 1 October 2010 and 30 September 2011. Previous winners include amongst others Jim Goldberg, Sophie Ristelhueber, Paul Graham, Joel Sternfeld, Juergen Teller, Rineke Dijkstra and Andreas Gursky.

The members of this year's Jury are: François Hébel, Director, Les Rencontres d'Arles; Martin Parr, photographer; Beatrix Ruf, Director/Curator, Kunsthalle Zürich and Anne-Marie Beckmann, Curator, Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Germany. Brett Rogers, Director of The Photographers’ Gallery, is the non-voting Chair.

Rinko Kawauchi. Untitled, from the series Illuminance

David Kregenow - portraits of photographers

2011-12-02T09:20:00.002+13:00

David Kregenow is a Berlin based photographer whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Paris Photo. Among other work, David makes portraits of other photographers. Here are some....

Anders Petersen

Boris Becker

Elliot Erwitt

Gregory Crewdson

JH Engstrom

Jurgen Teller

Taryn Simon

Thomas Ruff

You can check out David's website HERE it's well worth a look

Nan Goldin's Ballad of Sexual Dependency scandalizes Rio

2011-12-02T07:07:00.000+13:00

Rio de Janiero’s Oi Futuro Museum has cancelled a Nan Goldin exhibition featuring images from her famous “Ballad of Sexual Dependency” series, deeming the American photographer’s images of sex, drugs, and illness to be too disturbing for its audience. Denouncing the Oi Futuro's decision as a "step back" for Brazil, the director of Rio’s Museum of Modern Art (MAM-Rio), Luiz Camillo Osorio, said that "people confuse the symbolism of art with reality." Osorio is putting his institution where his mouth is: MAM-Rio has stepped up to host the Goldin exhibition, early next year. [AFP]

THE AGNOSTIC PRINT - a resource for photographers wanting the best out of their digital files

2011-12-01T14:18:00.001+13:00

I came across THE AGNOSTIC PRINT a SITE which outlines the fundamentals of getting the best out of digital photography, from file to print. Remembering what Beaubourg curator Quentin Bajac once told me, that the museum no longer regards digitally produced photographs to be "objects", I was particularly interested in a piece on "defining archival standards in photography."

Bill Kennedy writer of the article states, There is a great deal of confusion among photographers and artists, and those who sell and collect art, over exactly what the term “archival” means. Labeling a photographic print archival implies that it has met or exceeded a standard.
What is the standard? Is there one standard for all photographic images: color, black/white, inkjet, and alternative process? Is there a different standard for other, non-photographic prints?
The short answer is no. The Image Permanence Institute, a department of RIT’s College of Imaging Arts & Sciences, offers this definition:
“Archival- a term often used to imply that a material will be stable over time. The term has neither a recognized standard definition nor a quantifiable method for verification.”
(http://www.archivaladvisor.org/shtml/glossary.shtml)

The long answer is that photographers (photographers are arguably more guilty of misusing archival than any other group) use the term to mean that a print has been made to the highest standards of craftsmanship. Realistically it simply means that the photographer has taken great care to make an object that will last as long as possible.

All this is essential reading for any photographer making and selling digital prints.
And I suspect even more essential for collectors who put down serious money to acquire works that a museum of the stature of The Pompidou Centre regards as non objects.

You can read the full article HERE plus other equally informative material, the State of Inkjet, the Future of Scanning, What Happened to Photography and more.

John Gossage and Alec Soth - The Auckland Project (at last)

2011-11-29T19:52:00.002+13:00

John Gossage at Paris Photo, John's book on the left and Alec's on the right.

In January 2009 at my invitation, John Gossage and Alec Soth came to Auckland to present at the annual AUT St Paul Street Gallery photography workshop.
John had previously worked with Martin Parr where together they photographed in Memphis and from that joint venture produced the small but perfectly formed bookwork Obvious and Ordinary. I suggested to John and Alec that they might like to undertake a similar collaboration here in Auckland. Pleasingly they agreed. My worst nightmare was that Alec would bring his laborious 10x8 camera and John shooting with his Canon 5D, heading out to "make a book in a block." Fortunately Alec arrived with a brand new digital back Hasselblad. This was not without its problems however as Alec's first pictures turned out to be just jpegs, while John announced on the first day of shooting that already he'd made five good pictures. Could I detect a feeling of competition in the air?

I drove John and Alec all over Auckland, from harbour to volcanic cones. Fortunately they seemed to discover more than enough inspiration within a mile or so of my house, steadfastly disappearing separately after breakfast into the streets of Ponsonby and Grey Lynn, returning hours later. In the end John did make a book in a block and Alec went on record to say he only made one good picture in Auckland. Modest as ever.

Production and design of the book was left in John's hands and both Alec and I thought the book would turn out to be something similar to Obvious and Ordinary. Simple and to the point. Not so. At Paris Photo John had a few advance copies, I brought a copy back. All I can say is that the edition is superb, wonderful photographs, stunning design, and incredible production. John's work is in a case bound book of around 80 photographs and Alec's photographs are on a fold out poster tipped into a hard backed folder. Both held in a plastic slip case. In Alec's words a sort of Oblique and Ornate. Whatever you call it The Auckland Project is something very special.

John's book

Alec's front of poster photograph

You can order a copy of The Auckland Project directly from the publisher Radius Books HERE or from Amazon HERE. There are some special editions available too.

Auckland - AUT St Paul Street Gallery, End of Year Fair

2011-11-29T08:34:00.000+13:00

Auckland's St Paul St Gallery plans to alleviate the Christmas burden by hosting an End of Year Fair, mixing art, craft, design and performance. A fair where some things are for sale and some things aren’t.
Books and works on paper, contemporary art, object design and craft, artist projects and conversation opportunities. In addition to the stalls St Paul St Gallery has invited D.A.N.C.E. Art Club, Amber Pearson and Melissa Durbin to create interventions in the fair. On Friday night D.A.N.C.E. Art Club will create an atmosphere of a country or school fair, offering candy floss, experimental face painting, and music. Saturday will see Melissa Durbin work with visitors to the fair to create fortune cookies, and Amber Pearson perform in her Extension Suits carrying out itinerant and comical acts of futile labour. Atomic Coffee will be available throughout the Fair.

The stall holders at the End of Year Fair include: A Brief Engagement, Artspace, Artist Alliance, Atomic Coffee, Audio Foundation, Black Winter, Harvey Benge, Paul Chapman, D.A.N.C.E. Art Club, Melissa Durbin, Joe Jowitt, Melissa Laing & Sarah Laing, Little Art Things, Andrew McLeod, MSVA Jewellery, Lucy Meyle, Neil Satori/Photographer, Object Space, Paperette, Parlour, Pear Tree Press, Amber Pearson, Personal Best, Photo Forum, Rim Books, Second Storey, Snake Pit, St Paul St Gallery, David Straight, Tautai Trust, We Can Create.

Friday at 5:00pm until Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 4:00pm

Check it out on fb HERE

Paul Graham - Europe / America, at the Botín Foundation in Santander, Spain

2011-11-29T06:58:00.002+13:00

Two key periods of Paul Graham's art career are contrasted in the exhibition Europe : America curated by Vicente Todolí and organized by the Botín Foundation for its venue in Santander where it will be showing until January 8th 2012.
The show, which complements the British photographer's contribution as director of the Villa Iris workshop in Santander last July, juxtaposes two of his series: New Europe (1986-1992) and A Shimmer of Possibility (2004-2006).

The series titled New Europe , in allusion to the European dream, includes pictures the photographer took during his journeys in 1988, 1989 and 1990 across nine Western European countries: Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, England and Northern Ireland.
The photographs contain underlying historical references, such as an image in which the figure of Hitler has been scratched away, or another in which the Star of David has been successively drawn and crossed out on the orange paint of a steel beam. The images produced during his travels in Spain include one of Franco's sculpted tomb and another of some coins stamped with the dictator's effigy, which are no longer in circulation.

In the second series, A Shimmer of Possibility, focusing on isolated figures inserted in urban spaces and presented in film-like sequences, Graham depicts the division of classes in American society. This concern, that of making the underprivileged classes visible, is one that the photographer also explored in his previous series American Night (2003). A video on the Foundation's channel features testimonies of the artist and the curator, in addition to a tour of the exhibition space.

The show is accompanied by a catalogue with texts in Spanish and English written by the director of the Whitechapel Gallery of London, Iwona Blazwich; the photography curator of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, Jeff Rosenheim; and the New York-based investigator and freelance curator, Kevin Moore. It also includes reproductions of all the works in the exhibition. It is co-produced by the Botín Foundation and La Fábrica publishing house.

Furthermore, three artist photographers will view the works in this exhibition with visitors in order to comment on them during tours starting at eight in the evening. In October Ali Hanoon participated in the Villa Iris workshop, which will be conducted by Raúl Hevia on Wednesday, November 30th, and by the former winner of the Botín Foundation grant, José Ramón Ais, on December 21st.

Fundación Botín, Pedrueca, 1. 39003. Santander. Spain
www.fundacionbotin.org
fmabotin@fundacionbotin.org

London - 4 degrees of separation and some new photographs

2011-11-28T08:59:00.006+13:00

A theory stemming from an experiment by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s claimed every living person is connected to any other through only six friends. According to a recent study, Facebook reduces the six degrees of separation to only four. And it's true. Just before leaving for London I posted my travel itinerary on this blog. Soon after I was contacted by a London based photographer Thomas Rice-Smyth who reads my blog, but we had never met. Tom suggested we meet in London for a drink. And we did. Another fellow photographer Eric Perlberg came along too. And more than a drink we went out together and shot some photographs. Tom and Eric took me to parts of London I would never have found on my own. And that was very much appreciated. Here are some of my new London photographs.

You can look at Thomas Rice-Smyth's work HERE and Eric Perlberg's work HERE

and here we are at work........

The Kassel Photobook Festival moves to Paris in 2012

2011-11-26T07:10:00.005+13:00

As 2012 is Documenta year in Kassel, next year the 5th International Photobook Festival will be held in Paris at the influential Le Bal photospace. During April 20 to 22 the photobook will be the focus with a program of lectures and a curated market place. The festival will also present the 2012 Dummy and Photobook Awards selected in Paris by a jury of experts. The awards presentation will take place on Saturday, 21 April.

International Photobook Dummy Award 2012
Photographers are invited to present their completed dummy of unpublished photobook works to an international jury. The best 50 books will be exhibited at Le Bal as an important part of the festival. From these 50 chosen titles a first prize will be selected which is a complete book production by publishers Seltmann+Soehne.
Entries close on 31 March 2012 and there is a registrations fee of 32 Euros.

Le Bal has fast become a shaker and mover in the already dynamic Paris photo scene. At the heart of Le Bal are the 300 square metres of exhibition space on two levels. The rectangular space (100 sq m) on the ground floor is covered by an Art Deco glass canopy. The split-level rectangular space in the basement (200 sq m) will accommodate multiple formats, installations and screenings. Le Bal Café and Le Bal Books open onto the alley, a community garden and the neighbourhood as a whole. A glass-walled terrace provides a view of the garden and a moment of calm, just a hundred metres from the hustle and bustle of Avenue de Clichy. Le Bal in Paris.

And more here: www.fotobookfestival.org

José Pedro Cortes - Things Here and Things Still to Come

2011-11-25T10:20:00.002+13:00

One of my discoveries at OffPrint during Paris Photo was a new book from Portuguese photographer José Pedro Cortes, Things Here and Things Still to Come, published by his own imprint Pierre von Kleist Editions.
Cortes photographs in cities and the images in this handsome book weave a strange, compelling narrative that connects the city of Tel Aviv and the lives of four young Jewish women.

Cortes says this about the book. "For nine months I lived in Tel Aviv. During this period I met four young Jewish women who were born in the USA. They had all decided, at the age of 18, to go to Israel to do the military service. After completing the required two years of service, they decided to stay and live in this idyllic Middle Eastern city."

"Things Here and Things Still to Come"
published November 2011 by Pierre von Kleist editions, 120 pages, 31x24.5 cm, with 65 photographs, You can order the book here. And a see a video here

José Pedro Cortes website
Pierre von Kleist Editions website

The Photobook, narrative = story = entertainment?

2011-11-24T10:48:00.004+13:00

Alec Soth shoots John Gossage shooting. Grey Lynn, Auckland, January 2009

In a recent post on his blog, LITTLE BROWN MUSHROOM, Alec Soth talked about a lecture he gave where he outlined his desire to consider his audience and to make photobooks with narrative on the basis that by presenting a story the reader will be pulled in and "entertained". Alec said that the day after his lecture he went to hear John Gossage speak and was a taken aback when John made this statement, “Entertainers try to please their audience – artists do what they do and the audience comes to them. I don’t think about my audience whatsoever.”

Potentially here are two quite different and opposing yet also apposite approaches.

