Yes, I'm still alive.

Danforth Biennial showcases diverse work of 39 photographers

Recent Acquisitions

A lot of books cross my desk, at work and at home, and wind up in piles before they can find their way to shelves. Some are given to me by photographers, for which I am grateful and often touched by the individual's generosity--or, rarely, concerned that they've over-committed themselves by sending out expensive materials without properly having vetted their targets. Some are sent by publishers, for which I am sometimes grateful, sometimes embarrassed, sometimes inspired to write. Some are sent expressly for reviewing, in photo-eye and elsewhere, and for these, well, I am thankful that I got to know Darius Himes a number of years ago, for he (and Joel Eisinger, when he was editing Exposure for SPE) got me on the path of reviewing photography books. Larry Frascella, at Photo/Design way back in the eighties, and Christian Peterson, who hooked me up with the Washington Post to review Penelope Niven's biography of Steichen, are also due a credit or two for looping me into the photobook opinion mill.

But there was a time before I went pro, when I bought books, a lot, too often, to my financial detriment and esthetic enrichment. Starting circa 1981, I guess, when I bought a Stieglitz monograph (from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, no less) for Alan Trachtenberg's "Photographer in American Culture" seminar. During that class, researching my paper on Group f.64, I discovered a gorgeous, oversize Weston book in the art library. Gazing into its quarto-scale reproductions, I began to appreciate that the distance between a fine photographic print and a meticulous reproduction was relatively small, a displacement that is far less fictionalizing than that undergone by a painting, drawing, print, or other two-dimensional work (no need to talk about sculpture or cinema) in the translation from real to represented. The Weston reproductions, in fact, had a beauty all their own; since I'd never held a Weston print, or seen one unglazed, the book held me in thrall. Not better than the real thing, but a lot realer than the projected images I'd seen on screen.

I still seek this kind of unique experience in books. Quality standards have risen significantly in most books, and prices haven't risen too terribly much over the past five to ten years due to excellent, affordable printing in China and elsewhere. I am under some severe restrictions these days, in terms of disposable income available for purchases, but I do still acquire books (more than I ought to) and find my appetite getting just a bit pickier. At the same time, of course, the number of new publications has skyrocketed. I didn't know photobooks in the 1960s and 1970s, where one could fairly easily acquire all newly released, serious photography publications. When I went to A Photographer's Place bookstore in Soho, I had to be careful and selective. I'm glad I didn't know how much more I could, and perhaps should, have bought there in the 1980s. But my library grew like topsy anyway. Now and then I wished I'd written little capsule reviews of every book I brought into the collection; that would probably qualify me as a bibliomane, or at least kind of a nut.

Today, with a limited acquisition budget, I must be more thoughtful. Which is a good exercise. It means that every book I buy has something special to recommend it, something that causes its punctum to trump its studium (apologies to Roland Barthes). Here's a list of publications, in no particular order, that I've acquired with my own money, not on behalf of any organization other than my own, in the last couple of months:

