A beautifully inspiring man, the French photographer Klavdij Sluban talks with Lens Culture about his journey of photographing the inside of prisons around the world, from France, Ireland, Salvador, Guatamala and the former Soviet Union, since 1995. Here, he guides juvenile prisoners into the world of photography, letting them go to the very boundaries of creation, where they "are pushed to their own creative extremes".
At the FLOWERS EAST GALLERY, in Shoreditch, is a collection of work from the photographer Michael Wolf. Primarily the images shown are from China and Japan, with these colossal prints of buildings, consisting of a seemingly uncountable amount of floors, all stacked up on one another. One instantly feels claustrophobic, which is a theme that seems to run throughout his work.
There are a number of images from his series 'Tokyo Compression', where we stand safely on the other side of subway doors, free to move about on the outside, whilst looking inside where bodies have been rammed together, and again packed tight like the apartments in his large-scale pictures. And yet, in these images, there are some beautifully quiet moments, as if some of them have been suspended in time, frozen; dream-like, ethereal, and held in place behind the condensation of the glass.
With Michael Wolf you are given the ultimate ticket of voyeurism, the chance to stand unseen, and to gaze at miniature, contained worlds, small pockets of living spaces encased behind glass.
there is also an interesting audio interview with Michael Wolf, at Lens Culture.
An interesting video interview with the British photographer Simon Roberts, as he talks about the "anthropological study" of his pictures, and in particular the layers of history, time and the different classes that can be seen woven throughout many of his photographs, specifically from his book 'We English'. Within this series he documented how different types of people spend their leisure time, where he would elevate himself physically higher than what he was photographing in order to get a wide, clear view of the people within their chosen environments.
A little late, though well worth bringing up, is the photography slideshow from this years FOTO8 summer show. It is a powerfully stirring selection of photographs, from humour and wit, to fantastical, almost unbelievable events. We are confronted with photojournalism and the raw realism of so many stark, revealing moments in the people we're viewing. It is a wonderful insight into so many diverse types of photography right now, of its many, proliferating directions.
The show also includes a really good friend of mine, Nick Ballon, who I have been lucky to assist on numerous shoots. I have learned a great deal over the years from Nick, and continue to pester him even today, with many photography questions he always answers with the utmost patience.
I took this photograph at Seaside Heights, in New Jersey, which was used as part of the 'Dear America' series, curated by ZARA for their launch into the U.S. The series consists of 50 photographs for the 50 States of America, a quiet and gentle series, full of texture and landscapes and peaceful sights that undulate across the country.
"The period from 1961 - 1965 was the defining era of the American civil rights movement. As a participant and observer of this struggle for racial equality, Bruce Davidson chronicled the demonstrations, the protests, the aftermath of the bombings, and the social and political tumult that arose out of the conflict. "Time of Change" is a testament to the everyday lives of the people who fought against accepted social norms of segregation, poverty, and discrimination."
-Magnum
"Photography isn’t looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures."
Although best known for his war photography, there is a lot more to Don McCullin than his stirring B&W photographs of the Vietnam War. He shot strong, eye-opening pictures of the homeless in the East End of London, as well as the poor in the North of England, in the early sixties, giving us these stark, industrial landscapes where we can still see the scars of World War II; a battered, beaten country, a shadow of its former, colonial self. And now, at the Tate Britain, there is a collection of his British landscapes, capturing the changing seasons of England, as he explains in this short clip on TateShots..
This collection is on at the Tate Britain until 4 March 2012, admission is free.
A photographer I missed out on my list of inspiring photography websites was that of Martin Parr. From looking through some of my most recent photography series (from the Brighton Gay Pride, to the English American Car Convention, as well as the Street Party, USA and Beside the Seaside, UK) I seem to have gravitated, consciously or unconsciously, to observational photography of his kind. Throughout the summer I have taken myself to crowded spaces within America and England, to document what I see, whilst being constantly drawn to amusing moments or the little ironies I see within the world around me. In these environments, where people go to relax, I have attempted to juxtapose small details within the frame which I find playful.
