This Week In Photography Books – Viviane Sassen

by Jonathan Blaustein

I’m addicted to Project Runway. There, I said it. Since the beginning, I’ve been beguiled by the tangential relation to the fashion world. So close, and yet so far.

To make matters worse, a few years ago, my wife began subscribing to Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Which means I can now recognize Michael Kors style from Burberry. And as to the models? It’s pathetic that I can name drop Karlie Kloss, Lara Stone, Karmen Pedaru, and more. My good friend Melanie mocked when I correctly recognized Karen Elson in a photo she shared on FB.

The industry may be leagues away from my little horse pasture, but the fantasy and feast of consumerism still make sense. This is America, after all. Selling fancy clothes is not that much different than selling beer. Like everything else, it’s all about the Benjamins.

Lately, the worlds of art and fashion seem closer than ever before. Exhibitions laud both, and the upper class consumers that buy one luxury good often buy the other. What has that got to do with us?

Well, I just had a look at Viviane Sassen’s new book “Roxane.” (It took me three glances to realize it was spelled non-traditionally. Thereby depriving me of any jokes about putting on the Red Light.)

The book is cool, no doubt. And it doesn’t really make any sense, in a narrative sort of way. Which is not a problem to me. It just adds to the off-putting vibe that so many fashion mags court anyway. Feel bad about yourself for being too fat or poor, and then buy this Hermes scarf to feel better. (Ah, capitalism.)

The awkward poses are straight off the runway, as are the clothes and the strange-but-hot heroine. Throw in the natural landscape locations, and the obligatory Paris reference, and you’re good to go. Sarcasm aside, though, I do like the photographs very much.
The poses are sculptural, and the mood is almost surreal.

Ms. Sassen is in demand these days, from MoMA to the fashion houses. And the last-page-thank-you notes, which name drop Celine, Nina Ricci, Maison Martin Margiela and a few others, leave no doubt about that. No Marchesa, though. Pity. A few pictures of Georgina Chapman would have definitely put the book over the top.

Bottom Line: Fashiony photos of fashion as art

To Purchase Roxane 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.

 

Texas Roundup Part 2: Kate Breakey at the Wittliff Collections

by Jonathan Blaustein

Everybody loves a good idea. The best are often simple and elegant. What if we could build a machine to let people fly like birds? What if people could fit their entire music library in the palm of their hand? What if we could all share tiny bits of information, for free, with anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world?

Good ideas would not exist without their counterparts: bad ones. The worst are often genius, in a bad is good kind of way. (i.e., the mullet.) Most often, though, they’re just plain bad. For a while, my favorite bad idea occurred when I was hired to photograph the bloody slaughter of some local New Mexican cows. My client was a restaurant that wanted to use the snuff pictures to market hamburgers and steaks. Not surprisingly, they are now out of business.

As high as that one might rank, though, while driving from Houston to San Marcos, Texas the other week, I witnessed the granddaddy of all horrible ideas. El numero uno. El jefe. The boss.

I was headed NW on Highway 80, between the little town of Luling, and San Marcos. En route to the Texas State campus, I was excited to see Kate Breakey’s new exhibition, Las Sombras/The Shadows, at the Wittliff Collections.

While carefully minding the speed limit, as I was reminded many times that Texas cops are best avoided, there it was, just off the road to the East. I saw the wrecked plane before anything else. Like the car crashes I mentioned in last week’s column, plane crashes, while less frequently seen by the side of the highway, are equally riveting.

The plane had a crumpled nose, mushed into the dead grass. (Well, sir, you have my attention.) Next, I saw the sign next to it… for skydiving lessons. The hanger loomed in the background, like a kid at a soccer game, ashamed of his dad for berating the ref. Shall I summarize? A company that sells sky-diving lessons thought it wise to advertise said services with a plane crash. I have to nominate this as the worst idea of all time. Anyone care to disagree?

Without bad ideas, though, there would be no such things as good ones. (Yin, yang, etc.) And Kate Breakey’s exhibit was the perfect antidote to the ridiculous wreckage. Should you live anywhere in Texas, or plan to visit Houston, San Antonio, or Austin before July 7th, I’d recommend that you drive to San Marcos to check out the show.

I’d seen an installation of Ms. Breakey’s work at the excellent Etherton Gallery in Tucson back in 2010. I was intrigued. The taste whetted my appetite, and was the impetus for my 3 hour trek through Texas.

Speaking of appetite, I was fortunate to stop at Luling City Market for some of the best Texas barbecue on Earth. It’s so good, when I pulled up outside the joint, a fat man jumped out of a still-moving mini-van next to me, so excited was he to stuff his face. The sealed smokehouse in the back of the restaurant offered some seriously brilliant meat. Cows and pigs, which I rarely eat, called out to my rumbling innards, and insisted they make their way inside my belly. Mission accomplished. (What would a Texas series be w/o at least one George W. reference?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve always been fascinated by the dichotomy between animals and meat. Alive, they’re animals. Living creatures. Sentient beings. They moo and oink and quack and baa. Dead, they’re food. We don’t call them animals anymore. But if you don’t want to eat them, or kill them, or sell them, there are yet other ways to enjoy a good carcass.

A few years ago, Ms. Breakey got the great idea to pick roadkill and other dead things up off the ground, and turn them into art via the simple, direct process of a photogram. (Talk about preservation technique.) The resulting images do justice to the realities of nature: death is the inevitable conclusion to the cycle of life. And it also perpetuates the food chain, in each and every ecosystem. Bug eats grass, lizard eats bug, bird eats lizard, bobcat eats bird.

There are over two hundred images on display, in different sizes and random vintage frames. Save mountain lions, wolves, bears and humans, the biggest predators around, we see as categorical a display as I can imagine of life and death in the mythical American West. Snakes and birds and mice and rats and frogs and javelinas and foxes and leaves and everything in between. (Including the ominous vultures, which were everywhere in Texas.)

The exhibition map gives all the specific names, but dead, in shadow and repose, there is no way to tell the difference between a yellow-billed cuckoo and a black-throated sparrow. They all just look beautiful, and a little bit horrible as well. The basic human fascinations with collecting, categorizing, preserving, memorializing, and fetishizing are all interwoven.

Some animals repeat, but I was told no two prints are alike. The vultures are huge, as are the coyotes, but the bald eagle is the picture guaranteed to grab your attention. (Like a crashed plane by the side of the road. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) Apparently, the eagle photo was the most difficult to obtain, as bald eagles rarely drop dead in front of roaming photographers. But strings were pulled, and there you go.

The group of photographs, which I enjoyed in a large, empty gallery, with the subtle sounds of the air conditioning unit in the background, is absolutely fantastic. As a resident of the Southwest, I can attest that the fascination of living in the midst a raw and dangerous natural world is real. If you bump into the wrong creature on the wrong day, you might just end up dead yourself. But the ability to communicate those feelings via art is extremely difficult.

I’d heartily suggest that those of you who can see the show do. There are a few parking spaces reserved for visitors to the Wittliff Collections, in a parking structure under the college library. Kids on skateboards will whizz by you, daring you to hit them with your tiny rental car. (I came so close.) The gallery is on the seventh floor of the library building, and the entry way welcomes you with classic Southwestern decor, including a Saltillo tile floor.

One installation in said entryway was a particular favorite. An eagle, a snake, and a cactus were brought together again. Otherwise known as the sign that led some bloodthirsty Aztecs to found Tenochtitlan so many years ago. (Now Mexico City.) Of course, this wouldn’t be a good story if I hadn’t seen an eagle with a snake in its mouth fly over my shrimpy rental car on the way out of town. Is this true? Do you have to ask?

Texas Roundup, Part 1

by Jonathan Blaustein

Last week, I wrote a column that tried to tell it like it is. The world we inhabit, one that revolves around photography, is painfully un-diverse. Here in the United States, those in the profession are very, very likely to only interact with others of a similar background. (And skin color, sadly.)

While I left room for the exceptions, the fact that there seem to be so few is troubling. How do we change this? Whether it’s people complaining about all-white competition-jurys, all-male Superbowl commercials, or writers like me scrambling to review books by women and minorities, the numbers are obviously skewed. What to do?

The only answer I’ve been able to glean is to do some boots-on-the-ground style outreach. As I’ve said before, I spent seven years teaching photography to at-risk minority youth. I’ve done the work, and seen how easily art concepts can become embedded in young minds of any color or gender.

Another tried-and-true methodology is to honestly examine one’s own biases, and then try to challenge them. Most of us have a hard time admitting to negative preferences or stereotypes. Not a pleasant conversation to have with oneself.

Looking inward, I had to admit I was biased against Texans. (Here in New Mexico, it’s a state passion.) As I mentioned in a column a month or so ago, after years of seeing Texan plates on personal Tour Buses towing Hummers, it was easy to get angry. Throw in the bluster and big belt-buckles, and I can honestly say I was proud of the hate.

Whether geographically, racially, or gender-based, it’s not OK to dislike people en masse. (Obviously.) So I was thrilled to spend a little time in Houston last year, and realize that my pre-conceptions were off. I didn’t hate Texans, just the folks in the Dallas to Amarillo corridor. And even in Texas, that seems to be an established sentiment. (Yes, I am now mostly joking.)

As much as I enjoyed last year’s taste of Texas toast, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to re-visit H-town last week. I even planned a little road trip up to Central Texas for a quick visit to über-hip Austin. (Did I listen to some country music along the way? You bet I did. KNRG, the Renegade, is all Texas music, all the time. The first three songs I heard were all anti-urban. (Including a hysterical mockery of the aforemetioned Dallas.))

To be clear, this article is but an introduction to a series, like we did with San Francisco late last year. (How’s that for polar opposites?) I saw some fantastic art exhibitions, met with some intelligent, friendly and unpretentious art professionals, and ate some truly amazing food. Basically, I had a great time. From Texas hater to convert in 10 short months.

Before I leave you, though, I want to share one of my thin-sliced-stereotypical observations. I can’t take advantage of it myself, being chained by mortgage and blood to this extraordinary piece of rural paradise I call home. But some of you can. So here it goes.

Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States. The three cities above it, NYC, LA, and Chicago, are famously expensive. Houston is not. They are also known for exclusivity, and make it difficult to break into established networks, lacking the proper school connections and/or friend lists. Houston is extremely open and accessible, from what I’ve seen. (And the FotoFest Biennial provides entry to all comers.)

Beyond that, Houston has the kind of financial and cultural resources that exist in very few places in the world. Its economy is booming, and ought to continue to grow, as the energy sector is unlikely to wither. The port, connected to the city via the shipping channel, is also thriving. (And global trade is not going away any time soon.) The unemployment rate is below 6%, and the median income is over $70,000 per year. (Thank you for the statistics, Houston Public Radio.) Essentially, the place is leaking money.

The city is vast and diverse, with massive immigrant and minority communities, including Vietnamese, African-American, and Latino. It’s like a Texan Los Angeles in scope, minus the mountains and oceans. (Of attitude.) It’s the perfect place to encounter those from backgrounds different than yours: a city where biases go to die.

I noticed vacant commercial real estate everywhere; storefronts just waiting to be turned into artist-run galleries or commercial photo studios. I also spoke with an artist/curator who produces art shows for those downtown mega-corporate-skyscrapers that I mentioned in last year’s article. While state funding for the arts has been cut, (it is still Texas,) the public-private combination seems to offer insane amounts of cash and opportunities for the local community.

In the parlance of economics, Houston is an undervalued resource: a city just waiting for a fresh round of hipster-style-gentrification. And if you doubt me, you can trust Forbes magazine, which listed Houston as the coolest city in America in 2011. I’m not sure what their criteria was, and it’s likely to be very different from mine. (As Forbes itself is actually uncool.) But you can bet there will be a proverbial gold rush of 20-something energy-sector/hedge-fund yuppies who’ll rush down there due to Forbes’ blessing.

