LOST HOME - a collaboration

It's strange how things happen. Paris Photo 2012, a chance meeting with Japanese SUPER LABO publisher Yasunori Hoki and Washington based photographer Terri Weifenbach. We talked about the collaboration I'd initiated in 2010 called ONE DAY and a work I'd made with NZ poet Sam Sampson called Exclusivity. One thing led to another and what we've loosely been calling The Japan Project was born.

Japanese writer and film maker Nobuyuki Isshiki has written a prose poem called LOST HOME. Ten photographers will respond with a bookwork which will be published by SUPER LABO in a boxed set and launched at Paris Photo 2013.

In alphabetical order here is the list of participants: Harvey Benge, JH Engstrom, Roe Ethridge, Takashi Homma, Ron Jude, Daido Moriyama, Christian Patterson, Slavica Perkovic, Bertien van Manen, Terri Weifenbach.

Watch this space and see you in Paris in November.

Terri Weifenbach

Bertien van Manen

Slavica Perkovic

Christian Patterson

Daido Moriyama

Ron Jude

Takashi Homma

Roe Ethridge

JH Engstrom

Harvey Benge

Photography workshop with Sandra Phillips in Auckland

Following the successful photography workshop held last year at Auckland's AUT University - St Paul Street Gallery, with now NYC MoMA curator Quentin Bajac and Pieter Hugo, this year in August, Sandra Phillips Curator of Photography at San Francisco MoMA will be coming to Auckland.

Sandra has been photography curator at SFMoMA since 1987 and is one of the most influential curators in the medium working today. She has maintained SFMoMA's position as having one of the most active departments of photography anywhere. Sandra has been responsible for a host of exhibitions including those involving William Klein, Daido Moriyama, Diane Arbus, Larry Sultan, and most recently Rineke Dijkstra and Garry Winogrand.  She is an empowering teacher and an engaging personality.

Sandra Phillips will also be in Auckland as guest and key-note speaker for the Auckland Art Fair, where the focus this year is on photography. The Art Fair opens Wednesday August 7. The photography workshop runs over 2 days, Saturday August 10 and Sunday 11 August, and will be presented in AUT’s new state of the art digital design facility. Workshop attendees will receive a complimentary pass to the Auckland Art Fair so that they can go to the panel discussion with Sandra Phillips and Auckland Art Gallery senior curator Ron Brownson on the afternoon of Thursday August 8.

This is a unique opportunity to have your work reviewed by and learn, first hand, from one of photography's most iconic personalities.

There is a limited number of places for the workshop and already there is a high level of interest. If you wish to attend or have any questions please contact me without delay at harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz

Gerry Badger writes - the photographer's ultimate task...

 

In his essay on The Grapevine Work of Susan Lipper, from his book The Pleasures of Good Photographs, Gerry Badger writes:

The problem is the medium’s literalness, so the photographer is not only trying to go beyond subject matter and find subject, she has to take her audience with her. Most people, and this can include people quite sophisticated and well versed in other arts, assume that if the photograph is of a white horse, the photographer is talking about white horses rather than loneliness or loss, or any number of apparently unlikely subjects, as well as the more obvious metaphors like strength or grace. Of course, the ultimate task for any photographer is to talk about the most unlikely things and the white horse, in short, to tell the subject’s tale as well as her own.

I cannot think of a better summary of what the essence of a good photograph, a photograph that works, is all about. Certainly surface is important but not without substance, and often for maximum effect, drip-fed to the reader in homeopathic doses. Most people are not stupid, let's not make it too easy. Form, content, layers, mystery. Easy to say but difficult to do, but your reader will thank you for it.

Finally, Badger says this of Susan Lipper's work:

She is a particularly intelligent photographer, her work is an especially intriguing blend of the modernist with the postmodern, the objective with the subjective, and the outsider with the insider. She deals with many of the issues that concern contemporary photographic art, especially revolving around the relationship of the self to the "other," but does it in a uniquely personal and highly original way. 

Very true. See for yourself - here are several of Lipper's Grapevine photographs. And you can go to her website HERE.

LANDFALL Issue 225 - My Auckland

 

Landfall is New Zealand's oldest extant literary journal. First published in 1947 by Caxton Press under the editorship of Charles Brasch. It features new fiction and poetry, biographical and critical essays, cultural commentary, and reviews of books, art, film, drama and dance. Additionally, the journal showcases original works of art in full colour.
Landfall is published twice annually, in May and November by the Otago University Press, the journal is currently edited by writer and poet David Eggleton.

Issue 225 has just been launched, its subject - My Auckland. In it are eight of my photographs, all made in Auckland of course.

Ed Ruscha at The Getty

1018 S. Atlantic Blvd., 1965 © Ed Ruscha

The J. Paul Getty Museum presents Ed Ruscha, an exhibition from April 9th to September 29th, 2013 at the The Getty Center, West Pavilion.

