Paris Photo 2009 - Spotlight on Arab and Iranian photography

From November 19 to 22, 2009, Paris Photo will present a panoramic overview of worldwide photographic expression, spanning the 19th century to the present day while also unveiling an emerging international scene.
For its 13th edition, Paris Photo turns the spotlight on photographic work from the Arab countries and Iran in what is an unprecedented exploration of the practice in this part of the world.
Curated by Catherine David who was responsible for Documenta X in Kassel in 1997 as well as numerous exhibitions and publications on Middle Eastern artistic expression, this year's project will be based on three components.
The Central Exhibition will unveil a selection of rare studio photographs from the archives of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut; the Statement section will present a number of emerging talents from the region - from Tehran to Damascus, Beirut to Cairo, Tangiers to Dubai... The Project Room will offer a series of video works, testimony to the growing interest for the dynamics of this medium among the artists of the region.

Dates: Thursday, 19 November - Sunday, 22 November, 2009
Opening by invitation only: Wednesday, 18 November, 7:00 pm -10:00 pm
Venue: Carrousel du Louvre, 99 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris, France

Information: http://www.parisphoto.fr

Auckland - Ponsonby Road, 9am Saturday March 28

On the way for my morning coffee hit..... it's amazing what you see when you really start to look.

W.A.G.E. - Working Artists and the Greater Economy

DEAR ARTIST,
SO, I HAVE TO TELL YOU THE CRAZIEST STORY...
A MUSEUM HIRED ME TO PUT ON A SHOW.
SO I WENT TO WORK AT MY STUDIO.
AFTER LABORING FOR 6 MONTHS,
AFTER TWO WEEKS OF INSTALLATION,
AFTER COUNTLESS MEETINGS WITH THE MUSEUM,
I PUT ON A SHOW. A GREAT SHOW!
I SENT THE MUSEUM MY INVOICE.
THEY SENT ME A CHECK MADE OUT FOR A TON OF EXPOSURE.
MY LANDLORD KEEPS ASKING FOR A RENT.
I SIGNED OVER MY EXPOSURE.
TURNS OUT I DON'T HAVE A STUDIO ANYMORE.
MISSING YOU,
W.A.G.E.

http://www.wageforwork.com/wage.html

China Stories - Cambridge School of Art at Anglia Ruskin University, UK

Harvey Benge - Auckland, New Zealand
Oyvind Hjelmen - Stord, Norway
Ferit Kuyas - Zürich, Switzerland
Pok Chi Lau - Kansas City, USA
Elaine Ling - Toronto, Canada
Christopher Rauschenberg - Portland, USA
Gerard Saitner - Paris, France
Wolfgang Zurborn - Cologne, Germany

April 3rd - April 18th, 2009
Opening: April 2nd, 2009

Ruskin Gallery - Cambridge School of Art (CSA)
at Anglia Ruskin University, UK
Cambridge Campus
East Road, Cambridge, CB1 1PT
Mon-Fri 9 a.m.-9 p.m., Sat 10 a.m.-5 p.m.


Harvey Benge - These are a series of images I made in 2006 and 2007 when I was a guest at the Pingyao Festival in Shanxi Province China. Subsequently published in 2008 by FAQEDITIONS the pictures explore the everyday and overlooked in the Chinese landscape. Image from CHINA STORY, FAQEDITIONS, 2008

Øyvind Hjelmen - Journey Elsewhere When I travelled through China In December 2007.I tried to note my impressions of little bits of grace and surprise that I discover day by day. One may ask, is such a journey really a journey elsewhere, or is it just a journey going deeper within oneself? To be honest, I think both ideas are true…

Ferit Kuyas - City of Ambition This is a visit to one of the largest cities in the world, Chongqing, populated by roughly 32 million people. I am mainly interested in the outskirts of Chongqing, where the city can’t be really seen but sensed, like a tiger moving through the jungle – invisible, yet there.

Pok Chi Lau – China 1979 -1982 - Post Chairman Mao Period When Lau was 19 and living in Hong Kong, his parents borrowed enough money to pay for two cameras, a plane ticket and college tuition. He studied at the Brooks Institute of Photography and the California Institute of the Arts. Beginning in the late 1970s, Lau traveled from one Chinatown to the next documenting the lives of Chinese immigrants working at mines, railroads, laundries and restaurants and often living in cramped conditions.

Wolfgang Zurborn - China! Which China? In June 2006 I visited Beijing and Shanghai. The challenge of the encounter with the unfamiliar world was to transform the personal experience of the highly complex and interlaced parallel worlds of these "Megacities" into an individual picture language which should not keep the unknown in the realm of the exotic but which discovers the nearness in the strange.