Who are they to you? Will they be your new friends, if you move to H-town? Probably not. Would you find them “cool,” in their khakis and button down polo shirts? It’s unlikely. (Again with the stereotyping.) But might they make up the bulk of your collector base, or client base, for decades to come? Now you’re getting the picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Week In Photography Books – Rikard Laving

by Jonathan Blaustein

We’re all middle class, aren’t we? We, the creative class, were reared to have options. Here in America, at least, if you’re reading this, you’re probably white, and you likely grew up comfortable. (If you were upper class, you’d be reading Frieze, and planning to jet off to Dubai to take some sun.)

In case you’re wondering, I am aware that one of these days my penchant for stereotyping might just get me into trouble. But until then, I will endeavor to keep it real. If you grew up with enough education to become a photographer, or an editor, or an art buyer, it’s unlikely that you come from a dirt poor rural spot of nothing, or a gritty inner-city ghetto.

I believe our respective middle-ness is a big driver for the need many photographers have to visit emerging nations to document poverty. (And violence. And misery.) The obsession with “The Other” is well-worn. On the flip side, our mission to share truth and reality with the wider world, through our respective media outlets, often comes from noble roots.

Seriously, how many of you have a colleague who rose up from nothing to become an artist? Or a journalist? Of course it’s possible, but I’d suggest that for those with little or nothing, the desperate need to ensure survival supersedes the desire to make pretty, or important pictures. Given how much I believe in the power of Art, would that it were different. But class matters, as does one’s home turf.

I got to thinking about this, having just put down “Steel Work City,” a new book by Rikard Laving. (Journal) If bleak beauty is your thing, this is one to buy. If you love a peek into how the other half lives, those who toil thanklessly in dirty industry to make the cash to buy food, pay for gas, and perhaps have time to fish a bit on the weekends, then this one is for you as well.

The slim volume opens with a lovely poem by Mattias Alkberg, in Swedish, and then English. To be fair, you don’t know it takes place in Sweden until the end notes. The initial viewing provides a generic, cold, Scandinavian experience. Sitting here in New Mexico, it could have been Finland, Norway, or Denmark for all I knew. (It’s funny that some neighboring countries have internecine rivalries, but all look the same from the other side of the planet.)

But Sweden it is. The narrative is based at the Swedish Steel AB compound in Oxelösund, and the surrounding areas. (It employs 54% of the local population.) Lots of billowing smoke, modernist institutional architecture, and gray light. In the wrong hands, the material could easily be bland and banal. Instead, I was hooked.

This book is a great example, (as was last week’s,) of what happens when everything comes together. The production quality, the text, the graphic design, the use of suspense. (Where is this? What’s going on?) I loved that each image was allowed to breathe on the page, and that the titles gave me the info I needed just below.

The subtle color shifts communicate cold, and even boredom. The school children pictures truly surprise, as we see that diversity has hit this sleepy little area. It’s not just a bunch of little Aryan kids. Who knew?

I’ll readily admit that bleak beauty doesn’t do it for everyone. Some folks prefer otters and ocelots. Cacti and chameleons. Boobs and bikinis. Why not?

But I love the experience of opening up a photo-book, and being reminded how lucky I was to be born with options, in spitting distance of the most powerful city in the World. (Here’s your shout-out, NYC. Enjoy the mantle while you’ve still got it.) It’s a big part of why I worked so hard for seven years to share the power of Art with kids less fortunate than I was. The other reason, unsurprisingly, was that the bills needed paying. I’m a working stiff too. Thankfully, though, my fingernails are clean, and my hands are as soft as a baby’s belly.

Bottom Line: Lyrical, bleak life in a Swedish Steel town

To Purchase “Steel Work City” 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.

 

Jennifer Shaw Interview

by Jonathan Blaustein

Jennifer Shaw is a fine art photographer based in New Orleans. Her project Hurricane Story was published in 2011 by Chin Music Press. She is represented by Guthrie Contemporary in New Orleans, and by Jennifer Schwartz Gallery in Atlanta. Ms. Shaw also teaches photography, and is the director of the photoNOLA festival.

Jonathan Blaustein: Did you ever watch the Jetsons when you were a kid?

Jennifer Shaw: Uh-huh.

JB: When you were watching people talking to each other on screens, did you ever think it would happen in your lifetime?

JS: Not really.

JB: And here we are.

JS: It’s my second Skype conversation ever.

JB: Ever? I’m honored that I pushed you to do something new. I just used a bank drive-thru window for the first time in my life. Sometimes technology is scarier than it ought to be. I always thought I was too dumb to figure it out, but it wasn’t that hard.

Do you use the drive-thru window?

JS: Of course.

JB: Everybody had it figured out but me. You are in New Orleans right now, as we speak.

JS: Right.

JB: But I saw in your bio that you were born in Indiana, and raised in Milwaukee. So you are a child of the great Mid-West.

JS: Correct.

JB: What brought you to NOLA?

JS: I graduated from art school. I don’t know if you went to art school, but there’s not exactly some great corporate job lined up waiting for you. It’s more of a decision of where you want to go to make a life as an artist. I always had this fascination with New Orleans. You know, the mystique. The Crescent City.

I decided after one last long, bitter winter in Rhode Island that I was going to move South. I came down here, and here I am.

JB: How long ago was that?

JS: 1994.

JB: 1994? Old school. I was just in New Orleans for photoNOLA, which all of our regular readers will know. When I do these travel pieces, I don’t have a lot of time to make observations. I keep my eyes open, and talk to people. It works. But the downside is that I’m making judgements based on a really thin slice of reality.

I wrote a piece about the city booming with money and energy and galleries. Putting Katrina in the past. That was a spot observation. I have to admit that I could be really wrong. Just because Mercedes Benz is sponsoring the Superdome…was I rushing to judgement? Or are things doing really well down there, as I surmised?

JS: New Orleans is always a mixed bag. There are parts of New Orleans that are doing really well, but there are still some areas that haven’t fully recovered from Katrina. But culturally, we’re definitely in a beautiful, Post-Katrina boom.

The arts scene is thriving. It’s always been healthy, but especially now. The St. Claude arts district is new. A lot of artist-run co-operative-type things going on. So that’s exciting.

JB: So I wasn’t completely off base?

JS: No, no.

JB: Because that was your opportunity to tell me I was full of shit in my article from a few weeks back.

JS: (laughing) No. I loved your observations.

JB: It’s 2013, so we’re coming up on almost 20 years of you living there. Is this boom unprecedented in your time in the city?

JS: I think so. A lot of the larger institutions have been here for many, many years. The Julia and Magazine St galleries have been here for a long time. But the St. Claude and Downtown scene, where it’s funky and fresh and vibrant, where the artists are starting their own spaces…that’s all pretty new. Post-Katrina.

JB: When I was in town, it was suggested that maybe part of the boom had come from the people who came down to New Orleans to help out after the storm, and then stayed. Thereby bringing in aggressive, fresh energy. Was that something that you noticed? Was it all the government money? What do you think was the cause of the Renaissance?

JS: There definitely has been some “brain gain,” as they say. People who maybe came down to volunteer to help with the re-building, and then just fell in love with the city. There certainly was money flying around afterwards, but I think that’s dried up to some degree. There was a point where there was federal or insurance money, and things felt really hopping. (With lots of construction and renovation everywhere.)

I almost feel like I’m not qualified to answer the larger, institutional-type questions.

JB: No problem. Ladies and gentlemen, while you read this interview with Ms. Jennifer Shaw, you can choose to disregard some of what she says because she does not claim expertise. All right? It’s in the record. You might not be the right person to answer these questions, but you’re on the other end of the video screen, so you don’t have much of a choice right now, do you?

JS: No.

JB: What about the Southern Hospitality? When you first moved South, what was your reaction?

JS: It’s charming, right? Makes you feel right at home.

JB: photoNOLA, as I understand it, is an off-shoot or project of the New Orleans Photo Alliance.

JS: Correct.

JB: And the Alliance is an artist-run, artist-founded, member-supported community organization, with its own gallery in the Lower Garden District. Is that about right?

JS: Yes, non-profit as well.

JB: When did it get started?

JS: The New Orleans Photo Alliance formed in 2006. Another one of those Katrina silver linings. Don Marshall runs the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, and has a long history of working in the arts in New Orleans. After Katrina, he started calling meetings with different groups of artists, encouraging us to form our own collectives and non-profits. To help resuscitate the arts, and the wider cultural rebuilding of the city.

Out of these groups of meetings with the photographers, we eventually decided what to do, what to be, and the name. One of the things I thought we should do was start a photography festival.

JB: Was that emergence concurrent with the creation of the Photo Alliance, or did it take some time?

JS: It was pretty concurrent; it came out of one of the early meetings. We first met in February or March of 2006. There had been a couple of Mardi Gras-themed group photography exhibitions. You know there’s always a big crowd at a group show.

Everybody came out and was just so thankful to see each other again. Hugs all around. Lots of “How did you make out during the storm?” There was this great energy flowing, and I think Don had attended one of those openings. I don’t know if that was one of his catalysts for getting us together, or if it was a part of his mission to organize lots of different types of artists, and getting us forming these self-sufficient organizations.

I’m totally losing track.

JB: It’s OK.

JS: So there were these two shows, and then a formal meeting is called at the Jazz and Heritage foundation. We decided, yeah, this is a good idea. Why not go ahead and do this?
Start an organization. So we had a series of monthly meetings to figure out what we might accomplish as a group. What sort of form it would take, and what the goals might be. What the structure would be.

By December of that year, we had our first officers, and a group show that started membership. We made it so the entry fee gave you membership into the New Orleans Photo Alliance. That was the beginning of it all. Don hooked us up with an exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center. When he got that plotted, I said, “Let’s take this December show at the CAC, and use it as an anchor to get the festival started.”

I knocked on the doors of galleries and other venues, and said, “We’re going to do a festival. Would you have a photo exhibition in conjunction with our show at the CAC? It’s going to be called photoNOLA, a month of photography.”

So that was the beginning. The first year was just exhibitions throughout the month, but nothing what it’s like now, obviously. (Portfolio reviews were added in 2007.)

JB: I didn’t know that the Photo Alliance came out of the immediate aftermath of Katrina. It’s a really interesting idea, the DIY ethos of artists getting together to do if for themselves. Given how much work it takes to do the business and self-promotion aspects of a career, the idea of getting together to lessen the load, and create the rising tide model, makes so much sense.

Were you the head of the photoNOLA festival from it’s inception?

JS: Pretty much so, yeah.

JB: Now, we both know that there are people who do that job, the Director of a non-profit, and that’s their only job. But on top of that, you also teach photography, and you have a full-time art career, and you’re a Mom.

JS: Right.

JB: So you’re trying to juggle everything at once. The 21st Century Hustle. I wanted to hear a bit about the founding of the organization, so thanks. It’s kind of a leading and inappropriate question, but do you think this would not have happened without the storm? Was there a burgeoning sense of collaborative energy because of the Internet anyway? Or do you think this was really a reaction to tragedy?

JS: I think it was totally a reaction to tragedy. I don’t know if something else would have come up in a different form later without the storm. But with Katrina, with everybody being out of the city for two months, and desperately wanting to get home, and desparately missing all of our friends and connections, I think it made us all appreciate people in a way that we never had before. Community ties too, not just in the art world.

There was a whole civic rebirth after the storm, on many different levels. Schools, and community organizations. So Katrina had a lot of silver linings, and the art scene and the Photo Alliance are certainly two of them.

JB: As is your book, “Hurricane Story.”

JS: (laughing.)

JB: So there’s that. My house got destroyed in a Hurricane, and all I got was a hard-cover book. Is that a T-shirt yet?

JS: (laughing still.) No. I should clarify, though, my house did not get destroyed. I’m on the sliver by the river, where there wasn’t any flooding. Just wind damage.

JB: Oh, congratulations.

JS: (laughing again.)

JB: I know, it’s seven years later, and I’m saying, “Congrats that your house didn’t get destroyed.” Let’s not give people the wrong impression.

I picked your book up and reviewed it in the very beginning of my book review column. I didn’t know you, or your name, or your work, or photoNOLA. I grabbed the little object off of my stack, and was kind of shocked. I hadn’t seen anybody personalize the tragedy in such an empathetic, but slightly light-hearted way.
Because you used toys.