Photography has played a central role in Ed Ruscha's artistic practice, most notably in the photobooks he began publishing in 1963. Highlighting important recent acquisitions by the Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute, this exhibition features a selection of prints and materials related to Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965), and Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966). Also on view for the first time are contact sheets from his shoot of the Pacific Coast Highway (1974–75), one of the many streets he has documented extensively since 1965. The exhibition offers a concentrated look at Ruscha's engagement with vernacular architecture, the urban landscape, and car culture.

Standard, Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, 1962 © Ed Ruscha

Auckland - Recent Photography

It's not often that I get to do a blog post about what's happening on my Auckland doorstep. At last there is something to talk about, a milestone photography show - Recent Auckland Photography.

The show and bookwork features twelve photographers each with a connection to the Auckland region. Some of the photographs capture aspects of that region’s culture and landscape, while others testify to the mobility and ambition of the artists – their familiarity with other places and people. The images reveal distinctive identities and characters, Auckland’s place in the Pacific, the influence of history on the contemporary environment, the wonder of the commonplace, and much more. Most of all, they are personal statements; they are about how the artists see the world.

Unusually, the exhibition is supported by a stunningly well conceived and produced hardback catalogue.
PhotoForum, the publisher says this:  Included in the book are some of New Zealand’s most acclaimed photographers, as well as a number of exciting emerging artists. For each artist there is a full page of text followed by representative examples of their work, while an introductory essay establishes the case for looking beyond the more easily recognisable aspects of subject matter to the different effects and feelings of the images themselves. Ron Brownson, senior curator at Auckland Art Gallery has contributed the introduction.

Recent Auckland Photography would not have happened but for the extraordinary vision, and dogged persistence of photographer Chris Corson-Scott and arts writer Edward Hanfling. These two are to be congratulated for mounting and producing a museum quality show and book. This should have been the opportunity and responsibility of any one of a number of public art museums who for the most part seem happy enough to drift along ignoring the healthy, wealthy vein of current photographic practice that exists in New Zealand.

Recent Auckland Photography opens this Sunday May 19th, at Auckland's NorthArt and runs until June 12th. Ron Brownson will speak about the show, 3pm Saturday 8th June at NorthArt.

The book: 270x295mm, 176 pages, 100+ color images

Chris Corson-Scott, Ian Scott Painting, Whangaparaoa, 2013

Ngahuia Harrision, Elizabeth, 2011

Mark Adams, Mangungu, Wesleyan Mission, Hokianga, 1997

Ian Macdonald, Pohutukawa, Te Muri Urupa, 2013

After word: Chris Corson-Scott talks to D-Photo about the show and book. HERE.

DEVELOP PHOTO - an amazing photographic video resource

Vimeo's DEVELOP PHOTO photography video channel is an educational resource which features interviews, multimedia, lectures & films, everything photographic - photojournalism, documentary & fine art photography and more, for every taste. Subdivided into various albums, the channel has something for everybody. In the "best of" album there are 374 videos alone. You can go there HERE.

Robert Adams - Turning Back

 

Here is a wonderful 13 minute interview with Robert Adams. A photographic journal of re-exploration. All projects begin with a gift... Well worth a look HERE.

Mark Power - amazing print offer!

To mark the 21st anniversary of the BA in Photography at the University of Brighton, a book will be published with work from some of the school's successful alumni.

The University recently held an online auction to raise funds for the book, now in an effort to reach the funding target Mark Power is very generously offering five stunning limited edition images from his 1992 The Shipping Forecast series.

Mark says this about the series and the offer: I began 'The Shipping Forecast' in 1992, also 21 years ago. That time was important to me on two levels: the start of a teaching job I'm still enthusiastically doing, and the beginning of the project that has probably defined my career.

Recently I've been re-editing 'Forecast' because, with the benefit of hindsight, there are pictures I'd put into the book now that I didn't include in the original. I've chosen five of these and made an edition of ten of each, with the forecast for that place and date printed underneath. On the back of each print I've handwritten a little 'story' which explains something about when, where and occasionally how the picture was made.

Each is a beautiful, handmade object sold on a strictly first-come, first-served basis. The price has been kept so low in the hope that we can quickly raise the extra £5,000 we need to make the book.

Proceeds from sales of the book will be kept to one side to fund a prize for next years Brighton students. Please support us to make the book happen. Thank you.

And wait for it, the prints are offered for just £100 plus postage. Each is a beautiful, handmade object sold on a first-come, first-serve basis.

You can go to Mark Power's site HERE to see the prints in greater detail and there is a PayPal link for easy purchase.

I've just looked at the site again.... and a number have already been sold. Don't wait!

ICP, NYC - A Different Kind Of Order

Sam Falls

The ICP Triennial - A Different Kind of Order - is a a global survey of contemporary photography and video. The show will be on view at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, NYC) from May 17 to September 8, 2013. 

Filling ICP’s entire gallery space as well as its exterior windows, the exhibition will feature 28 emerging and established artists from 14 countries whose worksspeak to and illuminate the newvisual and social territory in which image making operates today. Artists include Nayland Blake, A.K. Burns,Thomas Hirschhorn, Elliott Hundley, Gideon Mendel, Wangechi Mutu, Sohei Nishino, Lisa Oppenheim, and Nica Ross. A complete list is on the ICP site HERE.

