Photographers whose work I like - No22/ Bucky Miller

I came across the work of Bucky Miller on line and liked it immediately. His photographs have a strange WTF quality about them, mysterious, ambiguous and as much about what's not in the frame as what's in. The pictures are spare but loaded. Miller has a quiet sense of humor too. As a preamble to his DESTROYER series he says this - I was interrupted while photographing in a shopping mall parking lot: "You should get permission from security to do that, on account of the heightened awareness levels and all." Heightened awareness levels of what, I asked. "Everything." he said. "of everything."

Miller says this about himself: Bucky Miller was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He has a BFA in photography from Arizona State University. In early 2013 he completed a residency at the grassroots arts institution Tempe Museum of Contemporary Art. He recently returned from the Little Brown Mushroom Camp for Socially Awkward Storytellers in St. Paul, Minnesota and is currently probing the country for photographs and other things.

Miller's certainly has heightened awareness. You can see for yourself by checking out his website HERE. And below are some images from his DESTROYER series.

David Campany - Gasoline

David Campany has a new bookwork, simply called Gasoline. Campany is a London based writer, curator, and artist. He writes about documentary, photojournalism, art, cinema, fashion, archives, and architecture. He has published essays on many artists and photographers including, Paul Graham, Chris Killip, Edgar Martins and John Stezaker. His books include Walker Evans: the magazine work (2013), Art and Photography (2003), Photography and Cinema (2008), and The Open Road: photographic road trips in America (forthcoming in 2014). Campany writes regularly for Aperture, Frieze, TATE, Source, and Photoworks. In 2010 he co-curated Anonymes: Unnamed America in Photography and Film at Le Bal (Paris). In 2012 he won the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Writing.

Publisher MACK say this about Gasoline:
The gas station is one of the most iconic of twentieth century buildings. Recognised across the world, it is arguably most established on American soil where the notion of the road trip on a full tank of gas is culturally ingrained. Gasoline presents 35 archive press images of gas stations taken between 1944 and 1995. They have been collected by writer David Campany, purchased from the photography archives of several American newspapers which have been discarding their analogue print collections and moving to the now ubiquitous .jpeg or .tif formats. Gasoline can be read as a cautionary tale about the modern dependence on oil, about news photography, about the shift from film to digital imaging, or as a minor history of car design and vernacular architecture. Marked with the grease pen notations of the newspapers’ art directors, the photos tell of oil shortages, road congestion, crimes, accidents and choking cities. Individually the images are single moments in time; collectively they show a growing consciousness about cars, the oil trade and global concern about pollution. 

You can see all of David Campany's bookworks, his own and those involving essays, by going to his website HERE.  And you can pre-order your copy of Gasoline by going to the MACK site HERE.

Four Parts Religion Six Parts Sin - 20 years on...

 

In 1993 the Auckland based photography collective PhotoForum published my first photobook. I called the book Four Parts Religion Six Parts Sin. The title came from a song played by Texas rocker Jimmy LaFave. I'd heard him perform at Auckland's notorious Glue Pot pub and music venue, long since demolished. Jimmy said this - Let it out baby stir it up and mix it in. Two parts religion and three parts sin. It's the truth or consequences because the new king reigns, and desperate men do desperate things. I can't remember now why I changed the number of parts.

I've just discovered a few remaining copies of the book deep in my archive. To celebrate the passage of twenty years and many photobooks in between, I'm offering 10 copies which I will sign and number. The book has 84 pages with 74 photographs.

Copies can be obtained directly from me at: harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz
Prices are, €50 / £45 / US$65  which includes packing and postage. For payment you can simply log on to my PayPal account using my email address above.

Here are some of the images.

 

Sandra Phillips in Auckland - A Great Pleasure!

 

Sandra Phillips on Quentin's seat, Devonport

It was a great pleasure to last week share the photography trail with Sandra Phillips; here as guest of the Auckland Art Fair and keynote speaker plus teacher at AUT University's annual Photography Workshop. In both these capacities Sandra acquitted herself with a tremendous generosity of spirit and a ready willingness to share her remarkable knowledge of the photo world accumulated over her many years as chief curator photography at San Francisco MoMA.