JS: Right.

JB: What was the impetus for telling this really difficult story that way, about your evacuation, and having a baby on the day the storm made landfall? What was the genesis?

JS: I had a Holga that I’d modified into a macro-camera, and I hadn’t done a lot with it. I had some King Cake Babies lying around, and I think one day, I saw one lying around, and it reminded me of…I don’t know. Something just sparked, and I decided to pull out that macro camera and try it on those King Cake Babies, and maybe that’s the way I can deal with Katrina.

I’d taken some traditional disaster pictures, but didn’t feel like I owned that. You know? I felt like I was doing it in a documentary sense, for posterity. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable saying that was my art, or trying to sell that kind of work in galleries. I don’t know.

It was just these King Cake Babies, this macro camera, and a roll of black and white film. It just rolled, and made sense. This is it. This is what I need to be doing.

JB: What exactly is a King Cake Baby?

JS: Good question. Sorry. Every year from 12th Night through Mardi Gras, New Orleanians have mounds and mounds of King Cakes. Inside the cake is a little plastic baby, and the tradition is, whoever gets the slice with the King Cake Baby has to buy the next King Cake. It’s a continuing tradition at parties, and in offices, for weeks on end. We all get really fat. Getting the baby is a special thing, so you tend to collect them. They’re small and plastic, and made in China.

JB: Just like everything else.

We left in the dark of night
At 3:47 a boy was born
There were rumors of alligators in the streets
The chaos was hard to fathom
Convoys of rescue trucks passed in the other direction

Mardi Gras was amazing

This Week In Photography Books – Paolo Ventura

by Jonathan Blaustein

Three nights ago, I flung raw chicken out the second story window of my Aunt Lynda’s house. With a salad fork. In East Brunswick, New Jersey.

Two nights ago, I traveled to a parallel dimension, and then back again. I was accompanied by a childhood friend named Brett. We made the journey in a machine; a cross between a sauna, and the hot tub from “Hot Tub Time Machine.” When I returned, I was a woman.

Last night, I repeatedly bashed a former summer-camp counselor about the collarbone with a hammer. Again and again, I beat him. Whump. Whump. Whump. A giraffe trotted by in the background.

You’ve probably guessed these narratives come from my dreams. I rarely remember them, but my son recently asked me to try harder, and now I can’t shake the visuals from my mind. I’m ambivalent about the whole thing, as the retained images are as troubling as they are bizarre.

We’re all comfortable with the fact that each evening, our conscious mind cedes control. The conductor of the night shift is clinically insane. We know this, yet still wake up refreshed, or screaming for coffee. Either way, how many of us spend significant time parsing these madcap adventures? And if we did, what might we learn? (No, I’m not about to quote Freud.)

Within the realm of art, when people think of the dreamworld, they invariably go to Dali. Melting clocks in the desert. Maybe the photo-geeks think of Robert & Shana Parke Harrison, or that young woman who ripped them off and is showing her work around these days. (No, I won’t name the offender.)

Some of the most compelling dream-scape images I’ve seen, though, emerge from “Lo Zuavo Scomparso,” a new, magnificent hard-cover book by Paolo Ventura. (Punctum Press, 2012.) Just last week, I assured you that it’s nothing to me if you buy these books or not. Today, I’ll reverse course, and suggest that this is one for the collection.

The book is experiential on multiple levels. The cover is bright red, with terrific design. Open it up, and you’re treated to a cryptic, repeating graphic inside the cover. Then, we get two poems, in Italian and English, that establish the narrative to come. (Anyone with a brain knows that Italian is the most beautiful language in the world. I encourage you to read the Italian text out loud, for sonorous pleasure.)

As many of you probably know, Mr. Ventura builds intricate sets for his imagery. They resemble paintings, while reflecting the camera’s power to observe. Here, the subject is a Papal Zouave who comes to Rome, and then disappears. (The city itself competes for attention.) The mood is mysterious and elegant, the light not easy to describe.

After the photos conclude, there is an interview with the artist, again in English and Italian, that gives compelling clues to the nature of his process and obsession. Rare for my somewhat-short-attention-span, I found myself reading, then going back to the pictures, then reading again. I returned to some passages three or four times.

Eventually, I decided I needed to know more, and googled Papal Zouave. Normally, I won’t do that, believing that the artist ought to provide all necessary information. Here, I was too entranced to care.

Papal Zouaves were 19th Century soldiers in service to the Pope. In Italy, they fought against the Risorgimento, or unification of the country. (In light of Silvio Berlusconi’s ridiculous escapades, perhaps they were on to something. Bunga, Bunga.)

The book concludes with a set of polaroids that were presumably used as sketches. And then that crazy graphic again, which I could by-then recognize as a Papal Zouave’s profile, repeated over and over. (Just like gelaterias in Rome. How much f-cking ice cream can people eat?) This book will be tough to give back, because it transported me to a different reality. Will it do the same for you?

Bottom line: Masterful, beautiful, dreamy piece of work

To Purchase “Lo Zuavo Scomparso” 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.

 

Scott B. Davis Interview

by Jonathan Blaustein

Scott B. Davis is a San Diego-based fine art photographer. He recently had solo exhibitions at Hous Projects in NYC, and at the San Diego Museum of Art. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times and the New Yorker. Scott is also the Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Photographic Arts, and the founder and director of the Medium Festival of Photography, which debuted in 2012.

Jonathan Blaustein: It’s a New Year, and I wanted to inaugurate a mini-series interviewing people who represent the new pathways to success in the 21st Century. I can’t speak to what it used to be like, but it seems many of the folks who are getting their work out in the world are creating multi-pronged careers. Multiple talents, multiple income streams.

Of course, I thought of you. We met back in 1998, in a Photo 3 class with Patrick Nagatani. Is that right?

Scott B. Davis: Yeah.

JB: Our audience knows a lot about me, but they don’t know what I was like back then. Do you have any embarrassing stories about me from back in the day? What did you think of me when we first met?

SD: (laughing.) Let’s see. (long pause.) You were a guy who seemed to think he had it all figured out, and wanted to jump right in the deep end with everybody else. I say that with all due love and respect.

JB: Of course. You’re allowed to make fun of me. That’s the point.

SD: What I also love is one of the early memories, where you then turned it on me. You said, “I couldn’t stand you when we first met. You were this guy who just knew it all.”

JB: You knew a lot for a young guy.

SD: I think the bottom line is we both approached the medium from a very different place, personally speaking, but with a lot of passion and drive to make it a career.

JB: Well, you had a free shot at me, and you didn’t exactly take it. Classy. Let’s move along, though.

You are a working artist, and just had a big solo show in New York at Hous Projects. You’re also the Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, and you just started your own photography festival, called Medium, from scratch. And you’re doing all three of these different jobs at the same time.

SD: Yeah.

JB: Why?

SD: Why?

JB: Yes. Why?

SD: I guess it goes back to that undergraduate experience. I knew I wanted to be heavily involved with this medium from a very young age. As I’ve grown older, and watched the world diversify around us, I realized there’s no singular experience that’s going to fulfill all the hopes and desires I have as an engaged photographer.

Working at a day job gives me these office skills, for lack of a better word, that allow me to understand the nuts and bolts of the industry. As a fine art photographer, that part goes without saying. It’s expressing personal beliefs, wishes, taking wild
attempts at making statements without language. That drives itself.

For the festival, it’s a culmination of those two things. It’s an opportunity for me to say, “How can I create something in my community that reaches other photographers, that gives other photographers a platform and a voice, and that engages me in a new way with photography itself?”

JB: It’s all really heady and high-minded, but isn’t there more to it? Isn’t it, the day job pays the bills, and the festival is where you party, and the art is where you get your crazy out?

SD: (pause) I guess you could put it that way too. The day job pays the bills. And as you know as well as anybody, it’s a dangerous trap. It can be.

But for the festival, it really is about creating a space and a place for other photographers. If it were just about a party, I’d have a party. It’s a business. Really a mega-business, for one or two people to undertake.

JB: I like to put my finger up in the wind and see what people are thinking about. Now that the worst of the Economic Collapse has passed, it’s good to see people come out of retrenchment mode and try to build things. Try to grow their own capabilities, so I thought you might be able to give us a little insight.

We’ve got readers around the planet, and thankfully photo festivals continue to pop up. But there are a lot of communities out there that could benefit from opportunities to see work, and meet new people, learn and grow, kick back a glass of wine.

You shared your motivation a bit, but I’d like to dig a little deeper. Did you always want to do this? Or was it a random idea, and then you decided to put your nose down? How long had you been planning the Medium festival?

SD: About 18 months. But it’s interesting when you materialize something like this, and then you achieve it. You can look back in hindsight and have a little bit of clarity about where it came from.

When I first moved back to California, there was a part of me that wanted to start a center for photography. A do-it-yourself frame shop, and a place where photographers could come together and mount exhibitions. Host lectures, stuff like that. It was 10 or 12 years ago, though. But I didn’t have the personal need or the experience to do it.

But to cycle back to 10 years of working as an industry professional, you start to learn how things operate. What it takes to organize something like this. That, and watching other art fairs and festivals crop up all over the world, it makes you realize there are micro-communities as well as macro-communities that want to have these experiences.

I guess what I’m saying is it’s a lot of world experience that comes together and makes you realize you can take a nascent idea and start to create something unique for this region.

I’ll give you one example. Photo LA, the established photo fair, has really changed a lot in the past several years. One thing I realized it became, by default, was a place for photographers to meet. Photo LA does their own programming. They had Stephen Shore out last year. They bring in big names.

But as that really changed, and less photographers were attending it, because of personal grievances, or not liking the fair, or it not having the same energy, I realized that that community in Southern California could use a place to come together like photo LA.

I’m not trying to create photoLA, through Medium, but when I realized that there’s nothing like this in Coastal Southern California, I thought we could really use something to get the creative juices flowing.

JB: I couldn’t go this year, unfortunately, because the festival was two weeks after the new baby came. I still feel bad about it, but I’ll be there for 2013. Big ups.

Earlier, though, you mentioned 10 years as an industry professional. I know you started out cutting mats in the bowels of the UNM Art Museum in Albuquerque. You were an exacting dude with a good internship.

Then, you started as a preparator at MOPA, and have worked your way up to the Director of Exhibitions.

SD: Right.

JB: Have you had any experiences over the years where you were taken less seriously as an artist because you were working as an arts professional? Or were there situations where anyone tried to hook you up as an artist to get in with the museum? Over the years, have you noticed any changes in the way people perceive a hybridized career?

SD: If anything, I’d say it’s gotten more difficult. I don’t know that people look at me and say, “Wow, he’s this multi-faceted guy.” They usually look at me as wearing one primary hat. It’s challenging, because, particularly as a museum professional, I don’t want to breach that trust, or cross that line.

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that people want to reduce you to one simple thing.

JB: I can relate. When the writing started to take off, there was a time when I was worried that people would know me more for this than for my art-making. But very quickly, I realized that if people know me at all, then I’m fortunate. I prefer they know me and like what I do, rather than wanting to firebomb my house, though.

But getting back to Medium, now that the festival came off successfully, was there anything you learned that really turned your expectations on their head? Was there any part of the process that caught you off guard?

SD: I don’t know if I can give you a good answer to the question.

JB: No? Should we just move on?

SD: Well, the reason being is that it’s anything that anyone would tell you. Anybody who’s done it, or anybody with common sense will know it’s a lot of work. And then people will turn around and ask you, “How did you do that?”

Getting back to which hat you wear, and how people associate you, it’s interesting to me, when I step back and take it all in, I’m not to worried about how people are going to categorize me. I know that doing every single one of these things is not motivated by profit, or fame or any kind of worldly riches.

JB: Speak for yourself, dude.

SD: Come on, now. It’s motivated by a very deep-seated love for what I do. From my perspective, I see it all as part of a rich life. I go to my day job, I come home and work in the darkroom, or shoot photographs. I organize a festival. To me, there are not always clear boundaries between those.

As far as advice goes for someone who’s thinking of starting something, if you’re really passionate, and you have the inclination and the capacity to do it, I think that’s the most important question to ask yourself. Because everything else has
to come from within.

