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A Story is Born: The Photo Story Seminar
A Story is Born: The Photo Story Seminar is two days of instruction aimed at photographers who have either recently embarked on a major body of work or are searching for the next story on which to dedicate their focus.
This seminar will explore different approaches to selecting a subject, researching and shooting their story, ways of editing and, of course, the billion dollar question: where the story should go and how to make it work for you.
Five renowned documentary practitioners representing the different disciplines within creating and disseminating photography will each discuss their approaches and experience gained from their years working at the height of their profession. Confirmed Speakers are: Olivia Arthur, Neil Burgess, Joakim Eskildsen, David Hurn and Simon Norfolk.
Like Foto8's previous seminar, the successful From Dummy to Genius: The Photo Book, this is an intimate seminar for a limited number of attendees.
SCHEDULE
Friday 1st October 2010
6:00pm – 9:30pm:
Welcome drinks with the seminar speakers and Foto8 team, followed by a keynote presentation and Q and A.
Saturday 2nd October 2010
10:00am - 5:30pm:
Series of Talks, discussions and Q and A’s.
Lunch and refreshments throughout the day will be provided throughout the day.
REGISTRATION
The price for this weekend seminar is: £145.00 (which includes a complimentary six month Foto8 membership)
Registration Now Open. Places on this seminar are limited to a maximum of 35.
For further information or for telephone bookings please contact:
Anna Pfab
Foto8
1 Honduras Street
London EC1Y 0TH
Tel: +44 (0)20 7253 8801
Email: seminars@foto8.com
London,
England
Together and Apart: Slide talk with Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb
As part of the South Dakota Festival of Books, Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb (a South Dakota native) will present a variety of work, including a selection of photographs from their most recent book, Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographs from Cuba. The Webbs will discuss other bodies of work as well, including some books they've worked on together -- such as Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names (photographs by Alex; photo-edited by Rebecca) -- and some books they've worked on individually, such as The Glass Between Us (Rebecca's first book), which explores the complicated relationship between people and animals in cities. The Webbs will also attend two book signings - featuring Dave Eggers, Pete Dexter, and other noted authors -- on Friday and Saturday.
Book signings:
Friday, Sat. 24, 2010, 4-5PM; Sat. Sept. 25, 12:30-2PM
H.I. Centre
100 W. 8th St.
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
11-11:45 AM
Anne Zabel Studio Theater
Orpheum Theater Center / 315 N. Phillips Ave.
Sioux Falls, SD
USA
Retrospective
René Burri is a ‘field man’: a journalist-photographer. If we examine more than forty years of his work, we perceive that all the various genres of documentary photography can be found. His signature can be seen on classic ‘reportages,’ on general essays in book form, on isolated images that mark milestones in color or black and white, on series, on sequences, on news-style photographs, on independent photographic creations. He has produced a countless number of portraits, transformed ambiances into formal graphic compositions, summarized the world’s future in iconographic formulas that have the appeal of a parable. And yet, something of a “typical” Burri does exist - something that has nothing to do with style or a mask or pure esthetics. It has to do with curiosity, with being irrepressibly drunk on life, and also with an attitude, an acute conscience regarding the way one stands before culture, before events, and before men.
Hans-Michael Koetzle
Exhibition curator
Kunsthal Rotterdam
Museumpark, Westzeedijk 341
Rotterdam , 3015 AA
Netherlands
Phone: +31 (0)10 - 44 00 301
Two books by Mariken Wessels
The last artist book Mariken Wessels published was a narrative of found material she discovered in an Amsterdam shop. Elisabeth - I Want To Eat is an assemblage of old photographs, postcards and letters that describe a young woman's life budding and then, rather shockingly, leading towards depression and, what I read as, an implied suicide. It is a reconstruction which blends some fact with loads of interpretation.
In one of the letters translated from Dutch, Elisabeth's aunt, in an attempt to help Elisabeth think differently about her life writes, "But unpicking yourself, that can be done, why am I doing this, couldn't I do it better (for me and for everyone else) in a slightly different way? Each little thing builds the whole. In accordance with the same system as all matter is built up from molecules and atoms." This suggestion of parsing and twisting the events of her life is also the strategy Wessels employs in these works. We grapple with trying to understand this life presented to us through only a few pieces of ephemera which insists that our own twist of psychology intervene.
