Paul Graham at the Winogrand retrospective, The Met, NYC

Garry Winogrand - New York, circa 1962

Writer Nicholas Dawidoff talked to New York resident Paul Graham at The Met's Winogrand show and penned a piece in The NEW YORKER Photo Booth section.

Inside the exhibition, Graham wandered until something snapped him into focus. He paused at a photograph of a muscular young man hoisting a woman aloft and wrestling her toward the surf, from 1952. “The thing about these early ones, they strike me as the work of someone who hasn’t found his voice. They’re of that era of Time-Life photojournalism—someone trying to unshackle himself from popular journalism’s obligatory good cheer, the clanking boxcars of magazine narrative.” A little further on, he admired photographs of elderly people with much seemingly on their minds, none of it optimistic, standing on street corners sometime around 1960. “We’ve charged ahead ten years, and it’s already much richer,” Graham said. “It’s him photographing on his own gambit. He’s gone rogue! It’s haphazard, disorienting.”

You can read the full story HERE. 

Photography Workshop - Cologne in November

 

Harvey Benge - Tokyo Girl No 1, 2007

I will be conducting a workshop in Cologne at galerie Lichtblick over the weekend of November 22 and 23rd. I've called the workshop - So You Want to Make Better Photographs? - knowing that we all want to do that. Among other things I will share my approach to evaluating images. And what makes a photograph work. Of course this will lead to idea generation and how to move a series of photographs forward, ultimately to a show or a photobook. I've had a lot of photobooks published and I'll be telling participants all I know in that area. I'm looking forward to getting back to Cologne and doing this workshop, it's going to be fun.

The Lichtblick School have this to say:
Paris and Auckland based photographer Harvey Benge will return to Lichtblick School this November for an intensive 2 day workshop. Harvey will share his wealth of experience giving special attention to idea generation, how to evaluate photographs, what makes one image work and another not, editing and sequencing plus photobook design, production and an overview of print-on-demand technology. The workshop will include constructive reviews of participants work and suggestions on ways to move work forward.
Known for his evocative and unsettling images, Harvey Benge’s focus is on picture series realised through the photo-book. With over forty titles to date, his work has been published in Britain, France, Germany, Japan and New Zealand. His photographs have also been shown in public and dealer galleries in New Zealand, Britain and throughout Europe including France, Holland, Germany, Poland and Italy.
Harvey has conducted workshops with: photographers Antoine d’Agata, Peter Bialobrzeski, Louis Baltz, Slavica Perkovic, Alec Soth, John Gossage, Rineke Dijkstra, Paul Graham, Todd Hido, Pieter Hugo and curators Quentin Bajac and Sandra Phillips. His bookworks have included collaborations with J H Engstrom, Roe Ethridge, Bertien van Manen, Christian Patterson and Daido Moriyama among others.

Some unsolicited comments from past workshop participants:
Thanks for a very pleasant and eye-opening workshop, I’m glad I attended - Michael Irmscher. Thanks for your workshop, it was great and brought me a huge step forward - Charly Artmann. Thank you for a great workshop, it was good fun and helped me very much - Torsten Schumann.

You can find out more at the Lichblick School website HERE. Or if you wish you could email me direct at, harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz

Israel Ariño - Le nom qui efface la couleur

 

Israel Ariño is a Barcelona based photographer who makes pictures that are spare yet loaded and have a profound beauty. Once in a while I see work that I wish I had made, here is such an occasion. 
Ariño's new bookwork - Le nom qui efface la couleur - revolves around what is possible, around the possibility of being one thing or another, of falling or flying, of remaining or vanishing, and in general, around man’s intrinsic freedom, which places him in a world full of options, forcing him to choose between one or another.
The work borders on abstraction, a state of mind in which to explore the limits of photography, a threshold from which to witness a new type of place coming into being, more indistinct and ambiguous but at the same time more involved in a territory rich in sentiment, metaphor and language.
The series was produced while Ariño was artist-in-residence in Nature Humaine, in the Centre region of France.

The book itself is a beautiful object. Published by Ediciones Anomalas the book feels good in the hands and the production values are superb. Printed on a luscious satin paper with intense blacks and subtle highlights. What's more, Israel Ariño not only knows how to make stunning photographs his edit and sequencing is masterful. 