JB: I ended 2012 with a column that suggested to folks that perhaps this would be a good year to try to stretch yourself, take a risk, try something new. Looking at what you went through, having a solo show, buying and renovating a house, putting on a festival and working full time all during one Summer. Wow.

Now that it’s behind you, what did you learn about yourself? Are you actually a more capable human being for pushing yourself to the limits?

SD: Definitely. I achieved what I set out to do, which is to give added dimension to a community that I passionately feel could use it. That’s something I can’t underscore enough for readers, is this idea. If you really believe in what you want to do, whether it’s to start your career as a photographer, or to start a festival, or create a publishing company. If you believe there’s a need for it, that it makes sense…this is just Business 101. Then it’s totally worth it to stretch yourself.

If you’ve done your job right, you’ve added value to the community. Whether it’s your community by zip code, or by theology. You’re adding value.

JB: Thanks for the honesty. Is there any cellphone footage of you berating an intern during Medium, like Christian Bale? Did you ever lose your shit? You might as well admit it right now…

SD: No. I don’t lose my shit. It’s something I work at more and more as I get older.

JB: I get it. I used to be a hothead, and now I’m not. I’m much happier this way.

But I wanted to shift to the museum for a second. I noticed on the website that you guys have a show up now that was crowd curated by your audience?

SD: Yeah.

JB: You guys gave your audience a chance to vote on pictures from a certain grouping, and then you showed the highest rated pictures in the exhibition?

SD: And the lowest rated.

JB: How did it work?

SD: There are forty photographs on exhibit that the crowd curated. The photos with the most and least votes are highlighted in the exhibition. Because it’s not always about winners.

JB: Forgive me if this is an obvious question, but wasn’t anybody afraid that this might prove the irrelevance of the curator as tastemaker, if the crowd can do as good a job? What’s been people’s reaction to the idea and the show?

SD: The reaction has been really positive, all the way around. The idea was born out of crowd-sourcing in general. The museum is really there to serve the community. Our photographs are held in the public trust, even though it’s a private museum. Why not give the community an opportunity to take an active role in things?

It also allows us to learn things about our collection. It’s one thing for an educated person to make decisions about what’s going next to what, and to develop thematic ideas. But it’s also interesting when you let non-experts look at something and discover new things, and in this case, new images.

It allowed us to ask some hard questions. How strong is our collection? Let’s be real. Let’s be honest, and not hide the duds. And, of course, we don’t believe it’s undermining the role of the curator.

JB: I know it’s off topic, but I think we came up with a new drinking game. Every time people read the word community in this interview, they have to do a shot.

Seriously, though, what happened when the crowd picked? Was it just, oh, they love Henri Cartier-Bresson, and nature and cowboys? Could you learn anything broad from their preferences?

SD: Well, the top three pictures were a photo by Kenro Izu of a sacred Tibetan mountain, a photograph by Bradford Washburn of climbers on an icy peak, and the classic photograph of a nuclear explosion on the Bikini Atoll. Think about that for a minute. People are responding to photographs that elicit emotions. Beautiful pictures of mountains elicit primal emotions, or fantasies about what the world should look like.

The lowest ranked images are basically abstract photographs that, when they’re set out there, on their own, without a voice, don’t make sense to people. Clearly, people didn’t respond to them.

JB: So they prefer the epic, and they eschew the abstract. At least in this experiment. That is not particularly surprising. But it sounds like it gave you guys a chance to get your own metrics in an evidence-obsessed society.

As far as your own work goes, you spend a lot of time rambling around empty deserts, at night, with a big camera. I read an interview a couple of years ago with Robert Adams, and he talked about having someone with him to watch his back, when he was shooting at night in Colorado Springs.

Is that something you’ve had to do, or do you just roll the dice?

SD: I roll the dice, and nothing that exciting has ever happened to me. The worst thing is people in Los Angeles, who find me in the middle of the night, and are whacked in the head, and think I’m making a movie.

Out in the desert, it’s a different story. The worst thing that happens is the border patrol comes by in the morning and says there was a lot of activity last night. You guys had neighbors.

JB: For years you’ve been out there working, in the middle of the night, when the rest of us are asleep. What’s the fascination?

SD: The fascination is discovery. I’m a landscape photographer. But as landscapes in the Western US become more and more well known, more and more seen, I’m interested in letting the camera help me discover worlds that I didn’t know existed otherwise. I’m looking at the world and seeing how it’s transformed, the other 50% of the time. In the darkness. Once the magic hour happens, most people head off to the bar to knock back a drink. Not me.

Three Female Artists in NOLA

by Jonathan Blaustein

Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus. So they say. But what if Mars is the better planet? If so, isn’t it sexist to give Mars to the men? Shouldn’t women be from Mars, and men from Venus? That would be more equitable.

Of course I’m joking. I’ve been thinking about this, though, since mid-November, when I realized that I hadn’t reviewed a book by a female artist in a long time. It wasn’t conscious neglect. I’m fairly indiscriminate when I grab the books at photo-eye, and then choose to review those to which I truly respond.

I was disturbed by my lack of awareness, but not surprised by my preferences. Early on in my relationship with my wife, we realized that all of my music was made by men, and all of hers by women. One man’s Bruce Springsteen is another woman’s Ani DiFranco. (Then, thankfully. Now it’s Lilly Allen and Regina Spektor. Much better.)

Still, I wasn’t going to let the trend continue. I had Cara Phillips’ “Singular Beauty” in my book stack, and reviewed it straightaway. I thought it was a fascinating book, and said as much. It belonged in the column. In retrospect, was this a case of affirmative action, or a belated remedy to a problem resulting from carelessness?

Shortly thereafter, it came time to give photo-eye my best books of 2012, and again I had to temper a male-centric list. I could have left it as it was, but that seemed inappropriate. Is it controversial of me to admit this? Probably, but the alternative is less attractive. I’d rather be open, and let you choose to respect my stance, or take exception.

This blog, and my effort in it, has always been about radical honesty. I’m not trying to offend anybody. I take this platform seriously, and think it’s vital to show a diversity of perspectives in the things I cover. Furthermore, I only want to discuss projects that are interesting and provide value for your precious time. If these articles promote dialogue, so much the better.

Men and women are both part of the human species, but our structural bodies and body chemistries are different. We couldn’t possibly have the same experience navigating the world. As an artist, it’s socially acceptable for me to have a lot of “female” characteristics. I’m emotionally sensitive, like to talk, and ask a lot of questions. I can empathize, and appreciate taking baths. But I also like football, farting and cursing. I’m still a dude, albeit one with a healthy dose of estrogen.

With all that in mind, I was thrilled to see three exhibitions by three super-talented female artists while I was in New Orleans. On a Sunday, just after my reviews ended, I was walking quickly towards the Ogden Museum when I got a text to stop in at the Contemporary Art Center. I was meant to meet my new friend Kathleen Robbins, so she could take me to see her show “Into the Flatland,” at the New Orleans Photo Alliance gallery. She asked me to change course, and there she was in the lobby, standing with a few women I didn’t know.

Kathleen told me she’d set up a little gallery tour, and would that be OK? I said no problem. Within a matter of minutes, my slow brain surmised that our companions were the artists featured in the shows were were to see. (And the three prize winners from photoNOLA 2011.) Sarah Cusimano Miles was exhibiting at the Martine Chaisson Gallery, two blocks away, and Priya Kambli had just wrapped an artist talk right there at the CAC. The last of my guides was photoNOLA chief Jennifer Shaw, whom I’d yet to meet.

Did I suspect a set-up? Of course. But I didn’t care either way. What a great opportunity, and it just dropped in my lap. I’d been thinking about how to include more female artists in my articles, and there they were. (Was it just like having brunch with Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda? No, not at all. Does my cliché reference make me square? Probably.)

We went to see Sarah’s show first, in a shiny, beautiful white gallery space. The photographs were still life masterpieces: objects from the Anniston Museum of Natural History in Alabama, (where the artist lives,) combined with her own possessions. (Mostly food.)

The photographs looked like twisted visions from a Victorian Curiosity Shoppe. Lots of dark, rich browns and plenty of dead things. The photos were very sharp, as well as sumptuous. Sarah told us she thought female artists were more motivated by intuition than were men. The other women all agreed, heartily, and the best I could muster was, “I’m down with the ladies.” (Yes, that’s a direct quote.)

Sarah shared a bit about her insanely intricate process. Apparently, she wasn’t happy with the sharpness of her lens across a variety of focal planes, so she put together the tableaux in pieces, shot by shot, with as many as 200 photos per picture. (A few inches of focus at a time.) I think that much composting in Photoshop would drive me back to coffee. (Or cocaine.)

They were incredible photographs, for sure, but didn’t speak directly to my viscera. It made me wonder about the intersection of gender and taste. Is there a feminine aesthetic, relative to a masculine one? Furthermore, does the male view still predominate throughout the art and photo worlds? (Again, probably.) But most of the curators and photo editors I know are women. And given that women now outnumber men in college, and seem to have the upper hand in the economy of the future, (health care, education) at what point will the scales tilt?

I’m not suggesting that equal rights have been achieved. Women still earn less on average, and are hampered in career tracks when they take time out to have kids. But I know more than a few families in which the woman is the primary earner, including my own. The story is far more complicated than it used to be, thankfully, and progress is undeniable. (Let me also shout out Taryn Simon and Susan Worsham, two of my favorite photographers working today.)

Back in NOLA, we walked the two blocks back to the Contemporary Art Center, and I got to speak to Priya for a few minutes.
She told me she teaches in rural Missouri, having studied in Louisiana and Texas, so all three artists have Southern roots. (For fun, try saying “rural Missouri” five times fast.)

Her photographs, at the CAC, were installed against serene blue walls. She’s from India, originally, but has lived in the US for many years. The color scheme references her background, I’d guess, as it’s a powerful theme throughout the work on display.

The pictures were, for the most part, diptychs printed together. One panel would contain scenes from her family domestic life: little toys and household objects and constructed things. They were personal as well as sculptural. Very well seen. The other panel would typically be a historical-looking portrait of family members back in in India.

Beautiful work, beautiful show.

After a few minutes, we piled into a very small car to go see Kathleen’s exhibition. There was a class going in inside the multi-purpose space, so by the time we got in to see the show, it was nearing dark on my last night in town. I was exhausted and drained, and couldn’t spend more than four or five minutes with Kathleen’s pictures. My apologies.

These reeked of a bleak, wintry, poor South of which I know nothing. The artist is from Mississippi, and the photos were of her family, herself, and the area from whence she comes. Lots of broken down shacks and barren fields. (I recognized one image from Fraction Magazine, and realized that I had seen the work before.)

The pictures are lyrical and Romantic; about place and home and sad light. Were they feminine as well? I suppose so, but they clearly had some edge. I responded emotionally to this show, most of all, and could almost hear some dark blues music in my head. (Or Ry Cooder’s opening riff to “Paris, Texas.”)

Did it make me want to go to Mississippi? Not exactly. But these three shows did give me a lot to think about. They were a great reminder that looking at art made by people of different backgrounds (or genders) opens one’s mind. I’ll keep on trying to maintain the balance, in 2013, as it benefits us all.

This Week In Photography Books – Risaku Suzuki

by Jonathan Blaustein

Karl Marx got it wrong. He prophesied the demise of Religion and Nationalism. Bad call. I know it’s ballsy of me to quibble with a dead great mind, but it was never going to be thus.

As long as humans have been upright, they’ve looked to the night sky. Before pollution, every part of the planet would have provided proper vantage to see the billions of stars above. Speaking as one who retains the privilege, you don’t need to know what those things are up there. You just feel, in your genetic code, that you are a small, insignificant nothing in the face of it all.

From there, it’s not a long leap to name that feeling of awe and worthlessness. And then to worship that name, and then again to ask for favors. (And to pray.) That progression happened everywhere on Earth, and many names developed as such. My wife was just telling me the other day that we Jews have multiple names to suit the many faces of our lone deity.