Elaine Ling – China Stones is a journey (1995) down the Spirit Road, a long avenue flanked on either side by pairs of stone sculptures of animals and figures, This road leads up to an earth tumulus beneath which lies the underground palace in which the emperor's body rested surrounded by treasures and other objects placed for use in the afterlife.

Chris Rauschenberg was travelling in China in 1985. He is looking at the urban spaces in China in a very fragmentary view. Objects of everyday life are developing an absurd own life. His panoramic photographs are forcing the very subjective construction of space.

BIG WORK small works

The work I made for the BIG WALL at Dunedin Public Art Gallery back in 2002 will at last be seen in Auckland at Bath Street Gallery, on their big wall, opening June 2. The work consists of 240, A3 images butted together to make one work 1.8m x 18m.
I'm also making some small works for the show. Here is an installation picture from Dunedin.

MoH08 - at foam photography museum Amsterdam

Marks of Honour 08 (MoH) - at foam Amsterdam opens May 28.
From the foam website, "Thirteen international photographers were invited to choose a photo book that was influential in forming their work, and to pay it artistic homage. All the participating works show a wide spectrum of enthusiasm for photo books and the variety of inspiration sources drawn on by international photo artists. Limited to three copies, each work contains the original photo book and its complementary homage. In sum Marks of Honour 08 constitutes a singular library and a system of reference on the most enduring influences as well as the freshest in contemporary photography.
The photographers and their homage: Harvey Benge honours William Eggleston, Chris Coekin honours Hendrick Duncker & Yrjo Tuunanen, Peter Granser honours Robert Frank, Pieter Hugo honours Roland Barthes, Tiina Itkonen honours Pentti Sammallahti, Onaka Koji honours Daido Moriyama, Jens Liebchen honours Anthony Hernandez, Michael Light honours Ansel Adams, Mark Power honours Stephen Shore, Matthew Sleeth honours Lars Tunbjörk, Alec Soth honours Andrea Modica, Jules Spinatsch honours Block 2008, Raimond Wouda honours Paul Shambroom. To make it accessible to a broad public, accompanied by a catalogue, Marks of Honour 08 will be shown in various international galleries and museums."

Auckland - Paris - Home

Working currently on the idea of Home, what it means to me and more interestingly looking at the cumulative effect of the small interventions that I see everywhere in the urban landscape. There will be two book works, Volume 1, Auckland and Volume 2, Paris. Fifty pictures each. Here are four recent images made in Auckland, but they could be anywhere.....

Context and authenticity in the portrait

Still thinking about the portrait and in particular the issue of signification. What message is conveyed and how. And the question of context and the role that plays in the photo portrait. Two of the pictures in my previous post are shot against neutral backgrounds and rely only on the figure to provide the reading. This not for the first time and I immediately think of Richard Avedon's American West pictures shot against a white background. What more would have been conveyed if my subjects had been shot in a more loaded setting?
Came across an interesting piece in a blog written by photographer Chase Jarvis. Here authenticity is discussed and a case made for many photographic portrait's merely presenting a stilted, contrived view of the subject, who is intent on showing their best "self". Pictures less rooted in honesty and more in...fantasy.
Here are some portraits I made in Pingyao in 2007, people I met in the street. Curious about me and me of them. They seem uncontrived and have an innocent freshness.

The photographic portrait

I've never really considered myself as a maker of portraits. But do none-the-less. Here are three pictures that I thought were worth a second look. The first made in Paris in 2001 is of Clemence, daughter of my friend Simon, the second a couple I photographed in Poland (Lodz) in 2008 and last made in Australia in February this year.
Here is what Wikepedia has to say on the subject of photographic portraiture:
Portrait photography (also known as portraiture) is the capture by means of photography of the likeness of a person or a small group of people, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The objective is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of the photograph is the person's face, although the entire body and the background may be included. A portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the camera.
Unlike many other styles of photography, the subjects of portrait photography are non-professional models. Many family portraits and photographs that commemorate special occasions, such as graduations or weddings, are professionally produced and hang in private homes. Most portraits are not intended for public exhibition.
Portrait photography has been around since the invention and popularization of the camera. It is a cheaper and often more accessible method than portrait painting, which has been used by distinguished figures before the popularity of the camera.
The relatively low cost of the daguerreotype in the middle of the 19th century lead to its popularity for portraiture. Studios sprang up in cities around the world, some cranking out more than 500 plates a day. The style of these early works reflected the technical challenges associated with 30-second exposure times and the painterly aesthetic of the time. Subjects were generally seated against plain backgrounds and lit with the soft light of an overhead window and whatever else could be reflected with mirrors. As the equipment became more advanced, the ability to capture images with short exposure times gave photographer more creative freedom and thus created new styles of portrait photography.
As photographic techniques developed, photographers took their talents out of the studio and onto battlefields, across oceans and into remote wilderness. William Shew's Daguerreotype Saloon, Roger Fenton's Photographic Van and Mathew Brady's What-is-it? wagon set the standards for making portraits and other photographs in the field.