Wessels' newest artist book, Queen Ann. P.S. Belly Cut Off from Alauda Publications is a look into a life of a woman named Anneka.
Anneka appears to be a woman haunted by loneliness and obesity yet she puts forth a fun-loving and warm, if at times slightly demented, demeanor. When we are shown recent images of her, she (or the artist) has painted their surfaces with adornments such as brightly colored hats or veils or cut out parts of herself in the pictures with shears. In some, she adds a second coat of lipstick or nail-polish that transforms her into an over-the-top eccentric where we might question her sanity.
In one image from which the title refers, she writes, "In a way I really do feel like a "Queen." I think that fits. Although lacking the wealth but perhaps like our image of famous queens, Ann is also slightly lonely, unsatisfied, and displays vengeful violent streaks which in this case, she plays out on her own image rather than others. She seems to mock even her own ideas of beauty in how she "improves" the picture makes herself presentable - all ribbons and bows with make-up dripping from her eyes.
In both Queen Ann and Elisabeth, sexuality is an overt presence. In Elisabeth a suite of scratched nude photos (think G.P. Fieret) is presented, perhaps made as self-portraits or by a lover. In Queen Ann, photography as a somewhat transgressive act is also included - that of what appears to be a middle interlude of stills from a sex film (with Ann as the star?). This is followed by a more recent image of Ann holding an image of herself as a young attractive teenager - the weight of wishing for the past is felt.
Although melancholy in overall tone, Ann's unique character and playfulness outshine her underlying problems with aging and self image. The last images, shot on super-8 film, show her running and twirling, arms outspread, in a forest. A smile is sensed through the grainy and blurred image just before she disappears behind a stand of trees.
As with many contemporary books from The Netherlands, both of these are beautiful objects. The care and attentiveness to "the book" is felt but never trumps the content. In Elisabeth, English translations from Dutch type-written on green tissue paper are loosely laid in are a wonderful touch, and Queen Ann includes a sealed glassine envelope of 4x6 inch snapshots. It isn't clear if this last element, the glassine, is meant to be torn open or whether the images are meant to be viewed through the translucent paper (the metaphoric haze of memory?). You decide. Maybe in that case, collectors should buy two.
Errata Editions limited editions signed by David Goldblatt
If you have not yet ordered your set of the Errata Editions newest books now might be the time. A little while ago David Goldblatt stopped by our studio to sign some books, so for a brief time we have Limited Edition sets available with David's signature in Books on Books #7: In Boksburg. All current orders for the sets will be shipping with a signed copy, you do not have to specify.
See the Errata Editions website and click on the 'SHOP' page for ordering details.
Car Crash Studies 2001-2010 by Raffael Waldner
The skin was broken around the lower edge of the sternum, where the horn boss had been driven upwards by the collapsing engine compartment. A semi-circular bruise marked my chest, a marbled rainbow running from one nipple to the other. During the next week this rainbow moved through a sequence of tone changes like the color spectrum of automobile varnishes. As I looked down at myself I realized that the precise make and model-year of my car could have been reconstructed by an automobile engineer from the patterns of my wounds. - from Crash, J.G. Ballard
I have never been in a car crash. Two friends of mine were once in a nighttime high speed head-on collision - one, the passenger, died immediately; the other, the driver, walked from the car physically unscathed. For years, it wasn't the details of the actual accident that were described to me that I dwelt upon, but the story told to me by my surviving friend when visited the car at the police lot to collect his personal belongings from the interior.
The car had been hit on the right front passenger side because he had instinctively jerked the wheel to the left at the last moment. The passenger seat, with Mike, had been compressed so that it came to rest near the trunk. By my friend's account the entire right side of the car was shorn away but the left side, except for the doors jammed into their casings, looked clean. There was something in his description about the post-violence, the lingering event felt in the crash dust seen in the bright afternoon sun, that was more horrifying and memorable than his descriptions of the moment of impact.
Raffael Waldner's Car Crash Studies 2001-2010 just published by JRP Ringier brought these thoughts back to mind.
For the last decade, Waldner has concentrated on automobiles, photographing "the impact of violence and the way it changes the product." The results of his nighttime ventures into scrapyards photographing wrecks might be seen as a sort of attempted typology of the unpredictable transformation of an object that took place in matters of split-seconds.