• Candida Hofer, Hamburg Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, Koln 2002 - I couldn't resist this tiny (about the size of my hand) book when I saw it, particularly since Hofer and her Dusseldorf colleagues so often go for the grandly oversized when it comes to scale, in print or on the wall.
• Peter Fraser, Material Steidl, Gottingen 2002 - Like the Hofer, purchased at Ars Libri in Boston, where I had to resist a half dozen other books on the shelves. This one is about color and stuff, strange inexplicable things, run almost full bleed with minimal text. As the back cover states, "Here are outstanding objects and objects left outstanding." Outstandingly weird.
• The Spectacular of Vernacular exh cat org by Darsie Alexander, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 2011 - Acquired this one after a too-hurried viewing of the show, which contains Walker Evans, Marina Abramovic's 2005 video Balkan Erotic Epic: Exterior Part 1 (B) (which transfixed 5-year-old Milan), Lorna Simpson, a Christenberry sculpture and Eggleston dye transfers, and Shannon Ebner, among others less notably photographic. The catalogue, only about twice as big as the Hofer noted above, with fewer pages, has an essay by the late J. B. Jackson. How could I resist (though the title really rubs me the wrong way)?
• Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century exh cat org by Peter Galassi Museum of Modern Art, New York 2010 - Though the show opened last year in Manhattan, it took me until this month to see it in Atlanta, at the High Museum. One can not have too much Cartier-Bresson; though I thought the show could have been edited, I wanted to have the catalogue to learn why I still gain so much looking at HC-B's work. 
• Whiteout: Poems by Marvin Bell, Photographs by Nathan Lyons Lodima Press, Revere, Pennsylvania 2011 and Balanced Equation: Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Lodima Press Portfolio Book no. 14 2010 - Also in Atlanta during the SPE conference, with Arno and Nathan sitting at the Lodima Press booth ready to sign, there's no saying no (for me, at least). These two modest volumes together with all the material I picked up during portfolio reviews during the conference don't equal the Cartier-Bresson catalogue in weight.
• Eirik Johnson, Sawdust Mountain Aperture, New York and Henry Art Gallery, Seattle 2009 - How can this book have been around since 2009? Anyway, it's a lovely and subtle accumulation of evidence, topographical, socio-economic, and environmental, to describe a certain angle of light and life in the Pacific Northwest.
• Jesus and the Cherries Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2005 - Almost bought this one when I was at Ars Libri a couple of weeks ago (see Hofer and Fraser above), and glad I didn't; it was nearly half their price at the Museum of Fine Arts store yesterday, when I picked it up with Eirik's. The plastic cover gives Jessica Backhaus' early publication an odd feel and smell, but the sequence and the images have a beguiling intimacy and mystery.

Well, if I don't spend money on books, I can still spend time.

fictographica007: Maude Coffin Pratt

It had been Stieglitz who'd refused to exhibit my work in New York--the Provincetown show I had had such hopes for. It seemed to me that Stieglitz in denying me this exposure was trying to thwart me in my courtship of Orlando. Or course, he knew nothing of Orlando, but the fact remained that my sole intention in studying photography was ultimately to persuade my brother that his proper place was with me in my darkroom. Stieglitz had spurned my photographs and in so doing had belittled me as a lover.

If Stieglitz didn't like it, it wasn't photography. Though I considered him of small importance--simply a man who had bamboozled a doting group of people with his lugubrious attentions--I knew that when Stieglitz loaded his camera the world said cheese, or at least his sycophants thought so. He was enthroned in New York in An American Place, his own gallery, and no one could call himself a photographer who had not first wormed some approval from this dubious man. I supposed I could be accused of bias, but I believed the clearest example of his complete lack of judgment and taste was his failure to recognize me as an original.

--Picture Palace

A recent jurying project in Guilford, CT

Shoreline Arts Alliance announces IMAGES 2011 awards - Entertainment - West Hartford News

Catching Up

Can a month go by without a new posting here? Almost. Happened last September--no news posts here all month. But please remember that I'm also providing content on the PRC blog, Boston Photography Focus, and I've even tagged it as "re:photographica" there. Almost like an extension of this, isn't it?

One thing pushing me to post is a small collection of open tabs on my Firefox window. It used to be three or four sites or articles I wanted to make mention of, before releasing them to the void again. But now the group has dwindled down, attrition has taken its toll over the last week or two. (Yes, I probably should shut down my computer now and then. Especially when they tell me to on airplanes--anything with an on-off switch, and definitely no wi-fi below 10,000 feet--am I just tempting fate?)

I'm left with Charles Harbutt, writing for Visura magazine on-line (link). And Charlie's piece, titled "The Unconcerned Photographer," was originally delivered as a speech. In 1970.

Whoa. I'm an anachronism.

Gotta run and catch a train to Guilford. More later.

Get 'Em Here, While They Last!