Alec Soth & John Gossage, Up-Close at AUT St Paul St

The workshop with Alec and John finished on Sunday night. And up-close it was. The twenty participants came away buzzing and full of enthusiasm for new directions in their own work and admiration for the work of Alec and John. Special thanks are due to AUT for hosting this 4th International Photography workshop, Neil Cameron AUT School of Art and Design Registrar for his hard work and Alec and John for making the long-haul to come here plus their patience, professionalism and humour.

Auckland - St Paul St Gallery, Saturday January 17th

"In conjunction with AUT's annual international photo-art workshop
at AUT's St Paul St Gallery we invite you to meet photographers
John Gossage and Alec Soth at St Paul St, 5.30pm Saturday 17th January.
Also to celebrate the launch of Harvey Benge's new book
I LOOK AT YOU, YOU LOOK AT ME."

Paris - January 12th

Vive la resistance en Palestine

Paris mysteries

Who is the woman in the red coat? What's in the bundle? Where is she taking it? Does the woman in red know the man in the brown coat? What has he got in his pocket? Why is the man in the distance looking back and what has he seen? Who is the man in the red jacket? Did he read the notice on the post? Who put that there? Why does the street sign have a cross? Who is the woman at the window? Questions with no answers.....

Victory of the Trivial edition

My Victory of the Trivial series consists of twenty photographs of unremarkable $2 shop objects. The work was first produced as a gallery show and installation and now this edition of ten, published by FAQEDITIONS. Pigment printed on archival matt paper, the images are each initialed, numbered and assembled in a translucent plastic box. The edition is available in Paris from SPREE galerie and librarie Florence Loewy, and in Cologne from Schaden.com. There will be a gallery showing of the series at SPREE, Paris, in 2009.

Paris - Librarie Florence Loewy

Along with Printed Matter in New York the Librarie Florence Loewy in Paris has no equal when it comes to artists' books. In business since February 1989 and from October 2001 located in the heart of the Marais at 9 rue de Thorigny almost next to the Picasso Museum. The shop with its amazing bookshelves (alone worth a visit to see) was designed by the architects Dominique Jakob and New Zealander Brendan McFarlane. The bookstore offers a wide choice of artists' books, multiples, records and other editioned works ranging from the 60's until now. Florence has always (rather haphazadly) had a vase of flowers or something growing in the window. I made this image of her anenomes in 2002 and then this last November her cactus. Florence writes that I got the last shot of the cactus before it ended in the dustbin....

Paris - signs

From Wikipedia- In semiotics, a sign is "something that stands for something else, to someone in some capacity". It may be understood as a discrete unit of meaning, and includes words, images, gestures, scents, tastes, textures, sounds – essentially all of the ways in which information can be communicated as a message by any sentient, reasoning mind to another.
The nature of signs has long been discussed in philosophy. Initially, within linguistics and later semiotics, there were two general schools of thought: those who proposed that signs are ‘dyadic’ (i.e. having two parts), and those who proposed that signs are interpreted in a recursive pattern of triadic (i.e. three-part) relationships.

Paris bicycle - coincidence or conspiracy

I've just had this amazing email from a photographer in Seattle Washington which reads:

Dear Mr. Benge,
Reference this picture that you recently posted on your blog. Looked eerily familiar. I rummaged through my digital archives and, lo and behold, I photographed the self-same bicycle on 25 October 2007. It appears to be parked at the same location (in the fifth; Rue Monge, perhaps). Hard to tell precisely by the scratches whether your picture predates mine, but it certainly is the same lovely chain-guard (and the same Metro entrance)!
Despite my best efforts, I never could pull all the elements of this image together, so it was relegated to the virtual dustbin. The ones that did survive are on my Paris blog (http://www.originalrefrigeratorart.blogspot.com).
Someday I may get around to gathering together all the images from my times in Paris; I do love that city!
Cheers,
Tyler M
Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

My reply:

Hi Tyler
have just opened your email....well the world certainly is a small and getting smaller place... I've just returned from Paris where I went for Paris Photo in November and it was then that I photographed the wonderful bicycle with the beautiful flowers on the chain guard. And yes it is the same bike in both pictures... how extraordinary. I'm wondering if it's been sitting there since you made your picture....I can't remember tho the exact location for my picture....

if the world in general is small the photo world even smaller...how strange that one lonely bicycle in Paris could be the catalyst for you in Seattle and me in Auckland talking to each other....I wonder what the world might be like if we all talked about bicycles and coincidences, rather than guns, wars and confrontation.. I'm sure a much better place...

and yes, Paris is a wonderful city....