We, the people of the book, who have such a prominence in the state of the safety of the World, are but .2% of its population, I recently read. (Seriously, Bibi, you can’t keep building on what will obviously be Palestine.) Christianity leads the way with 31%, and then Islam is second with 23%.

Both religions seek converts. And we wonder why countries with those tendencies are oft at each other’s throats. (ie, the Bush Wars.) Nationalism is nothing more than our need for the tribe, of which I’ve already written, and that’s never going away. Put the two together and the reptilian brain takes over, leading to conflict.

Elsewhere in the world, there are Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, and many other types of worshippers. In Japan, Shintoism remains popular. To those believers, there are entrances to the sacred world called “Torii.” Which is also, conveniently, the name of a new book, out last year, by Risaku Suzuki. (Superlabo)

(You knew there had to be a connection there, right?) The mid-sized hardcover consists of a set polaroid photographs, taken in Japan, in 1993. Almost all contain the presence of the large scale shrine-temple-type structure. It looks like the entrance to something that ought to be just behind it, or above it, but that got vaporized into a parallel dimension. (Or razed to make another mini-mart.)

The pictures look vintage, and some are washed out or have disintegrated edges. The colors might have shifted a touch here or there, but it serves the look and the meaning. Seeing these Torii in parking lots and dwarfed by city architecture hammers home the point that some ideas are eternal, and times always change.

The repetition of the beautiful, shape, over and over again is mesmerizing. Such a beautiful shape, this portal. Peaceful. I loved the one framed against the open car door. Not a big leap from this to the oft-mentioned Murakami vibe. (Pass through and you too can talk to the Sheep Man.)

I hate to state the obvious, but the book and pictures within are Zen. They close that loop on religion, in the way they inspire some immediate mental calm. And that is high praise from a man who’s staring at a snow covered mountain peak as he’s typing these words. (No easy feat.)

Bottom Line: Super-Zen Shinto shrines from 1993

To Purchase Torii 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.

 

photoNOLA, New Orleans, 2012

by Jonathan Blaustein

They say time heals all wounds. I’m sure that’s not true. To heal implies making things better. The parents of those poor Connecticut children will never be better again. With time, though, they will likely hurt less. They will keep on living. And in six weeks, most of us will forget they exist.

Sometimes, though, the rest of us, those glued to our screens during a tragedy, are the ones who get stuck. Occasionally, the bystanders will latch on to the moment of horror, and not let go. Like with Hurricane Katrina.

I went to New Orleans last month to attend the photoNOLA festival. I was booked for their portfolio reviews, and was also hoping to get around the city a bit and see things. But my very first impression, in the airport, served to solidify my preconceptions about this storm-ravaged region. The place was under construction disarray, with plywood tacked up willy-nilly. I even grabbed a snapshot of a marker-written “Baggage Claim” sign that was about as ghetto as anything I’ve seen.

Like I said, my vision was stuck a bit in 2005. When my Eritrean cab driver approached Downtown, I saw the Superdome up ahead, and then we drove right past it. At first, I held my breath, and saw those roof tiles gone in my mind. Then, I looked more closely. The place was shiny-metal-gleaming in the rosy late afternoon light. It is now sponsored, heavily, by Mercedes Benz. The stadium was stylish and expensive looking, in 2012.

I was on notice. The multiple cranes seen erecting buildings around the city were another sign of money and development. (You can learn a lot from the cranes on a skyline. We saw so many in Spain, in 2004, that I knew something was up. Or, as the Spaniards would tell you, tragically unsustainable.) Lucien, of whom you’ll hear later, told me the cranes were raising jails and hospitals. Two constant sources of cash.

I also learned that Eritreans will eat in Ethiopian restaurants. Though the two countries were locked in vicious wars for 30 years, that forced my cabbie to flee to America, apparently the food is pretty much the same. (He was sullen, so I tipped him poorly. I still feel guilty about it.)

The short version of my trip is that I found a city booming. So much so that I only saw a fraction of what was on display. Photography exhibitions were everywhere. Robot parades, Second lines, lectures, openings, music, art, it was everywhere. Good for New Orleans. While we may still have Katrina on the brain, especially in Sandy’s wake, the folks living there have most certainly moved on. Thank goodness.

I ate amazing food, day after day. I was kidnapped, three times, by photographers visiting from various parts around the South. The cliché about Southern Hospitality was on full display, and I’m now officially down with it. (For you foodies out there, Friday’s dinner was at Clancy’s. Book it. And celebu-chef John Besh’s pizza place, Domenica, was also a standout.)

The festival began a couple of days before I got there. There was a gala benefit on Thursday night, and lectures by Sasha Wolf and Mary Virginia Swanson earlier on Friday. I missed them all. You know I’ve got a baby at home, so my trip was too brief. If I return next year, I’ll make sure to stay longer. And I’d heartily recommend you go yourself, but don’t shortchange it.

My reviews were on Saturday, and I began with a meeting with an associate curator from the Museum of Modern Art. It was the first time I’d met with someone from there, the gleaming art Mecca, and I thought hard about how to approach it. I decided that the likelihood of her seeing something in a box, and it then ending up on the wall, or in the collection at the MoMA, was next to zero. Probably more like zero. (Maybe down the line, but still…)

The second route would be to be “insanely memorable.” While I can be charming on a good day, 20 minutes is not a very long time to strike up the kind of conversation that impresses someone enough to go straight to the top of their to-do-list. Possible, but, again, unlikely.

On the other hand, one thing I could reasonably hope for would be to get her honest opinion about my work. Presumably, you don’t work there unless you really know what you’re talking about. So advice, a critique, was something that seemed attainable, and potentially very helpful.

That’s how I approached it. I didn’t even show her prints from my established project, “The Value of a Dollar,” or try to woo her with my extensive resume. Rather, we focused on my in-progress work, where it was headed: what she liked, what she didn’t like. It was fascinating to hear her riff on my work, and very encouraging.

I’m sharing this, here, because I’ve been and am an advocate of portfolio reviews. The process has really made my career, and many others before me. But I’ve been victim, in the past, of that desire to make every meeting out be the game-changer. To hustle and schmooze. Talk without listening. What do they call that, the elevator pitch? Please.

The beauty of these events, and photoNOLA was an excellent example, is that you can learn more about what you’re doing from seasoned professionals. Can these meetings lead directly to exhibition, publication, and acquisition? Yes, they can. But even more, they can help push us further along, outside the domain of the “like-asphere.” (Am I coining this term, or does it already exist?)

The event was based out of the International House Hotel, just next to the French quarter. (In which the streets truly do smell of booze and urine.) The reviews took place in the hotel conference facilities, across the street, in a couple of rooms very well set up for the attending photographers. (Free wifi, free food, coffee and water? Classy.)

There were countless events in the evenings, so much that without a car and a better sense of direction, it was hopeless to try to attend most. I was bummed about that, as I didn’t get to see as much as I’d hoped, and was mostly restricted to the CBD and the Quarter. (Though one kidnapping brought me to the Lower Garden District. Cool spot. Hipster central.)

Ultimately, I realized that a surfeit of options of things to see is a good problem. You can only be in one place at a time, and you can’t talk to everyone. That’s why I’d recommend a longer stay, and why I hope to get back as soon as I can.

As for the events I did see? It started with the Shelby Lee Adams Lecture at the Ogden Museum of Art, on Friday night. He was super-intelligent, and showed a range of lesser-known work from his long career. Some of his portraits of Appalachians reminded me a lot of Roger Ballen’s pictures of poor South Africans. The pictures are straight, but the folks are so seemingly pitiable, and the lens so sharp, that the intent can seem mean or exploitative. Or, I should say, some folks interpret them as such.

As Mr. Adams is from and lives amongst his community, and his subjects love the depictions, I’m inclined to find them cool as hell. But he was very defensive about his critical reputation, mentioning it on three or four occasions. He took swipes at “Academics” at the University of Kentucky, and others. My companions and I all commented about it, as it seemed a waste of energy. He’s got great work, and is successful and acclaimed. (As he said, to paraphrase, once you get a Guggenheim, you can do whatever the hell you want.)

I was reminded of my own past fury at our pack of rabbly commenters, though I’ve since decided to leave people to their opinions. The critics are out there, in every field and forum. If you put your work out there, and it’s good enough to draw attention, then you have to learn how to take/live with the criticism. Because it will most certainly come.

Still, it was a great presentation over all, but we had to split a bit early for late dinner reservations. The next night, I was able to catch the end of a group Q&A with Keith Carter, Josephine Sacabo, Shelby Lee Adams, and Louviere + Vanessa at A Gallery for Fine Art Photography, in the French Quarter. The place is a must on any future visit to New Orleans. Tons of great historical work, and some contemporary Black and White photography as well. (Helmut Newton’s pictures jumped off the wall. Sexy photos, sexy town.)

Let’s wrap this up. photoNOLA rocks, and New Orleans rocks. It’s a city with an unfathomable amount of cultural events, and more insane restaurants than you could ever, ever eat at. The cost of the portfolio reviews is less than some competing events, which is a bonus. And every dollar you spend will pump right into the local economy.

The cabdriver who took me back to the airport was, in fact, right out extras casting for all the movies they’re shooting here these days. He could easily have been a character on David Simon’s “Treme.” Aforementioned, his name was Lucien, a fifty-something African-American guy, born and raised in NOLA.

He was funny, loquacious, and intently offered me his wisdom. We swapped stories for the whole ride back to the airport, talking shit about money and power. (I wish I could quote him on that week’s NFL shooting tragedy, but it’s NSFW.) When I lauded the local hospitality, and promised a speedy return, he summed it up for me as follows: “It don’t cost anything extra to be nice to people.” Amen.

This Week In Photography Books – Alec Soth

by Jonathan Blaustein

I signed up for Instagram a few months ago. As ridiculous as it sounds, I use my Ipad to shoot the photographs. It’s a crappy camera, but what I love most is that I see something, reach for the tablet, and make a picture. It’s perfectly unprecious, and I appreciate that the platform engenders occasional creativity in me, nothing more.

Normally I stay away from the day-to-day controversies in cyberworld, but this Instagram Term of Service kerfuffle is too good to pass up. We can all be as outraged as we like, and feel free to think that way. (Which comes first, I wonder, the liquor or the pitchforks? Wouldn’t you have drink first before you went out to hunt Frankenstein’s monster?)

Can we not acknowledge the silliness of trying to commodify the random, meaningless little compositions we create? If there are billions of these things (photos) getting made every day, how much could any one of them truly be worth? Value is traditionally derived from scarcity, for heaven’s sake.

How much money do you expect to lose when Instagram charges some dumb company $.00037 to put their ad next to your filtered photo? Does anyone actually think they’ll be denied untold riches from Mr. Zuckerberg’s secret vault? (I’ll have the rubies, thank you.)

Rather than focus on the news cycle, though, I wanted to write this last column of the year with a more important message. In the time I’ve been writing here, (2.5 years,) it seems as if the publication industry has started to stabilize, as has the American economy. So, many of you are off the proverbial ledge, worrying about how to pay the mortgage. At least, I hope that’s true.

So, for 2013, as we all emerge from perma-fear-mode, why not take a risk? Try something new. Learn a new skill. Make a conscious effort to improve yourself, and your knowledge base. Embrace the New Year with a sense of opportunity, rather than fear. (And of course I’ll try to do the same.)

Why am I off on this rant today? Why no mention of the wife and kids? Because I just finished looking at Alec Soth’s “Looking for Love 1996,” published by Kominek, and it seemed like the perfect catalyst for a “stretch yourself” message today. (Plus, that was the year I graduated college and took up photography, so I couldn’t resist the chance to wax philosophical.)

According to the text, Mr. Soth began investing in his photographic talents while working at a commercial printing facility in 1996. He would print other people’s birthday photos all day long, and then go out at night to drink and photograph away his misery. He also admits, after the statute of limitations has probably run its course, that he would make his own prints and sneak them out at night, wrapped around his legs. (Cue vision of the robot dance.)

I know Mr. Soth has many, many publications on the market. I don’t know if you should buy this one to add to your collection. That’s up to you. But his photographic style, though raw, is certainly on display here. He walks the line between pathos and poking fun at people. The photos display an eye for detail, and the ability to celebrate the awkward moment, rather than gut it like a branzino destined for the grill.