One of my first book essays, published in 1999 in a collection of works by select members of Moorhead State University's (aka MSU Moorhead) documentary photography class under the guidance of the estimable Wayne Gudmundson. Thanks to the Becker County Historical Society, To the Lakes is available for a sweet and low price ($10, including shipping). Act now! (Link here.) Who knows how many copies they have on hand?

(Obsessive collectors, take note: If memory serves, the renowned Mickey Smith was one of the photographers in that collection, in her earlier incarnation as a "straight" photographer.)

An Immodest Blog-folio Overview

I was just deriving a certain pleasure from skimming my reviews on photo-eye's blog. I was pleased to see that I'm one of their blog's most productive contributors; I post more stuff there than I do here on my own space (hmmm). Why not, then, give a link? If my entries on the PRC blog can carry re:photographica tags (which they do, see here), why not at photo-eye too? See here.

Old friends: Chris Faust

Chris has been an inspiration and a friend since I moved back to the Twin Cities from New York. He's one of the hardest-working and most self-effacing people I know; this article in Mpls St. Paul magazine reflects the spirit I've come to appreciate in him over the years. Please take a moment to acquaint yourself with this special artist, who was one of the founders of pARTs Photographic Arts, the organization that evolved into MCP.

Thanks to Martin Berg for forwarding the link to the article. Martin is one of many people who would say they learned a lot from Chris.

I know there are people in Boston who admire and respect Chris, too; he served as a juror for a show about night photography. (See his beautiful book, Nocturnes--signed copies available from photo-eye!)

Lynne Cohen revisited

Great to read this comment by Lynne on one of her craziest photographs (published on guardian.co.uk in mid-August). I'm intrigued by what she sees, and by what she notices in her own work. She makes me wonder what surprises come her way through the image, and how much she's able to "previsualize" as she works with the 8x10.

I also get inordinate pleasure out of knowing that there's a Slade art school in London. Makes me feel like I have a special place for me over there.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: PRC to give three Lifetime Achievement Awards in Celebration of 35th Anniversary

Photographic Resource Center
at Boston University

832 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215
www.prcboston.org
617-975-0600



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 7,  2010

Contact: Glenn Ruga, 617-975-0600, gruga@prcboston.org

Photographic Resource Center Celebrates 35 Years with Gala Celebration November 9

Lifetime Achievement Awards to be given to Carl Chiarenza, Chris Enos, and Barbara Hitchcock. Acclaimed photography writer and critic Vicki Goldberg to be keynote speaker.

BOSTON – Thirty-five years ago an idea was afloat in Boston that there needed to be an organization committed to supporting and promoting photography, which at the time was just beginning to gain recognition as a fine art on the level of painting, drawing, printing making, and sculpture.

In 1975, A. D. Coleman, Jeff Weiss, and Chris Enos, with help from the photography community in Boston, got together to create the Photographic Resource Center, with Enos was appointed founding Executive Director in 1976. On the first board of directors were Donald Perrin, Carl Chiarenza, Jerome Liebling, Elaine Mayes, Davis Pratt, and others. The PRC gained official existence in October 1976 as a non-profit organization. The exhibition program began in 1985.

Since the PRC’s founding, photography luminaries from the world over have lectured, exhibited, and given workshops at the PRC. This list includes Lisette Model, Gordon Parks, Robert Mapplethorpe, Arnold Newman, Ed Ruscha, John Szarkowski, Aaron Siskind, Joel Meyerowitz, Eliot Porter, Cornell Capa, Emmet Gowin, Jerome Liebling, Lee Friedlander, Wendy Ewald, Barbara Norfleet, Vicki Goldberg, Ansel Adams, Marilyn Bridges, William Wegman, Bruce Davidson, Susan Meiselas, and Mary Ellen Mark.

In celebration of this storied history, the PRC will host a gala celebration on November 9 at the Photonics Center at Boston University, Colloquium Room, 9th Floor, 8 Saint Mary’s Street, from 6–10 pm.