Le nom qui efface la couleur, 24x20cm. 104 pages. Hardcover. A bargain at 25€
You can purchase HERE. 

 

Arles 2014 - A Disaster?

The Paris based L'Oeil de la Photographie pulled no punches in its take on Arles 2014.

The name of this year’s festival was “Parade.” The fatal mistake is right there in the title. A parade is festive, friendly, flamboyant. But this parade was a motley commemoration of a few nostalgic veterans celebrating a soldier whose name isn’t even unknown: François Hébel.
And, really, we’ve had enough of these veterans: enough Martin Parr, enough Raymond Depardon, enough Christian Lacroix, enough Erik Kessels. They’re all great, but their ubiquity has become unbearable. At this rate, if Hébel and the festival weren’t parting ways, then next year’s edition would have featured Martin Parr’s cookbook, Raymond Depardon’s garden gnomes and Christian Lacroix’s children’s toys.

You can read the full story HERE.

And a last word from Sean O'Hagan writing in The Observer. You can read his complete review HERE.

Again, though, it is photography's former functions that are at the heart of this exhibition. The archival shot, the found photograph and the vernacular image continue to exert a hold on our imagination at a time when, as the Discovery award selection shows, much contemporary photography has become obsessed with the conceptual process. François Hébel departs for new ground at an interesting time for the discipline of curation as well as photography. I wish him luck, and hope the festival that he did so much to reinvent and revitalise continues to flourish.

Finally, the British Journal of Photography has their say - the highs and lows - HERE.

François Hébel's last stand

GOST Books - Maidan - Portraits from the Black Square

If you are in London on Thursday July 24th don't miss the launch of GOST books new title, Maidan - Portraits from the Black Square by Anastasia Taylor-Lind.
The bookwork is a remarkable series of portraits of anti-government protestors and mourners made in a makeshift photographic studio at the barricades in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), Kiev during February 2014.

The launch event will take place at London's Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London, W2 1QJ in the 2nd floor function room.

GOST Books is a photography and visual arts publishers founded by Gordon MacDonald and Stuart Smith, and based in London. You can see more of their titles on their website HERE.  

GOST Books current titles

 

Les Rencontre d'Arles - its 45th edition

The 45th edition of Les Rencontre d'Arles is in in full swing as I write. What I wouldn't give to be in the Place du Forum with a beer and amongst friends. Instead here in Auckland with rain and gale force winds. Yuk. You can go to the festivals program HERE.

Auckland - Viaduct Harbour this a.m. via webcam

Arles - Place du Forum

Garry Winogrand at The Met

Garry Winogrand - Albuquerque, 1957

Following its successful run at SF MoMA the block-buster Garry Winogrand retrospective is now showing at The Met NYC. Until September 21st.

The first retrospective in twenty-five years of work by Garry Winogrand (1928–1984)—the renowned photographer of New York City and of American life from the 1950s through the early 1980s—this exhibition brings together more than 175 of the artist's most iconic images, a trove of unseen prints, and even Winogrand's famed series of photos made at the Metropolitan Museum in 1969 when the Museum celebrated its centennial. It offers a rigorous overview of Winogrand's complete working life and reveals for the first time the full sweep of his career.
Born in the Bronx, Winogrand did much of his best-known work in Manhattan during the 1960s, and in both the content of his photographs and his artistic style he became one of the principal voices of that eruptive decade. Known primarily as a street photographer, Winogrand, who is often associated with famed contemporaries Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander, photographed with dazzling energy and incessant appetite, exposing some twenty thousand rolls of film in his short lifetime. He photographed business moguls, everyday women on the street, famous actors and athletes, hippies, politicians, soldiers, animals in zoos, rodeos, car culture, airports, and antiwar demonstrators and the construction workers who beat them bloody in view of the unmoved police. Daily life in postwar America—rich with new possibility and yet equally anxious, threatening to spin out of control—seemed to unfold for him in a continuous stream.
While Winogrand is widely considered one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century, his overall body of work and influence on the field remain incompletely explored. He was enormously prolific but largely postponed the editing and printing of his work. The act of taking pictures was far more fulfilling to Winogrand than making prints or editing for books and exhibitions; he often allowed others to perform these tasks for him. Dying suddenly at the age of 56, he left behind proof sheets from his earlier years that he had marked but never printed, as well as approximately 6,600 rolls of film (some 250,000 images) that he had never seen, more than one-third of which he had never developed at all; these rolls of film were developed after his death.

