Why should a meaningful piece of artwork take two days, two months, two years, or possibly much longer, to create? Why do we need to wait for the right inspiration, the right moment, or gather materials we have no idea how to use to create a piece of individual expression to hang on our walls?
…the constraints of time, finances, and physical or mental disposition no longer need to be our barriers. Braintone Art offers an alternative means of creating art…
via Braintone Art.
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Photographer: Derek Kettela
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted
My photographs, almost always Include people. Pictures of most ‘things,’ even lovely landscapes or seascapes, I find overwhelmingly boring. Rarely are these pictures of anything that I haven’t seen before. People pictures, on the other hand, are never the same.
My father reads this column each week. He enjoys it, though he’d probably read even if he found it boring. He’s proud, sure, but he says that he learns things about me and my life that he wouldn’t otherwise know. I suppose that’s a solid, 21st Century definition of irony, as the two of us live in the same town.
He mentioned the other day that he likes the style I’ve slowly adopted. A few paragraphs that initially seem random, or perhaps self-absorbed, then a sexy segue, and finally an actual review of an actual book. My first thought was to burn the house down, if my tropes were so obvious, but he advocated for stability. People, he felt, appreciate the mix of repetition and renewal. Perhaps that’s true.
But I don’t mention my father simply to conduct one more meta-riff on the absurdity of writing about myself and photo-books at the same time. He’s in a tough spot right now, my old man, currently battling the triple-whammy of tooth infection, shredded-knee, and ruined back. He can’t have surgery on the knee until the infection clears, and then needs an operation on his back, but not until the knee heals. He’s gritting his teeth (Sorry, horrible pun,) and dealing the best he can. Not-quite-stoic-suffering runs in the family, a genetic chain back to ever-miserable relatives in the ghettos of Eastern Europe.
Humans, incredibly resilient, have adapted different solutions to the problem of terminal misery. Heaven. Meade. Weed. Video Games. All share the common denominator of distraction. Look at the pretty red cloth, Mr. Bull, and ignore the sword heading right into your neck. Whatever the coping strategy, people keep pro-creating, and suffering persists.
Donald Weber seems to know a thing or two about suffering, and its lack of inherent nobility. People eat shit everywhere, every day, and do the best they can to aid in its digestion. With dignity. When possible. His new book, “Interrogations,” was just released by Schilt Publishing in Amsterdam. Pop it out of its intentionally generic cardboard shell, and its pink cover will surprise you immediately. As does its calender-like vertical orientation. (And its “poor”, or at least “not-slick” publication quality. Proletarian sensibilities and all.)
The photographs inside, along with a truly well-written essay by Larry Frolick, (In the Epilogue) were made in Russia and the Ukraine earlier in the decade. After a slew of establishment photos in the Prologue, bleak snow, junkyard dogs and the like, the main meal consists of a series of photographs of sad, terrified, and forlorn men and women in generic rooms. Given the title, they seem to be reliving or recounting tales of beatings, bitch-slaps and bedlam. One imagines the emotions to be real, regenerated upon reflection. But I suppose it’s never totally explained. Not necessary. Point taken.
I’ve reviewed several books already, and one MOMA exhibition, detailing life in former Iron Curtain. I think I even mentioned, last time, that it seemed to be one seriously ubiquitous subject, of late. No matter. Whether it’s mindless horror movies at the Mega-plex, dramatic dragon paintings in a British Museum (more on that later), or bleakly violent Eastern European photo-books, people will always, always be fascinated by the dark.
Bottom Line: Creatively made, striking publication
To purchase Interrogations visit Photo-Eye
Full Disclosure: Books are provided by Photo-Eye in exchange for links back for purchase. Submissions are not accepted.
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Photographer: Tesh
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted
Still Images In Great Advertising, is a column where Suzanne Sease discovers great advertising images and then speaks with the photographers about it.
I came across this campaign and it really hit home for me. I remember a hotel I stayed at in Chinatown that looked great on the website, but when we checked in the Queens Bridge was right next to it- I mean, right next to it. Some rooms had the subway racing right outside your window. I reached out to the photographer, Jonathan May to find out more about this campaign. The interesting thing about Jonathan’s work on his site was that all categories are personal except for one for his advertising work. But, I could see the connection between personal images and the work he was hired to create. This is always the result of a brilliant art director or art buyer.
Google Maps Street View “Know before you Go” campaign awarded a silver for print in The Moscow International Advertising ‘Red Apple’ Festival 2011, it was also awarded a silver at The Epica Awards (Europe’s premier creativity award). And was also a finalist in the Eurobest Awards and featured on the Best Ads website.