Auckland Art Fair - panel discussion

On Thursday of last week Sandra participated in a panel discussion at the Art Fair moderated by senior Auckland Art Gallery curator Ron Brownson together with photographers Marie Shannon, Yvonne Todd and myself. We opened up a conversation, What Photography Sees? - Looking passionately at the world. From my side of the table it seemed to be a lively hour.
On Friday night Sandra delivered her keynote address to the Art Fair, a presentation talking about her landmark 2010 exhibition - EXPOSED, Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera since 1870.

AUT University - Photography Worshop

The weekend was spent at AUT University, presenting in their new Sir Paul Reeves building an intense two days of photography discussion together with portfolio reviews. The thirteen participants received affirmative feedback on their work and ideas for ways forward. Sandra talked about the SFMoMA photography collection and presented her Art Fair keynote address to the workshop.
Sandra Phillips' invitation to Auckland came out of me talking to Lewis Baltz and Henry Wessel in Paris last November. Both Lewis and Hank raved about Sandra and among other things commented on what a charming person she is. They were 100% right.

Sandra Phillips and friend - The Gibbs Farm

Sandra Phillips for Auckland Art Fair and AUT Workshop

Photography curator Sandra Phillips, chief photography curator at San Francisco MoMA,  arrives in Auckland next week. While in Auckland she has a dual role, first as keynote speaker for the Auckland Art Fair and second she will conduct a photography workshop at AUT University, School of Art and Design.

At 2pm on Thursday August 8, at the Art Fair, Sandra Phillips will participate in a panel discussion - What Photography Sees? - chaired by senior Auckland Art Gallery curator Ron Brownson together with photographers Marie Shannon, Yvonne Todd and myself.
Sandra will deliver the Art Fair keynote address at the fair on Friday evening.

The AUT photography workshop will run over the weekend of Saturday and Sunday August 10 and 11 and continues AUT's successful workshop series, now in its seventh year. Previous high profile guests have included photographers - Antoine d'Agata, Lewis Baltz, Slavica Perkovic, John Gossage, Alec Soth, Rineke Dijkstra, Paul Graham, Todd Hido, and Pieter Hugo. Together with MoMA NYC chief photography curator Quentin Bajac.

The workshop with Sandra Phillips is an exciting continuation of the program. Sandra has been photography curator at SFMoMA since 1987 and is one of the most influential curators in the medium working today. She has developed and 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.

William Eggleston - At War With The Obvious, at The Met, NYC

William Eggleston - Untitled, Sumner, Mississippi, 1971

Running currently at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, and finishing July 28 is a retrospective of William Eggleston's classic 70's color work, all dye-transfer prints. The title of the show - At War With The Obvious - was taken from a comment Eggleston made in a conversation he had with one Mark Holborn over breakfast in Greenwoood Mississippi, February 1988. The text of the conversation was published in Eggleston's 1989 bookwork The Democratic Forest.

William Eggleston (American, born 1939) emerged in the early 1960s as a pioneer of modern color photography. Now, fifty years later, he is its most prolific and influential exemplar. Through a profound appreciation of the American vernacular (especially near his home in the Mississippi Delta) and confidence in the dye transfer printmaking process to reveal the region's characteristic qualities of light and saturated chromatics, Eggleston almost single-handedly validated color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. This exhibition celebrates the artist's iconic photographs of commonplace subjects that have become touchstones for generations of artists, musicians, and filmmakers from Nan Goldin to David Byrne, the Coen Brothers, and David Lynch.

Willim Eggleston - Untitled, 1974

William Eggleston - Untitled, 1974

William Eggleston - Untitled, 1974

What makes a good photograph?

Google search: What makes a good photograph?

The UK Brighton based photoworks recently commissioned Guardian and the Observer writer Sean O'Hagan to consider the question what makes a good photograph. And against what criteria critical judgments can be made.

Here are a few quotes that resonated with me.You can read the full piece on photoworks blog HERE.