Garry Winogrand - El Morocco, New York, 1955

Jim Goldberg - Rich and Poor

Sean O'Hagan writes in his excellent On Photography column in the quardian on Jim Goldberg's Rich and Poor series which looks at both sides of America's social divide.

Recently, Goldberg has been digitising his huge analog archive, a process that has prompted him to re-edit his older series with the benefit of hindsight. A reworked version of Raised By Wolves, now an expensive collector's item, is promised, but the first fruit of this process is a new version of Rich and Poor (1977-85), which has been out of print since 1985.
Rich and Poor looks at the social divide in 1970s and 80s America in Goldberg's now characteristic style – black-and-white portraits accompanied by handwritten texts from the subjects. The use of ephemera is central to his way of working. "There's a thread that runs through all the work that is to do with bearing witness," he told me in 2009. "The photographs are about asking questions, though, not answering them. I'm not a politically radical person. In fact, I'm much more interested in being radical aesthetically."

You can read the full story HERE. Well worth a read, in particular given the current debate about the perils of income and wealth inequality.

China Stories in Arles

Harvey Benge - Shanghai September 2007

Cologne based curator Tina Schelhorn from galerie lichtblick presents at the Rencontres d'Arles, which opens July 7, her China Stories exhibition. The show features work from 29 photographers from a host of countries.

Harvey Benge, Auckland, New Zealand – China Story
Steven Benson, Daytona Beach – The Cost of Power in China
Chili, Beijing – Red Star Hotel
Stefen Chow, Singapore – Ai Weiwei Portrait - The Poverty Line
Nathalie Daoust, Bejing/ Berlin – Mao Impersonator
Sanne de Wilde, Amsterdam – The Dwarf Empire
James Whitlow Delano, Tokyo – China: Dystopa/ Utopia
Luis Delgado, San Francisco - Cuentos Chinos
Giulio Di Sturco, Bangkok – China Hollywood
Antonio Julio Duarte, Lisbon – Macao Casino
Joakim Eneroth, Stockholm – Without End
Katharina Hesse, Beijing – Human Negotiations
Oyvind Hjelmen, Stord, Norway - Journey Elsewhere
Ore Huiying, Singapore – The Promised Land
Liu Jin, Beijing – Fallen Angel
Pok Chi Lau, Lawrence/Hongkong - Flow China 1979-82
Elaine Ling, Toronto – Mongolia – Neon Buddhas
Sherman Ong, Singapore - HanoiHaiku
Chris Rauschenberg, Portland - China 1985
Michael Rhoades, New York – China Town NY
Yuan Shun, Beijing/ Berlin - Mindscape
Matthew Sleeth, Melbourne – Red China
Zsolt Szamódy, Budapest – The Back Alleys of Globalization
Homer Sykes, London – Shanghai Odyssey
Ian Teh, London – Traces - Dark Clouds
Kurt Tong, Hongkong – In Case it Rains in Heaven
Unity Art Nabiha + Thom, Würzburg – Yellow Chain Dance
Robert Welsh, San Francisco – Grandma
Wolfgang Zurborn, Cologne - China! Which China?

July 6-13, 2014. Daily 1 pm to midnight
Opening: Sunday, July 6 at 6 pm
in cooperation with Corinne Dumas-micaleff, Max Pam, Edition Bessard

l'atelier cinq / lieu de l'écrit & galerie / Place Voltaire, 5 rue tardieu / 13200 Arles / France

Wim Wenders - 50 rules of filmmaking with some that apply to photography

Wim Wenders is known for his poetic and emotional film direction, like 1984’s Palme d’Or-winning Paris, Texas and 1987’s Wings of Desire – the latter netting him Best Director at Cannes. Wenders’ films are filled with a lyricism and romance borne of unforgettable cinematography – unsurprisingly, he is also a prolific still photographer and artist as well as moviemaker.