I have seen both Alec and John work. Alec's approach is analytical, he makes lists, he knows exactly what he's looking for. He is a connect-the-dots photographer where one image links with the next on a fundamental conceptual level. I like this, it's intelligent and the pleasure for the reader comes from trying to work out Alec's connections. This makes Alec a slower paced photographer as much of the hard work happens before the lens cap comes off.
John on the other hand is more of a stream-of-consciousness shooter, working intuitively knowing deep down just what he's looking for. Martin Parr told me that John can make a book-in-a-block, and it's true.

Whatever the approach the role of the reader cannot be ignored. Roland Barthes in his 1967 essay The Death of the Author states that the essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the "passions" or "tastes" of the author. Accepting this, surely then it's a question of presenting images that will allow the reader to construct their own story which may in effect have no relationship whatsoever with the authors original intention. And I see no problem in this.

The best work in my view comes from image making that is spare and not overloaded.
Images that remind us of what we know already rather than try and convince us of new truths. Think of Paul Graham's man mowing the lawn from his Shimmer series. We can all connect with this from our own experience. And from John Gossage's work in The Auckland Project, the image of a bent over nail or a paint splash on a wall. We are all familiar with these small overlooked signifiers. Our own stories flow from these images with ease.

I think there is a danger in trying too hard to make photographs that are significant, impactful and important. To try and educate and effect change. This can lead to work that is contrived, overloaded and just doesn't work.

The last word here is from John Gossage, "what I said is what I believe about intention and the practice of trying to make things real and honest. The results may very well be entertaining, and I often hope it is. But if I try for it I always get confused on who is speaking."

Here is Alec's original post.

Pieter Hugo and the legacy of the Rwanda genocide

2011-11-23T17:09:00.001+13:00

Sean O'Hagan writes perceptively about photography for both the Guardian and the Observer. In his Guardian story of last week - Pieter Hugo photographs the lingering legacy of the Rwanda genocide - O'Hagan writes that Hugo's 2008 book The Hyena and Other Men would be a hard act to follow. Now with the series Nollywood (2009) and Permanent Error (2011) plus this year Oodee: Rwanda 2004 Vestiges of a Genocide it is clear that Hugo's relentless questioning continues.

Hugo photographed remnants of the Rwandan genocide which seemed to have seeped into the landscape for his book Rwanda: Vestiges of Genocide. Photograph: Pieter Hugo/Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

It was a pleasure to catch-up with Pieter at Paris Photo and introduce him to Quentin Bajac, Chief Curator Photography at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Both had never met before and will be in Auckland together in January for the AUT St Paul Street summer photography workshop.

You can read Sean O'Hagan's full Guardian story here.

Paris Photo 2011

2011-11-22T13:23:00.011+13:00

Back and a chance to reflect on 7 weeks of travel, looking, shooting.

Paris Photo was my main destination and this year, its 15th, had moved to the splendid glass and iron domed Grand Palais where 135 exhibitors from 23 different countries gathered to show their collections of heavy hitters and hot new stars. This giant photo market place was overwhelming and an immense success. The overall quality seemed to have moved up several notches and this year influential galleries such as Marion Goodman and Gagosian had joined the throng.
The photo-book too at last getting fair share of the action with both publishers and booksellers having space to show their wares. Highlights here was the appearance of William Eggleston for a book-signing where the entire first print run of Chromes, his three-book boxed retrospective, sold out despite its expensive price tag of £220. And great to see Harper's Books innovative offering of unique-copy books from Richard Prince, Alec Soth, John Gossage and others. Despite hefty prices Harper told me the Richard Prince editions had all sold.

For the first time this year a photobook prize was offered. Here four photobook experts, Markus Schaden among them, had each selected 15 books from the past 15 years. Pleasingly the prize was won by Paul Graham's 12 volume, A Shimmer of Possibility published by Steidl.
Markus Schaden had also created a wall installation with images and text devoted to Ed Van der Elsken's story of bohemian life, Love On the Left Bank, first published in 1954.

Not surprisingly I headed to the galleries I knew or where I knew the photographers they represented. Here are a few of my picks.

Galerie Priska Pasquer puts an emphasis on introducing the major positions of Japanese photography from the 1930s until today. Japanese artists represented are for example Shomei Tomatsu, Daido Moriyama, Yutaka Takanashi, Asako Narahashi and Rinko Kawauchi.

Nobuyoshi Araki, Shiki-in (Color Eros), 2005. Gelatin silver print, paint - 34 x 41 cm © Nobuyoshi Araki

Yossi Milo Gallery is dedicated to exhibiting the work of international contemporary artists specializing in photography, video and works on paper. Established in 2000, the gallery is known for presenting premiere U.S. exhibitions by emerging and established artists.

Michael Stevenson is a contemporary art gallery with premises in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The gallery has hosted a series of solo and group exhibitions that engage with contemporary art practice in South Africa as well as Africa and its diaspora. In addition to giving (South) African artists access to the rest of the world.

Pieter Hugo - Yakubu Al Hasan, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2009 From the series Permanent Error, Digital C-Print © Pieter Hugo, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town

Pace/MacGill Gallery, established in 1983, presents itself as one of the premier places for the representation of modern and contemporary photography, placing the work of its artists in important museum and private collections around the world. Artists exposed: Chuck Close, Paul Graham, Irving Penn, Paolo Roversi, Lucas Samaras.

Paul Graham, End of an Age #30, 1997 pigment print image, 60 x 45 inches frame, 72 1/2 x 56 1/4 x 2 inches from an edition of 3, PG.058 © Paul Graham

André Magnin, is well known for his role in curating the milestone Beaubourg exhibition Magicians of the Earth and establishing the important Pigozzi Collection of contemporary African art. In 2009, he founded MAGNIN-A and today represents among others Seydou Keïta, Okhai Ojeikere, Malick Sidibé.

Ojeikere Modern Suku, 1974 21 x 28 cm Tirage argentique unique d’époque Courtesy Magnin-A © J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere

AWAY.......

2011-10-05T13:28:00.000+13:00

I'm to London tonight. And after, Madrid, Rome, Cologne, Amsterdam and on to Paris for PARIS PHOTO. As always when I'm away there is little chance for me to make blog postings. Will be back in the digital saddle November 20 with lots to report!

DEVELOP Tube - a valuable photographic resource

2011-10-05T08:05:00.002+13:00

DEVELOP Tube is an educational photographic resource which features interviews, profiles, lectures and films about photojournalism, documentary and fine art photography. You can browse DEVELOP Tube through the main Vimeo and YouTube channel pages as well as through its catalogue of albums containing videos, bios and web links to individual photographers and organizations.

There is a carefully selected and growing content on both channels, with a combined catalogue of over 400 playlists and albums.

Well worth a look. Check it our here:
DEVELOP Tube on Vimeo / DEVELOP Tube on YouTube

Alec Soth - The Ballard of Good and Bad Book Titles

2011-10-01T10:29:00.002+13:00

Here is and old post from Alec Soth's archived blog. Posted in 2007, never a truer word has been said about the importance of great book titles.

Men might think about sex every seven seconds, but I think about project titles. There is no greater pleasure than lying on the couch, closing my eyes, and daydreaming about the perfect title.

I guess this isn’t much different from teenagers dreaming up names for their rock bands. While I suppose this sounds silly, I think it is actually worthwhile. Titles are important. When I review student work, one of the first questions I ask is “what is the title?” More often than not I’m met with no answer. This is remarkable. I’d have a hard time getting started on anything without having some sort of working title.

This need to wrap an idea in a few, well-chosen words isn’t limited to creative projects. I’m currently working with a non-profit organisation that is putting together a large event centered on creative responses to life-threatening illness and death. It is going to be a great night with some legendary dancers and storytellers. But we’ve struggled to find the right name for the event. For awhile the working title was “Dance with Death.” But it started to leave a bad taste in the mouth. For some it was too corny, for others too bleak. And we weren’t sure if it was good marketing. The producer of “Death of a Salesman” once said the play would have had a much longer run on Broadway if ‘Death’ wasn’t in the title.

Titles are important. They affect the way people read the work. Take Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. The title is so urgent and unexpected. Imagine if the book was just called ‘Downtown.’ I doubt we’d think of the book in the same way.

It is a shame when a great book gets a bad name. One of my favorites of the last few years was Jem Southam’s Landscape Stories. The title is generic and lifeless – just the opposite of his sensual and complicated pictures. (I much prefer the title of Southam’s latest book, The Painter’s Pool).

Sometimes photographers get corny. David Heath’s Dialogue With Solitude is an example. But I’d rather have a corny title than a boring one. I’m a sucker for DeCarava’s Sweet Flypaper of Life.

William Eggleston is the title champion. He has the trifecta with Eggleston’s Guide, The Democratic Forest and Los Alamos. I love them all in different ways. Eggleston’s Guide is funny and playful take on the generic author title (Diane Arbus by Diane Arbus). The Democratic Forest is good example of a title that suggests the photographic process (much better than Helen Levitt’s Ways of Seeing and Cartier-Bresson’s Decisive Moment). Finally, Los Alamos is sly and subtle. The pictures were taken all over America, not just Los Alamos. But rather than using the generic adjective ‘American,’ Eggleston chose the name of the town where the atomic bomb was developed.

One of my favorite recent books is Tim Davis’s My Life in Politics. What a great title – and what a relief he didn’t call it American Politics.

Ray’s A Laugh by Richard Billingham, Why Mister, Why by Geert van Kesteren, Yesterday’s Sandwich by Boris Mikhailov – these are titles that match the originality and excitement of the pictures inside. Great marketing? Perhaps not in the short term. But like Death of a Salesman, these titles burn into the brain over the course of time. Does anyone remember Eugene Richard’s book Americans We? What was it about? It might as well have been called Untitled (wait, that is another Arbus book). But then consider Richard’s recent monograph, The Fat Baby. If you are like me, you can instantly recall the whole thing – the weight of the book, the images and stories, the feeling.

I’m not suggesting that a title needs to be wordy and poetic. One of the most memorable titles is Winogrand’s Women are Beautiful. It’s so dumb that it is smart. It sticks.

The lineup of books above are all Steidl publications and among them is one of my favorite books, Paul Graham's A Shimmer of Possibility. A great book(s) and a great title, by a great photographer.

Photographers whose work I like - No15/ Christian Patterson

2011-09-30T11:10:00.005+13:00

Christian Patterson is an American photographer living and working in Brooklyn, New York. His strange, enigmatic photographs avoid the obvious and their many layers are open to a multitude of interpretations. Just the sort of photography I like.

His second monograph Redheaded Peckerwood, will be published by MACK Books and launched at Paris Photo this year.
Redheaded Peckerwood is a work with a tragic underlying narrative – the story of 19 year old Charles Starkweather and 14 year old Caril Ann Fugate who murdered ten people, including Fugate’s family, during a three day killing spree across Nebraska to the point of their capture in Douglas, Wyoming. The images record places and things central to the story, depict ideas inspired by it, and capture other moments and discoveries along the way.
From a technical perspective, the photographs incorporate and reference the techniques of photojournalism, forensic photography, image appropriation, reenactment and documentary landscape photography. On a conceptual level, they deal with a charged landscape and play with a photographic representation and truth as the work deconstructs a pre-existing narrative.
Redheaded Peckerwood also utilizes and plays with a pre-existing archive of material, deliberately mixing fact and fiction, past and present, myth and reality as it presents, expands and re-presents the various facts and theories surrounding this story.
While photographs are the heart of this work, they are the complemented and informed by documents and objects that belonged to the killers and their victims – including a map, poem, confession letter, stuffed animal, hood ornament and various other items, in several cases, these materials are discoveries first made by the artists and presented here for the first time.
In book form, the work is presented as a sort of visual crime dossier, including pieces of paper which are inserted into the book. The many individual pieces included serve as cues and clues within the visual puzzle. In this way, there are connections that are left to the viewer to be made and mysteries that are left to be solved.

http://www.christianpatterson.com/

Schaden.com - Friends Collection: A Picture for Home

2011-09-29T08:47:00.003+13:00

“A Picture for Home” is made up of works by photographers who are close to the last 15 years of the Schaden photobook phenomenon, and have been involved in the Schaden.com history. The title is a tribute to the famous project “Pictures From Home” by Larry Sultan and this project will be a pivotal event for photography and Schaden.com.

“A Picture for Home” will bring together 500 members of the extended Schaden.com family (250 photographers and 250 collectors/photobook fans) in a huge event during Paris Photo 2011.

Some of the photographers involved include, Alec Soth, Anders Petersen, Antoine d'Agata, Donovan Wylie, JH Engstrom, Jim Goldberg, John Gossage, Lewis Baltz, Mark Power, Martin Parr, Pieter Hugo, Roger Ballen, Stephen Shore, Todd Hido and many more.

Each invited photographer chooses a photograph they’d consider “A Picture for Home.” This term can be interpreted loosely; the photo is one that, hanging on a kitchen or bedroom wall, might provide a daily inspiration or perspective for an anonymous but universal “home”. The prints are signed by the photographer “for Schaden.com Friends Collection.”
An important supplement to the project will be a catalogue (to be designed by Greger Ulf Nilson) including reproductions of each print. Each photographer and collector involved will receive this limited edition for free.

