Body Language
Vivian takes a shot on Red Square
I know I don’t look too comfortable in this picture that Vivian took of me. Americans simply have mediocre body language. I have an excuse– that long yellow line sticking up my wazoo.
Russian body language, on the other hand, is the language of life.
Our driver rescuing us from the airport.
I saw this girl standing on the sidewalk like she was frozen in place. Finally, I walked over and took her picture. She smiled and I walked away. I turned and she was still standing with legs crossed.
It was raining when we arrived in Moscow.
Russia in the rain is best.
We went to buy a SIM card for our Russian cell phone. I kept asking the sales girl if I could take her picture. She did not comply so I grabbed a picture of her in action behind the cell phone chain tree.
I do have an almost nice one of her totally out of focus.
For the most part, I’m trying to resist photographing the street fashion. It is so wonderful, though. I have a picture of an apparently drunk girl (she certainly smelled of booze) in a beautifully weird hoop gown that is everywhere it shouldn’t be. And I refused, almost on moral grounds, to photograph the long-legged girl in the see-through mini.
The next post will be about Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
Moscow Fever
NYC to Moscow - Russian security wields a new weapon.
Before they would let us off the plane, a crack team of thermometer wielding security professionals took every passenger’s temperature with a laser shooting ear gun. One shot of the ruby light into each passenger’s ear told them if there were any fevers on board. Out of a full plane of several hundred coughing, sneezing people, I was surprised we weren’t quarantined for a week or two. I was also surprised that it didn’t take them hours to shoot everyone in the ear.
Asia Central Coming and NYPH09 Again
I’m off on a 5 week trip to Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. I’ll be using my blog to provide updates of my experiences. I’ve been photographing in the former Soviet Union since 2001 when I first went to Ukraine. I returned to Ukraine in 2005 and in 2008 made two trips to Russia and Mongolia. I know that this sounds like mission creep, but on each trip I feel the work getting more concentrated. The project has the working title of The Shadows in Between. This is meant to suggest the 19th century Tournament of Shadows. That’s the Russian expression for the struggle for dominance between colonial tsarist and British empires.The British called it the Great Game. In 21st century terms, The Shadows in Between suggests the position of the post Soviet States sandwiched between the two economic world powers of the European Union and China.
If you would like to keep track of my Central Asian travels, Please tune into my blog by hitting the “subscribe” button and having my post arrive in your email.
One more note about last week’s NYPH09. I was there under the auspices of SocialDocumentary.Net who were participating sponsors of the event. I just want to thank them for their support. I also want to post this photo that I took outside one of the galleries.
Girls with Balloons, 2009, Frank Ward
NYPH09 Hit and Miss
I went to the NY Photo Festival last weekend and have been holding off on blogging about it all week. The reason is two-fold.
(1.) I didn’t think the exhibits at the festival were particularly fabulous and (2.) I had a great time there.
I was promoting NYPH09 on earlier posts because I like the idea of it. NYPH could potentially represent the state of contemporary photography. Yes, there were some strong pictures exhibited, but they were not exhibited well. I don’t feel comfortable complaining about the bad framing, the bad lighting or the bad installations in general. I’ve participated in many low budget shows and NYPH09 actually gave me some ideas about exhibiting on the cheap. Unfortunately, “cheap” was not the only installation issue. Joerg, over at Conscientious, mentions the blatant offense awarded Simon Roberts’ photos in Jon Levy’s mostly powerful Home For Good exhibition. Simon’s photos were among the best, and the best framed, in the group show. Unfortunately, they were hung in a dark gallery corner and over couches in a lounge area, and worse, they were placed between bright exterior windows so you could only really see them at night. I had friends who went to the exhibition and totally missed his excellent work.
In general, NYPH was a great experience in a great location (East River waterfront) with lots to see. Fortunately, most photographers have tunnel vision when it comes to looking at work, so odd installation decisions were not an overriding issue. Tim Hetherington had two very strong bodies of work represented. In fact, he gets my “Golden Palm” for his three screen installation presented as part of Home for Good. The ABC News cameraman and Vanity Fair contract photographer, Hetherington, used sleeping soldiers in Afghanistan as the fulcrum for experiencing the emotional hell of war.