Suzanne: I went to your website and like how you show mostly personal work but I see how it is the inspiration to the commissioned work you have been hired. Have you ever been hired by an American agency? Or do you find that if an American agency doesn’t see it, they aren’t sure how to hire you?
Jonathan: When I first started visiting agencies I had two portfolios, one was for personal work, and the other for commissioned. I quickly noticed how art directors and buyers were instinctively drawn to the personal book first. I realized the importance of having a strong body of personal work because that is what expresses your vision and creative ability. Further, it illustrates the point of difference that you can offer and that sets you apart from the next person who knocks on their door. I was very careful at picking which commission work I want to display on my website. I wanted to make sure that it is not too far divorced from my personal point of view and style. This is also the reason I decided to exclude branding and logos from my commissioned work.
In terms of being hired by an American agency I haven’t pushed myself too hard in that region, but I have worked with Goodby Silverstein and Partners (San Francisco) on a month long job, shooting all around Australia for the Commonwealth Bank. The images can be seen on my website under the division “Rural Australia”. I am originally from Sydney and have recently relocated to Europe so am currently focusing on that region. My long term goal, however, is to work in the States. About 8 years ago, my mentor http://www.photography-arc.com.au and good friend asked me: “What do you want to do with your life?” and my response was “I want to be a photographer in New York” and he said: “the only thing stopping you is yourself”. So I am driving myself in that direction.
Suzanne: I wish the agency had used you in the other two ads and see a difference in the style. Do you think you could have added a more human element to the other ones? And how did you shoot this one?
Jonathan: The Sex Shop image concept was by far the simplest. It was all shot in camera. The only element I had to shoot and then drop in is the hotel awning and sign. The beauty of photographing everything is being able to control the depth of field and overall sharpness of the images. When the agency is searching for photolibrary images they need to bear this in mind and then of course the constant struggle of trying to find images with matching light intensity and direction. I think the agency and retouchers have done a sterling job on making everything in the other concepts look believable.
Suzanne: Google is International and I would love to see this ad being picked up for a global campaign. Have you ever reached out to the other agencies that have the account?
Jonathan: I will be speaking to the agency down the track, once the award season is finished, it seems to be doing very well in Europe so far.
Note: Content for Still Images In Great Advertising is found. Submissions are not accepted.
Jonathan May studied photography in Australia where he received several awards for his work. Recently he has been voted into Lurzers Archive (2011, 2012/13) as one of the top 200 international advertising photographers and has relocated to Moscow where wife has an acting job for a year.
“Spoek used one of my images for a mix tape without asking my permission,” Hugo told me. “I phoned him up to berate him—turned out he was recording a new album around the corner from my studio. He came to the studio to discuss our dilemma, and by the time he left I agreed to do music video for him. He’s a super sweet talker.”
— Spoek Mathambo, “Control,” directed by Pieter Hugo and Michael Cleary.
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Photographer: Andrew Hetherington
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted
Heidi: How long did the shoot take, was it like a frat party?
Andrew: The shoot happened back in December at the Maxim office right before the holidays so there was a very festive atmosphere as you could imagine. Staff, invited guests and Maxim girls took part. The shoot took most of the day, as did the build. We did three main set ups; beginning, middle and end of the process as well as some reportage of the behind the scenes goings on. There were just as many people behind the camera as in front at times.
You can see a time lapse here
How many of those cans of beer did they drink on set?
Hard to say, but probably close to 1000 on and off set. There were 365 cans in the Beeramid itself.
Was it hard to build the can pyramid, it doesn’t look like it ever fell over and got restacked, is that right?
The photo editor Jane Seymour and her crew took care of the build. Jane worked with Art Director Paul Scirecalabrisotto in advance and he designed a diagram that illustrated what cans should be in what row, and where their placement should be depending on size (there were probably about 10 different sizes the cans), how many cans would be in each row and how many rows in the pyramid. The can’s were empty and stuck together with hot glue. It was pretty solid and never fell over. The Beeramid is still up to this day, on display in their front entrance. It’s quite a piece; almost 12 feet wide, 10 feet high. Worth the pilgrimage for any beer lover.
What’s your favorite canned beer?
I gotta say I really enjoy a cold canned Negra Modelo Especial at the moment from the can or a Guinness poured into a glass.
Pinterest, the hot new social sharing platform has a serious problem when it comes to the medium it’s designed to share. Despite careful wording on their about page that you agree not to post, upload, publish, submit, provide access to or transmit any content that infringes, misappropriates or violates a third party’s copyright… many (most) of the images on the site do just that. Several lawyers have weighed in on the controversy advising:
“…you should never pin an image on Pinterest for which you don’t own the copyright interest or for which you have not obtained a license from the copyright owner.”