A post on today's edition of Open Culture reveals Wenders' Rules of Cinema Perfection.
Following the link to MovieMaker I discovered that many of the rules also apply to still photography. Here they are, enjoy:

2. If you have nothing to say, don’t feel obliged to pretend you do.

3. If you do have something to say, you’d better stick to it.

11. Rain only shows on the screen when you back-light it.

13. Think twice before you write a scene with babies or infants.

15. Mistakes never get fixed in post.

16. Final cut is overrated. Only fools keep insisting on always having the final word.

17. Other people have great ideas, too.

18. The more money you have the more you can do with it, sure. But the less you can say with it.

24. It’s always good to make up for a lack of (financial) means with an increase in imagination.

25. Having a tight schedule can be difficult. But having too much time is worse.

26. Alright, so you’re shooting with a storyboard. Make sure you’re willing to override it at any given moment.

30. Film can reveal the invisible, but you must be willing to let it show.

31. The more you know about moviemaking, the tougher it gets to leave that knowledge behind. As soon as you do things “because you know how to do them,” you’re fucked.

32. Don’t tell a story that you think somebody else could tell better.

33. A “beautiful image” can very well be the worst thing that can happen to a scene.

37. Be ready to get rid of your favorite shot during editing.

40. You need a good title from the beginning.  

47. There are 10,000 other rules like these 50.

49. There are no rules.

50. None of the above is necessarily correct.

The Eye of Photography - your daily photography fix

Paris based - The Eye of Photography - provides a free daily photography fix that's well worth subscribing to. Apart from regularly publishing portfolios of work on Monday of this week they highlighted what they call The Guide - All the photographic events near you.This is a global overview covering exhibitions, festivals, auctions, books and events. Great stuff. You can go to the eye HERE.

Paris Photo - participating galleries for 2014 edition

Paris Photo, the premier international art fair for works in the photographic medium, is pleased to announce its preliminary list of participating galleries for Paris Photo 2014 to be held at the Grand Palais. The 18th edition runs from November 13 through 16.

31 new galleries
AFA Santiago / Andrea Meislin New York  / Artef Zurich / Athr Jeddah / Beyond Taipei / Bob Van Orsouw Zurich / Bryce Wolkowitz New York / carlier | gebauer Berlin / Daniel Templon Paris / Dix9 - Helene Lacharmoise Paris / Document Art Buenos Aires / Eva Meyer Paris / Farideh Cadot Paris / Henrique Faria New York / Imane Farès Paris / Jackson Atlanta / Kalfayan Athens / Little Big Man Los Angeles / Nusser & Baumgart Munich / Paci Brescia / Peter Freeman Paris / Richard Saltoun London / Scheublein + Bak Zurich / Selma Feriani Tunis / Silk Road Tehran / Stills Sydney / Thaddaeus Ropac Paris / Three Shadows +3 Beijing / Tolarno Melbourne / Yoshii New York / Zilberman Istanbul


