onestar press, Paris, presents new works from Daniel Gordon

The ever inventive, not to mention ground-breaking, Paris based onestar press present a series of 31 new photographs from New York based artist Daniel Gordon. 

onestar says this: Objects as seen through the prism of Daniel Gordon’s lens are never as simple as they appear. The NY based photographer teams with onestar press, presenting 31 new works in a series entitled Au Bon Marché, literally hand-picking a selection of his sculpted paper fruits, vegetables and objects and isolating each to highlight their singularly crafted details. It is evident from first glance that these 31 new works go beyond photography with the artist’s ever constant triangulation of painting, collage and cut out; they are digitally sourced, printed, sculpted and analogue photographed before re-emerging as digitally composed images that are pigment printed and paired with watercolor stained wood frames. From Cezanne, to Seurat and Matisse, Daniel Gordon emerges from his photographic practice with a new way of looking, removing the glass that separates a viewer from the photograph to define a new, unique tableau conceived as a whole also including the colored frames as components of the works. The title of this new series Au Bon Marché was inspired by the artist's recent visit to Paris and the history of Le Bon Marché, one of the first modern department stores that was inaugurated in 1838. 

Daniel Gordon is best known for producing large colour photographs that operate somewhere between collage and set-up photography. His work, as described by The New York Times, "Involves creating figurative tableaus from cut paper and cut-out images that Mr. Gordon then photographs. In addition, he seems motivated by a deeply felt obsession with the human body and the discomforts of having one." He has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions at Zach Feuer Gallery, Wallspace, and Leo Koenig, Inc., Projekte in New York City and Claudia Groeflin Gallery in Zürich, Switzerland. Gordon has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Saatchi Gallery in London, Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois, and he was included in MoMA PS1's Greater New York 2010. He is the author of Portrait Studio (onestar press, 2009) and Flying Pictures (powerHouse books, 2009).[10] His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gordon was a guest lecturer at Sarah Lawrence College in 2009.

You can go to the onestar press website HERE. And Daniel Gordon's website HERE.

Bill Brandt at Michael Hoppen Gallery, London

There is still a chance to see BILL BRANDT VINTAGE WORKS which shows at Michael Hoppen's London Gallery until January 19.

Bill Brandt [1904 - 1983] was a German born photographer who immigrated to the UK in 1933. Although he travelled throughout Europe he adopted Britain as his home and it was here that he produced his finest work. Known for his incisive depictions of the British, both high society and the working class, his distinctive, highly contrasting portraiture and landscapes were frequently shown in magazines such as Picture Post, Lilliput and Harper's Bazaar where he was a regular contributor. His early photojournalism work gave way to a more abstract vision as his career developed. Brandt's influence on the photography world started in the 1960's when he embarked on a journey to find a new visual language. By using a wide-angle lens often with a distorted foreground he was able to produce a series of remarkable graphic images of both interior and exterior nudes on the Sussex and Normandy coast. Brandt's signature photographic style of highly textural objects contrasted with the flattened perspective of the images created a uniquely oblique approach.

 In 1976 I learnt how to retouch a black and white photograph with a pencil, a magic marker and some beer. My teacher was none other than the photographer Bill Brandt who was a regular visitor to his friend John Hedgecoe who was head of department at the Royal College of Art. I was at the college and asked to bring some prints to a pub opposite the photography department in South Kensington. I will never forget Bill showing me how he retouched his prints using the simple items above.  I have long been an admirer of his work.

And though I knew most of it well having bought most of Brandt's key books - Perspective of Nudes - Shadow of Lights - London in the Thirties, etc.. I was delighted and honoured to be given the opportunity to work within the Brandt archive and curate an exhibition of works that are maybe less well known. Within this time capsule, we found wonderful early prints and nudes, which highlighted Brandt's inquisitive mind and his energetic search for a new way of photographing these well-trodden subjects.  

 Brandt is one of the few British photographers whose work has been widely seen and collected around the world. His substantial shows at the V&A (2004) and at MoMA in NY (2013) cemented an already illustrious reputation as a fine art photographer and great documentarian. His street photographs of the industrial north of England, his sublime winter landscapes and his insightful studies of the English at Home placed a spotlight on a country that had produced few photographers of this calibre.   