Tim Hetherington's Installation View
You can see by the extraneous crap lying around the performance area for Tim’s brilliant multi-screen presentation that installation was not the high point of NYPH09.
Hetherington’s Liberia show and book is also amazing.
American West
Mention American Landscape and one visualizes the West. Slate Magazine ran a great article/slide show about the Into the Sunset show at the MoMA with more insight than a Moonrise Over Hernandez, NM. I remember seeing a sign along the highway right where Ansel Adams took his moneymaker Moonrise masterpiece. It said, “No Pictures.”
Thanks to Robert Tobey for sending me the Slate link.
Photography Bracket
I’m tired of keeping track of basketball brackets and who advances. Don’t even try to show me a hockey bracket. Over at Year in Pictures there is a bracket to truly enjoy. First here’s the bracket.
If this is too small, click on the bracket as it is presented here.
Now you can read about some great American photographs working their way through our collective consciousness.
The Perpendicular View
Digital photography became a marketable form of fine art photography, originally, as a way to reproduce very large prints from film with a quality that large, chemically based prints often lacked. More recently, the use of Photoshop has become an acceptable way of manipulating the fine art image, as long as it isn’t too gimmicky. Andreas Gursky, the highest priced living photographer, has been piecing together digital slices with highly profitable motivation for years.
Andreas Gursky, May Day V, 2006
Other arrivals to the telephoto/perpendicular technique of contemporary photography include Andreas Gefeller, who takes a birds eye view.
It’s all quite a fascinating manipulation of how a camera can see the world, but once the “gee whiz” factor wears off, it seems to just be another angle worthy of National Geographic Magazine rather than the fine art market. The Presidential Inauguration provided a great populist example of this kind of photography.
Jurgen Chill won the European Architectural Photography Prize in 2007 for his fly’s eye views of prison cells. In this series, he does seem to have something to say about the value of this digital technique. Here is a great article and video (in German) about how he does it. Also, check out this wild blog on prison photography.
Jurgen Chill
This brings me to Benjamin Stern, via Joerg Colberg’s blog, who seems to be having more fun with the potentially tedious perpendicular technique. He has several examples of the bird’s eye camera technique, but I chose a looser collage effort based on a mix of David Hockney’s cubism and everybody’s scanner art.
Benjamin Stern
It seems that digital practice with fine art intensions is not about simply using digital cameras, or even outrageous Photoshop manipulations (which should be deposited into the trash bin of its playful practitioners). I’ll have to ask Joerg, when he comes to my class on Wednesday (see previous post), what is the newest direction of digital fine art?
Joerg Colberg Live at HCC
This Wednesday, April 29th, 2009, Joerg Colberg, one of the web’s most insightful photoblog personalities, will speak and critique student work in my Advanced Photography class at Holyoke Community College. The HCC Photo Club is sponsoring the event and is inviting the readers of The Coruscating Camera to join us for the discussion. Joerg will have just returned from covering the International Fashion and Photography Festival in France for T Magazine. That’s the on-line fashion magazine produced by the New York Times–AKA The Moment. Read his report HERE.
Joerg has many good articles available on-line. Check him out at Magnum, Photo-Eye and others. View his most recent portfolio, Higher Education, on his website. It is also featured at Qarrtsiluni, the on-line literary magazine.
Joerg Colberg, Corridor #16, No Exit, from Higher Education
Joerg Colberg will speak in room C-227 in C Building on the campus of Holyoke Community College (Route 202 west exit off of Rte 91) from 11:00-1:00 on Wed., April 29th. Park in the visitors lot at the top of the campus.
Visura Magazine
Visura Magazine sits in cyberspace simply waiting for our eyes to savor it. The second issue is loaded with beauty and wonder, including Ed Kashi’s Three. I first saw this jaw-dropping series of triptychs a year ago when he presented them at Williston Academy. This portfolio from 25 years of witnessing the vicissitudes of life provides a fresh narrative outlet for terrific pictures that may not have fit within the final edit of Kashi’s many projects.
from Ed Kashi's Three
Amy Stein is also represented with Stranded, a series of unexpected roadside encounters from the artist who is better known for her Domesticated pictures.
from Amy Stein's Stranded
Check out Visura’s fine portfolios by Shelby Lee Adams, Luis Gonzalez Palma, too.