What I can say is that it certainly looks to me like photography, (the taking of a photograph) is currently being superseded by the conceptually photographic (the ways in which photographs can be used: manipulated, re-appropriated, made into fictions, made to interrogate photography.) This is happening at a time when, as one cursory look at Flickr, Facebook ,Tumblr or Instagram will tell you, everyone is taking – and sharing – photographs all the time to a degree where the sheer weight of the numbers has long since become meaningless. 

Whatever, I would like to think that, even as we are living in a moment of fiercely accelerating culture, a great photograph remains just that. It alerts us to something about ourselves, our lives, our world, our way of thinking.

Photography reinvents and reinvigorates itself continuously and in often surprising ways. It asks of us that we stay alert and ask new questions of it as a form. The big question – what makes a good photograph? – is always predicated on a number of smaller questions about what it is that we want from a photograph. And, what we want photography to do and say in a world overwhelmed by photographic images.

JH Engström and Paris

I've just come across a short film by Linus Höök / Studio Tintin which was commissioned by the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg for JH Engström's exhibition Haunts in 2005. Engström talks about about intuition, risk and freedom, mixing images, exploration and extremes and the importance of not explaining. If you admire Engström's work as I do, the film is well worth a look HERE.

And interestingly, JH Engström's new book Sketch of Paris published by Aperture will be available end of October and I assume launched at Paris Photo in November. You can pre-order it at amazon HERE.

For more than 20 years, Swedish photographer JH Engström (born 1969) has spent time living and working in Paris, a city that, like New York, has a long photographic pedigree; countless photographers have been inspired by its iconic architecture and busy streets. Sketch of Paris, however, is hardly a catalog of classic Parisian scenes, offering instead a raw yet lyrical portrayal of the artist's misadventures, loves and random encounters in its streets, bars and artist lofts--an entirely personal Paris. Drawing more from Nan Goldin and Anders Peterson than Atget or Henri Cartier-Bresson, Engström brings us on a gritty, no-holds-barred guided tour of life in his adopted city. The book brings together more than 250 color and black-and-white photographs--self-portraits, nudes, portraits of lovers, friends, strangers and the occasional street scene--all shot between 1991 and 2012, tracing a critical time during the development of the artist's own voice and vision.

JH is also part of the LOST HOME project initiated by Japanese SUPER LABO publisher Yasunori Hoki. Ten photographers - Harvey Benge, JH Engström, Roe Ethridge, Takashi Homma, Ron Jude, Daido Moriyama, Christian Patterson, Slavica Perkovic, Bertien van Manen and Terri Weifenbach - will respond to the idea of lost home, and the series, slip case packaged, will launch with a book signing at this years Paris Photo. I've had preview of JH's LOST HOME book, it's not surprisingly, quite wonderful. Not to mention edgy and tough.

Duane Michals - The Painted Photograph

Duane Michals - Guermantes Way, 2012

Duane Michals - Fred, 2012

At age 81 Duane Michals continues to make work with profundity, insight, humor and magic in a manner that eludes most artists a fraction of his age. His recent show - The Painted Photograph - at the DC Moore Gallery in New York was no exception. 

DC Moore writes: Using 19th-century collodion prints on brown or black lacquered iron as his surface, Michals enriches the original images with oil paint, altering but not entirely obscuring the sitters’ features. Drawing on the principals of early photography and modern painting, especially Surrealism, Michals unites the two disciplines and explores the uncharted territory he identifies between photography and painting. Each 19th-century image is playfully rejuvenated by the addition of vibrant color and the artist’s witty allusions to visionaries such as Picasso and Picabia. In this way, Michals draws our attention to the discrepancy between a popular medium that required little skill—the tintype—and the work of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

A renowned innovator, Michals pushes the limits of photography. In past bodies of work, he has achieved this first by presenting his images in series, at times narrated with text scrawled directly on the print, and then further by embracing each imperfection. In this new work, Michals modifies the images of amateur journeymen, emphasizing the “found object” quality of these portraits of the working class by floating each tintype in spare frames to expose their irregular edges. Michals questions what he describes as “the museum photograph,” or large-format photography, with his small-scale and intimate images. Combining antique, personal objects with hand-painted abstract elements, Michals examines his favorite themes: memory, mortality, love, and loss. The results are curious, humorous, affectionate, and provocative.