Lifetime Achievement Awards will be presented to Chris Enos and Carl Chiarenza, PRC founders, and to Barbara Hitchcock, former Curator of the Polaroid Collections, for her outstanding service to the photography community. Acclaimed photography critic and author Vicki Goldberg will give the keynote address. Andrea Shea, Arts Reporter for WBUR Morning Edition, will be the emcee for the evening.

This event will include a gallery displaying prints from the PRC Portfolio. The PRC is providing a rare opportunity to purchase these masterful photographs individually. We will also be exhibiting the PRC 35th Anniversary Portfolios, created especially for this occasion.

The PRC will feature an exhibition of recent work by Chris Enos and Carl Chiarenza in its gallery, 832 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston from November 10, 2010 through January 9, 2011.

Tickets for the Gala are $200 and can be purchased online at www.prcboston.org/gala.htm

Biographies of Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients and Keynote Speaker:

Honoree Carl Chiarenza, (b. 1935) a native and current resident of Rochester, New York, is Artist-in-Residence and Fanny Knapp Allen Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Rochester. He has a long history with Boston and Boston University; between 1963 and 1986 he was Chairman, Director of Graduate Studies, and Professor of Art History at BU. He also received two graduate degrees from BU, followed by a PhD from Harvard in 1973. Chiarenza has lectured and taught at institutions across the United States; his photographic work has been seen in more than eighty solo exhibitions and more than 250 group exhibitions since the late 1950s. His critical biography Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and Terrors (published 1982) received a 1983 Merit Award from the Photographic Historical Society. He was one of the earliest members of the Society for Photographic Education, and has developed and guided numerous organizations (including the PRC) devoted to photographic arts. Chiarenza was a founding Board member of the PRC.

Honoree Chris Enos received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1970. The idea for the PRC first lodged in her imagination in 1975; she enlisted the help of others to push the discussion forward through its official birth in 1976, and served as the fledgling organization’s executive director until 1980, when she turned the reins over to Stan Trecker. Enos is an experienced teacher, and from 1986 to 2004 she was a professor at the University of New Hampshire (Durham, NH). Her photographs and multi-media artworks are in the collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, MA), the Center for Creative Photography (Tucson, AZ), and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Since retiring from teaching in 2004 she now works and lives in Santa Fe (NM).

Featured speaker Vicki Goldberg is a photography critic and author based in New York City. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri and earned an MFA from New York University. Goldberg has authored several books and articles on the subjects of photography and art history. Over the course of her career, Goldberg has written for countless publications, including Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, American Photo, Aperture, Art in America, and ArtNews; she has written regular articles on photography for The New York Times for over 14 years. Goldberg’s books include two award-winners, her 1986 biography of Margaret Bourke-White and The Power Of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives, published 1991. Aperture published Light Matters, a selection of her essays, in 2005. Goldberg has also co-written several books with other authors such as A Nation of Strangers: Essays written with Arthur Ollman and American Photography: A Century of Images written with art historian Robert Silberman. She has taught and lectured worldwide, including six years at Rhode Island School of Design, 2002 – 2008.

Honoree Barbara Hitchcock was employed by the Polaroid Corporation for nearly 40 years, the last 19, from 1990 to 2009 as their director of cultural affairs. While working for Polaroid she managed and directed strategic marketing communications and program planning, development, and execution. Among her areas of influence were the Polaroid fine art collections and the 20x24 Studio. Earlier at Polaroid she served as Group Manager, Press and Publicity Worldwide, as Manager of Worldwide Creative Programs, and as Photographic Services Coordinator. Hitchcock has a BA in English from Skidmore College, and additional degrees, certificates, and special recognition from: Simmons College Graduate School of Management; Center for Creative Leadership; and the Center for Corporate Community Relations at Boston College. Hitchcock has also edited and produced books and exhibition catalogues, among them Sanctuary: Anna Tomczak Photography (Fresco Fine Art Publications, 2007), Emerging Bodies: Nudes from the Polaroid Collections (Edition Stemmle, 2000), the Selections From the Polaroid Collection series (Verlag Photographie), Lucas Samaras: Polaroid Photographs, 1969-1983 and Sightseeing: A Space Panorama (Knopf). She has authored essays for a number of publications, most recently Private Views: Barbara Crane (Aperture, 2009), The Polaroid Book (Taschen, 2005), American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2000), Victor Raphael: space fields (William D. Cannon Art Gallery, 2004), Counterclockwise (Galleri Image, 2002), and Innovation/Imagination: 50 Years of Polaroid Photography (Abrams/Friends of Photography, 1999). Hitchcock formerly worked with large format cameras creating photographs that have been exhibited and published worldwide. Hitchcock was president of the PRC Board of Directors 1995 –1998.