“The Schaden-Night of the Year”: The lottery-draw and subsequent pairings (print with proud new owner) will take place during this year’s Paris Photo in November,
MC’ed by Viviane Sassen.

You can jump on board here: join Schaden.com Friends:

Here is my picture for A Picture for Home, which I made in London in June of this year.

Read more HERE

David Straight at Satellite Gallery, Auckland

2011-09-28T21:46:00.003+13:00

Christchurch born photographer David Straight presents 'Still Here', a photographic documentation depicting suburban Christchurch following the February 22, 2011 earthquake. The images, ‘quiet, contemplative, subtle and located away from the most obvious scenes of devastation, give a sense of the lingering disruption’ to suburban Christchurch (John Savage).

David says this about the work, 'Still Here - A Landscape of an Earthquake' is a series of work showing suburban Christchurch after the February 22nd earthquake, one of New Zealand's most devastating natural disasters. I spent two weeks in the city, over a three-week period, walking for hours around the suburban streets simply recording what I saw in front of me. I set out with no preconceived ideas about what I would photograph, except to record what I encountered honestly without drama or pathos. What resulted is a series of photographs that to my mind speak of the disruption and fragility of the suburban environment. The images are powerful in what they do not reveal. They are subtle in their language and allow the viewer a space to consider the event without being assaulted. They in effect form a landscape of an earthquake.

This is a profound and rewarding show well worth having a look at. It runs until October 22nd.

Satellite Gallery
Cnr St Benedicts St + Newton Rd
Newton, Auckland
http://www.satellitegallery.co.nz/
http://www.davidstraight.net/

Alec Soth's ROME

2011-09-28T14:28:00.001+13:00

Every year for the last nine years Fotografia - Rome, has commissioned a major international photographer to portray Rome with total freedom.
Previous photographers have been Josef Koudelka (2003), Olivo Barbieri (2004), Anders Petersen (2005), Martin Parr (2006), Graciela Iturbide (2007), Gabriele Basilico (2008), Guy Tillim (2009) and Tod Papageorge (2010).

This year’s commission went to American photographer Alec Soth, who has presented a series he has called La Belle Dame Sans Merci, inspired by Keats’s famous poem of that name. During his residence he says that its purpose was to show the beauty of the city “But I found it impossible. The city was too beautiful to photograph” he declared. In consequence his visual journey in the “eternal city” deals with myths, symbols, sensuality and poetry. Soth reveals Rome through its details of everyday life.

The choice of Alec Soth is part of the festival's broader research into contemporary American photography. Other activities include, the recent exhibition of Stephen Shore at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Joel Sternfeld in the spaces of MACRO Testaccio, the residences of Tim Davis, Montheith Matthew and Nancy Davenport and the second edition of the project ‘A Question of Time’ at the American Academy in Rome, the 2010 Rome Commission of Tod Papageorge and the exhibition of Gregory Crewdson at Gagosian Gallery with photographs taken at Cinecittà.

Fotografia- International Festival in Rome
From September 23 to October 23, 2011
MACRO Testaccio _ Piazza O. Giustiniani 4, Roma

http://blog.fotografiafestival.it
http://littlebrownmushroom.com/index.html

PARIS PHOTO 2011

2011-09-27T16:01:00.002+13:00

PARIS PHOTO will celebrate its 15th anniversary at the Grand Palais — a major step ahead for this renowned international event, which is not to be missed.

117 galleries from some 23 countries will present the best of 19th century, modern and contemporary photography in the heart of the French capital. To complete this panorama of worldwide photography, a selection of 18 publishers will have a dedicated space in the fair.
PARIS PHOTO will celebrate African photography from Bamako to Cape Town, unveiling the creative wealth of historic and contemporary African artists.These exciting developments put forward the new energy that PARIS PHOTO is displaying by reinventing itself. Four programmes will articulate PARIS PHOTO'S new identity: Institutions - recent photography acquisitions, Private Collection from Artur Walther, PARIS PHOTO conferences platform, focus on the Photography Book and launching of the PARIS PHOTO - Photo Book Prize.

PARIS PHOTO at the Grand Palais 10 -13 November 2011

Visit the PARIS PHOTO site HERE

Rome, Fotografia - International Festival

2011-09-27T15:54:00.000+13:00

The International Photography Festival in Rome reaches its 10th edition this year with a project that confirms the event’s growing national and international prestige. Its purpose is to promote contemporary photography in its different forms and languages, and also to support new talents at national and international levels.

The theme of this edition is MOTHERLAND investigated by Alec Soth, Tim Davis, Guy Tillim, David Spero, Leonie Purchas, David Farrell, Tod Papageorge, Paolo Ventura, Antonio Biasiucci, Anders Petersen and Guido Guidi.

The festival, curated by Marco Delogu, aims to stimulate an analysis of the relationship between land and identity and connections between photography and territory. Each photographer has responded in their own way, examining the lands that they can relate to, each with a personal documentation.

The photograph: © Paolo Ventura, Behind the wall-#1, 2011

Fotografia- Festival Internazionale di Roma
From septembre 23 to October 23, 2011
Macro Testaccio _ Piazza O. Giustiniani 4, Rome

http://blog.fotografiafestival.it

Quentin Bajac in Auckland in January

2011-09-21T21:56:00.004+12:00

Paris based, Pompidou Centre chief photography curator Quentin Bajac will be joining South African photographer Pieter Hugo for the AUT St Paul St Gallery photography workshop here in Auckland in January next.
Here is an interesting piece about Quentin from the the Paris based photography newsletter La Lettre de la Photographie.

A few essential facts might be sufficient to describe Quentin Bajac. Photography curator during the early days of the Musée d’Orsay, Senior Curator for the Photography Department at the Centre Georges Pompidou, professor at the Ecole du Louvre, director of several notable exhibitions and author of studies noteworthy for renewed historiography of their subjects, Quentin Bajac stands a perfect example of today’s new generation of curators.

To describe Quentin from a psychological or intimate angle is far more complicated. To avoid the inherent dangers of this type of exercise, we have decided to opt for a parable, using soccer as ground for comparison.

Like overseeing a collection or conceiving an exhibition, soccer is an enterprise that demands collective intelligence. As everyone knows, soccer is a game that opposes two teams of 11 members each, positioned in the field at specific spots, with specific roles. The technical, athletic and psychological qualities of the player will determine whether he plays as a defender, a half back, or a forward bearing in each case a specific number. As such, the goalkeeper wears number 1, the center defenders numbers 4 and 5, center halfback number 9, and so on. But among all the various posts, there is one of particular importance. It is the player with the number 10, the creative midfielder. Without a doubt, on a soccer field Quentin Bajac would be that number 10.

Of all the players on the field, number 10 must invent the game, that explains his nickname “creative midfielder”. He has the complicated task of directing the game and passing the ball to his attackers. He must have a clear vision of the game, knowing how to eliminate his opponents by dribbling, alternating quick steps to counter an onslaught of players, long steps to change the game’s direction, or playing a deep kick to the center striker. He must also have the qualities of a kicker, who scores the goals. He also participates in defense by blocking openings, preventing opposing strikers to gain territory.

Far from the rugged defender or the crazy striker, number 10 is a true game player who must skillfully combine offensive and defensive tasks. The greatest players have worn the number 10. If today’s players tend to favor offensive attacks to the detriment of their defensive skills, Quentin Bajac definitely upholds the “old school” profile. Altruistic, intelligent, skillful, fair playing, humble, these are the many qualities one associates with such legendary players as Di Stephano, Pelé, Platini or Zidane. And if, as we think, the function of an exhibition curator is not too dissimilar to that of a soccer player, there is no doubt that Quentin Bajac will be considered one day as a player of a legend. Denis Canguilhem

The photograph: Quentin Bajac, 2011 © Yan Morvan

You can have a look at La Lettre de la Photographie HERE

Although there has been huge interest and heavy pre-enrollments for Peter and Quentin's workshop we are still finalising places. If you are interested in the workshop and would like more information you could contact me at, harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz or Neil Cameron at AUT, neil.cameron@aut.ac.nz

Paris November Workshop

2011-09-21T13:01:00.000+12:00

PictureTank presents:
a weekend photography workshop in November with photographer Harvey Benge

Working between Paris and Auckland, New Zealand, photographer Harvey Benge is known for his evocative and mysterious images made in urban environments around the world. With a passion for the photobook, and over 30 bookworks to his name, his picture series have been published prolifically with publishers in France, Germany and the UK.
The workshop will emphasise the photobook and its importance and will deal with practical, achievable outcomes, concentrating on tactics to make a visible, differentiated photography practice in a digital world full of photographers and photographs.

Building on his experience of gallery shows, making photo bookworks and workshops conducted with Antoine d’Agata, Peter Bialobrzeski, Louis Baltz, John Gossage, Alec Soth, Rineke Dijkstra, Paul Graham and Todd Hido, Harvey will talk about photographic "process" and how to make work that has an edge and with a distinctive voice of its own.
Among other things, there will be discussion about what makes a great photograph and why, strategies for evaluating your own work, editing and sequencing and different approaches to arriving at a cohesive, meaningful body of work.

Participants will be required to bring with them portfolios of work which will be reviewed and discussed within the group in a constructive, supportive manner.

“In his search for the absurd and bizarre in the urban landscape…. small moments of everyday life flash with ambiguity and tension, contrasts and conflicts. Part humorous… often he shows disturbing signs of differences, small anarchies… an urban dream at the edges of reality.” Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

"One of the few photographers today who does as much for the poetics as for the philosophy of photography." Markus Schaden, Schaden.com, Cologne.

The workshop, which will be conducted in English, is limited to 12 places and will run over Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th of November. Fee is 250 Euro.

For more information please contact:
Marta Niedzwiecka, martanied@yahoo.fr or Harvey Benge, harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz

TRUTH AND VARIOUS DECEPTIONS

2011-09-16T13:59:00.004+12:00

Book cover and "apple" special offer print.

My new photobook work TRUTH AND VARIOUS DECEPTIONS is now available. The idea behind the book is simply about how we see and evaluate things we interact with in life.

The book-work is in an edition of 100 copies, with 53 photographs. Printed on a 150gsm offset paper with a 350 gsm board cover, it is perfect bound with 52 pages, 216 x 160 mm.

With the first 20 books sold, via my blog or from collectors who follow my book-works I am offering at no additional cost, a limited edition signed and numbered print (from an edition of 20) of the apple image from the book. This is offered on a first come first served basis.

The bookwork can be obtained using the PAYPAL option at the top of the blog or you can contact me at directly at harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz

€40 / £35 / US$55 / NZ$65, which includes postage.

You can see all the photographs on my website HERE

Seismic Shift - Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal and California Landscape Photography, 1944-1984

2011-09-14T07:30:00.005+12:00

In less than two generations, Ansel Adams to Lewis Baltz, California artists redefined landscape photography in America. This exhibition, which opens October 1st, at University of California, California Museum of Photography, proposes to show how.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Joe Deal and Lewis Baltz crossed paths at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), and the UCR/ California Museum of Photography. This was the period when the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, which included both photographers, announced the arrival of a radical new aesthetic in landscape. Though the show originated in Rochester, NY, its origins lay significantly in Southern California, and its effect was to shift the epicenter of landscape photography from Northern California to the SoCal region.

Seismic Shift will illuminate the far-reaching consequences of this revolution in landscape photography by tracing its regional history. Beginning with Ansel Adams and Edward Weston—and with the 1946 arrival in San Francisco of Minor White, who would extend the Weston-Adams tradition by transforming it—the exhibition will follow the history in the 1950s and 1960s through the careers of Wynn Bullock, Brett Weston and many others. Then it will examine how the 1970s work of Baltz, Deal, Robert Adams and Henry Wessel—the Western contingent of the New Topographics—created a shock of recognition, an awakening to mutual ideas different from those of their predecessors, that a younger generation of photographers shared. Portfolios of the period, one done by a class Baltz taught at UCR, will demonstrate the immediacy that these ideas had.

October 1st - December 31st
UCR CMP 3824 Main St, Riverside, CA 92501, USA

You can get the catalogue HERE

The photograph: © Lewis Baltz, New Industrial Parks #23, from the portfolio, New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California, 1974

Robert Rauschenberg: Photographs 1949 - 1962

2011-09-13T09:50:00.003+12:00

This new publication from Thames and Hudson for the first time gathers together and surveys Rauschenberg’s inventive uses of photography.

It includes portraits of friends such as Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, studio shots, photographs used in the Combines series, silkscreens, photographs of lost works and works in progress – allowing us to reimagine almost the entirety of the artist’s work in light of his uses of photography, while also supplying previously unseen glimpses into his social nexus of the 1950s and 60s.

Robert Rauschenberg’s engagement with photography began in the late 1940s during his time at Black Mountain College in North Carolina; for a while he was even unsure whether to pursue painting or photography as a career. Instead he chose both. He found ways to fold photography into his Combines, and maintained a practice of photographing friends and family, documenting the evolution of works and occasionally dramatizing them by inserting himself into the picture frame.