Starting from the premise that most photography is now produced, processed, and distributed in digital form, A Different Kind of Order explores the sometimes unanticipated consequences of this shift as revealed in the work of a wide range of international artists. For the younger artists in the Triennial, the digital revolution is something that happened during their childhood, and dealing with its ramifications has occupied most of their creative lives. For artists of this generation (such as Sam Falls, Andrea Longacre-White, and Oliver Laric), mixing the new idioms of digital imagemaking with the existing visual language of painting, sculpture, and collage is almost second nature. Other Triennial artists, wary of the advent of “screen culture,” emphasize the handmade qualities of their work, yet even they recognize that their efforts are situated within the spaceof a fully digitized, networked world.

 

Daido Moriyama at 6th FotoBookFestival - Kassel

The 6th FotoBookFestival in Kassel which runs 24th to 27th of October presents Daido Moriyama.

Daido Moriyama is one of the most important living photographers and photobook makers of current times. His career began during the sixties in Tokyo, where he became a member of the influential Provoke group that created the most important style of Japanese post-war avantgarde photography. His oeuvre plays a central part in the establishment of Japanese photography as one of the important creative developments in the history of photography. In more than 50 years, Moriyama gained fame through his coarse, contrast-rich, partly unfocussed and highly grainy black-and-white photography, in which he deals which urban experiences, especially around the streets of Tokyo. His immense influence on young Japanese artists continues to date.

 Apart from black and white photography, Moriyama works with color, Polaroid’s, screen-printing, film, texts and installation. His fame is predominantly due to the more than 150 photobooks that he has continuously published - including masterpieces like Japan - A Photo Theatre (1968), Farewell Photography (1972), Light and Shadow (1982) and Shinjuku (2002).

More HERE on the FotoBookFestival website.

Two Degrees of Separation!

I've just had a skype conversation with Jeroen Kummer, partner in the Utrecht based design company Kummer and Herrman. K&H are designing my new book with UK publisher Dewi Lewis which will launch in the northern Spring.

On the wall behind Jeroen was what looked like a framed poster of a flag. I asked him about it and he said it was by British conceptual artist Billy Apple. Ah ha, I said... Billy is in fact a New Zealander and I was talking to him here in Auckland only last Saturday. Small world indeed.

Jeroen explained that the work on his wall was a ready-made poster devised in 1962 for a Young Commonwealth Artists' show. In 2009 Kummer and Herrman reused the poster for a major solo Billy Apple show at Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. The show was in two parts opening four weeks apart. The first part - A History of the Brand followed by Revealed / Concealed.

You can check Kummer and Herrman out HERE. They are great designers.

Lucas Blalock at WHITE CUBE London

Beans on Blue, 2011 - 2012

Lucas Blalock plays with the conventions of photography by exploring its limits and inherent contradictions. He examines not only the photograph’s subject but also the internal information of its making. Transposing Bertholt Brecht’s theory of alienation into photography by making the mechanics of the tools of production an evident part of the picture, Blalock then forces the viewer to question the conflicting realities set before them and, in turn, the contemporary condition of photography itself.
Blalock’s pictures begin by photographing with an analog view camera and then, like most photographs today, are processed through the computer using Photoshop. Blalock's process is transparent and the marks and gestures left by both him and the computer are clearly visible.
The resultant images can recall conventional portraiture, advertising and landscapes before being subjected to evident digital manipulation. In Coffee Maker (2012) a stove-top espresso maker is digitally redoubled from competing vantage points suggesting a kind of Surrealist aluminium flower, while in Figure (2012) a curled jump rope has been aggressively punctured several times using the Photoshop cloning tool.
Blalock also makes un-manipulated photographs, such as Photo Opportunity (Nina and I) (2009), where the artist and a friend are depicted jovially poking their heads through a cartoon cut-out of a couple dressed in lederhosen and dirndl, a picture that is as absurd as it is tender. This tension, between straight and manipulated conditions, begs new categories and challenges the coherent possibilities of the photographic image.
By creating undecipherable, frequently humorous and sometimes brusque moments in the work, Blalock opens up an unencumbered relationship between viewer and image. Blalock’s pictures leave a residue, acting at once individually and in tandem. In the artist’s words, the images ‘stutter or become guttural or foreign in articulation’ creating their own world of surprises that suggest a larger imagined reality in which we all take part.
Lucas Blalock was born in 1978 in Asheville, North Carolina and lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. In 2013 Lucas will graduate from UCLA with an MFA. Recent exhibitions include ‘New Pictures of Common Objects’ at MoMA PS1, New York (2013); ‘Second Nature: Abstract Photography Then and Now’, at DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA (2012-13)and ‘Towards a Warm Math’, curated by Chris Wiley, On Stellar Rays, New York (2012). Forthcoming solo shows include Ramkien Crucible, New York, September 2013.

Show runs May 1st to July 7th, 2013. You can go to the WHITE CUBE site HERE.

555-555, 2012

Gabriela as Bunny, 2012

Object Re-thought in the Shape ot its Shadow, 2012

Five Positions, 2012