On John Mann's Mappings

I contributed this piece to the tenth issue of Twin Cities-based Quodlibetica. They mentioned an interest in maps, I thought of John Mann. I think the combination turned out well. I hope you agree.

fictographica006: Ophelia, Storyville Diary

Bellocq - April 1911

There comes a quiet man now to my room--

Papa Bellocq, his camera on his back.

He wants nothing, he says, but to take me

as I would arrange myself, fully clothed--

a brooch at my throat, my white hat angled

just so--or not, the smooth map of my flesh

awash in afternoon light. In my room

everything's a prop for his composition--

brass spittoon in the corner, the silver

mirror, brush and comb of my toilette.

I try to pose as I think he would like--shy

at first, then bolder. I'm not so foolish

that I don't know this photograph we make

will bear the stamp of his name, not mine.

--Natasha Trethewey, Bellocq's Ophelia (2002)

Michal Chelbin: Strangely Familiar starts September 7 at PRC

Portraits of performers and athletes in Russia, Ukraine, and England.

Exhibition runs September 7–October 31, 2010

Photographic Resource Center

832 Commonwealth Ave., Boston

Reception: Thursday, September 16, 6:30–8 p.m.
Artist lecture & book signing: Tues., Oct. 19, 7 p.m., BU Photonics Building rm. 206, 8 St. Mary's St. Boston

"Because I shoot portraits I can say that people are my first inspiration. They are intriguing, mysterious, and unsolved."  —Michal Chelbin (from 9/4/2008 interview on Nymphoto)

Michal Chelbin (born 1974, Haifa, Israel) started making pictures when she was 15, and honed her skills as a photographer during her compulsory service in the Israeli military. Following four years of study in Haifa, Chelbin began pursuing personal photographic projects and traveled in Russia, Ukraine, England, and Israel making the portraits that appear in Strangely Familiar (also the title of her 2008 Aperture monograph; The Black Eye, her new book, is forthcoming from Twin Palms). The body of work on display at the PRC this fall demonstrates Chelbin's search for those displaying a "legendary" quality, which she describes as "a mix between odd and ordinary."

Her photographs depict mostly young people who carry their livelihoods with them, often in the very form or function of their bodies. Her subjects are members of itinerant companies—dancers, acrobats, and carnival attractions—and athletes. Chelbin's work, typically made of individuals in off-stage repose, reflects both the intensity of their pursuits and the fatigue engendered by being constantly on the road and almost always on display. Her photographs are staged, in the sense of being made by arrangement between artists and subject, but not manipulated or otherwise altered post-exposure.

The artist, who again lives in Israel after several years in the United States, will be present for a talk and book signing on October 19 at 7 p.m.

Exhibition organized in collaboration with Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York City.

To read more, please visit www.prcboston.org.

B+W @ Mpls Photo Center

Clicking on the link above (or here) should get you to a nice little Quicktime slideshow on MPC's site, showing the works I selected* for the Black and White juried exhibition that opens September 10 at Mpls Photo Center. If you're in Minnesota between 9/10 and 10/25, do try and find your way to MPC to see the show. From what I could tell, working with jpg files, it should be good.