As the distinguished curator Walter Hopps wrote, ‘The use of photography has long been an essential device for Rauschenberg’s melding of imagery… [and] a vital means for Rauschenberg’s aesthetic investigations of how humans perceive, select and combine visual information. Without photography, much of Rauschenberg’s œuvre would scarcely exist.’ The artist himself affirmed, ‘I’ve never stopped being a photographer.’

28.00 x 23.90 cm, hardback, 232pp with 167 illustrations in colour and duotone

You can order a copy HERE

Auckland - some photographs I made last weekend

2011-09-12T10:08:00.000+12:00

Milton Glaser - DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY

2011-09-09T10:21:00.000+12:00

In a lecture delivered in London in 2001 designer Milton Glaser, best know for his design of the I Love New York logo, talked of Ten Things He Had Learned. Number eight is that DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY. Glaser said this, and it's well worth remembering....

Everyone always talks about confidence in believing what you do. I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being sceptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between scepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins. And then in a very real way, solving any problem is more important than being right. There is a significant sense of self-righteousness in both the art and design world. Perhaps it begins at school. Art school often begins with the Ayn Rand model of the single personality resisting the ideas of the surrounding culture. The theory of the avant garde is that as an individual you can transform the world, which is true up to a point. One of the signs of a damaged ego is absolute certainty.

You can read the other nine points here: http://www.miltonglaser.com/pages/milton/essays/es3.html

Roger Ballen at Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal

2011-09-09T09:53:00.000+12:00

Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal has just opened and one of the highlight exhibitions is Roger Ballen's body of work Asylum (2004 - 2010).
For Roger Ballen, a photographer who has worked as a mining expert, photography is a means of drilling down into his own psychological depths. Asylum is the most recent stage that he has reached in his descent into himself. The work features birds in macabre, nightmarish, or lewd sketches, which he composes meticulously with a blend of drawing, theatre, painting, and sculpture. He then photographs these scenes, as if to attest to the fact that the strangely familiar asylum in which these birds live actually exists in our reality, and perhaps in our psyches.

Born in 1950 in New York, Roger Ballen lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. In the early 1980s, he moved to South Africa, where he began to photograph life in neglected white rural communities. In the 1990s, this work provoked strong reactions but also recognition from international photography circles. Since Ballen participated at the Rencontres d’Arles in 1996, which named him photographer of the year in 2002, his works have been acquired by prestigious museums and his list of exhibitions has constantly grown. In 2010 alone, his works were shown at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, the Sammlungsleiter Fotomuseum in Munich, the Sydney Biennale, and the Moscow Centre for Contemporary Art. Ballen is represented by the Clint Roenisch Gallery in Toronto.

ARSENAL
2020 William (angle/corner Canning & Notre-Dame O.) | 438 402 4975
Sept 8 - Oct 9 | Wednesday 12 pm to 6 pm, Thursday 12 pm to 7 pm, Friday to Sunday 12 pm to 6 pm

http://www.rogerballen.com
http://www.moisdelaphoto.com

La Carte d'après Nature at Matthew Marks, New York

2011-09-08T17:19:00.000+12:00

La Carte d’apres Nature, is a group show curated by Thomas Demand currently on view at Matthew Marks, New York. An impressive catalogue published by SteidlMAC accompanies the show which was first shown at Nouveau Musée National de Monaco. The exhibition takes its title from a short-lived art magazine created by René Magritte between 1951 and 1954. Magritte’s publication ran for just fourteen issues and each consisted of a postcard, featuring loosely connected poetry, illustrations and short stories. In a similar fashion, Thomas Demand has selected artworks by eighteen artists that are related to each other in an associative manner. The selected work is connected by two ideas: tamed nature and Surrealism as an artistic form fashioned by Magritte. Just as Magritte himself related ideas from different eras, Demand chose works by different generations of artists: Saâdane Afif, Kudjo Affutu, Becky Beasley, Martin Boyce, Tacita Dean, Thomas Demand, Ger Van Elk, Chris Garofalo, Luigi Ghirri, Leon Gimpel, Rodney Graham, Henrik Håkansson, Anne Holtrop, August Kotzsch, René Magritte, Robert Mallet-Stevens, and Jan and Joel Martel.

You can read a full review here:
http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/?location=New+York

http://www.matthewmarks.com/

The Photobook, Re-Mix / Re-Think

2011-09-08T10:46:00.004+12:00

Joerg Colberg recently made an interesting and thought provoking post on his blog Conscientious about how in his view photobook layout and presentation since the 50's has become stale. You can read the full post HERE. Joerg comments, the world of contemporary fine-art photography has proven to be solidly conservative... blank-page-picture-blank-page-picture layout is still the most commonly employed mode to lay out photobooks. I agree. As a buyer and collector of photobooks how often have I looked through the photobooks in a book store and found there is nothing I want to take home with me. It's all bull, boring.
But what is at the heart of the problem? I suspect not primarily the book layout. Tarting up the layout of a book full of average photographs is not going to make the book better, that's a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. First the pictures have to work. Is the idea strong enough? Have they substance, the right balance of form and content, is there an element of mystery and surprise? Do the pictures work as a series? Are there average pictures lurking in the edit that pulls the whole work down? Where is the authenticity? Are there pictures included we've all seen before, made better by someone else?
A painter friend of mine talks about the need for a stone in the shoe in a work, an element that niggles. Something not quite right. Risk taking in fact. Isaac Stern the maestro violinist did this and used off notes and slides in his playing that added a jarring element. Let's see more risk taking in photography! Having said that let's make sure that risk doesn't equal clever. Not a good look.

All this is currently top-of-mind for me. I've been working on a new book work, TRUTH AND VARIOUS DECEPTIONS, with 52 photographs over 52 pages. Self published under my inprint FAQEDITIONS. All the points I've made above have been going through my head. In the end I've opted for the straight up, a series of 26 pairs with images all the same size. I made this decision for several reasons. First I wanted to show all 52 images and not blow the budget by having additional blank pages. Second, the images work as pairs. Third, I kept the images all the same size simply because I didn't want to privilege one over another. Watch this space!

In the end it's surely a question of horses for courses. Here are some books I like and that break the mold.

Tillmans, here some catalogue spreads where he has incorporated installation pictures and found material.

OBVIOUS AND ORDINARY, America 2006 by the anonymous P&G. Here they mix it up.

The spread at top from, Robert Adams, What Can We Believe Where? Quite perfect!

Cologne Photography Workshop in October

2011-09-06T14:31:00.002+12:00

Following the successful photography workshop at the Lichtblick School in Cologne last May, I will be conducing another workshop there on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 October. The workshop will concentrate on tactics to achieve a visible, differentiated photography practice in a digital world full of photographers and photographs.

Building on my lengthy experience of gallery shows, making photo bookworks and workshops with Louis Baltz, John Gossage, Alec Soth, Rineke Dijkstra, Paul Graham and Todd Hido, I will be passing on what I have learnt with regard to "process" and the arrival at positive and authentic practice outcomes. Among other things, I will be talking about what makes a great photograph and why, strategies for evaluating your own work, editing and sequencing and different approaches to photobook making.
There will also be an opportunity for all participants to have their portfolios reviewed in a constructive, helpful manner.

It was clear to me that the group at the last workshop came away feeling enthused and uplifted with fresh tools and ideas to take their photography to the next level.

If you'd like to know more you can contact me direct at: harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz
or Wolfgang Zurborn at Lichtblick School.

Steinbergerstr. 21
50733 Köln
fon +49 (0)221 729149
fax +49 (0)3212 5382739
info@lichtblick-school.com
www.lichtblick-school.com

The photograph is of the group from the last workshop, including from the Lichtblick School, Wolfgang Zurborn, Tina Schelhorn and of course me.

Ai Weiwei at Kunsthaus Graz

2011-09-06T08:28:00.000+12:00

Ai Weiwei Interlacing, the first large-scale exhibition of Ai Weiwei’s photographic and video work—taken over from the Fotomuseum Winterthur—puts the spotlight on Ai Weiwei the communicator and indefatigable remembrancer, the documenting, analysing, interlacing and multichannel-communicating artist. Even in his New York period (1983–1993), Ai Weiwei took photographs, but especially since his return to Beijing, he has tirelessly documented everyday realities of the urban environment and society in China, and discussed them in blogs and twitters. The photographs of the radical changes to the urban built fabric, the search for earthquake victims, and the destruction of his Shanghai studio are presented along with art-photographic projects, the documenta Fairytale project, the countless blog and mobile-phone photographs. The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive book of material and archives.
and runs from 17th Sept. 2011–15th Jan. 2012.

The exhibition was organised by the Fotomuseum Winterthur and curated by Urs Stahel. From 21st Feb. to 29th April 2102, it will be on show at the Jeu de Paume, Paris.

The image: Ai Weiwei, "Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn," 1995 (detail).

www.museum-joanneum.at

PETER DOWNSBROUGH: The Book(s) - 1968-2010

2011-09-04T14:15:00.002+12:00

On the occasion of the publication of the book: Peter Downsbrough: The Book(s) 1968-2010, Florence Loewy’s Paris bookstore has organized a retrospective exhibition, to discover or rediscover the work of this conceptual artist, who, since 1968 onwards, has published some 85 books. Peter Downsbrough belongs to the first generation of artists such as, Robert Barry, Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner, John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha and Allan Ruppersberg, who use the book as a real medium.

Peter Downsbrough considers the book as a volume, a space, using words as tools, combining them with a wide variety of graphic elements (lines, punctuation marks, plans, and maps), to constantly create new configurations. Very architectured, from the beginning, his work focuses mainly on the status of location and on the implication of locating something in relation to space and time.

The ensemble presented, collected over the past twenty years, gives a true understanding of not only the importance of the book in the artist’s oeuvre, but also its perpetual renewal and enrichment, starting from what one might call a basic vocabulary.

Peter Downsbrough was born in 1940 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. During the 60’s he studied architecture at the Cincinnati University, Ohio, and at the Cooper Union, New York, first exhibiting his works during the 70’s. Selected group exhibitions include Documenta 6, section ‘Artists’ Books’ (1977), “Printed Art: a View of Two Decades”, Museum of Modern Art, New York City (1980), “Artists’ Books”, Tate Gallery, London (1995), “Reconsidering the Object of Art”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1995) or POSITION, a monographic exhibition, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (2003). Peter Downsbrough currently lives and works in Brussels.

Peter Downsbrough: The Book(s) 1968-2010
10 septembre- 5 novembre, 2011

florence loewy... by artists
9 rue de thorigny 75003 paris
t: 01 44 78 98 45 f: 01 44 78 98 46
www.florenceloewy.com info@florenceloewy.com
ouvert du mardi au samedi de 14h00 à 19h00

The image: Peter Downsbrough, Hors, 2005 Carte postale unique envoyée le 27-11-2005. Vue panoramique de Milano Marritima et adhésif noir.

Auckland - some new photographs

2011-09-03T10:05:00.000+12:00

Here are four new images, I made here in Auckland in last few days....

Photobook London - this weekend

2011-09-03T09:48:00.001+12:00

With talks, seminars, portfolio reviews and the whose-who of independent photobook self publishers, this first edition of Photobook London at Hotshoe Gallery is the place to be this weekend.

Hotshoe Gallery
29-31 Saffron Hill
London EC1N 8SW

Saturday 11:00 - 18:00 / Sunday 11:00 - 18:00

http://www.photobookfair.co.uk/#

Karlheinz Weinberger at Swiss Institute New York

2011-09-03T09:28:00.000+12:00

Earlier this year the Swiss Institute presented the first institutional exhibition of vintage prints by the late Karlheinz Weinberger (1921-2006). An unsung pioneer of vernacular photography since the Fifties, Weinberger captured a young generation of rebels, who were greatly influenced by American culture.

For most of his adult life, Karlheinz Weinberger worked by day in the warehouse department of the Siemens-Albis factory in Zurich. In his free time, however, he escaped monotony by immersing himself in photography. Self-taught and working under the pseudonym of Jim, Weinberger began his artistic career by taking pictures for a gay underground club, Der Kreis, which published the eponymous magazine.

In 1958, Weinberger met members of a small band of teenagers and began photographing them both at his home, as well as at the public parks and fairgrounds where the group gathered. In post-war Switzerland, these self-named “rebels” (referred to by the Swiss as “Halbstark” or “half strong”) were comprised of working class boys and girls dissatisfied by the conservative climate of the day. They adopted a powerful gang identity expressed in their self styled and homemade clothing--embellished jeans, motorcycle jackets, enlarged belt buckles--which referenced and emulated American icons Marlon Brando (in The Wild One), James Dean (in Rebel Without a Cause), Elvis Presley (in the film and album Jailhouse Rock).

The clandestine phase of Weinberger’s work is the impetus behind the exhibition at Swiss Institute. Weinberger inhabited the role of an intimate stranger, capturing the unfiltered attitude of a generation while processing and developing the objects of his gaze in his home photo laboratory. Although created decades ago, Weinberger’s photographs have remained accessible to a relatively small group of people. They were not meant to be artworks, rather they are vestiges of a personal obsession. Beyond the documentary value of Weinberger’s work, his photos, in their triumph over objectivity, are a genuine contribution to the history of portraiture.