105 returning galleries
+R Maserre Barcelona / 303 Gallery New York / Alain Gutharc Paris / Asymetria Warsaw / Ben Brown London / Bendana|Pinel Paris / Benrubi New York / Bernheimer Munich / Bertrand Grimont Paris / Bruce Silverstein New York / Camera Obscura Paris / Camera Work Berlin / Carlos Carvalho Lisbon / Christophe Gaillard Paris / Daniel Blau Munich / Danziger New York / David Zwirner New York / Dominique Fiat Paris / Du Jour Agnès B. Paris / East Wing Doha / Edwynn Houk New York / Eric Dupont Paris / Eric Franck London / Esther Woerdehoff Paris / Feldbuschwiesner Berlin / Feroz Bonn / Fifty One Antwerp / Filomena Soares Lisbon / Flatland Amsterdam / Fraenkel San Francisco  / Françoise Paviot Paris / Frank Elbaz Paris / Gagosian Paris / Gilles Peyroulet Paris / Gitterman New York / Glaz Moscow / Grafika La Estampa Mexico / Greve Paris / Guido Costa Projects Turin / Hackelbury London / Hamiltons London / Hans P. Kraus Jr. New York / Howard Greenberg New York / Ilan Engel Paris / In Camera Paris / James Hyman London / Johannes Faber Vienna / Jörg Maass Berlin / Klaus Kleinschmidt Wiesbaden / Klemm's Berlin / Laurence Miller New York / Le Réverbère Lyon / Les Filles Du Calvaire Paris / Luisotti Santa Monica / Lumière Des Roses Paris / M Bochum Bochum / M+B Los Angeles / Magda Danysz Paris / Magnin-A Paris / Magnum Paris / Martin Asbæk Copenhagen / Melanierio Nantes / Mem Tokyo / Michael Hoppen London / Michèle Chomette Paris / Nathalie Obadia Paris / Obsis Paris / Odile Ouizeman Paris / Pace/MacGill New York / Paris-Beijing Paris / Parrotta Stuttgart / Particuliere/Foucher-Biousse Paris / Peter Lav Copenhagen / Photo&Contemporary Turin / Polaris Paris / Polka Paris / Priska Pasquer Cologne / Purdy Hicks London / Robert Hershkowitz Lindfield / Robert Klein Boston / Robert Koch San Francisco / Robert Mann New York / Robert Morat Hamburg / Rolf Art Buenos Aires / Rosegallery Santa Monica / RX Paris / Sage Paris Paris / Silverlens Makati / Stephen Bulger Toronto / Stephen Daiter Chicago / Stevenson Cape Town / Susanne Zander Cologne / Suzanne Tarasieve Paris / Taik Persons Helsinki / Taka Ishii Tokyo / Tasveer Bangalore / The Third Gallery Aya Osaka / Thessa Herold Paris / Thomas Zander Cologne / Toluca Paris / Vintage Budapest / Vu' Paris / Xippas Paris / Yancey Richardson New York / Yossi Milo New York

Participating publishers and art book dealers will be announced mid-July.

John Gossage - Who Do You Love

Who Do You Love presents a tightly curated group of unique, never-before-seen pieces - photographic distractions, in the words of the artist - from the 1990s, culled from hundreds made over the course of that decade. Using simple materials, they push at the edge between collage and straight photography, not sitting squarely in either space. A traditional photographic image takes you “elsewhere” and “previously”; the photographic frame acts as a threshold to another place and time. By presenting each image unobscurred but in tandem with collage-like elements and handmade marks, Gossage breaks the basic photographic illusion and directs one’s attention back to the surface of the work - to the present - with a rare sophistication. These twelve works survey a decade-long artistic practice that occurred concurrently with a straight photographic discipline.

The publication includes a conversation between the artist and Darius Himes. John Gossage (b. 1946) was born in New York and is based in Washington D. C. His first monograph, The Pond (1985), was recently reissued; other notable titles include Stadt Des Schwarz (1987); There and Gone (1997); Snake Eyes (2002); Berlin in the Time of the Wall (2004); and The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler/Map of Babylon (2010). His work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, among others. A major exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago is planned for early 2015.

Edition of 500 Perfect bound with affixed boards, 12 color reproductions, 32pp. Fraenkel Gallery, July, 2014 Trade Edition: $40

Get this book. John Gossage never puts a foot, a photograph or a photobook wrong. You can get a copy of Who Do You Love direct from the Fraenkel Gallery HERE.

ONE DAY - a reprise

On June 21st 2010 ten photographers - Jessica Backhaus - Berlin, Gerry Badger - London, Harvey Benge - Auckland, John Gossage - Baltimore MD, Todd Hido - Oakland CA, Rob Hornstra - Utrecht, Rinko Kawauchi - Tokyo, Eva Maria Ocherbauer - Berlin, Martin Parr - Bristol UK, Alec Soth - Saint Paul MN - set out on that solstice day to make a book in a day.
Yesterday, our winter solstice, I reprised the event and made some pictures. Here are four images that I thought could possibly be worth a second look.

John Claridge and Chet Baker

John Claridge - Chet Baker

When I worked in London more years ago than I care to remember, John Claridge was one of the hot fashion shooters. I liked his work then and like it today.