There is also a piece on BOMBLOG, Sabine Mirlesse interviews Michals. It's a good read, HERE.
And more, from the New York Social Diary, Jill Krementz takes the reader inside Duane Michals' New York townhouse on East 19th Street, HERE.

florence loewy - Paris, presents their editions, 1991 - 2013

Robert BARRY. Sans Titre. Paris, 1991

Opening this Saturday July 6th at 6pm and running until July 20th, Florence Loewy - books by artists, presents an exhibition of their books made from 1991 to 2013.

Artists include: Jean-Michel Alberola, Robert Barry, Harvey Benge, Florian Bezu, Dominique Blais, Jean-Charles Blanc, Barbara Bloom, Christophe Boutin, Claude Closky, General Idea, Jérémie Gindre, Jean Le Gac, Roberto Martinez, Tim Maul, Annette Messager, Jonathan Monk, Antoni Muntadas, Olivier Nottellet, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Eric Tabuchi, Didier Rittener, Yann Sérandour.

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

Noam Chomsky takes no prisoners!

It was good to read on the ever interesting Open Culture site that Noam Chomsky - linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist -

linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist - See more at: http://www.citelighter.com/sociology/linguistics/knowledgecards/noam-chomsky#sthash.5r5jGsyv.dpuf

linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist - See more at: http://www.citelighter.com/sociology/linguistics/knowledgecards/noam-chomsky#sthash.5r5jGsyv.dpuf

linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist - See more at: http://www.citelighter.com/sociology/linguistics/knowledgecards/noam-chomsky#sthash.5r5jGsyv.dpuf

takes as dim a view as I do of the impenetrable posturings of that clique of postmodern philosophers Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida and other theorists who do their best to complicate simple ideas or worse, disguise the fact that they have no ideas of substance at all.

Chomsky writes (more eloquently than I could) - What you’re referring to is what’s called “theory.” And when I said I’m not interested in theory, what I meant is, I’m not interested in posturing - using fancy terms like polysyllables and pretending you have a theory when you have no theory whatsoever. So there’s no theory in any of this stuff, not in the sense of theory that anyone is familiar with in the sciences or any other serious field. Try to find in all of the work you mentioned some principles from which you can deduce conclusions, empirically testable propositions where it all goes beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old. See if you can find that when the fancy words are decoded. I can’t. So I’m not interested in that kind of posturing. Žižek is an extreme example of it. I don’t see anything to what he’s saying. Jacques Lacan I actually knew. I kind of liked him. We had meetings every once in awhile. But quite frankly I thought he was a total charlatan. He was just posturing for the television cameras in the way many Paris intellectuals do. Why this is influential, I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t see anything there that should be influential.

The Open Culture site HERE is a mine of fascinating material. Well worth a look.

Clare Strand - the mesmeric, the talismanic and the unsolvable...

I came across Clare Strand's wonderfully bizarre work via her photoworks survey monograph published by Steidl in 2009. You can see it on amazon HERE.

A recent piece in The Telegraph succinctly says this about her work...

Clare Strand’s images are conceived, researched, developed and resolved through a highly unusual and personal sensibility, using a clear and decisive method of production unique to each project. Strand belongs to the everyday, yet her images evoke the mesmeric, the talismanic and the unsolvable. Solutions reporting the ordinary often turn up further layers of complexity and reveal problems as yet un-considered. The hinterland to her image making is provided by a childhood upbringing where a family life in a suburban cul-de-sac was confounded by true crime magazines, ominous supernatural events, Paul Daniels on Sunday evenings, and a flasher who lived in the house opposite.