With this exhibition we will be offering some rare and beautiful vintage prints directly from Brandt's family collection. With this carefully selected body of work we are providing experienced collectors an opportunity to view photographs never previously offered for sale and at the same time giving new collectors the opportunity to acquire masterpieces which rarely come on to the market. - Michael Hoppen 

Michael Hoppen Gallery,  3 Jubilee Place • London • SW3 3TD / Website HERE.

PHOTOBOOKSTORE UK - The 25 best selling photobooks of 2018

The Top 25 Bestselling Photobooks of 2018 at PHOTOBOOKSTORE were: 

1. Margins of Excess by Max Pinckers

2. Past K-Ville by Mark Steinmetz

3. Provoke: Complete Reprint of 3 Volumes by Various

4. Women by Saul Leiter

5. Halfstory Halflife by Raymond Meeks

6. Supplement Deutschland by Gerry Johansson

7. Bright Black World by Todd Hido

8. Niagara by Alec Soth

9. American Winter by Gerry Johansson

10. Approximate Joy by Christopher Anderson

11. The Portraits by John Myers

12. White Night by Feng Li

13. The Gamblers by Martin Amis

14. Good Goddamn by Bryan Schutmaat

15. Night Procession by Stephen Gill

16. She dances on Jackson by Vanessa Winship

17. Okinawa by Anders Petersen

18. War Primer 2 by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin

19. TTP by Hayahisa Tomiyasu

20. Termini by Tom Wood

21. Like You’ve Never Been Away by Paul Trevor

22. All About Saul Leiter

23. And Time Folds by Vanessa Winship

24. World (The Price of Love) by Martin Parr

25= Record no.37 by Daido Moriyama
25= Dream Away by Michael E.Northrup

You can go to the PHOTOBOOKSTORE website HERE.

Image: Margins of Excess by Max Pinckers

Bára Kristinsdóttir - Life is Everywhere

Icelandic photographer Bára Kristinsdóttir kindly sent me her bookwork It All Has a Story which was self published last year in an edition of 300 copies. The book is in memory of Elias Guomundsson (1937 - 2017) and the pictures were made in the workshop of Nylon Coatings in the Icelandic district of Garðabær. The book is beautifully conceived and photographed, the reader is left with an overwhelming feeling of the impermanence of all things.

Bára Kristinsdóttir says this: The pictures in the book are symbolic of a vanished world... The screw, the snagged, worn chair - all have a story. But who should tell them all? And where do the stories that are never told go? Things we have around us but rarely give attention... We hardly see them, yet they have roles, they matter. And someone has built these things, with care... The person who has built them matters, and has a story. This story has to be told. Screw, snagged, worn chair. And the man. It adds something to our life...thinking about all the people who have been sitting in the worn chair. And gradually, we realise that life is everywhere. There is something really good about that thinking. 

Bára Kristinsdóttir studied photography in Gothenburg. She has had several solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions both in Iceland and abroad including the Reykjavík Museum of Photography, Scandinavia House in New York and Frankfurt Kunstverein. Bára has also worked regularly for the New York Times. She is the founding member of the Association of Icelandic Contemporary Photographers, FÍSL. Bára founded and has run Ramskram, which is an exhibition space for contemporary photography.

You can go to Bára Kristinsdóttir's website HERE.

John Gossage and Guido Guidi at SAGE Gallery, Paris

If you happen to live in Paris or plan on visiting, there is still a chance to see the Gossage / Guidi show at SAGE Gallery. The show opened in November and runs until February 9.

Sage says this: We are proud to present an important group of vintage photographs by John Gossage and Guido Guidi which is part of a 25 years dialogue between the two friends. As Guido claims, John Gossage and him are brothers who, as neither of them know the language of the other, speak only "photography".  When you look at their work you immediately understand why. Their work is always about the importance of what goes unnoticed, about what remain unseen until they call your attention to it. They both resonate with a rare emotional, esthetical and poetical purity. As Guido Guidi said : « The spirit lies in simplicity not rhetoric.

SAGE Paris 1 bis, avenue de Lowendal, 75007 Paris, France. Gallery website HERE.