Image: Karlheinz Weinberger, Zurich, ca. 1962.

Read the New Yorker Review
Order the Karlheinz Weinberger book
Order the Karlheinz Weinberger limited edition

Artists who work as a couple

2011-08-31T09:51:00.001+12:00

Posted this morning on Andy Adams' Flak Photo network is this list of "artists who work as couples". This is an interesting resource and worth re-posting. When artists work together they face an array of challenges different from the solitary practitioner. How to define boundaries and responsibilities, and division of process. In the field of photography Bernd and Hilla Becher, seen above, are probably the best known artist team.

Bernd and Hilla Becher

Pierre et Gilles

Jeff Charbonnea and Eliza French
http://www.sevensistersasleep.com/

Nate Larson and Marni Schindelman
http://larson-shindelman.com/

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann
http://www.shimonlindemann.com/

Robert and Shana Parkeharrison
http://www.parkeharrison.com/

Daniel and Geo Fuchs
http://www.daniel-geo-fuchs.com/

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin
http://www.choppedliver.info/

Trine Søndergaard and Nicolai Howalt
http://www.trinesondergaard.com/
http://www.nicolaihowalt.com/

WassinkLundgren
http://www.wassinklundgren.com/

Louviere + Vanessa
http://louviereandvanessa.com/

Rimma Gerlovin and Valeriy Gerlovina
http://www.gerlovin.com/

Michael and Abigail Mouw
http://mouwstudio.com/

Aziz + Cucher
http://www.azizcucher.net/

Inez van Lamsweerde and Vindoodh Matadin
http://inezandvinoodh.com/

Francoise and Daniel Cartier
http://www.fdcartier.fr.st/

Wilmes and Mascaux
http://www.wilmesmascaux.com/

Michael Boss and Diana Thorneycroft
http://michaelboss.ca/
http://dianathorneycroft.com/

Mike and Doug Starn
http://www.starnstudio.com/

Lucie and Simon
http://www.lucieandsimon.com/

Nicholas and Sheila Pye
http://www.nickandsheila.com/

Diane Cook and Len Jenshel
http://www.cookjenshel.com/

Thomas Dorn and Isabelle Derigo
http://www.dornderigo.com/

Dead Porcupine (Raffaele Capasso and Francesco Claudio Cipolletta) -
http://www.deadporcupine.com/

Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb
http://www.webbnorriswebb.com/

Schilte and Portielje
http://www.schilteportielje.com/

Carlos and Jason Sanchez
http://www.thesanchezbrothers.com/

Montiel Klint
http://klintandphoto.com/

Tribble and Mancenido
http://www.tribblemancenido.com/

Alex and Felix
http://www.alexandfelix.com/

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz
http://www.martin-munoz.com/

Bleda y Rosa
http://www.bledayrosa.com/

Minimiam (Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle)
http://www.minimiam.com/

The Hilton Brothers (Christopher Makos and Paul Solberg)
http://www.thehiltonbrothers.com/

Anderson and Low
http://www.andersonandlow.com/

Sasha Bezzebov and Jessica Sucher
http://sashabezzubov.com/

Laura McPhee and Virginia Beahan
http://www.lauramcphee.com/
http://www.virginiabeahan.com/

Araki / Lady Gaga / Bondage

2011-08-31T07:44:00.003+12:00

Nobuyoshi Araki has shown the first Polaroids from his shoot with Lady Gaga for Vogue Homme Japan, September 2011 issue.

Martin Parr's THE PROTEST BOX

2011-08-30T15:12:00.001+12:00

Martin Parr’s collection of photobooks is one of the finest to have ever been assembled and THE PROTEST BOX is a box set which brings together five books from that collection as facsimile reprints. Parr has selected diverse books which each deal with the subject of protest in quite different ways. From the documentation of various protest movements to the actual book being a form of protest, all these reprints are gems within the history of photographic publishing. A few are known but many are new, even to the connoisseur of photography books. All these books are virtually impossible to locate, so these reprints will make a substantial contribution to our understanding of this sub-genre of the photobook. The box set is accompanied by a booklet which includes an introduction by Martin Parr, an essay discussing the wider context of these books by Gerry Badger, and English translations of all the texts in the books.

Five books in a box with a booklet, including essays by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, and English translations of all texts from the original books.

# Enrique Bostelmann: América: un Viaje a traves de la injustica176 pages, 11.2 x 7.9 in. / 28 x 20 cm, tritone, hardcover # Paolo Gasparini: Para verte major, América Latina180 pages, 9.7 x 8.7 in. / 24.5 x 22.2 cm, tritone, softcover # Dirk Alveramnn: Algeria224 pages, 4.3 x 7.1 in. / 10.8 x 18 cm, tritone, hardcover # Kitai Kazuo: Sanrizuka184 pages, 7.1 x 9.6 in. / 18 x 24.3 cm, tritone, softcover # Paolo Mattioli and Anna Candiani: Immagini del No124 pages, 3 x 3.9 in. / 7.5 x 9.8 cm, tritone, softcover

5 volumes, 888 pages, 20 cm x 28 cm, Softcover, Publication date: August 2011 in a limited edition of 1,000 boxed sets

http://steidlville.com/books/1105-The-Protest-Box.html

TODD HIDO at Kaune, Sudendorf Gallery, Cologne

2011-08-29T16:25:00.001+12:00

Opening Friday September 9, Kaune, Sudendorf Gallery in Cologne will be showing for the first time in Europe a selection of images from Todd Hido's A Road Divided series. Photographed through the windshield of his car the world is presented through a diffuse veil of water and ice. Some details are sharp while others melt into abstract fluid forms. Haunting ambiguous images that are metaphors for personal feelings. Emptiness, isolation, sorrow and separation.

http://www.toddhido.com/

A Road Divided, Nazraeli Press (2010)

http://www.ks-contemporary.com/

PIETER HUGO for AUT St Paul St, January 2012 workshop

2011-08-28T11:39:00.007+12:00

It was a pleasure to meet Pieter Hugo at the Kassel Photobook Festival back in June. When I talked to Pieter about the AUT workshop series he jumped at the chance to come and contribute.

Pieter Hugo was born 1976 and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a South African photographer who primarily works in portraiture and whose work engages with both documentary and art traditions with a focus on African communities.

Hugo has called himself "a political-with-a-small-p photographer... it's hard not to be as soon as you pick up a camera in South Africa". He believes that "the power of photography is inherently voyeuristic but I want that desire to be confronted." He also states that he is "deeply suspicious of the power of photography."

Hugo's first major photo collection LOOKING ASIDE consisted of a collection of portraits of people "whose appearance makes us look aside", his subjects including the blind, people with albinism, the aged, his family and himself. Explaining his interest in the marginal he has said, "My homeland is Africa, but I'm white. I feel African, whatever that means, but if you ask anyone in South Africa if I'm African, they will almost certainly say no. I don't fit into the social topography of my country and that certainly fueled why I became a photographer."

This was followed by RWANDA 2004: VESTIGES OF A GENOCIDE which the Rwanda Genocide Institute describes as offering "a forensic view of some of the sites of mass execution and graves that stand as lingering memorials to the many thousands of people slaughtered."

His most recognized work is the series called THE HYENA AND OTHER MEN, published as a monograph and has received a great deal of critical attention.
Hugo has also been working on a series of photographs called MESSINA/MUSSINA that were made in the town of Musina on the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa and also published as a monograph.

This was followed by a return to Nigeria with NOLLYWOOD, photographs of the Nigerian film industry.

PERMANENT ERROR followed in 2011 where Hugo photographed the people and landscape of an expansive dump of obsolete technology in Ghana. Critic Sean O'Toole writes "if NOLLYWOOD was playfully over-the-top, a smart riposte to accusations of freakishness and racism leveled at his photography... PERMANENT ERROR marks Hugo’s return to a less self-reflexive mode of practice."

Pieter Hugo is a fresh and exciting voice is contemporary photography. Those who saw his show of NOLLYWOOD photographs at Te Tuhi in February / March I'm sure will agree.

Joining Pieter at the 2012 workshop will be one of Europe's most influential and highly regarded photography curators. As chief curator photography for a noted and well known contemporary art museum his responsibilities include building one of Europe's most significant and substantial photography collections and mounting year after year stunning photography shows. More about this very soon.......

For more information you can contact either me at: harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz or Neil Cameron at AUT School of Art and Design, neil.cameron@aut.ac.nz

Photographs from Pieter Hugo's NOLLYWOOD series

Pieter Hugo at Yossi Milo

2011-08-22T13:37:00.002+12:00

Yossi Milo Gallery New York will show Pieter Hugo's new series Permanent Error, opening Thursday September 8 and running until Saturday October 29.
Permanent Error, depicts Agbogbloshie, a massive dump site for technological waste on the outskirts of Ghana’s capital city, and the locals who burn down the components to extract bits of copper, brass, aluminum and zinc for resale. Tons of outdated and broken computers, computer games, mobile phones and other e-waste are shipped to the area as “donations” from the West, under the guise of providing technology to developing countries. Rather than helping to bridge the digital divide, the equipment is transformed into noxious trash threatening the health of the area’s inhabitants and contaminating the water and soil.
Gray plumes of smoke rise from smoldering piles of disassembled monitors, motherboards and wiring, providing an apocalyptic backdrop for Hugo’s portraits of the workers. The subjects, many of whom are young men sent by their families from impoverished outlying villages, are photographed full-figure and directly engaged with Hugo’s medium-format camera. With each portrait, Hugo draws the viewer into the conditions imposed on this slum community and their effects on individuals. Collectively, the photographs expose consequences of the West’s consumption of ever-new technology and its disposal of outmoded products in poor countries ill-equipped to recycle them.

Pieter Hugo’s work was recently on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London; the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia; and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland. A mid-career retrospective exhibition curated by Wim van Sinderen will open in February 2012 at The Hague Museum of Photography, The Netherlands, and will travel through 2014.
The photographer's previous books, The Hyena & Other Men (2007) and Nollywood (2009) were published by Prestel, which released Permanent Error in March 2011.

525 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
http://www.yossimilo.com/
http://www.pieterhugo.com/

Douglas Stockdale - Ciociaria, secrets about a place

2011-08-21T14:50:00.001+12:00

Douglas Stockdale, well known for his insightful photo-blog The PhotoBook will launch his new photo-book Ciociaria in conjunction with FotoGrafia Festival Internazionale di Roma, which runs September 23rd to 23rd October.

The book is case bound with a page trim size of 20.5 cm x 24.5 cm and has been printed and bound in Italy. With 96 pages, 50 color photographs and an essay by Marco Delogu and text is in both English and Italian. Priced at US$55.00, as a special offer leading up to publication the book will be signed and shipped to purchasers at no cost.

You can email Douglas Stockdale direct to enquire about Ciociaria or the Limited Edition print series he plans to go with the publication. doug@douglasstockdale.com

Here are some images:

PHOTOQUAI - 3rd biennial exhibition, images of the world

2011-08-18T08:00:00.004+12:00

PHOTOQUAI was established in 2007 at Paris' musée du quai Branly. This year the exhibition will continue to pursue its original mission that of showcasing photographers whose work is little known in Europe.
PHOTOQUAI 2011 is a voyage through the noise and clamour of the world presenting a cultural world view.

Opening September 13 and running until November 11, 2011 this third edition of the exhibition presents nearly 400 works by 46 contemporary photographers from 29 countries: South Africa, Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Togo, Morocco, Tunisia, Bahrain, Iraq, Belarus, Russia, China, South Korea, India, Japan, Taiwan, Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Colombia, Brazil.

The curator of the third biennial PHOTOQUAI is photographer and director Françoise Huguier who also estabished the Bamako biennial.

Exhibition catalogue: PHOTOQUAI 2011, Co-edition musée du Quai Branly/Actes Sud
19.6 x 27.5 cm; 264 pages; 200 illustrations, In French and English.
www.quaibranly.fr

COLOGNE STOPOVER - June 2011

2011-08-15T15:57:00.000+12:00

When I was in Cologne for my workshop at Lichtblick School back in June I was able to make same photographs and from these a bookwork.
This artist's book is 226 x 160 mm, 20 pages with 19 photographs printed on 150gsm art stock. The edition is limited to 50 copies, each signed and numbered.
The bookwork can be obtained directly from me: €15 / £13 / US$22 / NZ$25, which includes postage.

The Photobook - a few thoughts on sequencing

2011-08-14T17:33:00.006+12:00

Making a photobook, assuming one has an idea and photographs that work, involves first an edit and then the sequence. That is the construction of a narrative made up of often unrelated photographs. Each photograph in its own right has its own narrative and when sequenced with other images, often juxtaposed, the narrative changes and builds. Changes to fit the idea of the work.

I believe that the reader is smarter than we give credit. Often smarter than we are. Accepting that, it makes sense not to give away too much. What is withheld matters just as much as what is revealed. The best photographs are open ended and leave room for the reader to construct their own meaning.

Screen writer and director David Mamet talks about the idea of uninflected images, those that carry no inflection and are therefore as neutral as possible. These are open to interpretation and will move the narrative along.