Subject matter dominates her work – photography and film are the mediums through which her enquiries are mapped. Strand is interested by imagery in which the aesthetic are secondary to function. Taking inspiration from forensic imagery, instruction manuals, the conventions of signage, the mechanics of spirit photography and photography employed to offer evidence of an event or a task, her work treads the uncertain boundaries between the expected and the absurd.

And there is new book about to be launched, Skirts, published by London based gostbooks. You can have a look at Skirts HERE. And if you're in Arles this year, you can see the show.

Clare Strand - Skirts

Mark Power - photography, it never tells us everything.

The photograph I bought from Mark Power to help support the publication of a bookwork celebrating 21 years of photography at the University of Brighton arrived this morning.

South-East Iceland, Tuesday 20th August 1996 is a magnificent work and what's more a stunning object as well. Mark tells the story of the photograph, handwritten on its reverse.

We took our yellow VW camper to Iceland during the summer of 1996. It was nearing the end of The Shipping Forecast but still had a few far-flung sea areas to visit. We took a ferry from Aberdeen to the Shetland before moving on, after a few days, to the Faroe Islands. It was Jo's 30th birthday when we finally reached the Icelandic port of Seyðisfjörður, and to celebrate we treated ourselves to a real smorgasbord, consisting of far too much pickled herring for my liking. 

This picture was taken on the way back to Seyðisfjörður after a wonderful two weeks. It's a strange image of an odd situation that I don't understand myself. Even the contact sheet offers no clues as to what happened before of after.

But that's one of the things I love about photography - it never tells us everything.

The Shipping Forecast in my view is one of Mark Power's most memorable and compelling series.
Mark says this: Intangible and mysterious, familiar yet obscure, the shipping forecast is broadcast four times daily on BBC Radio 4. For those at, or about to put to sea, the forecast may mean the difference between life and death.
But for millions of landlubbing radio listeners it is more than this; the enigmatic language of the forecast has entered the public consciousness, creating a landscape of the imagination and confirming romantic notions of Britain's island status.
Captioned by the 0600hrs forecast on the day they were taken, these photographs attempt to challenge our assumptions of these far-flung places.

There is much more to see on Mark's website HERE.

The University of Brighton's commemorative bookworks are now available for purchase.
You can find out more and purchase HERE. 

Students and staff have produced two beautiful publications celebrating 21 years of BA (Hons) Photography at the University of Brighton. Entitled '9213', the books are paired together in a foiled slipcase; One features the work of this year's graduates, while the other highlights 36 alumni who have made a significant contribution to photography over the past two decades. Limited to just 300 hand-numbered copies.

 

Broomberg and Chanarin win the 2013 Deutsche Börse Prize

 

The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize aims to reward a contemporary photographer of any nationality, who has made the most significant contribution (exhibition or publication) to the medium of photography in Europe in the previous year.
The Prize was originally set up in 1996 by The Photographers' Gallery in London to promote the best of contemporary photography. Deutsche Börse has sponsored the £30,000 prize since 2005. The Prize showcases new talents and highlights the best of international photography practice. It is one of the most prestigious prizes in the world of photography.

Adam Broomberg (b. 1970, South Africa) & Oliver Chanarin (b. 1971, UK) were nominated for their publication War Primer 2 (2012, MACK). The limited edition book physically inhabits the pages of Bertolt Brecht's publication War Primer (1955). In the original, Brecht matched WWII newspaper clippings with short poems that seek to demystify press images, which he referred to as hieroglyphics. In War Primer 2 Broomberg & Chanarin choose to focus on the ‘War on Terror’; sifting through the internet for low resolution screen-grabs and mobile phone images, the artists then combined them to resonate with Brecht's poems. Through this layering of photographic history, Broomberg & Chanarin offer a critique of photographs of contemporary conflict and their dissemination—a theme that has been central to their practice for fifteen years.

Rob Hornstra, Arnold van Bruggen, Jeroen Kummer – Workshop...

 

If you happen to be in Berlin this coming weekend for the BERLIN FOTOFESTIVAL'13 here's a workshop opportunity on Saturday 15th. It is too good to pass up.