Gerry Badger - takes a reactionary tack

Last October in Denmark for the superb Aarhus Photobook festival (link HERE) I was able to have several extended conversations on the nature of photography with Gerry Badger. Gerry is probably the most informed writer and commentator on the medium I have ever come across. His views are stridently opinionated and not to be easily dismissed. Gerry divides photography practice into two opposing camps. On one hand authentic hard-won work coming from the artist's heart and head. And the other pretentious wow look at me, ego based, I want to be famous sort of work. Needles to say I'm with Gerry and go 100% with the authentic.

I came across a piece on Gerry Badger's website (you can go there HERE) which further develops this debate. In essence Gerry firmly supports documentary or straight photography. And I agree, for two reasons, First, there is more than enough magic and mystery in the world on our doorsteps, to keep all of us shooting for several lifetimes. Second, the contrived and the overly conceptual mostly seems to come pre-loaded with a goodly dose of ego and pretentious posturing. Don't get me wrong here, there is a lot of rubbish documentary work being made just as there is some worthy highly conceptual work.

In a preamble to a piece on Michael Schmidt's bookwork Waffenruhe Gerry expands on these thoughts: 
For the serious photographer with a confirmed belief in the artistic worth of ‘straight’ photography – the so-called ‘poetic documentary’ mode – these are trying times. More than ever, most of the world seems to think that the simple photograph is not enough. The photographic artist who still stubbornly works within the broad tradition of Atget or Weston, even Frank or Friedlander, is deemed wilfully anachronistic, a member of a mutated, almost extinct species. 

 The straight photographer certainly is an endangered species. Reviled either openly or covertly, and frequently passed over in favour of those utilising the medium for conspicuously more grandiose ends. These days, the straight photographer’s nominally modest, ‘unambitious’ tend to be swamped by the serried ranks of vainglorious photofabrications and moronic pieces of minimalist conceptualism masquerading as the ‘real thing.’ For example, in a recent exhibition shown in France and England, Another Objectivity, the work of the American ‘New Topographer’ Robert Adams – relatively smallscale, subtle, complex – looked like a fish out of water amidst the welter of overblown, vacuous variations on undergraduate themes that were purporting to make us ponder issues of ‘art’, ‘culture’, and ‘representation.’ Adams – unfashionably, daringly – seemed more concerned with life than with art. 

 Of course, I an deliberately oversimplifying the issue. I also wish that is were unnecessary to take such a reactionary tack, but I feel that a little revisionism is in order. An artist’ medium should not be the ground for value judgements and ideological conflict. The art, yes – the medium itself, no. Yet that is precisely what has happened, and what is happening with photography. Certain ideological applications of photographic processes, namely, where the primacy of the photograph is denigrated and challenged, are held to be superior to the documentary utilisation of the medium. The photo-hybrid – photopainting, photosculpture, the ubiquitous conceptual photo ‘piece’ – is seen as the only valid notional approach. There are signs of active discrimination against the straight photograph and the plainly veristic practice from both within and without the photographic enclave. 

Yet, so many of those seeking to ‘extend the boundaries of the medium’, and refute the ‘hegemony of the documentary’, are fooling themselves. Whether deliberately or unknowingly (often the latter I suspect), they would seek to deny photography’s salient strengths and replace them with a diluted academicism. Much of what they trot forth as shining examples of the medium’s cutting edge are simply tired old ideas (intellectually kosher ideas, to be sure) wrapped in glossy new packages and bound with accompanying rhetoric. Invariably – lots of rhetoric.

I write this rather bitter preamble by way of a new book by one of Germany’s leading photographer – Michael Schmidt. I have been cheered immensely by the appearance of Waffenruhe (Ceasefire), and hope that it might rekindle the spirit in any straight photographer whose faith might be waning. For Schmidt confirms that photography certainly can be enough, a medium rich in allusion, visual surprise, and narrative quality when utilised by an intelligent mind’s eye. Furthermore, Waffenruhe reiterates a fact that has long seemed blindingly apparent to the more discerning photographer, that photographs must be put together like words, or individual movie frames, in order to sing their full song. It advocates persuasively that the most effective form of presentation for the straight photograph is probably the book. A vessel for the poetically juxtaposed sequence of images, the book becomes the primary artwork, rather then the necessarily less concentrated row of prints on a gallery wall.