Accepting that, all photographs are a balance between form and content. Still however, I see photobook works that seem to be edited and sequenced purely on the basis of the photographs formal characteristics. This to me is sudden death. What is important is not so much what a photograph looks like but what it says, or can say when the readers brings their own intellect and experience to the work. Using only formal criteria robs images of their layers of meaning and stops the work in its tracks. And understandably the reader looses interest when their chance to contribute to the narrative is diminished.

What’s worse photobooks are still being made where photographs are juxtaposed with images echoing each others formal elements. Viewer response, and my response to this is – oh yeh I can see why those photographs were put next to each other, so what.
This sort of reaction is counterproductive. Better to have a response like this – why were those pictures put next to each other, there has to be a reason? Setting this up sustains interest and keeps the reader coming back to the work.

Alec Soth sequences conceptually moving the idea along as he goes. John Gossage uses what I call the slow burn approach, intelligently sequencing images often visually similar but never where the formal link is obvious. Torbjørn Rødland and Roe Ethridge employ what I call a “stream-of-consciousness” strategy, conceptually juxtaposing images that by right shouldn’t go together, but you know there is a reason. Paul Graham has used various sequencing tactics, for example in End of an Age where ingeniously the photographs follow the turn of the heads of the portraits in the book. And in Shimmer of Possibilty, short almost cinematic narrative sequences.

Picture editing is difficult. Sequencing harder still. Hemingway advised,
Write the story, take out all the good bits and see if it still works……
Good advice for both writers and photographers. Oh, and never underestimate the readers desire and ability to contribute to the reading of the work. Don’t make it too easy, make it harder and they will respect you for it. And the bookwork will be all the better for it.

The spreads:
from Torbjørn Rødland's book, I WANT TO LIVE INNOCENT, SteidlMACK 2008

Auckland - Saturday morning in perfect light

2011-08-14T10:27:00.001+12:00

Here some photographs I made yesterday in perfect early morning light. Steel grey mist with hard winter sun pushing through. And did I detect a touch of Spring nodding its head?

Le Bal PARIS presents PRESTON Is MY PARIS

2011-08-12T16:17:00.008+12:00

Coinciding with Laurence Vecten's second edition of the Publish It Yourself show of self-published books, 9-11 September 2011, at Maison d'art Bernard Anthonioz, Laurence has arranged two independent workshops at Le Bal.
One with BoehmKobayashi, photographers and editors Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber, and the second with Preston is my Paris from Great Britain.
If your interested in these workshops you can contact one of the team at Le BAL Books, follow announcements on Le Bal's facebook page. Or here: http://www.le-bal.fr/ or contact Laurence at http://www.publishityourself.org/

Preston is my Paris was formed in 2009 by Adam Murray and Robert Parkinson. They set it up in order to encourage the exploration of the city they live in. It has now expanded into a publishing platform for a wide range of publications on ever changing subjects and events. They have turned an appreciation of a city into one of the most exciting and prolific self publishing initiatives in the UK.

Spreads from the zine derby - Jamie Hawkesworth / Adam Murray / Robert Parkinson

Although they have stopped producing the original Preston is my Paris zine, attention has moved to new projects. They will still continue to produce individual photographic publications with the next project, Preston Institute of the Everyday.
This will be a multi disciplinary, collaborative project that will encompass photography, printed matter, sound, digital output, live events, writing, lectures and talks. September sees the launch of the first issue of PIE and the first piece of work from PIE can be found in the latest issue of Art Licks

Spreads from Industria, Virtus, et Fortitudo - Taken in Derby between 21 - 23rd January 2011, Jamie Hawkesworth / Adam Murray / Robert Parkinson

More here: http://pppbooks.blogspot.com/ and http://prestonismyparis.blogspot.com/

Florian Habicht's LOVE STORY opened yesterday on 6 Auckland screens

2011-08-12T14:35:00.012+12:00

Following its rave reception at the opening night of the Auckland Film Festival, Florian Habicht's LOVE STORY has moved to general release on six Auckland screens.
Set in New York, Florian has made a movie that's an amazing hybrid and a total genre bender. Part doco, part biopic, with a touch of self exploitation, Florian reveals a chest full of ideas. Watch for the kinky breakfast scene! Not to mention hot in the bath action!
A knock out movie not to be missed!

Rialto Newmarket 10:25am, 2:35pm, 6:30pm
Event Queen Street (Skycity) 11:40am, 1:40pm, 6:30pm,
and late night screening at 10:50pm.
Bridgeway 2:00pm, 4:30pm, 8:45pm
Hoyts Sylvia Park 10:40am, 12:50pm, 6:00pm
Event Albany (Skycity) 10:15am, 2:55pm, 4:55pm, 7:00pm
Waiheke Community Cinema 8:00pm

Frontiers of another nature - Contemporary photographic art from Iceland

2011-08-11T14:27:00.001+12:00

Opening next week at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, "Frontiers of Another Nature - Contemporary Photographic Art from Iceland". The show is a considered selection of emerging and established Icelandic photo-media artists, artists who draw from unique Icelandic landscape and environment in their work.

The photographers are, Bára Kristinsdóttir, Einar Falur Ingólfsson, Haraldur Jónsson, Hrafnkell Sigurðsson, Icelandic Love Corporation, Ingvar Högni Ragnarsson, Katrin Elvarsdóttir, Pétur Thomsen and Spessi.

Curated by Celina Lunsford, Artistic Director, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt and Christiane Stahl, Director of the Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung in cooperation with Inga Lára Baldvinsdóttir, Curator of Photography, National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavík and María Karen Sigurðardóttir, Director of the Museum for Photography, Reykjavík.

A bilingual catalogue accompanies the exhibition, edited by Celina Lunsford, Christiane Stahl, and Kristján B. Jónasson, with a text by Christiane Stahl. Published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, August 2011.

The Exhibition is a production of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt in cooperation with the Frankfurter Kunstverein. It is part of the arts and culture program "Fabulous Iceland - Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2011". www.fkv.de

Frankfurter Kunstverein, Steinernes Haus am Römerberg, Markt 44, 60311 Frankfurt / Main, Germany

The photographs: Bára Kristinsdóttir from the series Calm

Frontiers of another nature - Contemporary photographic art from Iceland

19 August - 18 October 2011

Press preview: August 18, 2011, 11 am
Opening: August 18, 2011, 7 pm

Vanessa Winship awarded Cartier-Bresson Fondation Prize

2011-08-09T08:15:00.001+12:00

Just a year after receiving the Descubrimientos PHE prize, photographer Vanessa Winship has received the biannuall Henri Cartier-Bresson Prize. The jury, composed of seven influential figures in the world of photography, has awarded the prize for Winship’s upcoming project entitled “Out there: An American Odyssey.” The photographer was given 30,000 euro to produce the new work.
Once Winship has completed her American Odyssey project, the photographs will be exhibited at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in spring of 2013.

Winship is an English photographer born in 1960. After studying cinema and photography at Westminster University (Polytechnic of Central London), Vanessa Winship begins teaching photography in London. After that, she works for the National Science Museum and becomes an independent photographer. She joins Agence VU in 2005 and shares her time between United Kingdom and the Balkans where she works on the series “Sweet Nothings” and “Schawarzes Meer”. She won numerous prizes, including the World Press Photo (Amsterdam) and the National Portrait Gallery Prize (London) and her work is exhibited in numerous museums and festivals such as the Rencontres d'Arles, the Kunstall Museum of Contemporary Art in Rotterdam or Photographers Gallery in London.

The photograph: Hakkari, Iraki border, 2007

More here: http://www.vanessawinship.com/projects.php

Auckland - the gray winter days continue

2011-08-08T09:46:00.000+12:00

.....some pictures I made this weekend

New York, at the MET - After the Gold Rush: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection

2011-08-07T16:18:00.001+12:00

The Museum says this about the show:
Recent tumult at home and abroad has prompted soul-searching in some quarters of America, and many people have a sense that the promise of our founding ideals and the positive international sway we once exerted are in eclipse. Recent flare-ups over art and censorship echo the "culture wars" of the 1980s and 1990s, which, with an economic collapse and a war seemingly in a stalemate reminiscent of the 1970s, add to the feeling of déjà vu. While previous exhibitions in this gallery have revolved around the nature of photography itself or historical examinations of a formal or aesthetic concept, this installation gathers works made since 1979 that address the culture at large. The title of the exhibition comes from a song of 1970 by Neil Young; the verses contrast a romanticized past, a present of squandered plenty, and an uncertain future. Like the song, the earlier works in this selection fulfill the poet Ezra Pound's definition of literature—"news that stays news"—and in many cases these missives from another time feel uncannily as if they could have been made yesterday. In the broadest sense, these works from the 1980s and 1990s reflect on marginalized voices whose ability to be heard is the true gauge of a healthy democracy.
The most recent works in the exhibition take an epic perspective that brings into focus the contradictions and complexities of our current condition—from the humanitarian "soft power" that mitigates our often bellicose presence in the world to the isolating effects of how we pursue happiness. The final piece, a suite of photographs by the German-born, London-based photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, offers a more hopeful note, gazing beyond our narrow purview and shifting from macro to micro to reveal the connectedness of all things.

The photograph:
Phillip-Lorca diCorcia, André Smith, 28 Years Old, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, $30, 1991

After the Gold Rush: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection
March 22, 2011–January 2, 2012
Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, 2nd floor
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/index.asp

Photography - is the Decisive Moment DEAD?

2011-08-04T10:10:00.006+12:00

John Gossage - from The Thirty Two Inch Ruler / Map of Babylon

I've noticed on the blog-a-sphere of late a lot of talk about the old Decisive Moment chestnut. Is it dead or not? For me the phrase is tired and worn-out but the idea still has a lot of traction. Think about it. Other than William Eggleston who professes to only ever shoot one frame of any subject, I'd guess most of us will shoot around what we are looking at, maybe 3 or 4 pictures. And those photographs are not all created equal. In my case, always, one image will stand out above the rest every time. Why? As H C-B said it's the geometry. It's when everything comes together, the photograph just works. It's like hitting the bulls eye in darts. Pocketing the black.
But we are only talking form here. I'm assuming that the content issue is addressed, working and when heading out to shoot pictures the idea is firmly in the head. I say this because contrary to some schools of thought, if you don't get the content / form balance just right all the "geometry" in the world will not save a photograph with no substance. We know it. There are far too many photographs made and put on dealer gallery walls just for their decorative formal qualities.

The other issue that goes hand in hand with geometry is context. A good photograph is as much about what you leave out of the frame as leave in. Looking again at John Gossage's The Thirty Two Inch Ruler bookwork, John is a master at getting the context just right. Like the photograph of a solitary leaf lying on a pavement, or the cross of what looks like red string, the stickers on a car window. These pictures work because of the small details and the fact that they have been given room to breath, room to play. Room to add to the mystery. And the geometry is just right too. No easy task because as you pull back, leave more in, it becomes harder to get the geometry right.

Now let's go and make some photographs!

John Gossage - from The Auckland Project

London - Hollywood celebrity portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

2011-08-04T08:46:00.001+12:00

London's National Portrait Gallery pays tribute to that period when Hollywood film studios controlled the public's perception of their actors and actresses through the use of in-house portrait photographers. The show "Glamour of the Gods: Hollywood Portraits," is an exhibition of 70 vintage photographs from 1920 to 1960, and is currently on view until October 23.

Most of the prints come from the archive of the John Kobal Foundation, founded by the collector who began tracking down the photographers behind the glossy images in the 1950s and '60s, just as corporate takeovers of the big Hollywood studios began phasing out the promotional practice.
He continued to collect the photos until his death in 1991.

The photograph:
Elizabeth Taylor, 1948, by Clarence Sinclair Bull

And more here: http://www.npg.org.uk/glamour/index.htm

Photography cooperatives and collaborations

2011-08-02T12:06:00.000+12:00

One of the great things about this online digital age are the opportunities and possibilities for photographers to get together and work together. Making photographs can be a very isolating business. Creating a photography cooperative helps deal with that. Five Eleven Ninety Nine is one such group.
You can check them out here: http://fiveelevenninetynine.com/about/about/

The six members, Hannah Jones, Jonny Cochrane, Samuel Bland, Simone Massera, Maria de la Iglesia and Teresa Cos have just shown their joint project A Royal Wedding at Dublin's PhotoIreland Festival.

They say this about the project.
We have created a collection of individual projects exploring the human quest for happiness in contemporary Western society. Everywhere people are dreaming of something more and better than what they currently have: aspiring to be more successful, to earn more, achieve more, be loved more – and thereby attain the state of happiness. A Royal Wedding is a metaphor for this very human characteristic. Each photographer has explored this area from a different angle, and the resulting projects use still photography, screenshots, video and sound, in the hope of encouraging reflection on how to live “happily ever after”.