His still-lifes, described with large format precision accentuated by strobes, are loaded with the tension between beauty and the horror of the implicit event that occurred. If it sounds or looks cold, it is. His is often the sensibility of a scientist, or an insurance photographer might take to matter-of-factly complete an accident claim. Their simplicity is belied by the new forms of twisted metal, the spider-web of windscreen glass, the scratched and battery-acid burnt paint varnishes that he focuses upon.
A degree of fetish is apparent, both on the part of the photographer and reflecting on car culture. The autos shown here are mostly high-end sports cars of a variety common with associations to wealth, sexuality and vanity on the part of the driver. They are expensive status symbols rendered valueless in an instant - the sexual prowess of the driver left limp in a cabin full of flaccid airbags and useless gear shifts.
Waldner breaks the book into various section starting with the surface damage to the car's skin. Abstract and painterly, these feel more like a conscious artistic decision, something that many of the other images seem to resist. He follows with sections on areas of impact that sequentially move us closer and closer to the details. The last sections are interiors and finally a small suite of engine blocks removed completely from the vehicle. The sequence might suggest a sort of autopsy (no pun intended), moving from outer body to inner and diagnosing the damage to individual organs.
If Waldner's book has one flaw I feel it is in the amount of photographs. It is oddly sits between not being 'Becher-exhaustive' enough to feel like a full exploration of a 'typology' and having too many of one section over another. This might be due not through lack of the photographer having material but from the editing which was done by Christoph Doswald. This is not a crushing blow to how the entire book functions but rather like a small design flaw that might be perceived after several test drives.
Car Crash Studies 2001-2010 includes closing essays by Christoph Doswald and Maik Schluter.
Landscapes: With and Without Figures
D.C.A. Gallery, NYC
2001
LARRY BURROWS
Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC
1998
Stiff card stock, 9 x 3.75 inches, blank back
LYNNE COHEN
P.P.O.W., NYC
2000
Stiff card stock, 6.25 x 5.25 inches
LUCIEN HERVÉ
Michael Hoppen Photography, UK
nd
Stiff card stock, 4 x 5.75 inches
TODD HIDO
Julie Saul Gallery, NYC
2000
Stiff card stock, 5 x 7 inches
PAUL HIMMEL
Keith de Lellis Gallery, NYC
2003
Stiff card stock, 10 x 7 inches, folded once vertically
JOHN HINDE
Wessel + O'Connor Fine Art, NYC
2005
Stiff card stock, 6 x 4.25 inches
RUTH THORNE-THOMSEN
Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC
2001
Stiff card stock, 9 x 3.75 inches, blank back
GEORGE TICE
Sandra Berler, Chevy Chase, MD
2000
Thin card stock, 6 x 4.25 inches
LARRY TOWELL
Leica Gallery, NYC
2001
Thin card stock, 16.5 x 5.5 inches, folded once vertically
WYNN BULLOCK
Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC
2002
Stiff card stock, 9 x 3.75 inches, blank back
Summer Show
The Magnum Gallery is pleased to present a selection of works by Olivia Arthur, Bruno Barbey, Antoine D'Agata, Carl De Keyzer, Elliott Erwitt, Jean Gaumy, Bruce Gilden, Burt Glinn, Harry Gruyaert, Constantine Manos, Susan Meiselas, Inge Morath, Mark Power, Miguel Rio Branco, George Rodger, Dennis Stock and Alex Webb.
Related LinksMagnum Gallery Paris
13, rue de l'Abbaye
Paris, 75006
Phone: + 33 1 46 34 42 59
Blake Gordon’s ‘Reality TV’
Austin-based photographer Blake Gordon wants people to turn off their televisions and get outside. He transports us to natural landscapes throughout the American West, with an old school television.
A graduate student of Design at the University of Texas at Austin, he is represented by Aurora Select.
Men in the dark.
Hey, Les.
Long time no scribble. Pardonnez moi, svp. Many changes in my life over the past few months.
I’ve found a new cave. It’s near the water, not too high up, high ceilings (can you say “cathedral”?). Northern exposure, and in a bit of a valley, so there’s not too much direct sun. But that’s jake with me.
I was reading Paul Auster again. I know, I know. But the title—Man in the Dark—spoke to me. I won’t labor the narrative details, but it’s about a man divided between two worlds, two ways of life. One was prompted by recollections of violence, a race riot, about which the narrator says the following:
That was my war. Not a real war, perhaps, but once you witness violence on that scale, it isn’t difficult to imagine something worse, and once your mind is capable of doing that, you understand that the worst possibilities of the imagination are the country you live in. Just think if, and chances are it will happen.