5 Best Photobooks 2018 - my selection

Given the prolific volume of photobooks published every year it's impossible to get an complete overview of what's out there. However here are five new books that struck me and now sit comfortably in my photobook library. If there is a factor common to each of these books it's on one level the authenticity of the approach, images made from heart and head. And secondly all firmly coming from a documentary tradition. 

Paul Kooiker’s EGGS AND RARITIES is an“encyclopaedia of life” in 164 images. This ambitious but utopian project reads like a sampler of photographic genres: landscape, nude, still life, etc. To achieve this, Kooiker often uses clichés more reminiscent of the propaganda of tourist brochures or of religious and political rhetoric in the media. 

John Gossage LOOKING UP BEN JAMES. This is a book of photographs first and foremost, by an endlessly experimental photographer. He is essentially a street photographer, a flâneur with an emphasis upon the urban landscape, although that does not begin to describe the range or depth of his practice. Gossage has developed into one of the most recognisable photographic voices over the years, and that can mean resorting – quite naturally, all artists do it – to a repertory of stylistic and contextual devices, that go to make up his distinctive voice. I know his work intimately, so I am very aware of his little strategies and visual foibles, but I can also say that, like a good jazz improviser, he is always trying to surprise himself, and come up with a picture that one has never quite seen before. Gerry Badger 

Gerry Johansson DEUTSCHLAND SUPPLEMENT...They’re unique experiences, quite unlike most of what is going on in the world of contemporary photography. Everything about them feels extremely carefully considered, yet there is a lightness to them that is quite rare. Jörg M. Colberg 

In “Waffenruhe” Michael Schmidt brings together surprising combinations of images to express a generation’s dystopian sense of life shortly before the fall of the Wall. Schmidt evokes a world of ruptures and absences that eschews a confident, comprehensive point of view. Tipi Bookshop

In Domesticated Land, Susan Lipper navigates an apocalyptic world poised between inertia and the end of mankind, somewhere in the California desert. Uncannily tranquil, the landscape offers a trans-historical litany of monuments, icons and signs from which the author and protagonist constructs a narrative interspersed with the words of historic and contemporary women. Putting female subjectivity into relief, Lipper obfuscates the romantic notion of the desert as a land of freedom and self-enlightenment. A lone snake, a dilapidated home, the remains of a cinematic stage set, the head of a fallen woman, a military base, barbed wire: such facts create fiction, and one that serves as an unnerving political admonition concerning the current state of America. Mack Books

Martin Parr - "most of what I take is crap"

In a short but inspirational video, (go to it HERE) Martin Parr dispenses some solid advice to an unnamed group of students. Parr talks about the need for passion and obsession, how there is no place to hide in photography. The need to build connections with a subject. Finding ones voice and a unique visual language. Learning from others mistakes.

Parr notes that most things that happen in the world we miss. He reveals that most of what he takes is crap, (fuck, I thought it was only me). And that you have to take a lot of crap pictures to trawl through in order to get to something half decent. Then you have to learn to know the difference between the crap and the good. Pictures he says have to be powerful enough so that they can work on their own.

Finally, Parr talks of the creative demise of photographers who used to be great but half got lazy and fall back on past achievements. He doesn't mention names. Mmmmmm let's think...

If you have 6 minutes to spare watch this video, it will either cheer you up or send you into a deep funk.

You can go to Martin Parr's website HERE.

