Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long. -- Walker Evans

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Alessandro Imbriaco wins European Publishers Award for Photography

© Alessandro Imbriaco
From British Journal of Photography: Italian photographer Alessandro Imbriaco is the 19th winner of the European Publishers Award for Photography, and will see his project - The Garden - published in a book in five European countries .... Imbriaco won the prize for his work on Rome's housing problems. "This led him to explore the peripheral and hidden spaces of the city," say the judges.  [Read more...]

From dewi lewis publishing: The European Publishers Award for Photography was established in 1994 and celebrates its 19th year in 2012. Previous winners have included Bruce Gilden, Simon Norfolk, Jeff Mermelstein, Paolo Pellegrin, Jacob Aue Sobol, Ambroise Tézenas, Klavdij Sluban, Christophe Agou and David Monteleone.

The competition requires the submission of a substantial, completed and unpublished photographic book project. The winning project is then published in book form simultaneously by each of the publishers. 
[Read more...]


The interview below is from World Press Photo.
























See also: Lens Culture.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Bruce Gilden: Coney Island

Magnum photographer Bruce Gilden's Coney Island essay must be one of the strongest, wittiest street photography essays of recent years.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Matakana Pictures 2012: Images

From Rodney Arts Notes: A group photography exhibition featuring both local and national photographers is taking place in Matakana, at Art Matakanafor Auckland's 2012 Festival of Photography.

The exhibition will run from June 
2nd to 24th, with the opening taking place on Friday June 1st, at 5:30pm.


The photographers exhibiting are: 
Mark Adams, Richard Collins, Barbara Cope, Di Halstead, Sue Hill, Paul KoningsMaria KrajcirovicAndrew Martin, Davina Monds, Richard SmallfieldMurray SavidanJenny Tomlin and Karen Williamson
. [Read more...]


Friday, May 25, 2012

Nadav Kander: Yangtze, The Long River

Kander's 2010 book Yangtze, The Long River traces development along China's Yangtze River as a potent case-study of our unprecedented and irreversible transformation of the environment.

Yangtze, The Long River
is one of the most timely books – photographic or not – in this age of industrial escalation (most notably in Asia). Along with Edward Burtynsky, Kander's work is among the most sobering accounts of humanity's reshaping of the environment and the implications of our addiction to material consumption. Consequently, it will appeal to broad current affairs and environmentally-interested audiences, in addition to the smaller photo-book market.

There is a disquieting beauty in these photos, however, shot with the clarity of large-format film. Here is work, not only of a master who knows 
aesthetics and technique, but which, when coupled with a timely message, creates a photographic masterpiece. This window on a changing world will resonate decades from now, when future generations will look back on our era and soberly reflect upon the ravages of overpopulation and our hunger for material advancement on a finite planet.


One aspect of the book which interested me was the accommodations locals have had to make with these new developments, in order to carry on lives as normally as possible, while being overshadowed by huge construction projects (and often being displaced by them).

From The Guardian: Kander won the 2009 prix Pictet for these photographs. The award focuses on sustainability and climate change, and last year's theme was the Earth itself. The Yangtze "is a metaphor for constant change", as Kander puts it, and also a literal indicator of the destruction and devastation China is visiting on its land and its people as it ruthlessly pursues economic development on an unprecedented scale. It is the world's third-largest river and its banks are home to more people than live in the USA. Or, to put it another way, one in every 18 people on Earth lives along the Yangtze. [Read more...]


The following slide show, with commentary from the photographer, provides an insightful overview of the project.



[Kander's Website]  Buy at: Fishpond / The Book Depository / Amazon

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Don McCullin: Darkness in Me

This is a very personal interview with Don McCullin, probably the world's best-known war photographer since Robert Capa

He delves into the trauma and personal conflict involved in immersing himself in the world's most tragic locations, while making a living from this suffering; of at times being excited by war, at times driven mad by it, but trying above all to retain humane motivations and not shirking opportunities to help people when possible. 


Of his war photos, he says that he does not want people to resist looking at their horrors: he wants to be the voice of the people he has photographed. Sadly, he has concluded that his war photos have changed nothing; today he takes landscape photos to uplift both himself and the viewer.