— Jonathan Pink, a California-based intellectual property lawyer with Bryan Cave LLP via, WSJ.
Federal copyright laws give the author of any copyrighted work (which includes photographs and copyright attaches automatically as soon as the work is created) the sole and exclusive right to publish and reproduce such work. So, basically, when you see a photograph that you love, you do not have any right to publish or reproduce that photograph unless you took the photo or got consent from the photographer to use the photo.
…in my humble opinion, the only “safe” conclusion here, for me, is to either get off of Pinterest or pin only your own work or work you have a license to use.
— Kirsten Kowalski via, ddkportraits.com
If that’s not enough, Pinterest CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann has completely deleted his boards: http://pinterest.com/ben/ even though he was named #2 in a list of 21 must follow Pinterest users on mashable.com.
On the flip side we have a very exciting way to share photography that some photographers like:
Photographers need to look beyond their own nose when it comes to social media web sites and copyright concerns. I’ve written about a fair number of photography rights grabs here on my blog and there have certainly been cases where there have been egregious violations of copyright that photographers should have been concerned about. By and large Pinterest has not proven to me they fit in that category. In addition social media web sites and the Internet as a whole are great tools to be exploited by photographers. Don’t be afraid of having your work seen. If you look beyond your own nose you’ll see these new tools and sites can be creatively applied to enhance your business versus kill it. Being creative isn’t just about taking photos its about creatively enabling your work to be found.
— Jim M. Goldstein via, Pinterest – Seeing beyond your own nose
I even have it on good authority that top creative directors are actively pinning and competing to have the most creative boards. My source tells me that it’s not impossible to imagine a future where your pin board is part of your resume.
So, I agree that there’s potential here to make a great service for sharing, driving traffic to, and bookmarking photographers. But they just haven’t figured out how to do it without running afoul of copyright laws.
Then there’s the separate matter of their heinous terms:
We may, in our sole discretion, permit Members to post, upload, publish, submit or transmit Member Content. By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services. Cold Brew Labs does not claim any ownership rights in any such Member Content and nothing in these Terms will be deemed to restrict any rights that you may have to use and exploit any such Member Content.
Facebook has similar terms:
For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
And so does Twitter:
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).
My prediction is that before they get sued into oblivion they will figure out a reasonable way to get it to work. But for those who think whiny photographers or outdated copyright laws are to blame, I’ll leave you with one last set of quotes to chew on:
For the first 1,500 years of the last two millennia, man was generally poor. Though there were empires and kingdoms, the gross world product (GWP) was largely flat. For generations, people did not experience any major change in their living standards.
And then something changed: the Western world introduced stronger property rights, including intellectual property rights, which allowed people to pursue new ideas, firm in the knowledge that success could bring financial rewards.
Today, all of the contemporary advanced economies have strong property rights, and data shows a strong correlation between property rights, productivity, living standards and innovation.
via Ndubuisi Ekekwe – Harvard Business Review.
thx, Jeremy
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Photographer: Michael Friberg
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted
Congratulations to this years class of 30 photographers to watch:
Mustafah Abdulaziz
Jenn Ackerman
Kyle Alexander
Meiko Takechi Arquillos
Michele Borzoni
Dominic Bracco II
Peter DiCampo
Eliot Dudik
Sarah Elliott
Mark Fisher
LaToya Ruby Frazier
Misha Friedman
Andrea Gjestvang
Mark Hartman
Lauren Hermele
Ingalls Photography
JUCO
Sam Kaplan
Peter Ash Lee
Sebastián Liste
Mark Mahaney
Chloe Dewe Mathews
Ilvy Njiokiktjien
Ryan Pfluger
Markel Redondo
AnaStasia Rudenko
Daniel Shea
Jake Stangel
Christopher Testani
Yasu+Junko
Photojournalism has changed incredibly over the past decade and in many ways we have been bombed back to Year Zero. The thing is that most of us have been forced to reinvent ourselves as visual storytellers and for many (including me) this transition has not been easy.
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Photographer: Richard Phibbs
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted
The story of Seth Casteel and his diving dog photos is the perfect example of what happens when something goes viral and the person is prepared to take advantage of it. Seth was your typical on-the-move freelance photographer when he created the now famous underwater images of dogs diving in a pool after balls. As you’ll see in the story below by Wired on the Raw File blog, he was prepared to handle all the inquiries about him and his work, because he’d teamed up with the good people at Tandem Stills + Motion to handle licensing and PR. While it’s impossible to make something go viral or predict when it might happen it’s good to know professionals can turn all that attention into business.