Alice Smeets Tells Her Story
A little while ago I posted some pictures by Alice Smeets. I read her inspiring post HERE about how she got started. I especially want to share her remarks with my photojournalism students. Her story is relevant because it’s not about life 20 years ago. It’s about last year and the year before that. She’s a rising talent whose story suggests a possible pathway to becoming a successful picture maker in the world of photojournalism today.
Alice Smeets from Growing Up in Haiti
The Art of Sleep and Expectations of Waking Up
Chester Higgins' photo of Chu Yun's installation at the New Museum
I posted about this show earlier today and then discovered Kevin Bubriski’s photo from Uzbekistan below:
The Chester Higgins photo for the New York Times review of The Generational: Younger than Jesus exhibition features a medicated woman sleeping in the center of one of the New Museum’s galleries. Kevin Bubriski’s view of “local residents sleeping outside in Khiva, Uzbekistan” echoes similar sentiments without the drugs. Kevin’s Central Asian portfolio has recently been added to SDN.
Last weekend I went to the wonderful opening of photographs by Stan Sherer and Blake Fitch at the Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography. The museum has been around for four or more years now and has consistently presented work from all quarters of the photography spectrum. At the opening I talked with museum director and curator Paul Turnbull. In this age of “bigger than life” art administrators with BTL egos, it is a pleasure to hear Paul’s philosophy of museum directing/curating. He says that it’s not about what he likes in pictures. It’s about waking viewers up to the many possibilities of the still image. His exhibition record speaks for itself. He has shown artists and photographers from the full spectrum of photographic practice. He’s exhibited color innovators like Jay Maisel, legends like Paul Caponigro, the greatest photographer of the New England Landscape, and his son John Paul Caponigro, who is totally entrenched in the digital domain. I mentioned the Colin Finlay tough-on-your-emotions exhibit in an earlier post.
Currently, Hallmark is featuring Stan Sherer, who is a prime example of the strength of documentary and fine art photography in Western Mass. Stan spent a career documenting the world, especially Africa, Russia and Albania. He has, more recently, embarked on an inner visual journey incorporating scientific lantern slides, landscape and his unique personal intelligence. See my earlier post about his color abstractions. The picture below, not in the Hallmark show, illustrates his interweaving of documentary work with fine printmaking.
Stan Sherer, Chess, St. Petersburg, Russia
I’ve known Stan for decades so the real surprise of the show was Blake Fitch’s decade long narrative of her younger sibling and friend growing up in the affluent Northeast. My first walk through of the gallery brought up the image of a more focussed Tina Barney. Then, the intensity of her singular study of two girls over time registered their impact. These girls are like Sally Mann’s daughters only photographed with less sexual tension and a New England-based, rather than Southern, grace.
Blake Fitch - Expectations of Adolescence
The Antidote–SDN and NYPH09
Robert Tobey sent me a review of the New Museum’s Younger than Jesus show in NYC. It’s a triennial affair featuring artists under 33 years of age and it looks like a good show. I found a disparaging remark in the second to last paragraph of Holland Cotter’s NYT review that has to be addressed. After praising many of the exhibition’s videos and installations the critic’s primary complaint about the show is “…too much work, particularly photography, making too little impact.”
Well, next month NYC will experience The New York Photo Festival from May 13th to 17th. With a special thanks to SocialDocumentary.Net’s founder Glenn Ruga for offering me a free pass, I want to encourage people to make the trek to this Brooklyn festival in DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass). SDN will be there promoting all of us who are keeping documentary photography alive by exhibiting on http://www.socialdocumentary.net.
Why should you go? Well, in a turn-around from some previous remarks from The Coruscating Camera, the NYPH09 is an excellent opportunity to show your work to top NYC gallery directors, photo editors and general groovers and bakers of the contemporary photography scene. OK, I know you have to pay to get viewed and I haven’t stopped hating that fact, but all these people will be in one place for you to simply carry your portfolio from one desk to the next. That sure beats schlepping around the City for weeks to get comparable exposure.