The Galerie Adrian Bondy in Paris is currently exhibiting two personal series by John Claridge. One Hundred Photographs, a selection of images taken from his One Hundred Photographs series (1988) which were shot during Claridge’s world travels. Among other things this work features jazz musicians, native Americans, slate mines, prisons and still lifes. East London, spans a period from 1959 to 1986, many images made when Claridge was 15 and living in a poor East London neighborhood.

Galerie Adrian Bondy, 221 rue St. Jacques, 75005, Paris. Show ends 5 July 2014

You can see more of John Claridge's work on his website HERE.

Paul Graham - Does Yellow Run Forever?

 

Paul Graham has a new bookwork, Does Yellow Run Forever? - due for publication this month by MACK. The book comprises a series of photographs touching upon the ephemeral question of what we seek and value in life – love, wealth, beauty, clear-eyed reality or an inner dream world?
The work weaves in and out of three groups of images: photographs of rainbows from Western Ireland, a sleeping dreamer, and gold stores in the United States. The imagery weaves us in and out of reality, dream and illusion, between fact and spectral phenomena, each entwined one within the other.
Does Yellow Run Forever? refuses to reduce the world to a knowable schema, but instead embraces the puzzle - that there are no singular meanings, direct answers, or gold waiting at the end of the rainbow. Yet, there are startling visions in the everyday, be they ‘beautiful’ or ‘ugly’, that there are dreams worth dreaming, magical scenes to be seen, and true moments of wonder to be found as we shiver the mirror of life.

96 pages / 31 colour plates / 13.5 cm x 19 cm / embossed hardcover /  €35.00 £30.00 50.00

 You can order from MACK - Here.

Irony is ruining our culture...

Here are some extracts from a piece written by Matt Ashby and Brendan Carrol from the online arts and culture magazine SALON. There are a couple of paragraphs that resonated for me.

David Foster Wallace long ago warned about the cultural snark that now defines popular culture. It's time to listen.

Early postmodernists such as Robert Rauschenberg broke the modernist structure of medium-specificity by combining painting and sculpture. The sheer level of his innovation made the work hopeful. However, renegade accomplishments like Rauschenberg’s gave way to an attitude of anything-goes pluralism. No rules governed the distinction of good and bad. Rather than opening doors, pluralism sanctioned all manner of vapid creation and the acceptance of commercial design as art. Jeff Koons could be seen as a hero in this environment. Artists became disillusioned, and by the end of the 1980s, so much work, both good and bad, had been considered art that nothing new seemed possible and authenticity appeared hopeless. In the same period, a generation of academics came of age and made it their mission to justify pluralism with a critical theory of relativism. Currently, the aging stewards of pluralism and relativism have influenced a new population of painters, leaving them confused by the ambitions of Rauschenberg. Today’s painters understand the challenging work of the early postmodernists only as a hip aesthetic. They cannibalize the past only to spit up mad-cow renderings of “art for no sake,” “art for any sake,”  “art for my sake” and “art for money.” So much art makes fun of sincerity, merely referring to rebellion without being rebellious. The paintings of Sarah Morris, Sue Williams, Dan Colen, Fiona Rae, Barry McGee and Richard Phillips fit all too comfortably inside an Urban Outfitters. Their paintings disguise banality with fashionable postmodern aesthetic and irony.

But David Foster Wallace predicted a hopeful turn. He could see a new wave of artistic rebels who “might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels… who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles… Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue.” Yet Wallace was tentative and self-conscious in describing these rebels of sincerity. He suspected they would be called out as “backward, quaint, naïve, anachronistic.” He didn’t know if their mission would succeed, but he knew real rebels risked disapproval. As far as he could tell, the next wave of great artists would dare to cut against the prevailing tone of cynicism and irony, risking “sentimentality,” “ovecredulity” and “softness.”

Wallace called for art that redeems rather than simply ridicules, but he didn’t look widely enough. Mostly, he fixed his gaze within a limited tradition of white, male novelists. Indeed, no matter how cynical and nihilistic the times, we have always had artists who make work that invokes meaning, hope and mystery. But they might not have been the heirs to Thomas Pynchon or Don Delillo. So, to be more nuanced about what’s at stake: In the present moment, where does art rise above ironic ridicule and aspire to greatness, in terms of challenging convention and elevating the human spirit? Where does art build on the best of human creation and also open possibilities for the future? What does inspired art-making look like?