On that fateful February 9th, the photos mysteriously landed on Reddit, Facebook, Google+ and then Warholian, becoming one of the hottest trends amongst viewers on at least five or six continents.
More than 1,000 people all over the world have subsequently asked him to shoot photos of their pets. He’s got a line of publishing houses fighting to get the rights to his forthcoming book of underwater dog photos, and he’s made appearance on, or in, most major American news publications from the The New York Times to Good Morning America.
He credits his licensing and PR firm, Tandem Stills + Motion, with successfully converting his new audience. Where many internet stars fade away after a few days of intense popularity, his firm capitalized on the traffic by handling most of Casteel’s business transactions and press requests.
“The business side is so important because you can have something go viral and be silly about it and you won’t make a dollar off it,” Casteel says. “Without [Tandem Stills + Motion] it would have been a fail.”
via Diving Dogs Are Good Catch for Photographer | Raw File | Wired.com.
there’s nothing more liberating than shooting in a new place, spontaneously, without planning, lighting or agenda. It’s what drew us to photography in the first place. Personal work is what recharges us.
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Photographer: Jack Thompson
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted
It’s 4 something in the morning, and I ought to be asleep right now. Instead, I’m staring at a computer screen. (Insert pathetic attempt at humor here.) Why? I’m shaking the last vestiges of a nasty case of jet lag. Such a small, almost elegant term. What it really means is, you feel like your liver and stomach are doing battle for supremacy of your viscera. Your head hurts, it’s hard to complete a sentence, and you see a little man out of the corner of your eye who’s never actually there. (OK, I made that last part up.)
The human body was not designed for Inter-Continental air travel. Don’t bother arguing the point. It used to take someone like me a week to horse it down to Albuquerque, and now I can make it in a couple of hours. Technology has fundamentally changed the way our bodies interact with time, and mine still clings to GMT, for some odd reason.
So here I am, watching words miraculously appear in front of me, one at a time, as they march from my mind to you, our most excellent Global readership. Now that I have your attention, and have admitted that my half-mad ravings ought to be understood within a particular context, we might as well talk about a book, no?
As you’ll soon find out, I was in London last week, eating, drinking, and seeing lots of fantastic things. All to report back to you, in a series of upcoming features. Stay tuned. One thing I can say, straightaway, is that weight of history there is palpable, as is the awareness of all those people who’ve previously trod the ground on which you stand. As photographers, we’ve all visited old cities before, or battlefields, or former nuclear test sites. Places sanctified by blood. We accept that a spot of ground can radiate emotion well after some dark moment occurred in the past.
Deborah Luster researched and visited a series of such places for her new book, “Tooth For An Eye,” published in 2011 by Twin Palms. Except her collection of locales would otherwise have been anonymous, spots where people were murdered across the city of New Orleans. Such a grim concept, mashed together in such a beautiful volume. Like I said last week, I like to be surprised.
This book is over-sized yet slim, the front and back cover mirror images of luminous birds on wires, white on gray. Lovely. As to the grayscale theme, it continues inside. Each double-page spread contains a sheet of text on the left, and a circular, black and white photographic image on the right. The text, hand-written on a sort-of-bureaucratic-looking-form, details the victim, and the manner in which they were killed. The photos depict the location.
Would we care about the photographs without knowing the tragic back-story? I ask the question only to debunk it, because it really doesn’t matter. We do know what happened, and that’s the point. A great book has a story to tell, whether delivered by words, pictures, or both. But yes, the photographs are poignant enough that they’d hold attention regardless. As to the circular shape, well, I might always see the world through that prism if the last thing I saw was the barrel of a gun. (Yes, that’s a bit of a metaphorical stretch, but then again, it’s 4 something in the morning.)
I’m not big on rankings, but this might just be the best book I’ve reviewed yet. The photographs are powerful, the artist is staring down the macabre, and not blinking. As an object, you want to pick it up again and again, seduced by it’s desire to memorialize people who far to often fade away as if they were never here. And those birds on those wires, glowing on the cover, re-appear as the last photo in the book. Brian Christopher Smith, age 22, killed on July 14, 2009. He was found face up, and died of multiple gunshot wounds. That is all.
Bottom Line: Brilliant book, enough said
To purchase “Tooth For An Eye” visit Photo-Eye
Full Disclosure: Books are provided by Photo-Eye in exchange for links back for purchase.
Books are found in the bookstore and submissions are not accepted.