They're also publishing a catalogue, with an essay I wrote about the selections. You'll find an order form for it down that page a little. Thanks to MPC for publishing this record of the show.


* Selected from 1,961 entries, a good warm-up for Critical Mass pre-screening, which I just completed this morning. That had over 5,000 photos. Talk about retinal exhaustion...

Pieter Hugo Redeemed

I was distrustful of his over-close, highly detailed records of light-skinned, Albino African faces that featured in his catalogue of facial portraits from 2005 and 2006. I liked his 2007 book, The Hyena and Other Men, quite a bit. I was put off by Nollywood, as I intimated in my review for photo-eye.

But this portfolio, "A Global Graveyard for Dead Computers in Ghana," on the New York Times web site brings me back into the Pieter Hugo fold. He's tied people to the post-industrial myth once again, but unlike the "dream machine" and its exemplary spear carriers that I cited in my Nollywood review, the situation in the Agbogbloshie dump in Accra, Ghana, is a waking nightmare, far more insidious and toxic. His photographs in this portfolio address both cause and complication, and veer just far enough from the people to address the dangers--burning computers, keyboards leaching metals into the ground, child laborers supporting distant families at sub-subsistence, scavenger pay.

Bravo, Pieter, and thanks.

Special thanks to Lori Waselchuk for circulating the link.

The Pencil of Nature at the University of Minnesota

Peter Martin with W. H. F. Talbot's Pencil of Nature in the Special Collections and Rare Books at the University of Minnesota's Andersen Library on the West Bank

My St. Paul friend Peter Martin, above, knew there was a copy. I had seen a copy, too, in a display case in the early 1990s that highlighted the very specialized Mertle Collection on the History of Photomechanics; Pencil, of course, was the first book illustrated with photographs, hence its inclusion in Mertle's unique assemblage. The library's special collections had experience a massive relocation into the caves, the carved-out storage area below Andersen Library, during the late 1990s. Peter wanted to show it to a class he was teaching in the early 2000s, but it was not to be found. AWOL, within the walls or outside, no one quite knew. But Peter kept pushing, kept requesting, kept nudging me and a couple of other photo folk to help pressure the U to locate and serve up this rare volume.

And it finally surfaced; not a complete copy, and in somewhat rough shape. But it included Talbot's well-known images and captions, and a surprise in the form of a paper negative. Peter printed the negative, and I may be able to persuade him to let me show it here. Can you imagine, though, having the chance to handle this masterpiece, this landmark of photographic history, in our hometown library, no less? It was a thrill to see it again, up close and in person, to hear how curator Tim Johnson found it tucked behind other material, and a credit to Peter's persistence that it reappeared.

William Wylie, Route 36

Bill called me when he was in Minneapolis in the late winter, during the waning weeks of a winter that didn't have much to say for itself in terms of notable Minnesota winters. The upside of global warming is the endurable, even boring, version of the winter season that's been the case the last several years.

Anyway, Bill was in town having a new book project printed by Shapco Printing. I offered to pick him up from the printer and take him to his hotel. I'd hoped to have had time to hang out over beers and a meal, but as it tends to do, time shrank to the point where all I could do is chauffeur him from one spot to another, and pause briefly in the hotel driveway to look at sheets hot off the Shapco presses.

I'd been eager to see Shapco's shop, as I'd been acquainted with their work over some time; my long-time designer for McKnight materials, Mike Lizama, used to do most of our printing there. Shapco is located in the shadow of the new Target Field in downtown Minneapolis; the stands loomed over my car as Bill sat in the front seat. I didn't get time to see inside. But Bill was extremely excited about the production, and mildly surprised to find such excellence in Minnesota. (I had to remind him about Litho Specialties.)

The book, Route 36, came out in June. Published by Flood Editions, a small (about a half-dozen titles per year) non-profit publisher in Chicago, it's a modestly-scaled but beautifully produced volume of photographs resulting from several road trips across Kansas. The light is summer, and fall, mostly light that you can feel, light that bears upon you as an almost physical force in these photographs and in the prairie and town spaces Wylie has captured. Elegant spaces, quiet and calm. Spectacularly unspectacular.

