Auckland - Photography Sell-Out

Next Tuesday night June 9, it's photography sell-out time at the Gus Fisher gallery. A lot of photography for not much!

Editing - some thoughts

I watched David Mamet's film Red Belt (2008) last night. Mamet is both a film writer and director whose work I like a lot. Remembering that I have a little book of his, On Directing Film, written in 1991, I re-read Mamet's thoughts about the folly of rushing into visual / pictorial solutions. His advice, before rushing into anything is to understand what the scene means (read picture in photo terms) and to understand the progression of the work. He quotes Hemmingway who said, "write the story, take out all the good lines, and see if it still works". Mamet goes on to say that a work only gets better by learning to cut the ornamental, the narrative, and especially the deeply felt and meaningful. What remains? The story remains. Photo-book editors could think about this, I include myself here. Shoot the pictures, edit, make a sequence, take out all the good images and see if what remains works.

Auckland Public Library - The Photo Book

At 2pm tomorrow, Sunday May 31st, at Auckland's Central Public Library I will be talking about the photo-book. Among other things, how the photo-book has become an important and lasting vehicle for the presentation of photographic series and how it has become a significant rival and alternative to the showing of photographs on the gallery wall. I will also be talking about and showing my new book YOU WON'T BE WITH ME TOMORROW. The picture here shows some of the photo-books I've made since my first in 1993.

Bath Street Gallery - BIG WORK

And here is the BIG WORK which I will install at Bath Street. First show at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2002, it consists of 240, A3 prints hung together to make an installation 1.8 x 16.8 m.

Auckland, Bath Street Gallery - BIG WORK, small works

Here are five of the small works that I will show at my Bath Street Gallery show which opens Tuesday of next week, June 2. The works, each in an edition of five measure 640 x 480 mm. They include images made in Auckland, Paris and Genoa together with two works made in Auckland from my "S" series. These works are all from my new book work YOU WON'T BE WITH ME TOMORROW, to be launched at Bath Street on Tuesday night. This artist book, under my own imprint FAQEDITIONS has been produced in a limited edition of 100 copies, each signed and numbered.

Paris - La Force de l'Art

Last chance this weekend to see LA FORCE DE L'ART, La triennale de l'art en France, showing in the magnificent Grand Palais in Avenue Winston Churchill. If the art doesn't get you the building will. It was at the first Triennale in 2006 where I made a number of the portraits for my book I LOOK AT YOU, YOU LOOK AT ME. How time flies.....

Bill Jay dies on May 10th

CURATOR, AUTHOR AND PHOTOGRAPHER
BILL JAY PASSES AWAY IN HIS SLEEP

"Everything about photography, everything I write about photography, everything I photograph has a feedback system which says: This is what it's like to be human."--Bill Jay in a 2007 interview by Darius Himes of the Photo District News.

Bill Jay passed away in his sleep in Costa Rica Sunday night, May 10th. As Tucson photography dealer Terry Etherton noted in an email to fellow AIPAD photography dealers, "For those of you who knew Bill, you understand what a huge loss this is to the photography world."

Bill Jay began his career in the U.K. His first article to appear in print was published in "Practical Photography" magazine, then the largest circulation monthly in Europe, when he was only 19 years old. It was the start of career writing about the photography medium that extended over more than 40 years.

He later became the first director of photography at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and was the first editor/director of "Creative Camera" magazine from 1968-1969. In 1970 he founded and edited a new London-based journal, "Album". It only survived for one year, 12 issues.

To pay the bill during this early period, he was also picture editor of a large circulation news/feature magazine and the European manager of an international picture agency. He left England in 1972 to come to the U.S.

After studying with Beaumont Newhall and Van Deren Coke at the University of New Mexico, he founded the program of photographic studies at Arizona State University, where he taught history and criticism classes for 25 years.

Bill Jay published over 400 articles and was the author of more than 20 books on the history and criticism of photography. Most of these books have been published with Chris Pichler of Nazraeli Press, a former student of Jay's. Some
of his recent titles include: Cyanide and Spirits: an inside-out view of early photography; Occam's razor: an outside-in view of contemporary photography; USA Photography Guide; Bernard Shaw: On Photography; Negative/Positive: a philosophy
of photography; 61 Pimlico; Sun in the Blood of the Cat; Men Like Me, etc.