Did I mention that there will be lots of photography to view and awards given? Here’s an Ellie Davies image. Her portfolio received an honorable mention from last years festival.
Ellie Davies, NYPH08 Honorable Mention
Once Upon a Time in Holyoke
Frank Ward, Holyoke, MA 2009
Buddha’s Family
The humble joys of Holyoke have been totally engaging this past week and have taken up valuable blog time . My photojournalism class is photographing both inside and outside Holyoke. I want to post a page or two of what we’ve been doing, but that will have to wait for a few more days.
Once Upon a Time in New York
I mentioned Robert Aller in my last post and remembered that he sent me the best obit. for the late Helen Levitt. Helen’s pictures speak lovingly of a past New York City; the Wall Street Journal speaks lovingly of a tough old gal who would drink and gamble, and even NYC’s “good ol’ boys” couldn’t make her blush.
Helen Levitt (C.1940) courtesy of the estate of Helen Levitt
Once Upon a Time in the West
Aaron Schuman's Once Upon a Time in the West
Photography’s Ghosts – Frances Richard
“Theatrical Images are Bad, Anti-Theatrical Images are Good.”
I lost sleep thinking about that quote the other night. What is it all about? Well, I’m now on my second reading of Frances Richard’s Photography’s Ghosts in the March 16th issue of The Nation. First, please note that this blog is subtitled Thinking with Our Eyes, so I’m not ready to do the heavy word wrestling that Frances Richard is throwing at me from the first paragraph. Her philosophizing is couched as a book review of Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before by Michael Fried and After Photography by Fred Ritchin. Here’s how she gets started.
“Photography is haunted by distortions, or what philosophers and media theorists call “simulacra”–those devils or replicants that blur authentic essence and mere appearance. Pictures in general trigger these anxieties, Plato having bequeathed to Western culture a fear that overidentification with images will dull perception of a spirit that eludes sight. Photography, however, has been especially seductive, seeming to offer unmediated access to how things “really” are. As Martin Jay explains in Downcast Eyes, his marvelous history of antivisual themes in French thought, “Because of the physical imprinting of light waves on the plate of the camera…it might seem as if now the oeil was not trompé in Daguerre’s new invention. But doubts nonetheless soon arose.” By the 1840s, it was clear that even apparently direct imprinting could not rout the ghost of simulacra. “Yet as late as the Dreyfus Affair,” Jay notes, “it was still necessary to warn the naïve viewer against concocted images.” Photographs could be retouched or faked through double exposures–as when, in 1899, the newspaper Le Siècle printed composite pictures of enemies in the Dreyfus Affair appearing friendly. Technologies have drastically evolved, of course. Nevertheless, according to new books by Michael Fried and Fred Ritchin, warnings about photography’s uncertainties are no less necessary.
CONTINUE READING… The rest of the review is better than the first paragraph.
From perusing the Amazon reader’s reviews, I suggest reading Frances Richard first, maybe that’s enough. Thanks to Gregory Thorp who dropped The Nation in my mailbox last week.
“Real Pictures for Real People”
Antero de Alda, my Portuguese friend who runs a beautiful site/blog of photographs and photographers that strike his fancy, just sent me his most recent find. Alice Smeets is a young Belgian photographer who is by no means new to documentary work or photojournalism. Her Haiti series throws some punches, but I’m showing you the G rated material.
Alice Smeets in Haiti
She shoots for the New York Times and others, and won the Unicef photo of the year in 2008 for her picture below.
Unicef 2008 Picture of the Year by Alice Smeets
She has a great blog where she talks about finding Landa, the girl in the picture above, and helps her and her family move to a better area of Haiti.
Her blog introduced me to the photography of Andy Spyra, another amazing documentarian who recently won the Getty Images grant for his work in Kashmir.
Andy Spyra in Kashmir, India
Check out his Womenboxing in India, too.
Andy’s blog is loaded with personal pictures which are every bit as dynamic as his project work.