And here are some images:

Jonny Cochrane, I Want That

Simone Massera, I Am Not What You See and Hear

Teresa Cos, Through the Spaces Between Moments

Maria de la Iglesia, Happy Inside

Hannah Jones, To Happiness, Endlessly

Samuel Bland, Seamless Web

Auckland Sky Tower - a bookwork

2011-08-01T17:03:00.001+12:00

From the terrace of my studio the view looks directly out over the city to the Auckland Sky Tower. At 328 metres it is the tallest man made structure in New Zealand.
Inspired by Hans-Peter Feldmann's bookwork of Eiffel Tower images, I decided to make a Sky Tower book.
With photographs made over the last year this artist's book is 226 x 160 mm, 24 pages with 24 photographs printed on 150gsm art stock. The edition is limited to 50 copies, each signed and numbered.
The bookwork can be obtained directly from me: €18 / £16 / US$26 / NZ$30, which includes postage.

The Photobook - its true value

2011-07-31T11:52:00.000+12:00

The UK Guardian ran a piece a few days ago talking about how rare photobook editions are soaring in price. Auction houses now run photobook sales and seminal editions are leaping in price. At a dedicated auction at Christie's in London last year, signed early editions of influential photobooks such as Robert Frank's The Americans and Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment sold for £43,250 and £13,750 respectively.

It could be said that this all started in 2004 with the publication of Martin Parr and Gerry Badger's two-volume overview The Photobook: A History.
I read somewhere that a particular photobook collector advocates having a shrinkwrap machine to wrap and protect valuable photobooks. This seems to defeat the purpose and undermines the real reason for having these books. Photobooks, art books are about ideas and the pleasure of looking into other worlds and expanding ones knowledge. It's about inspiration and the delight in looking at photographs you wish you had made. The best of these books deserve repeated reading as there is always something fresh to see. Very difficult when the object is encased in plastic.
I'm sure when Martin and Gerry wrote their Photobook History they were motivated by the love of the photobook and not with an eye to investment values. After all gold is a far better deal, it's not subject to mildew, foxing, moths, acidity and wear and tear. Books are fragile, but fortunately the ideas they contain endure.

Raymond Meeks - some thoughts on making photobooks

2011-07-29T14:10:00.002+12:00

Raymond Meeks is a photographer based in Portland Oregan. He makes wonderful hand made photobooks. What follows are a few points Meeks made, taken from an extended conversation with Joerg Colberg, about the process of making photobooks.
These are wize words..... read and don't forget!

The Material
I tend to be a photographer who appreciates the contents of my backyard. I believe there’s a universal story that can be told in your own surroundings without needing to necessarily travel or take on social documentary by going where these large social topics are acting out on a large scale. They can also be told using metaphor in my neighborhood, which is a place I’m familiar with and have developed an order or understanding.
The book as Object
The thing that’s most important about the object for me is that it have presence. I think that’s accomplished by bringing care and attention to it. And that happens in the way that I care for the book, the handling and printing of pages. My daughter, a tenth-grader now, comes to my studio after school. She’s developed a final act of kissing the title page after the stitching and tipping-in of loose prints I package all the books myself. My hands go into everything. For me, it’s a privilege that I get to make this book for somebody who is drawn to my work and this form of expression, which I happen to love. None of this is a given or something I take for granted.
The Intention
In fiction and storytelling, I prefer a narrative that lays out a straight story without embellishment. I agree with you. I think there’s no substitute for intention, there’s no substitute for somebody really caring for something. I was skeptical of that personally until I started receiving emails after people received their books. They were overwhelmingly gracious. Break the books down to their spare essence and materials… it’s not the finest printing, these are laser-printed sheets of Mohawk paper. But when you care for a work, it is transmitted.
What makes a book Great
I think any book or work of art that I appreciate the most is one that calls for involvement, interaction. You have to work to understand it and you get to bring something to it each time. It’s a constant metamorphosis. The work itself, or the subject, is changing because you are changing. The way I look at a book today and the way I look at a book a year from now - if the book is good, if the book isn’t static, isn’t solved and isn’t a one-liner, then based on where you are in your life you bring something new to the narrative. And if it’s not solved, you don’t close the book and feel “OK, I understand, this is done.” Those are the books you never pull off your shelf again.

The images: pages from where objects fall away, 2011

You can read the full conversation here:
http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/extended/archives/conversations_about_photobooks_raymond_meeks/

And more of Raymond Meeks here:
http://www.raymondmeeks.net/

John Gossage - The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler / Map of Babylon

2011-07-23T17:44:00.002+12:00

I first saw this book(s) at Paris Photo in November 2008 where I was fortunate enough to get my hands on one of thirty "before the first edition" copies, complete with signed print. At last the Steidl edition has arrived. Needless to stay perfect in its conception and refined production values.

A Gossage photobook always astounds. At once simple and to the point but at the same time loaded and redolent with hidden meanings. There is never a wasted photograph, every image plays the right note either harmonic or purposely discordant against its pair or lack of it. The work in this book asks more questions than gives answers and the pleasure is in the journey, trying to work out exactly what is going on. And this entices the reader to keep coming back, working out the layers. Trying to make sense of the enigma. Isn't this a quality that every photobook should possess? Sadly so few do.

Like John Gossage's The Pond, The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler / Map of Babylon is destined to become a photobook classic.

You can get your copy here:
http://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Two-Inch-Ruler-Map-Babylon/dp/3865217109/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311398328&sr=1-2

or here:
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/John-Gossage-John-Gossage/9783865217103

Steidl says this about the edition:
John Gossage, the renowned American photographer and photography book-maker, presents two companion volumes and his first ever books in color. Engaged in a dance, neither book comes first, there is no hierarchy or sequence to the pair of volumes.

Gossage is one of the most literary of photographic book authors and in The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler, the narrative, whilst not autobiographical, is about a neighborhood in which he lives; one that is singular in the United States. At the same time provincial and international, it is a neighborhood populated by ambassadorial residences, embassies, and the lavish private homes of those who are in positions of power and influence in Washington. A project he began with the arrival of a new neighbor, the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and made over a full year’s cycle of seasons, these are images from the drift of privilege. The streets, cars, homes and yards of this neighborhood are photographed on perfect spring or autumn days, with sparklingly clear blue skies, and flowers or foliage accenting the order. These are photographs about how one might wish the world to be, how beauty might be seen as desire. In the same year Gossage made the Map of Babylon, photographing digitally from Washington, to Germany, to China and places in-between. This look away, to places beyond the immediate and local, is a classic exploration of particulars of the outside world.

Awards:
Kassel Photobook Festival "Best Books 2010/2011" International Photobook Award 2011

Essays by John Gossage and Gerhard Steidl
Book design by John Gossage and Gerhard Steidl
80 pages, 180 colour plates, 23.5 cm x 28.6 cm, clothbound with dust jacket

Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs

2011-07-23T07:43:00.002+12:00

New York's Asia Society Museum presents an exhibition of 227 photographs taken by Ai Weiwei, capturing the history, culture, and atmosphere of 1980s New York from his unique perspective. The exhibition marks the first time Ai Weiwei’s New York Photographs series is being shown outside of China.

Before Ai Weiwei became internationally recognized as an artist and activist, he lived in a tiny apartment in New York’s East Village, and was a prominent member of a community of expatriate Chinese artists and intellectuals in the neighborhood’s then burgeoning avant-garde scene. Throughout those years, from 1983 to 1993, the artist used his camera to document his life and work, his surroundings, and the atmosphere of the time. The photographs document a distinct era in New York, as seen through Ai Weiwei’s eyes, tracing the beginnings of his conceptual art practice. They depict East Village poetry readings, riots in Tompkins Square Park, drag queens at Wigstock, and well-known artists and intellectuals from China, such as filmmaker Chen Kaige, composer Tan Dun and artist Xu Bing.

“Ai Weiwei is one of the most provocative and influential conceptual artists from China today, and in recent years he has become an increasingly iconic figure,” says Asia Society Museum Director Melissa Chiu. “As an artist, his work has stood for individual expression and we hope his recent release, following nearly three months in detention in China, has delivered a new promise of creative potential for him and other artists there. These photographs are a poignant and powerful chronicle of Ai’s artistic vision and emerging political consciousness during his time in New York.”

The New York Photographs series comprises a selection of 227 photographs from Ai’s archive of 10,000, selected by the artist. It is conceived as a single unified installation that reveals Ai Weiwei’s personal experiences, thoughts, and attitudes at the time the photographs were taken.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 316-page comprehensive catalogue with plates of all the photographs, along with essays and interviews, published by Three Shadows Photography Art Centre. The exhibition is organized by Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing in association with Asia Society Museum.

June 29 through August 14, 2011
http://asiasociety.org/aiweiwei

Martin Parr's Most Influential Photobooks of the Decade

2011-07-20T14:29:00.005+12:00

Fresh from PhotoIreland Festival Martin Parr presents his list of the most influential photobooks of the last decade. The festival has published a catalogue which includes Martin's comments on each book, together with illustrations and "author's notes".

www.photoireland.org

The list:
Ryan McGinley - The Kids Are Alright
Rinko Kawauchi - Utane
Geert van Kesteren - Why Mister Why
John Gossage - Berlin in the Time of the Wall
Christien Meindertsma - Checked Baggage
Leigh Ladare - Pretend You're Actually Alive
Paul Graham - A Shimmer of Possibilities
Doug Rickard - New American Picture
Dash Snow - Slime the Boogie
Miguel Calderon - Miguel Calderon
Viviane Sassen - Flamboya
Miyako Ishuichi - Mother's
JH Engstrom - Trying to Dance
Jules Spinatsch - Temporary Discomfort: Chapter 1-V
Daniela Rossell - Ricas y Famosas
Uchihara Yasuhiko - Son of a Bit
Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs - The Great Unreal
Donovan Wylie - Scrapbook
Archive of Modern Conflict - Nein, Onkel
Stephen Gill - Hackney Wick
Florian van Roekel - How Terry Likes His Coffee
Susan Meiselas - In History
Wassink Lundgren - Empty Bottles
Michael Wolf - Tokyo Compression
Alessandra Sanguinetti - On The Sixth Day
Nina Korhonen - Anna, Amerikan Mummu
Alec Soth - Sleeping by the Mississippi
Hans Eijkelbook - Portraits & Cameras 1949 - 2009

If you were making a shortlist these would be my top four:

Auckland - the Winter Light continues....

2011-07-19T11:07:00.002+12:00

Sky clear hard blue, weak sun, heavy animated shadows, wet streets..... some pictures I made yesterday.

Torbjørn Rødland - Work That Baffles

2011-07-16T11:31:00.007+12:00

Torbjørn Rødland, born 1970 in Stavanger, Norway. Now lives and works in Los Angeles and has been making photographs for 20 years.

Shane Lavalette in a 2008 interview with Rødland put it like this, "Rødland has been making work that baffles, finding something in common between nudists, priests, Nordic landscapes and curious still lifes of food, such as one of George W. Bush’s favorite things: Diet Coke, tortilla chips, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Häagen-Dazs “Pralines & Cream” ice cream and A Field of Dreams."
I call it "stream of consciousness photography" as if you'd given Kerouac a camera.

Here are some statements from that 2008 interview that resonated with me:

I am attracted to pictures that aren’t appreciated in contemporary art, if they have what you could call mythical potential.

A cliché is only interesting if it contains a hidden truth.

I was completely bored with thematic photography books. I wanted to break with the “100 Somethings” or “Pictures-from-Somewhere” type of book. I wanted to make a book that continues to challenge, as you go through it. I wanted the logic of the book to be perforated - and therefore erotic.

Erotic? A photograph or a collection of photographs that ignores its usual objective is perverted. Perverted photography doesn’t sell a product or communicate a message. It’s not meant to be decoded, but to keep you in the process of looking. It’s layered and complex. It mirrors and triggers you without end and for no good reason, and that is erotic.

It is very satisfying to build a book from seemingly incongruent single images, only to find that it all makes sense somehow.

One of the ways a photograph can be successful, if it’s a surprising but precise take on something that you suspect could become your reality – and if you’d like to look at it again tomorrow.

Photographs give meaning to each other, so it is interesting to look at them with different neighbors. But, of course, a majority of juxtapositions are unproductive.

And there is more. Rødland has penned these Sentences on Photography that are well worth a read.

1. The muteness of a photograph matters as much as its ability to speak.
2. The juxtaposition of photographs matters as much as the muteness of each.
3. All photography flattens. Objectification is inescapable.
4. Photography cannot secure the integrity of its subject any more than it can satisfy the need to touch or taste.
5. Good ideas are easily bungled.
6. Banal ideas can be rescued by personal investment and beautiful execution.
7. Lacking an appealing surface, a photograph should depict surfaces appealingly.
8. A photograph that refuses to market anything but its own complexities is perverse. Perversion is bliss.
9. A backlit object is a pregnant object.
10. To disregard symbols is to disregard a part of human perception.
11. Photography may employ tools and characteristics of reportage without being reportage.
12. The only photojournalistic images that remain interesting are the ones that produce or evoke myths.
13. A photographer in doubt will get better results than a photographer caught up in the freedom of irony.
14. The aestheticizing eye is a distant eye. The melancholic eye is a distant eye. The ironic eye is a distant eye.
15. One challenge in photography is to outdistance distance. Immersion is key.
16. Irony may be applied in homeopathic doses.
17. A lyrical photograph should be aware of its absurdity. Lyricism grows from awareness.
18. For the photographer, everyone and everything is a model, including the photograph itself.
19. The photography characterized by these sentences is informed by conceptual art.
20. The photography characterized by these sentences is not conceptual photography

http://www.rodland.net/

Hans-Peter Feldmann at the Guggenheim

2011-07-14T13:42:00.000+12:00

If you're in New York between now and November 2 an essential visit would have to be the Guggenheim Feldmann show.