Jay was also frequently asked to contribute essays to monographs by well-known photographers, such as Jerry Uelsmann, Bill Brandt, Michael Kenna and Bruce Barnbaum.

Until his retirement, Bill Jay was a frequent guest lecturer at symposia and conferences and at colleges and universities in England and Europe, as well as throughout the U.S.

His own photographs have been widely published and exhibited, including a solo show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His previous monograph, "Photographers Photographed", included a selection of the thousands of portraits
he has taken of prominent individuals of the medium of photography, a database of which is located at the Center of Creative Photography, which also houses his research archives.

The photograph is one I made of Martin Parr and Bill Jay at the Wellington Photography Festival

Paris May 1st

Spring day in Paris today..... how pleasant to be in the gardens at Palais-Royal

Photography Sell-Out

At Auckland's Gus Fisher Gallery on Tuesday June 9 from 6 to 8pm seventeen photographers will each present an edition of 15, each work to be sold for $15. Part piss-take, part conceptual and creative challenge the event has already raised the hackles of some in the "art business" who feel that the whole affair is indeed a sell-out. I'm sure it will be!
Photographers include Mark Adams, John Lyall, Ian Macdonald, Fiona Partington, Haru Sameshima, Ann Shelton and Ans Westra.
My work is called $15 Scream, After Baldessari (and with thanks to Edvard Munch).

William Eggleston's Paris

William Eggleston is exhibiting his "Paris" pictures at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain (until June 21). For the last three years, Eggleston has photographed Paris as part of a commission for Fondation Cartier. The "Paris" series marks his second solo show at the Fondation Cartier and follows two other Cartier commissions "Deserts" (2000) and one on "Kyoto (2001). The exhibition also includes a rare look at the photographer's drawings, some of which are juxtaposed with his photographs.
Eggleston's photographs are most closely associated with the American South. His work is characterized by his observation of the banal and ordinary. Not surprisingly Eggleston's Paris series avoids the usual cliches. Many of his pictures look like they could have been taken anywhere. Says Eggleston "I approached it as if it is just anywhere...You're not sure: is this Paris, Mexico City, elsewhere? I didn't change my style for Paris. I just did as always, used the same approach."
"When people ask me what I do," says Eggleston "I say that I am taking pictures of life today." Many of the images exhibited at the Cartier Fondation such as two children playing at a café, motorcycles at a stoplight, anonymous passers-by express Eggleston's concern for the everyday.
The photographer has often said that he attempts to photograph "democratically," which means for Eggleston that everything may potentially be an interesting picture and that every element within the photo should be of equal importance.
Many of Eggleston's pictures have a touch of melancholy. The photographer once described his approach saying "I want an absence of too much prettiness...Not a complete absence of it, but just like coffee, pictures can get too sweet."
Does this exhibition mark the end of photographing Paris for Eggleston? "After three years working at it on and off, I still feel I have just barely begun. It's a big project...I hope it will be my crowning achievement."

"Willam Eggleston Paris" to June 21, 2009, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, 261, Blvd. Raspail, 75014 Paris. Open daily (except Mondays) 11-8pm. Tues eves. to 10pm.

Christie's London Photo Book Sale May 19th

You can view the catalogue for Christie's Photo Book sale on line at http://bit.ly/PRUsX. The sale is a treasure trove of photo book works and flipping through the catalogue at random you will find these listings:
Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places published in 1982, this is the deluxe issue, one of 100 signed copies with a signed print. Estimate US$8,700 - $13,000.
There is also a copy of Paul Graham's book A1. The Great North Road, 1983. A First edition. And a supporting quote from Parr and Badger, Graham 'has continually pushed the boundaries of documentary practice'. Cf. The Photobook, vol. II, pp.55, 291. Estimate US$580 - $870