Andy Spyra
And these artists lead me back to Antero de Alda who also is a documentarian of note. Check out his portfolio at SocialDocumentary.Net, which, btw, currently has an offer for free posting.
Antero de Alda from Portraits and Transfigurations
Antero’s site features several great photographers like Vinessa Winship and Ed Kashi. I’m even on there if you take a look in his photographer’s index.
The Unwavering Witness
Abraham Ravett has been making films and photographs for decades. I usually see, and appreciate, a sampling of his work here and there. Last month, he revised his website and uploaded an enticing overview of a career in art. I’m not saying it’s time to welcome another horn-tooter photographer. Abraham considers himself a filmmaker first, his site is tucked away at Hampshire College where he teaches. His web bio is impressive, but only takes a fraction of a webpage. I just want you to look at a “no bells or whistles approach” to what clear seeing looks like. In Brighton Beach, he balances the power of the populace with the geometry of the landscape.
from Brighton Beach by Abraham Ravett
Of course, using an 8X10 view camera is a real boon to seeing clearly. For Abraham, though, it’s not about the details. He continually places himself as the eloquent watcher, unobtrusively reveling in whatever presents itself. He freely mixes the informative with the abstract. His Polaroid Quartets take on a sad significance with Polaroid’s demise.
from Polaroid Quartets by Abraham Ravett
Check out his films, too. There are only a few clips on-line, so visit his blog for screenings.
The Economy Stupid
First, the good news. Bruce Davidson’s picture from his 1959 series Brooklyn Gang is slated to be on the cover of Bob Dylan’s soon to be released CD.
Photo by Bruce Davidson
I don’t buy CDs, but I am looking forward to seeing this picture come up in my iTunes.
In the good photographer/bad news realm, Greenfield photographer Justin Sullivan was on NPR yesterday with work about the Tent City erected by the homeless in Sacramento California. If you go to the NPR website, you can find a slide show of Justin’s Getty Images. Thanks to Glenn Ruga over at Social Documentary for the link.
More bad news from the corporate world–Ritz Camera, the nations largest camera retailer, has filed for bankruptcy. An appropriate picture for this story is:
Yes, there is a Brian Ulrich slide show of failed merchants over at Time.com. Thanks to Northampton photo luminary Joerg Colberg at Conscientious for the link.
The Valley’s premier recycle artist and blogger, Mo Ringey over at benigngirl, has a theory about the economy. Not being an economist, it took me a couple of readings to get what she was deducing. If you believe in chain emails, you’ve got to believe it can happen. Below is a picture from her blog. I don’t know where it originated, but I like it.
I figure a representation of over-consumption is a good way to end a blog about America falling over the edge.
The Big Mash-Up
Last night I joined Twitter. It seems similar to Facebook, only with less stuff going on. People I respect are having a positive experience with it. I don’t get it. I did find Tarky7, who says that the next mash-up star has arrived, Kutiman. Visit him to see a pile of brilliant sounding and fun to look at videos.
I’m a member of the Facebook, Flickr, Twitter troika which seems to be mashing together to take control of our “social networking.” Getty Images is now accessing millions of Flickr files to sell through their stock agency. They have uploaded about 8000 images if you want to see the kind of Flickr work they are after. I’d post one, but Getty might charge me for it. Here’s one of my Flickr pictures done with my photo class when we mashed-up silhouettes with a Ralph Gibson slide.
Shadow of a Doubt– Homage to Hitchcock
AIPAD is March 26-29 in NYC. They’ll have over 70 international photography galleries represented. I’m going to miss it so I started looking around for other photography events and festivals. There are many. Spain is throwing a hook into the sea of photo lovers to see who they can attract to the first MadridFoto in May. They have several artist represented on their site. One photographer seems to be recreating Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills in color with a Cindy Sherman look alike and a focus shift.
MadridFoto is also featuring work by Jose Manuel Ballester.
Jose Manuel Ballester, 2006
Jose Manuel Ballester, 2005
Ballester has a great eye for architecture. He also sculpts and paints. Some of his work borders on highly structured mash-ups of space and color. When a photographer depicts the work of an architect, is he appropriating it? Check out his site.
The Coruscating Camera 