I've yet to look at your blog and will do so now... I just wanted to get this off to you straight away.... while I'm still stunned and smiling in amazement...

very best from me

Harvey

Marks of Honour at FOAM Amsterdam - May 2009

MoH/08, a homage to the photo-book will be shown at FOAM photography museum Amsterdam in May 2009. The show consists of the library itself, multimedia-reproductions of the work and large format “inspiration-sketches”. Visitors will see the original works, a multimedia presentation, photographs, drawings and reproductions. Text will be a linking element between the different artworks and will carry the visitor through the exhibition-room.
A documentation of the inspiration source of every invited artist and a complete reproduction of the original photobook with it’s complementary homage will be accessible on computer screens. A catalogue will be published by Schaden.com.

The photographers:

Harvey Benge honours William Eggleston
Artist book of 16 pages, hand written text and four tipped in photographs, one inserted loose. Both books contained in a slipcase.

Chris Coekin honours Hendrick Duncker & Yrjo Tuunanen
Book in hay and eco/farmer bag, four pictures of me hitchhiking plus one of the original signs "Hay on the Highway".

Peter Granser honours Robert Frank
Box from linnen with book and a map with four pigment prints on Fine Art Pearl Paper.

Pieter Hugo honours Roland Barthes

Tiina Itkonen honours Pentti Sammallahti
Box with five pictures.

Onaka Koji honours Daido Moriyama
Book, contactsheet and five pictures in handmade wooden box.

Jens Liebchen honours Anthony Hernandez
A sequence of 3 images presented as a Leporello, with text and separate book, in a cardboard box.

Michael Light honours Ansel Adams
Box, Adams book jigsawed along landscape lines; M. Light pigment prints atached to certain Adams images.

Mark Power honours Stephen Shore
Custom made box with book and four large format c-prints.

Matthew Sleeth honours Lars Tunbjörk
A fold out book with „Office“ bound to the middle and then two selfmade inkjet books („Fire extinguishers“ and „Houseplants“) each side folding over the top.

Alec Soth honours Andrea Modica
The edition includes a box with two photographs in a small portfolio responding to Andrea Modica’s Treadwell.

Jules Spinatsch honours Block 2008
8 booklets made out of the calender Block 2008; one for each artist in a box with the title: Deblocked.

Raimond Wouda honours Paul Shambroom
3 pictures as inkjets in the book; they continue the book as leporello.

http://www.marksofhonour.com/index.html

Auckland - pictures from home?

Here are three pictures I made last night in a therapeutic one hour walk from home. They could be anywhere, then so could I.

Paris - more November images

Three more pictures worth a second look....

Paris - November clichés?

Paris, les flâneur, roaming with friend and fellow photographer Bruce Connew. First on the Metro south to porte de vanves heading for the sunday morning flee market and a walk back to montparnasse and down rue de rennes, st germain des pres across the river towards home. Later, another day, east from place de la bastille along the viaduct des arts to bois de vincennes and the walk back. Shooting as we go, each observing the other, calling cliché, boring or been done at every other shot. Hopefully not....here are three of mine....all good fun.

Paris - random images

In between hanging out in cafes, looking at art, catching up with friends and giving Paris Photo a thorough going over, Paris is as photogenic as ever. Here are three random images that seem to have survived my first edit. The strange wedge shaped building is in the rue de seine in the 6th and is noted for the fact that it was photographed by Atget. As for the others they could be anywhere. The image of the child in the red raincoat brings to mind the 1973 Nicolas Roeg movie, Don't Look Now with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.

Paris - rendezvous at le fumoir

Le fumoir, my Paris office, located at the eastern end of the Louvre is not only a pleasant and perfect Parisian cafe but superbly located. It's a short 20 minute walk from where I stay in the 11th and on the way to the left bank across the pont des arts. So it was at 11am on Wednesday November 13th I was due to meet Hungarian friend, curator, artist, Gergely Lazlo. Me seated on the comfortable leather sofa where 2 years ago Jim Casper had interviewed me for Lens Culture. As I waited who should arrive but Jim and the remarkable South African photographer Guy Tillim. Jim set to interview Guy. Small world we said as Jim and Guy retreated to the back room library for some peace and quiet. As it happened Gergely never arrived, sick in Budapest. After my coffee I invaded the back room and made this picture of the two (well three) deep in interview mode.