There is a bit of a time capsule feel to the book. It’s all in black and white, which is not the way we know Mr. Soth’s best work. It really is a cool little object, and ends with a dorktastic self-portrait. The artist, lacking his now-famous beard, lounges back in a tuxedo, sans jacket and bow-tie. The look in his eye is a bit doofy, but you can definitely sense the beginning of some serious confidence. (What the f-ck are you looking at?)

Let’s all take inspiration from Mr. Soth’s journey. Let 2013 be the time when you too try to build something fresh. I’m not advocating theft, per se. But my New Year’s wishes for you are clear. I hope, this time next year, that you find yourself fulfilled, and capable of new and dynamic things.

Bottom Line: Very cool collection of the artist’s early work

To Purchase “Looking for Love 1996” 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.

 

The Best Photos I Saw This Year That I Haven’t Already Written About Yet

by Jonathan Blaustein

I have a dirty little secret. Photography is not my favorite medium. I have equal love for Painting, Sculpture and Cinema, which inspire me greatly as an artist. Perhaps they should take away my cool-guy-photographer club membership?

But when in professorial mode, my first lectures are always about the magic of photography’s essence. Light and time. Harnessing powerful elements of the Universe. Freezing people and moments, forever. Thinking about that gets me every time.

Unfortunately, a by-product of living in a time of unprecedented image saturation, I’d be hard pressed to say I see that magic within the rectangle, very often. I see a lot of photographs in my line of work, and then we all do via our massive media addiction. We’re all drowning.

Fortunately, when I was in San Francisco earlier this year, I visited the Legion of Honor Museum on the edge of the Presidio. The gorgeous, resplendent building abuts a golf course, and sits above the rocky cliffs jutting up from the Bay. The fog was thick, sitting in a bank that touched the tops of the Eucalyptus trees.

I didn’t even know the museum existed, but there were banners plastered around the city, promising a Man Ray/Lee Miller exhibition. That was enough to draw me. Who wouldn’t want to see his work? I’d heard of Ms. Miller before, but didn’t know her work or backstory at all.

Down some old-school-curved-stone stairs, with vaulted arches hard at work, the exhibit was in the bowels of the historical building. Did it used to be someone’s mansion? What was the history? I didn’t have a chance to find out, as the museum was about to close when I arrived.

Time to cut to the chase. The gorgeous Ms. Miller stole the show, as well as my heart. Wow. What a presence. And through the exhibition, it was clear that my name is only last on a very long list of the infatuated that included Man Ray, Picasso, and probably every man she met in Europe before World War II.

She was tall and blonde, with striking blue eyes. Ms. Miller was beautiful the way Grace Kelly was beautiful. Just the perfect, Upper Class-looking WASP goddess. Normally not my type.

She exuded a kind of wounded, cold, intelligent reserve. Bottled up, statuesque. In fact, early in the exhibition, there are a couple of photographs of her playing a statue in a Cocteau film. The verisimilitude was off-the-chains.

Her photographs begin in the second room, alongside of Man Ray’s. It seems as if the show has been designed to show her off, as she is better represented than he. And subsequent rooms show only her work, and the work of others who were inspired by her.

Man Ray’s photographs of Lee Miller amp up the sexuality. He fetishizes her, and when you see the portraits of him, you can understand his excitement that he got to have sex with her at all. In her self-portraits, though, she is subdued and classical, her intellect beaming out. Two completely different visions of the same woman.

I’m still weirded out that I had powerful urges towards someone I knew to be dead. The whole notion of freezing time, of encoding moments from the rush of history, was foremost in my thoughts. In the bowels of this old museum, on a misty late afternoon, it was almost as if there were ghosts about. (Let’s hope she’s young and hot as a ghost. I’ve no interest in the 70 year old Lee Miller haunting my dreams.)

OK, the photographs are what this 2nd Annual column is supposed to be about. Ms. Miller had one image of breasts that had been lopped off in a mastectomy. Just sitting there. Right below a photo of dead rats hanging in a shop window. Of their moment, as surrealism, they screamed of the dark soul looming within the model’s body.

And she was also tough enough to go into the Concentration Camps after the end of the War. Her photos of German officer’s bodies, after suicide, reeked of that same Surrealist training. She knew from absurd, which was a fine a response as any to the atrocities, the death and destruction. Crazy photographs. Crazy. Together, they were definitely the best photographs I saw this year that I haven’t already written about yet.

Man Ray and Lee Miller eventually broke up. She married an Englishman. I have her biography on the shelf, given to me by a friend, but I haven’t opened yet. (I’ll get there.) This friend, in the know, told me that Lee Miller had been sexually abused as a child. Common knowledge, apparently.

Upon hearing that morsel, it all fit. I’d known something was wrong with her all along. That’s why I was so smitten. In those years that she and Man Ray documented, she had it all. The looks. The brains. The creativity. And the soul scars that seared her humanity into celluloid.

Richard Misrach’s lecture at the Center for Creative Photography

by Jonathan Blaustein

The weather in Tucson is brutally hot most of the time. 115 degrees Fahrenheit for almost 7 months a year, so they tell me. But the other five months are beautiful, when much of North America is freezing its collective ass off. Not being a lunatic, I’ve visited in October and February, and, as a result, love the place.

I was overdue for a visit to hang out with my good friend Ken, his wife Lisa, and their lovely daughter. Ken and I were chatting on the phone one day, and I made that all-too-familiar, non-specific promise to come “as soon as I can make it work.” Generic meaninglessness.

Ken then mentioned that the great Richard Misrach was due to lecture at the Center for Creative Photography, on the campus of the U of A. “Misrach, dude. Misrach,” was the final refrain of his argument. I stammered. No obvious excuse came to mind. “Uh, uh, Misrach, dude. You’re right. I’ll buy a plane ticket today.”

And so I found myself, earlier this Fall, fresh off the airplane, handing Ken a breakfast burrito from an Indian Casino outside Albuquerque. Before you say yuck, I got it only a couple of hours before, and it’s designed to keep in long-haul trucks on the Interstate. Delicious.

It couldn’t have been seven minutes from the time I stepped off the airplane to the time we were driving away in Ken’s Prius. The hybrid car is not as out-of-place as you might imagine in Super-Red-State Arizona. Tucson is actually a liberal island in a sea of anti-immigrant hostility. (Though these folks do have to live on the fringe of the Mexican Drug War, with a strong Mexican Mafia presence in town as well.)

I’ll spare you any more details on what he and I did in the handful of hours we had before the lecture. But cruising on the Prius-driving-tour gave me a bit of perspective on where the town is situated. The city is actually surrounded by mountains, and pretty ones at that. I’d rank it highly on the natural beauty scale. But that probably doesn’t matter if you’re sitting inside with your underwear pressed up against the air conditioning unit.

We turned up at the CCP about an hour before kickoff, to get some good seats reserved. And to catch up with the other artists that drove into town from California and Phoenix. People pay attention when a big dog pops his head out in public.

The lecture began soon enough, and the audience was both packed and silent. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve been in a quieter crowded lecture hall since taking final exams at Duke all those years ago. But this was fun instead of hysterically stressful.

Mr. Misrach structured the lecture as a linear narrative of the projects he’d done throughout his career. I was familiar with all of the earlier work, the Desert Cantos photos upon which he built his career. The Salton Sea. The fires. The Bravo 20 Bombing range pictures. The salt flats.

The projection was excellent, and the pictures looked amazing at 15’x15′, or whatever it was. It made me want to create super-giant prints, or do projection installations. Anything to achieve that powerful sense of scale. He claimed inspiration for the Cantos series, in which the projects interlock to inform each other and the whole, from Dante and Ezra Pound.

Mr. Misrach continued on through pretty pictures, like “Golden Gate” and “On the Beach,” and also showed newer things I’d not seen. Images from Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, Iphone images, (of course,) and a return to working in Cancer Alley, Louisiana. The project, which began in the late nineties, originated as a commission from the High Museum in Atlanta.

I’d first seen one of the large scale color images at the now-defunct Friends of Photography in San Francisco many years ago. He showed dozens of these photos, each more compelling than the next. Factories, chemical plants, plantations, riverscapes, old shacks, all in that famously perfect light. I felt the work certainly on par with Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of corporate-sponsored environmental degradation.

I heard the first seat creaks from the crowd at the one hour mark, just as he was discussing his new Aperture book “Petrochemical America,” with design work by Kate Orff. Then, things took a strange turn. (And then stranger still, but I’ll get there.) Mr. Misrach wrapped up the lecture with a segment on the private salon he has at his studio with a handful of younger Bay Area Artists. He went on to show slides of their work, including Doug Rickard, Paul Schiek, Jason Fulford, and my previously-mentioned-friend McNair.

That the San Francisco collaborative scene made such a prominent appearance here in Tucson, just a couple of weeks after I was in SF, was totally surreal for me. I’m not sure people knew what to think. Was he promoting his younger buddies, blatantly, or showing off work that inspired and intrigued him? This was quickly followed by an excellent Q&A, in which Mr. Misrach seemed to enjoy responding directly, rather than sticking to the script.

Here are a few quotes I thought you’d find interesting. On the political impact of his work: “Whether they can change public policy? I don’t think that’s real.” On how he stayed safe in the dangerous situations in which he often found himself: “I was young and stupid.” On how he deals with delving into bleakness of eco-misery: “It’s a job.”

He also said, of art making, “the process is metaphysical.” Let me be the first to agree. Finally, speaking about switching from large format film photography to medium format digital, he said, “I’m making better pictures now than I could possibly do with an 8″x10″ negative.” Hard to believe, but I suppose he’s earned our suspension of disbelief.

Seconds after he finished speaking, Lisa waved to a friend, and her diamond engagement ring flew off her hand, in full view of dozens of people, and disappeared into thin air. I’m always telling my son that things don’t vanish, but it happened before my eyes. Fortunately, the ring was discovered a month later, in the bowels of the pocket book of the lady sitting next to her.

Then, we headed back to their place for a Taco Truck dinner, and a little impromptu, photo-geek-salon/taco fiesta. We had five photographers with five MFA’s between them: a Guggenheim Fellow, two artists showing at Klompching in Brooklyn, a photographer who went to school with Gregory Crewdson, and me.

The consensus on the lecture was that Mr. Misrach was too literal and linear, and didn’t provide inspiration for my colleagues. His target audience was clearly the many young college students in attendance, who were likely less familiar with his canon than we. Alec Soth was suggested as a model of the inspirational lecturer, as several of the photographers had recently seen him speak at the Medium Festival in San Diego.

Personally, I hung on Mr. Misrach’s every word. Beyond the countless incredible photographs, and the consistently relevant issues, seeing that many years of production inspired me. Just do the work, he implied. Keep doing the work. It was kind of Zen.

Back at our round-table, I mentioned the Cindy Sherman show at SFMOMA, and we kicked around comparisons of major artists who’ve lost it and got it back again. Robert Mapplethorpe came up in the photo world, but most comps were to music. Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen.

Finally, someone asked the following question, with which I will leave you. (Feel free to discuss it amongst yourselves.) Over time, what costs more, having a child, or an art career?

This Week In Photography Books – Chema Madoz

by Jonathan Blaustein

Last night, my wife trudged to bed in her green bathrobe. At 7pm. She looked at me, forlorn, and said, “It feels like it’s always time to make the donuts.” Then she continued down the hall.

Much as I wished to say something witty or helpful, I was at a loss. Our lives are pretty wonderful, all things considered, but she hasn’t slept right in six months. Every day, from wakeup to bed, she’s responsible for helping someone out of a mess, or cleaning one up from the kids.

Some day, she’ll sleep through the night again. Schedules will develop, allowing for some planned “downtime.” Fun will return to her life, and someone else can make those blasted donuts instead.

Drudgery is a part of the human condition, as much as fun. Death never happens without the sex first, right? But Art is one of the best ways to try to cheat said mortality. And when we make it, we preoccupy those parts of the brain otherwise used for neurotic self-criticality, or constant to-do-list-making. (And the prints we leave behind will outlast us, we hope.)