Sydney, looking West

Here's a picture I made in Sydney last week..... looking west over the Tasman Sea from the walk from South Head Lighthouse to the Gap.
Sydney.com has this to say about the walk...."Perhaps the most magnificent harbourside walk is one that starts at The Gap, a spectacular ocean cliff at Watsons Bay, near South Head. It winds its way down through Vaucluse, meanders through Watsons Bay and takes you all the way up to the lighthouse at South Head. The Gap is famous not so much for its natural scenic beauty, but for more bizarre reasons: a reported 20-30 people suicide each year by leaping from The Gaps on to the rocks below. Dozens slip from the rocks, which makes it a dangerous place to be if you don't keep to the paths and stay behind the barriers.

Attachment. Impermanence. Loss.

I'm working on a new series of pictures dealing with the issues of attachment, impermanence and loss. I have a book work in mind with roughly sixty pictures, here are four so far....

William Carlos Williams - Between Walls

I came across this short, evocative poem by William Carlos Williams facing the essay by Sandra S Phillips in her introduction to Henry Wessel's book published by Steidl.... this prompted me to think of my wanderings a few weekends ago around the abandoned hospital complex at Hanmer Springs. Here is a picture I made at the Hanmer Hopsital, not the back wings but still strange and silent. Things growing but nothing happening.....

Between Walls

the back wings
of the

hopsital where
nothing

will grow lie
cinders

in which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle

William Carlos Williams

The Most Photographed Barn In America

I've always enjoyed this passage from De DeLillo's book White Noise, about the Most Photographed Barn In America. An excuse to post my cliched image of the Red Barn I found at Hanmer Springs a thermal resort town a couple of hours out of Christchurch in NZ's South Island.

An excerpt from White Noise by Don DeLillo:

Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.

"No one sees the barn," he said finally.

A long silence followed.

"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."

He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.

We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."

There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.

"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."

Another silence ensued.

"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.

He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.

"What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said. "What did it look like, how was it different from the other barns, how was it similar to other barns?"

Clouds....

Clouds in my street this morning, Good Friday 2009 and in Paris, May 2008. I wonder if there is a connection?

Happy Easter!

Auckland - Webbs auction, Contemporary Art and Modern Design, May 12th

My work, Victory of the Trivial, Number 12 is included in Webbs contemporary art auction on May 12. The photograph measures 60 x 48 cm and is number one from an edition of five and is a pigment print on photographic paper.

Auckland - photoforum fundraising auction

Webbs are conducting a fundraising auction for photoforum on Tuesday April 17th at 7pm. I have put a work in the auction, it is from my book A Short History of Photography and is the image Bangkok 2001 (after Tillmans). The work is 36 x 24.8 cm, a pigment print on archival matt paper and is number one from an edition of three.

Paris is HOME

Working on a small edition of about sixty pictures, dealing with HOME and what that means to me.... although home is in reality located in the head and has less to do with location..... Paris is home to me.... here are four pictures and like much of my work they could anywhere.

Auckland - cat story

Following my yesterdays "cat post" and despite being chastised by a photographer friend in Minnesota for stealing his cat material I could not resist making these pictures this morning. One to show if nothing more, that the cat idea is well and truly dead!

Auckland - Have You Seen This Cat?

Since Alec Soth was here in January and started to photography Lost Cat posters, they seem to be cropping up everywhere. The posters not the cats! Here is one I photographed this morning on my coffee mission. Go figure....

New York - photography sale season

It's spring photography sale time in New York. Sotheby's have just posted the results of their sale this last Monday. The sale realised US$2,384,690. There were several Eggleston photographs in the sale. This picture, Peaches! Near Greenville, Mississippi, has always grabbed me. I first saw it in Eggleston's book Ancient and Modern, 1992. The image is a dye-transfer print, 30.8 x 47.6 cm, signed by Eggleston in pencil and with a numerical stamp on the reverse, matted, framed, 1971, printed no later than 1980 and it came from the collection of the Bank of America. Pre-sale estimate was 50,000 - 70,000 USD. Sold for 80,000 USD, including buyer's premium. Not bad going!

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.....