It is good to see such quality in an affordable, and affordably made, volume; accessibility is part of Flood's mission, and while they are publishing photography along with other types of books, they have affirmed, in Wiley's Route 36, a clear commitment to photography engaged in a dialogue about representing place. The promise evinced in the early sheets came through in the final book; thanks again, Bill, for calling.

A friend's gallery goes to the dogs

Panopticon Gallery: Wegman reception | A smashing success!:

My almost-colleague at the PRC, Jason Landry (he was the program manager just before I arrived to assume the curator role), has assembled a tremendous collection of William Wegman prints for a show in his space, Panopticon Gallery in the Commonwealth Hotel, just a few blocks from the PRC. Really, it's more of Man Ray and Fay Wray's descendants (biological and thematic) than I've seen all together, and it's a tribute to Jason's dedication to photographers and the medium.

Interesting historical background note about Jason and Panopticon. Jason took over the gallery from Tony Decaneas this spring; he left the post at the PRC in order to do this. Tony had run the gallery for years and years. One of the artists he represented at the gallery (and still supervises the estate of) is Ernest Withers. When I became the artistic director of MCP in 2003, the show that was up at the time was of work by Withers, borrowed from Panopticon. The wheel keeps turning...

p.s. There's a snap of me (by PRC intern YoonJoo Kim) and Jason at the last PRC opening on Flickr.

"Forester's Child, 1931" by August Sander, in "Children of Summer," at Bell

On page 14 in the July 26 issue, The New Yorker runs a darker, browner version of this photograph by August Sander. I'd never seen it before. I find it enchanting, magical even. It points at something I've been mulling about recently--what, truly, are the most compelling photographs about?

This one is, at first level, about the child, the bike, the dog, the hut, and the empty fields and treeline in the background. It's also about Sander, and his typological project; we imagine his checklist of German faces getting one item shorter as we read the caption.

But when I see this photograph, this ink image on paper and its digital corollary on screen, what occurs to me is that it is about balance. It's about the effort to get this child fixed on the crossbar, holding on to the handlebars just so, about placing the dog to obscure a kickstand or other device holding this bicycle upright. Maybe the dog is the device.

Regardless, what I see in this picture, made the year my father was born, is composition, the net effect of all the factors that contribute to its presence. The child's face is dead center in the frame, while the father's occupation, the forest, looms in the background while his best friend's two front paws hold it all erect. Sunlight and relatively shallow depth of field kept the exposure mercifully short; could child, dog, and bicycle have remained still much longer?

Hence, balance is what I see here. Balance, composition, composure, exposure. And a miracle of light that brings the child to us, fresh and amazing.


The group exhibition at Deborah Bell Photographs, on West 25th in Chelsea, runs into August. Link for more info.

fictographica005: Wilfred Eng

For much of his life he had operated a commercial portrait studio on Grant Street in San Francisco, which he occasionally closed to indulge his famous wanderlust. Among the Aperture images reprinted from the 1870s was a picture made in that studio of a Chinese woman and her son seated on the same divan as the one in the self-portraits. The pattern of the fabric matched. A small tear appeared in one corner. When I bent over the broken plate with a loupe, I saw the same tear and said, "Holy shit," out loud. The five self-portraits had been made in San Francisco  and must have been brought here some time later. Eng must have brought them himself. Given that they were cumbersome and easily broken, I wondered why he'd bothered. Vanity, maybe. "This man loves his mirrors," Alfred Stieglitz had observed when the two first met. In 1912 he had invited Eng to show at his 291 Gallery, which had marked the beginning of their prickly friendship. "Wherever we walked, even along busy streets," Stieglitz wrote, "he was forever giving bird-like twitches of his head in order to catch glimpses of himself in shop windows."

--The Lost Glass Plates of Wilfred Eng