The country we live in is comprised of the worst possibilities of our imagination. Now, that’s a thought to either keep us hunkered down in our dark spaces, or make us confront the darkness to dispel it while denying the abyss, the Mariana Trench of our imaginations. Which way do we go?
Yrs,
OG (forgot how to sign my name, it’s been so long)
Camille Silvy: Photographer of Modern Life at the National Portrait Gallery, review
Quatorze Juillet by Johan van der Keuken
My best find while in Europe during the Kassel festival was a new book from Willem van Zoetendaal on Johan van der Keuken called Quatorze Juillet.
In July of 1958, Van der Keuken was wandering through Paris and happened upon a street celebration. A stage had been set up, music was playing, people were dancing and Van der Keuken - like most photographers might - took the opportunity to shoot a few rolls of film. The day resulted in one of his more well-known images of a couple dancing which has made it into several of his books - 6 to be exact including Paris Mortel. Most all of the other negatives were never published.
Quatorze Juillet is a book of the other images he made that day presented in a cinematic sequence which gives a look into a much larger, and delightful, afternoon along the Seine. Edited by Noshka van der Lely and Willem van Zoetendaal this construction of a larger narrative suggests Van der Keuken's interest in "stills that move", a curiosity that would later lead him into film-making.
On page one we encounter a couple, they dance, closely embraced, in a vertical image which isolates them from other dancers and celebrants. As Van der Keuken twirls around them photographing, the larger celebration is revealed. People on the periphery become the new leading players and smaller narratives develop - a man approaches a group of young women, another walks through the frames carrying a long ladder, a car speeds around the corner whooshing through the crowd. Small flirtations take place and the photographer works works like a fly on the wall - testing each frame and trying variations which, in my mind, are as wonderful as the image he finally chose as "his best" from the day. This is not a re-edit of mediocre pictures made better by the inclusion of others.
As with most of Van Zoetendaal's books, the care in making Quatorze Juillet is excellent. The choice of paper stock - an uncoated matte stock - is bound sempuyo-style producing a double thickness of each page.
The printing was done by Calff & Meischke in Amsterdam and while I was visiting Holland I stopped by the printing facilities to visit Freek Kuin who had just finished printing the book after testing out several paper and ink variations. Stacks of proofs laying on the floor revealed slightly different interpretations of tone and contrast. Each looked good on their own but when directly compared, slight shifts of color emerged, the contrasts popped or the ink suppressed details. The final result made apparent the vast choices to be made in book reproduction and Freek is an extremely passionate craftsman in putting ink to paper.
The design is also superb. Van Zoetendaal designs most of his books and the placement of the images on the page in Quatoze Juillet is a fascinating study of design. The images are oriented towards the bottom of the page, not extreme enough to be readily noticeable at first, but it pushes the sequence along, connecting the images and grounding them - amplifying Van der Keuken's vantage point since a few of the pictures were shot from the elevated musician's stage.
I received one of only a handful of advanced bound copies of this book that were made to show in Kassel so I am not sure if the book is officially out yet, but this was made to accompany an exhibition of the work at FOAM in Amsterdam this year. I don't know how many they made but if you can get your hands on one, I doubt it will disappoint.
Bernhard and Hilla Becher: Ephemera, Catalogs and Books from Librairie 213
I am finally home again after the second leg of my European tour. Can't say I am happy about that but the photobook burn out I felt after the Kassel Photobook Festival, which started my trip back in May, seems like such a distant memory now. All of my new acquisitions have more or less made it safely to the States and I am going to ease back into regular postings if time permits.
My brain is still recovering from the trip so I thought I would start with a book/catalog which doesn't require much effort from me. It is an overview of ephemera, catalogs and books that have been published on Bernhard and Hilla Becher from Librairie 213.
Librairie 213 is the French book dealer Antoine De Beaupre. Some of you might know him from the Galerie 213 and the slickly designed exhibition catalogs they published in the late 1990s - most notably, one on William Eggleston that has all the plates tipped onto the pages.