Those negative thought trains are silenced while the hand draws a line, types a phrase, or clicks a shutter. We all know how much fun it is to be focused on both the present, and the matter of creation at hand. Looking at Art does much the same thing, with the additional benefit of giving us new information about the world around us.

When we’re exclusively literal, we miss out on many of the best parts of life. Photography is a literal medium, but we all know it can be cheated. (I was fooled by a fake shark-in-a-Long-Beach-Island-Front-Yard photograph. Even tweeted it.)

Literature and painting are all better known for delivering abstracted realities. Hence the love for writers like Murakami and Garcia Marquez. And Spanish painters like Picasso, Goya and Dali. (Not to mention the not-quite-Spanishly titled “El Greco”.)

Personally, I love the blending of absurdity married to reality that we see in Spanish culture. I speak from the experience of the bastard son. New Mexico has deeply Spanish roots, but our particular kind of lunacy is homegrown.

As anyone would tell you, life is crazy. But that need not be a sorry assertion. Absurd humor can be cathartic and profound, and is rarely seen in modern photography. Much rarer still in Black and White. So I was happy to find a new soft-cover book from Chema Madoz, a Spaniard, published jointly by PHotoBolsillo and La Fabrica.

I’d never heard of the artist, but that’s not unusual for this column. The pin-through-the-cloud cover gives a quick and not subtle nod to surrealism, and probably Photoshop. The pictures within are excellent. Formally, they’re super-tight. The tonality is always well-crafted too, as is the use of light. The subjects are sculptural as well as whimsical.

We see a chair wearing suspenders. A burned match in the center of a thermostat. A set of plates, stacked in a storm grate instead of a dish rack. A cactus made of stone. Scissors with eye lashes. Shoelaces made of braided hair.

Surreal images like these are ideal for expressing the dreamlike world of the subconscious. And for reminding us that life is not all about punching the time-clock.

Given my own work, and my taste, it was almost assured that I’d love this book. But I think most people would. Once you’ve flipped through it, you’ll likely feel a bit better than you did before. I should probably show it to my wife when she gets home from work.

Bottom Line: Formal, Surreal, Black & White photo gems

To purchase PHotoBolsillo 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.

 

Interview with New Mexico Museum of Art Photography Curator Katherine Ware

by Jonathan Blaustein

Katherine Ware is the curator of photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. In 2011, she curated the blockbuster landscape photography exhibition, “Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment.” We caught up earlier this Fall, chatting under fluorescent lighting in the museum library in the basement of its 1917 building.

Jonathan Blaustein: How did it all begin? Were you a little girl who aspired to be a curator?

Katherine Ware: I wanted to work in a museum. That was clear.

JB: Always? Growing up in Ohio?

KW: Yes. We would play museum.

JB: You would play museum?

KW: I did. We collected a lot of nature artifacts in my family. Fossils and shells. My dad had this thing called the floating rock. So there was a demo part of the museum that we would set up with a bucket of water, to reveal its extraordinary nature.

JB: You had a demo at your pretend museum?

KW: It wasn’t pretend. (laughing.) Initially we took all our stuff over to the neighbor’s carport. We would set it up there.

JB: With your parents?

KW: No, the kids would set it up. I was very into labeling things. And making labels for the collection. Very into arranging things. I don’t think anyone ever came. I really don’t.

JB: To the carport?

KW: Right. But it was a big production to drag it all over there. And we had to get it shut down by the end of the day so that their dad could park there.

JB: Did you sell concessions? Was there a lemonade cart?

KW: No. We didn’t have a shop. Later, when we moved to a different house, my dad built us some shelves, so we had our own museum in the house. We put our specimens on that. And now I have some of the things on a small bookcase in my laundry room.

JB: So how does one go from the childhood dream to a career? Did you study art history? How does it work?

KW: I was an English major, because I was going to be a features journalist. That seemed like something practical I could do. I feel like I ended up being something like that. As a curator, I identify something of interest, do research on it, study, read, and then write about it, share it with people. And then I move on to something else.

JB: You just cut my next question off at the knees!

KW: What was it going to be?

JB: I was just wondering whether the average photographer really understands the complexity of your job. I was going ask about the nuts and bolts. You were leading into that.

KW: Was I?

JB: Yeah, you condensed it. I was hoping you could expand it.

KW: I don’t remember what I said at all.

JB: For the record, neither of us is rolling with too many brain cells today.

KW: That’s right.

JB: Your average, everyday art viewer pays their money, walks into a beautiful space, and sees art and text on the wall. I don’t think they spend too much time thinking about the years of planning that go into it.

KW: Right. But hold that thought for a moment so I can declare that I like stuff. I like objects. I don’t quite know how the transition got made from fossils to photography in regard to the type of things I work with. I don’t have a great story about that. Maybe it could be anything. Maybe the important part is the power in a one-to-one interaction between a person and an object. With the original, so to speak.

JB: Do you love all art equally, or does photography move you in a way that other media don’t?

KW: I was really involved in art making for a while, but I never considered myself an artist. As to why I connected to photography? I don’t know. I was in Washington DC in the 80’s, and photography was really starting to cook. It was an interesting time, and I think I just kind of latched on to it. What a great ride it’s been!

To come back to your other question of what goes into it, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, and we can talk about that if you want to.

JB: Why, is it too boring to talk about?

KW: We can find out.

JB: In all our interviews, beyond being interesting and keeping people engaged, the goal is to give people information that they would not typically have access to.

So beyond questions about your job, I’d also love to talk about the things that you see. You see a lot of work. And among the taste-makers, I think curators have that magic ability to get work on the wall. That’s part of your job.

Almost everybody wants to have work on the wall, and there are only several score of people that can do that themselves. That have the inherent power to take something from the ether and put it on the wall.

KW: There’s a funny split — people think I get to show what I want, or I get to decide what’s shown and it’s true to an extent, but it’s also really, really not true. There’s a funny tension there, well, not so funny. On the one hand, I am in this job, and I’m the most likely person to get to show what she wants to show. But there are lots of other factors that go into it.

JB: Like what?

KW: There are people whose work I like more than anyone else’s in all the world, but in many cases I never have found a way to show or acquire it. We think a lot about balance in an exhibition program. If we’re showing some contemporary work, then often we’ll try to balance that with historic work.

We think about what we’re going to show throughout the building from a variety of angles with the idea of providing a richness of perspectives, not just the experience of one culture or one artistic school or fraternity. Art in New Mexico, especially, has benefited from all the people and cultures that have touched it and we do strive to demonstrate that. But you can only balance so much, and ultimately I believe that if you don’t follow the curator’s eye you end up with something very wishy-washy and santitized.

JB: By committee?

KW: Yeah. There’s a funny level of ego to the job, in that sense. At the same time, we’re always trying to mediate that. Do the checks and balances on that. Probably about as effective as our national system of government, right?

JB: I would guess that you end up getting constrained by politics and money. What tends to stand in the way of you expressing your vision?

KW: There’s only so much gallery space. That’s a big one.

JB: How many exhibitions do you get to mount in a year?

KW: That is unclear at this time. (laughing.) What I could do, if it’s helpful at getting at some of these issues, is talk about how the “Earth Now” project happened. It’s a great example of how something gets generated.

I was new to the museum, I got here at the end of 2008. The idea was to do an exhibition that would showcase my arrival, but the mandate was that it be a landscape show, and primarily from the collection. That was what I started out with, and I was trying to find a way to distinguish it from other projects.

One of the things I found out was that we didn’t have a lot of landscape photography in the collection. So that made it more difficult.

JB: (laughing.) To pull together an exhibition from the collection?

KW: That’s right. And I also found out that there has been a lot of shows and a LOT of writing on landscape photography!

JB: Especially in the Southwest.

KW: I also found out I didn’t know much about it. And that was a real scramble. Turns out, I’d never done a show about landscape issues. That was new to me.

JB: I saw the show, and really enjoyed it. Our readers know I get to see a lot of work, which is a great part of my job. This show was unique in that you clearly incorporated a number of younger, unknown, and lesser-known artists alongside a lot of heavy hitters. Like Misrach and Robert Adams and such.

I don’t see that very often, in the museum context, and I’d love to see more of that. How did that come about? And were you trying to deviate from the norm in expanding the talent pool?

KW: Yes, I’m that deviant. (laughing.) I really like to contextualize things that way. I think that can be a really strong approach. But I have to say, I felt very boxed in regarding what I could do by what has already been done. The quickest out was to concentrate on contemporary work, because it hasn’t been done yet. It hasn’t been beaten to death. No one has written about it 17 times. But to look at it together with what preceded it.

People say this all the time about Ansel Adams and Stieglitz: Does anybody really need to see another show of those guys’ work? We hope there’s always richness to go back to in them, but there’s also so much more out there. It was a really great opportunity to tap into both sides of the equation. And also what motivated me was seeing how many people were doing work that seemed to be about human relationships with the environment. What’s more pressing right now? That’s really one of our top issues, I would say.

JB: I would agree. I turned my personal attention from food to nature. I thought it was a natural (no pun intended) progression.

KW: But the food is intertwined with that too.

JB: Of course. I want the projects to fit together, and to look at core aspects of the human condition. Our life on this planet is so limited.

KW: It’s interesting to think about that strategy. I’m just lumping you and I together, but are we doing something additive when projects overlap over interlock, or we are we just repeating ourselves? That’s always the question for me.

JB: What did you take away from your experience curating “Earth Now?” How did it change your perspective on contemporary environmental issues?

KW: I got a couple of really big things out of it. One is that I really do believe that Art can make a difference. I was very skeptical about that before, as were most of the artists I talked to. But it can be a real catalyst. And the thing that was most powerful to me was that images can reach people in a way that intellectual conversation maybe can’t. Because we put up our barriers to the words.

Most people, we’ve already decided what we believe, and we’re going to defend that. Whereas an image, because it’s not speaking to you on a factual basis, can be more emotional. It can get into you and stimulate contemplation. Of course, it all gets filtered through the brain eventually. But it can be a crack in the armor. A way you can reach people. I found that really powerful.

The other thing that I learned with that show was I’m less interested in telling; in being the expert. This isn’t unique to me, necessarily. But lately, or at this age, I’m less interested in being the person who provides you with the answers, than the person who guides you in the questions.

JB: I know a lot of artists view their job that way. Curation is a creative expression, as is Art-making. I mentioned earlier that you were bold enough to exhibit several artists whose work might not have been seen in a museum context before. How did you go about finding these lesser known artists?

KW: I want to address something you were saying earlier, which is, “What does Art mean?” We’re always pushing on that in the portfolio reviews. I expect an artist statement, and that the artist will know what he or she is doing. What they’re trying to communicate. These are all really hard-line things the reviewers can get very adamant about. But in the end, isn’t a picture always is more than we can say, isn’t that it’s strength? So in the past, I think I’ve seen my job as taking some of what you the artists are making, and draw it together and state the meaning in some kind of definitive way.

JB: Right.

KW: I think that’s what I’ve done in the past. And now I feel more aligned with what you guys are doing, which is you give it a title, you say what your intent is, but you know that it really is much more than that. It has this life out in the world that is far beyond you. Beyond your imaginings, even.

JB: We hope. That’s the best case scenario.

KW: Right. So I no longer want to decide on or dictate the meaning. I want to participate in making the meaning. I’m one of the hands it passed through. An interpreter, sure, but not the final answer.

JB: In some sense, you’re a gate-keeper to the audience. In 2012, it’s a little different, because people can run their own shows now. But historically, at least, the audience participated through the institution. But I asked how you found the artists, and then you mentioned portfolio reviews. So I’m guessing that’s the way you’re finding the new work?

KW: That’s right. And referrals from other curators and seeing who pops up in juried shows and online.

JB: I think a lot of photographers are a little resentful that they’re expected to both speak and write about their work at a high level. But most photographers are visual communicators, which is why they’ve gravitated towards this medium. As a talented writer yourself, how do you feel about those expectations for photographers?