Rob, Arnold and Jeroen will talk about their Sochi Project collaboration and process which has yielded a remarkable series of bookworks and supporting collateral material. These guys really know their stuff!

The Sochi Project Unveiled - Rob Hornstra is currently finishing the 5-year documentary The Sochi Project with writer and filmmaker Arnold van Bruggen, and graphic designer Jeroen Kummer. The Sochi Project documents regional changes in the conflict ridden North Caucasus, as they prepare for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games. The trio will give a one-day interdisciplinary workshop entitled, The Sochi Project Unveiled. In the workshop, they will discuss the background of and stories from The Sochi Project, while also dealing with the use of different presentation media and publication, financing and distribution strategies.

You can find out more on the BERLIN FOTOFESTIVAL'13 site HERE.

Photographers whose work I Like - No21/ Ofer Wolberger

12 Books 2010 - 2012

Ofer Wolberger lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Wolberger is a consummate artist, camera based, but there is more, much more. With book making central to his thinking, his practice is driven with a keen eye and intellect focused on the currency of film, fashion, design and forms of art in general. Check out his Horses Think site HERE.

In 2008 he was the recipient of The Humble Arts Foundation Grant for Emerging Photographers. He was a finalist for both the BMW Paris Photo Prize in 2008 as well as the Prix HSBC pour la Photographie in 2009. His photographs have been collected and exhibited internationally. His project Life with Maggie, was exhibited at Michael Hoppen Gallery in London and at C/O Berlin in 2009 and at the Goethe-Institut in Stockholm and at VU in Quebec in 2010. In 2012, he completed 12 Books, a series of self-published artists books and was awarded the Printed Matter Award for Artists. In August of 2013 he will be a resident at Light Work in Syracuse.

Wolberger publishes his artist's books under his Horses Think Imprint. With twelve editions to date in the words of Christopher Gianunzio writing in ahorn magazine, 12 Books, when considered as one offering, build a world oversaturated with quirk, solitude and a brimming with a kind of pop sensibility allowing the awkward beauty in the world to float to the surface.

You can read the full (and action packed) piece in ahorn magazine HERE.

Fractures & Other Injuries, Printed Matter, NY 2012

PAPER JOURNAL - A visual arts site, well worth a look...

I came across PAPER JOURNAL because they had an interview with Lucas Blalock, LA based photographer whose work I particularly like. 

PAPER JOURNAL was founded and is edited by Patricia Karallis, who says this about the journal - Launched in 2013, online magazine Paper Journal is updated weekly and aims to bring you the very best in contemporary visual arts. Based in London but with contributors from all over the world, Paper Journal shifts its focus onto innovative visual artists and their contribution to the site,  whether that be a book review, an audio/ visual studio visit, or an interview with a fellow photographer.

You can go to PAPER JOURNAL  - here, you will not be disappointed. 

Lucas Blalock - Gabriela as a Bunny, 2012

Quentin Bajac - following the artistic practice...

 

Quentin Bajac and Pieter Hugo in Auckland, Jan 2012

French curator Quentin Bajac, the Museum of Modern Art's new chief curator of photography spoke this week to The Wall Street Journal. His comments reflect the changing face and pace of camera based image making in a world where everybody has a camera and is using it, social media dominates and upwards of 250 million images are posted on facebook every day.

The following comments sum up Quentin Bajac's fresh and expansive curatorial view -

Rather than suggest what it would prefer artists to be doing, a photography department, in Mr. Bajac's view, has to reflect what they are actually doing. "Photographers can be nostalgic. Curators cannot. We have to follow the artistic practice."
In his opinion, the museum will in the future "not only be collecting prints but also media installations, files, images made especially for a website. We will have to adapt. Photography is no longer about the wall. The book form is basic to photography. Young photographers are self-publishing. We must be aware of that and work closely with the museum library. There are all these forms that we should collect."
Keeping abreast of the digital revolution, he realizes, will not be easy. "Historians and curators are facing a situation quite different from what John Szarkowski faced in the 1960s. Then, it was about access to images. Today, it's the opposite problem." 

You can read the full text of the WSJ interview HERE.