Monday, May 21, 2012

Francesca Woodman

A new retrospective book of Woodman's work was published in 20111, to accompany an exhibition at SFMOMA. (This is one of a handful of books that has changed the way I think about photography; check out the interview with Corey Keller, the book's editor, at American Photo, which named it one of the four best photo books of the year.) Coupled with this book and exhibition, an internationally touring exhibition has brought about much media comment on her work of late. 

Tragically, In 1981, after a period of depression, she committed suicide, aged 22. That this influential work was created during her educational years, is astounding. 


Space2, 1976
From The New York Review of BooksGiven that her complete catalogue is composed almost entirely of work she produced as a student, the posthumous critical esteem for American photographer Francesca Woodman is astonishing. Unlike music or math, where precocious displays of talent are not uncommon, photography tends not to have prodigies. Woodman, who committed suicide in 1981 at age 22, is considered a rare exception. That she has achieved such status is all the more remarkable considering only a quarter of the approximately 800 images she produced - many of them self-portraits - have ever been seen by the public. [Read more...]

From The Economist
With their spectral figures dissolving into Gothic ruins, the black-and-white photographs of Francesca Woodman look so antiquated as to be thoroughly modern in our nostalgia-riddled digital age. She shrouded herself in sheets of plastic, smeared Vaseline on mirrors, and tucked herself into vitrines. In some of her pictures her nude body appears as a solid form, all contours and negative space, like a prop in a Man Ray photograph. In others the only evidence of her body is a pair of legs underneath a diaphanous blur. [Read more...]


On being an angel #1, 1977
From The GuardianFrancesca Woodman has been called a modernist, a surrealist and, even, a gothic artist. Her work carries echoes of all three traditions, but it evades categorisation. As a young woman, she photographed herself obsessively but often she appears as a blur of movement or a half-hidden figure, someone constantly trying to escape or hide. The end result is not self-portraiture, but a series of stills from a continuous performance in which she plays with the notion of the self, disguising, transforming and defacing her own body. [Read more...]
Untitled, from Eel Series, 1977-78
From American Photo: Some three decades after her untimely suicide at the age of 22, Francesca Woodman remains a powerful presence in photography. As a young artist exploring themes of the female body and its perceived impermanence, her work immediately became a focus for feminist theorists and art historians around the world. But as is often the case with an artist's work viewed posthumously through the lens of tragedy, that's only a part of the story. 

A new exhibition at SFMOMA, curated by Corey Keller, hopes to tell the full story. It is the first major U.S. retrospective of Woodman's photographs, on view through February 20 in San Francisco and appearing at New York's Guggenheim museum next spring.  Its accompanying monograph, Francesca Woodman (D.A.P./SFMOMA), is one of our books of the year. We spoke with Corey Keller on the challenges of curating the work of a young artist taken by tragedy, and the unexpected themes that emerge from Woodman's photographs when viewed in a less tragic context.
[Read more...

From The Tate Modern Artist Rooms YouTube Channell:
 American photographer Francesca Woodman has eighteen rare vintage black and white photographs in the ARTIST ROOMS display, from a collection once owned by the artist's boyfriend. Woodmans photographs exhibit many influences, from symbolism and surrealism to fashion photography and Baroque painting. They have a timeless quality that is ethereal and unique. [Read more ...]





1 Francesca Woodman, Corey Teller (ed), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Distributed Art Publishers, New York, 2011. Buy at: Fishpond / The Book Depository / Amazon

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Josef Koudelka

This 1990 video with commentary looks at some of Koudelka's contact sheets and discusses his photographic philosophy.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Black and White with Ultrachrome K3 Inks: Fade Tests for Three Workflows

I have conducted six month fade tests for three black and white workflows using Epson K3 Ultrachrome inks. Scans of the results,which give a rough idea of how the workflows compared, are below. 

The full report is on my website, including Lab values for all results. [Read more...]


Please
email me with any questions, comments or suggestions.



Saturday, May 5, 2012

DUFFY: The Man Who Shot the Sixties

Brian Duffy was one of the greatest British fashion photographers from the late fifties to the late seventies, when he grew disenchanted with it, burned most of his negatives and gave up photography altogether, turning instead to shooting commercials. He died in 2010. 

In 2009, a retrospective exhibition was held at Chris Beetles Gallery in London (a few photos from the exhibition are on
The Guardian website).

The 
Duffy Photographer website is devoted to his work and an excellent BBC documentary was made about his career, called DUFFY: the Man Who Shot the Sixties, which is well worth watching.