KW: That’s a good one to touch on. But I’m going to say one other thing before I forget. I like being the go-between. I like being the conduit between the artist and the public. It’s an amazing role to have. Putting people together with pictures is one of the greatest parts of my job.

But increasingly, if we’re saying that words are not the way things are communicated, or words aren’t the most effective way that things are communicated, then what is my role? That becomes a very interesting question.

I was just talking about that with someone who’s been around the block a little, I think it was Michael Berman. Talking about artist statements, he bluntly said, “The artist can’t do that. They can’t be expected to make the work and to write about it.” I’m someone who’s always pushing on the artist statements, but I really had to laugh. There was just so much truth in it.

Photograph by Bill Owens
Photograph by Richard Misrach
Photograph by Suzette Bross
Photograph by Robert Adams
Photograph by Brad Temkin
Photograph by Sharon Stewart
Photograph by Joan Brennan
Photograph by Ansel Adams

This Week In Photography Books – Cara Phillips

by Jonathan Blaustein

My Dad told me a strange story the other day. Then he tried to tell me again, the next day, sitting in the same chair. Seemed like a great metaphor for Thanksgiving. Same day, same meal, same people, every year.

He read the tale on the Internet, so I immediately assumed it untrue. According to Dad, there’s a guy in China who sued his wife for giving birth to an ugly baby. Once paternity was established, everyone figured he’d lose. But then they discovered his wife had undergone massive plastic surgery, and used to be butt-ugly-heinous. He won a settlement from the judge, so the story goes.

Fortunately, my new baby daughter is totally gorgeous. For now. We’ll see what develops. If she ends up with a grand and Roman nose like I have, we might have to visit the plastic surgeon’s office in 2028. (Happy 16th Birthday, honey. Enjoy your new schnozz.)

Just as we haven’t yet digested how insane and unhealthy it is to be digitally connected to everyone else, all the time, the plastic surgery epidemic is equally absurd and troubling. One can only imagine the daily damage done to impressionable young girls by the cavalcade of fake everything on display in today’s myriad media. Fake boobs on Perez Hilton, fake skin in the fashion mags, fake lips on Top Chef.

People can now, for a fee, cut and paste their bodies, molding flesh like anthropomorphized DNA. That’s pretty nuts. Phil Toledano showed us the freaks, in all their Caravaggio’d-out horror. Great stuff. But mocking the loonies doesn’t exactly lead to subtle iconography.

Cara Phillips’ new monograph, “Singular Beauty,” published by Fw: Books, offers a serene and insightful look inside the scalpel industry. I must say, the book is curiously made. After unwrapping the plastic, one opens the solid, minimalist, white cardboard box-cover, and finds a color-copy-paper-ish, stapled catalog inside. Strange and super low-tech, it seems intended to subvert our desire to aestheticize everything. It also references a catalog in a waiting room, where a fancy lady might peruse herself some boobs.

I was off-put at first, as I’m used to leafing through so many of these expensively crafted productions. But I do give props to the structural metaphor, and it’s in evidence here. The pages are also quirky, as each is an inseparable double-fold, with the titles wedged in between. Black text emerges from beneath the white paper. (Again with the outside/inside dialectic.)

The photos are really well seen: medium or large format, lots of studio lights, banging away in high-end plastic surgery consultation rooms. With tight formal construction, Ms. Phillips shoots the fancy-leather-reclining chairs, the liposuction pump machines, anesthesia stations, metal pokers, and nasty tools of the trade. It’s cooly done, clean and meticulous. That enables the viewer to supply the mental details, like blood seeping into a plastic syringe. (Or liquid fat sucking into a lexan cylinder.)

The photos were all shot in LA, New York, the OC, and DC, so we’re probably only seeing inside the exclusive joints. Not sure that matters much, but it’s definitely not Bakersfield. (Hola, me llamo Dr. Reyes. Quieres un nuevo estomoco? Venga a nuestra officina para un grand discuento. Solamente esta semana.)

I like the work a lot. And for once, I don’t have to chastise the creator for exploiting the Boobs Sell Books℠ phenomenon. Whether as doctorly doodles, or in a sexy-type montage photo, they definitely belong. Couldn’t tell this story without them.

Bottom line: Conceptual book, killer photos, flimsy innards

To Purchase “Singular Beauty” 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.

The San Francisco Fall Season: Cindy Sherman at SFMOMA

by Jonathan Blaustein

It was sweating hot on the first Tuesday of October. If you’re planning a trip to San Francisco, keep that phrase in mind. First Tuesday. Because it’s free at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). If you’re the type to get off on saving $18, go then. If you are, however, the type to hate the hordes, then avoid it.

I can understand both perspectives, so when I dropped in on SFMOMA see the blockbuster Cindy Sherman exhibition, I was glad to save the money, yet noticeably cranky because of the crowds. (Karma got me back the following day. At the de Young museum, an older gentleman actually gave me an ironic bow/apology combo, with a smirk on his face, when I asked him not to stand quite so up in my grill.)

SFMOMA is one of my very favorite museums in the US. Amazing place, with consistently interesting shows. I was excited to see Cindy Sherman’s show here, having missed it on earlier incarnations. (It’s now at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.)

I’ve always been a fan of her early work, the “Untitled Film Stills.” It’s important, for the obvious reasons. (Feminism, Post-Modernism, Hollywoodism.) I’d never seen more than a handful at once, but they’re lovely. Together, those images pounce in a large 3 wall grid installation early on in the show. (It’s preceded by the earliest self-portraits, from 1975, which are electric and indicative of her continued style.)

Seeing the whole grid together, it’s clear that she’s genuinely acting. That’s what brings the vision through. She’s energetically invested in each photo, through varied landscapes. Ms. Sherman works the drama, and has the charisma of an of-that-moment-Suzanne Somers. (Yes, I just made that comparison.)
One photograph, taken at a train station in Flagstaff, gives off the Western vibe. In another, she has a crucifix in her cleavage. Classy.

The next room has color versions of the Film Stills, larger, mostly from the 80’s. Still strong. Upon closer examination, some of them, with more ornate, luxe costumes, are actually from 2007 and ’11. Despite the more expensive production values, the new ones are definitely not better than the old.

The “Centerfold” images are next, and still compelling. She’s working it, trying to squeeze the last of the “Film Still” style. From there, we walk along, and hit a big skidmark. (No future pun intended.)

The large scale color images adorning the walls of the subsequent room are offensive on every level. (Among those levels are quality and good taste.) The photos depict grotesqerie that makes Joel Peter-Witkin look slightly less alone in his crazy. A cut-off, limbless torso with a tampon in a vagina, and, also, a cock with a cock ring. There’s a photo of putrid rotting entrails, “Untitled #190”, that reminded me of the stomach contents of that fat guy who exploded in “The Meaning of Life.” (I couldn’t eat anover bite.)

So, so, so bad. What’s the point? I’m so rich and successful that I can get collectors to buy photos of rotting shit? Or was it, first, I gave them the surface version of femininity in America, so now I’ll follow with the extreme opposite: what it feels like to be objectified and relegated to second class status? Probably neither. But the pictures suck.

Then, the clowns. I had the privilege, or bad fortune to see these when they debuted at Metro Pictures. At the time, I thought they were horrifying, and the epitome of mailing it in. Once you’re famous enough, people will buy anything to get a piece of the investment action.

Here, they were creepier than in my memory. Again, bad. Bad, bad. Are they interesting for evoking revulsion? I suppose we’ll have to give her that.

At that point, I’d decided that Ms. Sherman was just one more major talent who got soft and rich and lost her edge. She’ll always have Flagstaff. And then, walking into the final rooms of the exhibition, I was surprised. (You know I like to be surprised.)

Those last few galleries were redemptive. Praise Jesus. And to what do we owe this renaissance? I’m going with The Great Recession as my hypothesis. “Untitled #463,” from 2007-8, is a large scale color photo that shows two versions of Ms. Sherman. Both are brown-haired, middle-aged, city party ladies after work. We see a red plastic cup filled with what? Probably not keg beer. She plays each broad to the hilt. Not exactly flattering.

Then, “Untitled, #466,” from 2008, shows a gray haired, grand dame in a beautiful blue silk caftan coat, floor length. She’s standing in an archway of a regal-type Spanish or California Mansion. It’s not a nasty image, but establishes the rich, powerful, older-lady-type vibe. A demographic which Ms. Sherman herself joined. It also references, no doubt, her collector base.

Grand dames buy a lot of expensive art. There are several pictures in the grouping, and they are subtly critical in their depiction of said dames. Her performances are nuanced, but powerful. No mailing it in here. The production design is as good as the acting. Great, great photos, I thought. She’s back.

Why then? Why at all, given how few artists ever pull out of the money-coma-induced nosedive. Well, though it was not so long ago, it’s easy to forget that the American and European economies fell off a cliff in 2007-008. People lost half their wealth within the span of less than a year. Fear was everywhere. Even, presumably, among the super-rich.

So I’d speculate that Ms Sherman felt the pinch, like the rest of us. Wherever her wealth is, she would have gotten hit, and then people would have stopped buying her pictures, for a little while. That kind of freaked-out energy feeds creativity. It’s primal.

Does it matter why she got it back? Or, for that matter, will we ever know? Of course not. It just makes for fun chatter. I loved all of the pictures in the last group, and was happy to see that “IT” could be re-captured, once lost. Inspiring.

In fact, it kicked off a long, round table, two hour conversation about who still has it, who lost it, blah, blah when I was in Tucson the following week to see Richard Misrach lecture at the Center for Creative Photography. Has he lost it? What is his new work like? Stay tuned.

This Week In Photography Books – RJ Shaughnessy

by Jonathan Blaustein

Initially, I hated it. Today’s book: “Stay Cool,” by RJ Shaughnessy. I picked the thing up off my bookstack, attracted to the bright yellow color. (Mmmm, yellow.) Then, I set it down a moment later. It seemed insanely cynical, like a mashup of Larry Clark’s “Kids”, anything by Ryan McGinley, and an American Apparel ad. (No offense.)

But wait, you say. Isn’t he supposed to start off with either a self-referential or quasi-philosophical hook? He never just writes about the book. That’s for squares, man.

Well, today, we’ll (kind of) make an exception. There’s been a lot of my voice on APE this week, and I really don’t want to burn you out. I thought it more appropriate to cut to the chase. (Sort of.)

As I was saying, I didn’t care for the book. I put it back on the stack, and forgot. Today, I peeked again, because, you never know. Opinions, left alone without adult supervision, have been known to change.

Do you remember what it’s like to be a teenager? I mostly recall the endless supply of insecurity that pumped through my blood daily. Yes, I was an angst-ridden youth. Quelle surprise?

Fortunately, having taught photography to high schoolers for seven years, I learned to appreciate the combination of energy, intelligence, passion, creativity and curiosity that so many people display at that age. Fire and brimstone. Piss and Vinegar. (Insert one last random cliché here.)

This book has little text, beyond the ubiquity of “Stay Cool.” Only an intro paragraph that speaks to the desire to tell the “story of youth.” (Naive, or refreshingly earnest?) It ends with an entreaty to pirate, copy, and share these photos any way you like. How Millennial.

The photographs represent a series of very-good-looking kids, in LA, goofing off, being very-good-looking kids in LA. They kiss, climb on top of cars, slap five with the PoPos, climb on some more things. Then they kiss each other again. Release some balloons. And walk around with signs that say “Stay Cool.”

Is this an ironic review? I’m not sure. Because as silly as it sounds as I’m writing about it, (and the first time I saw it,) the book kind-of does capture the spirit. In a world where everyone can’t stop talking about the obnoxious chick from “Girls”, and 20somethings living in their parents’ basements, this captures the phase, just before, when kids do stupid shit just because it’s fun. Not because they want HBO to option their life story.

Teenagers really do the sorts of things we see here. (Though I have no doubt this was thoroughly staged.) And in LA, of all places, I’m sure they’re not shy about showing off their trendy jeans and tight posteriors. No artifice, because it’s all artifice. (Wait, are we talking about LA now, or the kids?)

Bottom line: Fun, in a vapid kind of way

To purchase “Stay Cool” 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.