You can read the full SALON article HERE.

David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

Collier Schorr - 8 Women

photo-eye asked me to select and review a Book of the Week. I chose Collier Schorr's puzzling new bookwork 8 Women. Here is what I wrote...

In her new bookwork 8 Women, Collier Schorr has abandoned the German countryside and has moved inside the studio. What’s not been lost is the fundamental landscape of desire that continues to permeate her work, where the reader inevitably questions the nature of the relationship between Schorr and her subjects. These profoundly enigmatic photographs deal with identity, power and issues of gender and sit on the edge of knowing and not knowing. Unsettlingly, the work picks at the scabs of our own past relationships. This is a loaded and layered series that leaves the reader never quite knowing what is going on and what they are looking at. Richard Prince says that this is Schorr’s best bookwork, I think he may well be right.

You can buy the book from photo-eye HERE.

Melbourne and Sydney in May - 28 photographs

While in Melbourne and Sydney at the end May there was time to wander, explore and make photographs. The result, a 28 page photobook similar in format to my Paris series.

The edition is limited to 50 copies, each book signed and numbered. There are 28 photographs, over 28 pages, printed on 150gsm art paper, 226 x 160 mm. Below are some of the pages.

Copies can be obtained directly from me at: harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz
Prices are, €23 / £18 / US$30 / A$33 / NZ$36, which include packing and postage. For payment you can simply log on to my PayPal account using my email address above.

The Photobook - Yin and Yang

MOCA Sydney - Sunday May 25

The Sunday before last I took part in a panel discussion at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art where a panel consisting of publishers, photography educators and photographers attempted to prise open the photobook oyster to see if we could come up with any pearls of wisdom. The subject was tossed back and forth before a receptive audience and in an hour and a half not many substantive conclusions were reached.

As a committed maker of photobooks I’ve been thinking a lot about the photobook and the problems and opportunities of book making and distribution. Since I made my first photobook twenty years ago much has changed. On one hand it’s become hugely easier to actually get a book produced. With InDesign, working from PDF’s in a computer to plate environment, sheet-fed offset books are simpler to produce. Make-ready press times are shorter, plate turn around on the presses are faster and printers can now cost effectively print smaller runs, down to even 500 units. Possibly less. On top of this there is digital printing with state of the art printers from both Fuji Xerox and HP. And soon in this arena sheet sizes larger than A3. All this has meant a flood of photobooks. In effect the haystack has got bigger but the needle much smaller. What I’m saying is that amongst the flood of books, some books are not very good and it’s harder to get ones hands on the really outstanding stuff. Somebody commented at the panel discussion, “how many times have you gone into a photobook store and come out with nothing”. Right!

Once you’ve got your book in your hand the killer is distribution. Today, there are many more books seeking shelf-space with less shelf-space to go round. High Street art bookshops have closed and those that keep going have become more selective in what they stock. And for example the wonderful Flammarion bookshop in Centre Pompidou, Paris, seems to have a policy of just one stock-turn for most books. In other words they will order a book, display it, sell it but not restock. Then there is Amazon and Book Depository with their huge market share which enable them to dictate terms to publishers. Book resellers demand hefty discounts and more often than not publishers pay the freight costs of unsold returned books. I am still convinced that the photobook is the best vehicle for photography. The book makes a series of pictures into a work in itself. There is a wonderful tactile, format, scale thing that works with photographs in book form which adds to the experience of viewing the work. And unlike a short lived gallery show a book has long life, it can travel and becomes the photographers ultimate calling card.

As for acquiring photobooks, in my view you can’t go wrong it you buy and collect every new book from those photographers you admire with a history of making books where often one book can inform the next. For example I get hold of, sight unseen, every book from luminaries such as Robert Adams, Paul Graham, John Gossage, Wolfgang Tillmans and Collier Schorr, to name a few. I do this because I follow their work and know their books will be good. And I look for books from new voices such as Sacha Maric, Lucas Blalock and others.

Despite the changes of the last few years there is still life in photobook. Long live the photobook!

Harvey Benge - Can I leave the room?