Hans-Peter Feldmann has spent over four decades conducting a profound investigation into the influence of the visual environment on our subjective reality. Composing images and objects into serial archives, uncanny combinations, and other illuminating new contexts, his work unearths the latent associations and sentiments contained within the landscape of daily life. As the winner of the 2010 HUGO BOSS PRIZE, a biennial award recognizing significant achievement in contemporary art, Feldmann received an honorarium of $100,000. For his solo exhibition at the Guggenheim, he has chosen to pin this exact amount to the gallery walls in a grid of overlapping one-dollar bills.

The installation, which uses money that has previously been in circulation, extends the artist’s lifelong obsession with collecting familiar material into simple groupings that reveal a nuanced play of similarity and difference. Throughout his practice, Feldmann has frequently divided an apparent whole into separate components; he has photographed every item in a woman’s wardrobe (All the clothes of a woman, 1973), presented individual images of the strawberries that make up a pound of fruit (One Pound Strawberries, 2005), and created a sequence of 100 portraits showing individuals of every age in a collective lifespan of a century (100 Years, 2001).

Feldmann also has a history of resisting the art world’s commercial structures, issuing his work in unsigned, unlimited editions and retiring from art making altogether for nearly a decade in the 1980s, at which point he gave away or destroyed the works remaining in his possession. Bank notes, like artworks, are objects that have no inherent worth beyond what society agrees to invest them with, and in using them as his medium, Feldmann raises questions about notions of value in art. But his primary interest in the serial display of currency lies less in its status as a symbol of capitalist excess than in its ubiquity as a mass-produced image and a material with which we come into contact every day. At its core, this formal experiment presents an opportunity to experience an abstract concept—a numerical figure and the economic possibilities it entails—as a visual object and an immersive physical environment.

Installation view of 100 Years, portrait series

"One Pound Strawberries", 2005

31 pairs of knees

http://www.guggenheim.org/

Spot the difference: Has Ryan McGinley Ripped-off photographer Janine "Jah Jah" Gordon?

2011-07-14T08:11:00.003+12:00

Photographer Janine "Jah Jah" Gordon has filed a lawsuit against rising contemporary art star Ryan McGinley alleging that he stole her visual style and subject matter.
The lawsuit against McGinley targets 150 of McGinley's works, ranging from commercial shots for Levis and other companies to earlier pieces by the artist. Top curator Dan Cameron has supported Gordon's case in an affidavit, stating that "Ryan McGinley has derived much of his work from [Gordon's] creations.

Levis--Go Forth (2010) by Ryan McGinley

"Casey at Paramount" (2000) by Janine Gordon

Who was it who said there are only three original ideas in the whole world?
Let the battle commence!

PARIS DIARY - May 2011

2011-07-11T14:56:00.001+12:00

Following my last years PARIS DIARIES in May and November, I'm continuing the series with my PARIS DIARY, May 2011.
The edition is limited to 75 copies, each book signed and numbered. There are 27 photographs, over 28 pages, printed on 150gsm art paper, 226 x 160 mm. Here are some pages.

Copies can be obtained directly from me at: harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz
€22 / £19 / US$30 / NZ$36, these prices include postage

André Magnin - MAGNIN-A

2011-07-10T19:00:00.003+12:00

André Magnin was the first person I met in the Parisian art-world when I started going to Paris nearly twenty years ago. André works and lives in the Blvd Voltaire 5 minutes away from where I hang out. We meet for coffee from time to time and occasionally we bump into each other in the street. It was in André's apartment where William Eggleston told me not to talk bullshit and where from André's terrace Nan Goldin pointed out to me her apartment above the pharmacy in Rue Oberkampf.

André Magnin is a curator par excellence. A man of vision, impeccable taste and integrity and importantly he has done more than anybody to put contemporary African art on-the-map.

In 1986 André Magnin began his research into contemporary art in non-Western cultures, especially throughout Africa for the exhibition Black Magicians of the Earth at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande Halle de la Villette. Since 1989 he has established the emblematic Pigozzi Collection which he directed for twenty years. He has held numerous solo exhibitions and group in museums, art centers and foundations around the world: Out of Africa (Saatchi Gallery, London), African Art Now (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), I like Cheri Samba (Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, Paris), Arts of Africa (Grimaldi Forum, Monaco), 100% Africa (Guggenheim Bilbao), Why Africa? (Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli), Africa? una nuova storia (Complesso del Vittoriano, Roma), African Stories (Marrakech) ...

In 2009, he founded MAGNIN-A, whose mission is to promote contemporary African art on the international art market.

You can see more here: http://www.magnin-a.com/

The Photo: André Magnin by Malick Sidibé

Auckland - seriously RETRO

2011-07-10T16:12:00.000+12:00

I came across these pictures for a house available for rent in the Auckland suburb of Avondale. It's a "spacious 5 double bedroom 2 level house in a prime location, partly furnished with beds to all 5 bedrooms and furniture. Clean and tidy but slightly dated interiors. Good flow throughout. Convenient to public transport, good schools and shops. $545 a week." I love the comment about the interior.... come on this is serious retro, they don't make 'em like this anymore!

Thomas Struth: Photographs 1978 - 2010

2011-07-09T08:21:00.000+12:00

Thomas Struth: Photographs 1978–2010, opened at London's Whitechapel Gallery last Wednesday, the first UK survey of German artist Thomas Struth, one of the most important photographers of the late 20th century.

Picturing subjects as diverse as places of worship, jungles and research laboratories, Struth once compared the space shuttle programme to the construction of the medieval cathedrals. His photographs reveal the cultural, psychological and historical undercurrents beneath the surface of modernity.
Tracing the architectural history of ordinary city streets Struth also charts the increasing uniformity of global development. While people are absent from his street scenes of Düsseldorf, Naples or New York, they take centre stage in his family portraits and his iconic museum photographs showing spectators lost in devotional gaze before works of art and architecture. In sharp contrast, his Paradise series captures impenetrable forests void of any trace of human intervention.
This exhibition spans early black and white prints to recent colour photographs that are up to 4 metres long. These include images of sites at the cutting edge of technology such as the Space Centre on Cape Canaveral. Their overwhelming scale evokes an industrial sublime; built by us, yet chillingly inhuman, these structures encapsulate the great contradictions of progress.

The photograph: Audience 1, Florence 2004

Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/home

Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century

2011-07-09T08:05:00.001+12:00

The Royal Academy of Arts presents an exhibition dedicated to the birth of modern photography, featuring the work of Brassaï, Robert Capa, André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy and Martin Munkácsi. Each left their homeland Hungary to make their names in Europe and the USA, profoundly influencing the course of modern photography. Many other talented photographers who remained in Hungary, such as Rudolf Balogh and Károly Escher, are also represented in the exhibition. Over 200 photographs from 1914 to 1989 show how these world-renowned photographers were at the forefront of stylistic developments, revealing their achievements in the context of the rich photographic tradition of Hungary.

Brassaï, Capa, Kertész, Moholy-Nagy and Munkácsi are each known for the important changes they brought about in photojournalism, documentary, art and fashion photography. By following their paths through Germany, France and the USA, the exhibition explores their distinct approaches, signalling key aspects of modern photography.

The image of modern Paris was defined by Brassaï (1899–1984). Introduced to photography by Kertész, who was then at the heart of an energetic émigré community of artists, Brassaï is best known for his classic portraits of Picasso. His stunning photographs of sights, streets and people bring vividly to life the nocturnal characters and potent atmosphere of the city at night.

Robert Capa (1913–1954) left Hungary aged seventeen, first for Berlin, where he took up photography, then on to Paris. He is often called the 'greatest war photographer', documenting the Spanish Civil War, the 'D'-Day landings and other events of the Second World War. In 1947, he co-founded Magnum Photos with Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger.

André Kertész (1894–1985) showed an intuitive talent for photography, which blossomed when he moved to Paris in 1925. Using a hand-held camera, he captured lyrical impressions of the ephemeral moments of everyday urban life. Proud of being self-taught, Kertész considered himself an 'eternal amateur' whose vision remained fresh; his highly personal style paved the way for a subjective, humanist approach to photography.

A painter and designer as well as a photographer, László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) became an instructor at the Bauhaus in 1922. He was a pioneer of photograms, photomontage and visual theory, using unconventional perspectives and bold tonal contrasts to manifest his radical approach. His camera-less images and experimental techniques explore the centrality of light to the medium.

Martin Munkácsi (1896–1963) was a highly successful photographer first in Budapest, then Berlin, covering everything from Greta Garbo to the Day of Potsdam. He moved to the USA in 1934, securing a lucrative position with Harper's Bazaar, revolutionising fashion photography by liberating it from the studio. Taking photographs of models and celebrities outdoors, he invested his photographs with a dynamism and vitality that were to become his hallmark.

The photograph: László Fejes, 'Wedding', Budapest, 1965. Silver gelatin print. 155 x 238mm. Hungarian Museum of Photography © Hungarian Museum of Photography.

Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century
Brassaï, Capa, Kertész, Moholy-Nagy, Munkácsi
The Sackler Wing of Galleries, 30 June–2 October 2011
Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/hungarian-photography/

Sol LeWitt - an exchange

2011-07-08T13:17:00.002+12:00

Many months ago I replied to an eflux mailing calling for "artists" to respond to a curatorial call from curator Regine Basha working with Cabinet magazine and MASS MoCA. This was an open call for artists to respond to Sol LeWitt's practice of responding to each and every artwork he received, by sending an artwork of his own.
Hundreds of people sent in work from well known artists to school kids. A nice idea, art fostering unity.

Here are some pages from the catalogue that MoCA has produced which documents all the work received included the page with my work, Scream after Baldessari.

KASSEL - A souvenir

2011-07-07T14:21:00.002+12:00

When I was in Kassel for the Photobook Festival I was able to make some photographs. And from these I've made a Kassel souvenir. I've called it THREE DAYS IN KASSEL IN JUNE. The edition is limited to 50 copies, 200 x 260 mm with 12 photographs printed on a 150 gram art paper. Each book signed and numbered.

Copies can be obtained directly from me: €10 / £9 / US$15 / NZ$18, this includes the cost of postage. Simply email me at: harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz

The missing women of Ciudad Juarez as seen by Mayra Martell

2011-07-05T17:00:00.002+12:00

Cinthia Jacobeth Castaneda Alvarado, 13 years old, disappeared October 24, 2008

It was my pleasure at the Kassel Photobook Festival, in the course of portfolio reviews to meet Mexican photographer Mayra Martell. Mayra showed me her project on the missing young women of Ciudad Juarez a Mexican border town across the Rio Grande from U.S. city of El Paso, Texas. All the reviewers were astounded and moved by this work and we unanimously nominated Mayra for the festival's Reviewer Award, a prize of 3,300 Euro.

Mayra's project to document the private spaces of the missing women from Ciudad Juarez is as much about memory as anything else. Her heartfelt images record the traces and painful reminders, all that's left for the many still grieving families.

Mayra says this about her project.

Utopia: If we take a step to obtain it, it moves away a step, if we take two steps, it moves away two steps; so concluding a utopia is used for walking.

On July 22 of 2003, the declaration of the president of Mexico's Human Rights National Committee, Jose Luis Soberanes, outraged the international press; he stated that the number of disappeared woman in Ciudad Juarez exceeded the thousands. To the date the number is still open, no political branch or organization knows exactly the number of disappeared woman.
Several doubts arose in me; on what moment did those woman became Fictitious? What happened to their families? With the spaces were they existed?
Such question became so constant; I ended up at the state's law enforcement station requesting information on the missing women. The murdered woman of Ciudad Juarez was not my interest, perhaps my concern, but not my main interest, only the disappearances. How is it possible that so many missing woman and in such that number are unaccounted for? My primary intention was to validate the disappearance of the woman, not of numbers. I wanted to see their rooms almost as an intuitive movement, as a past necessity.
The police reports don't give any information as to their families who try to continue with their lives. The living rooms remains intact, however these people are filled with images, religious images, their daughter images, hopeful images, and they do not know that to do with all of them. They search for the clothing that she wore a day before disappearing, it conserves her scent. After years, it is necessary the presence of another person to renew the memory. That is there were they are, it is there where they survive. They are still waiting.

Griselda Muroa Lopez, 16 years old, disappeared April 13th, 2009

Jazmin Chavarria Corrales, 21 years old, disappeared February 20th, 2007

Diana Noralay Piaga Reyna, 16 years old, disappeared February 27th, 2009

Maria Guadalupe Perez Montes, (Lupita), 17 years, disappeared January 31st, 2009