Martin Parr is a chronicler of our age. In the face of the constantly growing flood of images released by the media, his photographs offer us the opportunity to see the world from his unique perspective. At first glance, his photographs seem exaggerated or even grotesque. The motifs he chooses are strange, the colours are garish and the perspectives are unusual. Parr’s term for the overwhelming power of published images is “propaganda”. He counters this propaganda with his own chosen weapons: criticism, seduction and humour. As a result, his photographs are original and entertaining, accessible and understandable. But at the same time they show us in a penetrating way how we live, how we present ourselves to others, and what we value. Leisure, consumption and communication are the concepts that this British photographer has been researching for several decades now on his worldwide travels. In the process, he examines national characteristics and international phenomena to find out how valid they are as symbols that will help future generations to understand our cultural peculiarities. Parr enables us to see things that have seemed familiar to us in a completely new way. In this way he creates his own image of society, which allows us to combine an analysis of the visible signs of globalisation with unusual visual experiences. In his photos, Parr juxtaposes specific images with universal ones without resolving the contradictions. Individual characteristics are accepted and eccentricities are treasured. The themes Parr selects and his inimitable treatment of them set him apart as a photographer whose work involves the creation of extensive series. Part of his unusual strategy is to present and publish the same photos in the context of art photography, in exhibitions and in art books, as well as in the related fields of advertising and journalism. In this way, he transcends the traditional separation of the different types of photography. Thanks to this integrative approach, as well as his style and his choice of themes, he has long served as a model for the younger generation of photographers. Martin Parr sensitises our subconscious – and once we’ve seen his photographs, we keep on discovering these images over and over again in our daily lives and recognising ourselves within them. The humour in these photographs makes us laugh at ourselves, with a sense of recognition and release. Thomas Weski

Paris Photo - The Interviews

In Paris Photo's Christmas mailing they included a link to 43 short but superb interviews with many of todays leading camera artists. 

Paris Photo said this: we invite you to follow Paris Photo online with the Agenda featuring the latest events of our partnering galleries and institutions across the globe, the Interviews with in-depth look at photography with today’s leading artists, or catch what you missed at the fair with videos and podcasts from the 2018 edition.

I've just looked at a few of the interviews, they are short and sweet and well worth a look. Agnes Varda for example who states simply I try to be honest about what I speak about. Mitch Epstein, to take the strange and exceptional... to see it with clarity. Roger Ballen, birds link the heavens to the earth.

What seemed to be common to all the interviews was a sense of down to earth honesty and humility. There were no pretentious attempts talk up the work with bullshit art-speak, a strategy usually employed by lesser artists.

The Paris Photo link is HERE. Go for it.

Sally Mann - A Thousand Crossings at The Getty

Sally Mann - A Thousand Crossings at The Getty Center. 
For more than forty years, Sally Mann (American, born in 1951) has made experimental and hauntingly beautiful photographs that explore the overarching themes of existence: family, desire, mortality, memory, and nature’s indifference to the human condition. Her broad body of work is all bred of a place, the American South. A native of Lexington, Virginia, Mann has long examined the tension between her devotion to the region and her awareness of its fraught past. Her photographs pose provocative questions about identity, history, race, and spirituality. This exhibition considers how the legacy of the South—as both homeland and graveyard, refuge and battleground—has shaped the artist’s career and continues to inform the American experience. 
The exhibition is organised by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts and runs until February 10. 

There is an excellent an extensive overview of Sally Mann's practice on the The Getty site. This covers her early work photographing her her three children - Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia - at the family’s remote summer cabin in the Shenandoah Valley, in western Virginia. She primarily used a large 8 × 10 inch camera to convey the detail and texture of everyday life.  The text concludes with commentary on the pictures Mann has made of her husband, Larry, since they met in 1969. In the early 2000s Mann began to document the transformations to his body caused by muscular dystrophy. She called this series Proud Flesh, a term for the scar tissue that forms over a horse’s wounds.

Sally Mann (born in Lexington, Virginia, 1951) is one of America’s most renowned photographers. She has received numerous awards, including NEA, NEH, and Guggenheim Foundation grants, and her work is held by major institutions internationally. Her many books include At Twelve (1988), Immediate Family (1992), Still Time (1994), What Remains (2003), Deep South (2005), Proud Flesh (2009), The Flesh and the Spirit (2010), Remembered Light (2016) and Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings (2018). In 2001 Mann was named “America’s Best Photographer” by Time magazine. A 1994 documentary about her work, Blood Ties, was nominated for an Academy Award and the 2006 feature film What Remains was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2008. Her bestselling memoir, Hold Still (Little, Brown, 2015), received universal critical acclaim, and was named a finalist for the National Book Award. In 2016 Hold Still won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. The National Gallery of Art presented a critically lauded show, Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings, in 2018. Comprised of 109 prints and several videos, A Thousand Crossings addresses complex issues relating to the American South and will travel internationally until the beginning of 2020. Mann is represented by Gagosian Gallery, New York. She lives in Virginia.

You can go to The Getty site HERE and Sally Mann's website HERE.