This catalog on the Becher's work starts with their earliest appearance in an art magazine review in Die Sonde in 1964 and progresses through their recent books published as late as 2010. Much of the early ephemera such as promotional posters for Anonyme Skulpturen and exhibition announcement cards are the reason to pick this catalog up as many of these items have been lost to history. Last year at Paris Photo Antoine had a framed copy of the Anonyme Skulpturen poster from the Moderna Museet and if expendable income were at my disposal, it would be on my wall right now.
With each entry there is only the most basic of publishing information, all in French, so this teeters between being just a sales catalog (no prices are listed) and a bibliography for Becher scholars. It was printed in an edition of 500 with 50 copies numbered and signed by Hilla Becher.
As with all of Antoine's publications, the design is by Olivier Andreotti of Toluca Studio. At approximately 11 x 11 inches and with high production standards but for the occasional slight Morey patterning in the plates you might over look the 25 euro cover price.
Note: There is no mention of this book on the Librairie 213 website but perhaps email Antoine about getting a copy.
Each year, seemingly made and given free as sales pieces for Paris Photo, Antoine has produced a few other fine catalogs. In 2007, his booklet on 31 Japanese books from 1968 and 1982 is worth looking for if there are any left floating around. Although it is well-trod territory and most of the books won't be a surprise, again the production standards are wonderful.
The same goes for his book on German photobooks En Allemagne from 2008. This one charts an implied timeline of 66 books starting with Renger-Patzsh and Rudolf Schwarz's Wegweigsung der Technik and ending with Jorg Sasse's D8207. Neither of these last two catalogs specify how many were made.
Photobook Library
The Indie Photobook Library was founded in 2010 by Larissa Leclair. It is an archive that strives to preserve and showcase self-published photobooks, photobooks independently published and distributed, photography exhibition catalogs, print-on-demand photobooks, artist books, zines, photobooks printed on newsprint, limited edition photobooks, and non-English language photography books to be seen in person through traveling exhibitions and as a non-circulating public library. Having a specific collection dedicated to these kinds of books allows for the development of future discourse on trends in self-publishing, the ability to reflect and compare books in the collection, and for scholarly research to be conducted in years, decades, and centuries to come. The Indie Photobook Library has an open and ongoing submission policy. Books can be donated by the artist, indie publisher, or private collector.
info about submissions and more here
for news and more, follow on the Indie Photobook Library on facebook here
Peregrine 2010 Royal Navy Photographic Awards
London 2012: Jason Orton's photographs of Olympic Park
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) is one of the most original, accomplished, and influential figures in the history of photography. His celebrated work of the early 1930s helped to define the artistic potential of modern photography; a decade later, after surviving three years as a prisoner of war, Cartier-Bresson emerged from World War II determined to document a world in the midst of profound change. He did so in 1947 when he joined Robert Capa and others to found the Magnum photo agency, an organization that allowed photojournalists to reach broad audiences through such publications as Life and Paris Match, while still retaining independence and control over their work.
This exhibition of nearly 300 images is the first full retrospective devoted to Cartier-Bresson in three decades. It includes both his formally groundbreaking early images and his historically significant postwar work—in India and Indonesia during struggles for independence, in China during the revolution, in the Soviet Union following Stalin’s death—that redefined the field of photojournalism.
Following an exquisite presentation of the best of the early work, the exhibition is organized as a series of distinct sections. Several of these sections are devoted to his work in countries such as the United States, the Soviet Union, and France. Other sections present the themes that preoccupied Cartier-Bresson throughout his career: portraiture, the persistence of ancient customs and patterns of life, the transformation of these patterns by modern industry and commerce, the poetry of human encounters on the street, and the psychology of the crowd.
The retrospective, organized by the Museum of Modern Art, shows the rich interplay between Cartier-Bresson the artist, gifted at capturing the flux of life, and Cartier-Bresson the photojournalist whose lens shaped our understanding of seismic political and cultural changes across the second half of the 20th century. This retrospective is the first to draw upon the extraordinary resources and cooperation of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris.
Related Links When & WhereMonday - Tuesday: 10:00 a.m. - 5:45 p.m.
Wednesday: Closed
Thursday: 10:00 a.m. - 8:45 p.m.
Friday - Sunday: 10:00 a.m. - 5:45 p.m.
SFMOMA
151 Third Street / (between Mission + Howard)
San Francisco, CA 94103
USA
Phone: 415.357.4000
Peter Turnley on Haiti
Award-winning photographer Peter Turnley talks to CNN’s Jim Clancy about his experience in Haiti and challenges ahead.