Another reason I have been drawn to this type of photography is because of the spontaneous element to it - of just being able to pick up a camera and then going along to a free, public event. It is there that I need to orchestrate nothing, where I let the narrative of life, as it were, unfold before my eyes. It is within this stage that all I need to do is to be aware of what's around me and then, when a moment presents itself, I compose the shot and take the picture. It gives me an immense sense of freedom taking these types of photographs, and they can be taken whenever the whim takes hold of one.
As for the subject matter I choose... I think this may have been born out of the brilliant American photographer Phil Toledano when he wrote, in the introduction to his series 'The United States of Entertainment': "I’ve always felt that the very soul of a country is reflected in the way in which it entertains itself."
And so there I go, venturing into places where people relax, to enjoy themselves or to partake in a hobby, a lifestyle, or a way of life. It has been these places I have been drawn to, where people cut loose and have fun, to experience the outer world around them when the sun is out to shine, where people are at ease within their life, if only for a day, or even just for a few moments.
Now that I have become completely sidetracked from my original intention, I want to finish this where I begun, with Martin Parr. But I shall save my perspectives on his work, on the way in which his work effects me (I find him wonderfully humorous) and, instead, let him speak for himself in this short interview on TATE SHOTS.
It is by no means a comprehensive list, and so I welcome the mention of any others I have missed out, but I have relentlessly searched for striking photographers. Photographers with a unique style, who put together interesting series that strike sparks inside my mind. I yearn to be moved, dazzled, wowed, and so over time I have bookmarked these in the hope to share them with others, to give people some of the delight I have found with the following list of photographers at the forefront of this art form today (with just a couple of older photographers slipped inside the list).
2. Nick Ballon
3. Jeff Bark
7. Doug Dubois
8. Max Farago
10. Daniel George
11. Jim Goldberg
12. Yulia Gorodinski
13. Yann Gross
16. Nadav Kander
17. Henrik Knudsen
18. Kalpesh Lathigra
19. Vivian Maier
20. Edgar Martins
21. Kiran Master
22. Michel Mazzoni
23. Nick Meek
24. Zed Nelson
25. Anders Petersen
26. Alex Prager
27. Richard Rowland
28. Denis Rouvre
29. Stefan Ruiz
30. David Ryle
31. Viviane Sassen
32. Lina Scheynius
33. Steffen Schragle
34. Aaron Schuman
35. Shaw and Shaw
36. Mike Sinclair
37. Alec Soth
38. David Stewart
39. Larry Sultan
40. Phil Toledano
41. Massimo Vitali
William Eggleston, inspiration to many, and without a doubt the main photographer, along with Stephen Shore, to make colour photography accepted as a serious contender to the B&W photography that had dominated the field for so long. He has given us a long line of sumptuous shots, and has captured a time in America that only colour photography could ever show us.
'In the Real World' follows William closely, intimately, out in America, with his son, and assistant, Winston. His voice has an echo of that other great Southerner, William Burroughs, with a wonderful, drawn out drawl, his sentences spoken slowly, his answers as aloof as he appears to be. But this is compelling viewing, and a rich experience to catch a glimpse of this master at work.
Without the photographer Julius Shulman how known, or how iconic, would the architecture of modernism be in the in the consciousness of the masses? He was a true pioneer of this type of photography, paving the way in a manner the world had not yet seen. He captured the greats, from Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Charles Eames, Pierre Koenig, John Lautner and Frank Gehry, in what was to be the perfect marriage between two different disciplines - a building and a photograph.
Julius Shulman gave architects a way to be seen, to have their work showcased and put into magazines from the 1930's onwards. He was a true artist in his own right, a kind of curator, a bridge that lead the eyes of a much larger audience to the works of some of the most exciting architecture of his day.
From this wonderful documentary, about Julius Shulman's life and career, we are given a fascinating insight into this brave new world of design, with stirring photography in a time when history gave us some of the most awe-inspiring buildings modern man has ever conceived.
HOLY GHOST have just published a few of my photographs from my LOST IN NEW JERSEY series.
There is a really interesting article and interview about Sally Mann, over at NPR.
Vivian Maier, she seemed the ultimate outsider (one of the watermarks of a great artist), moving on the outskirts, aware of all the kinks and queerness of society, rapt with awareness. There is a subtle feel of Cartier-Bresson in her pictures, though they are quintessentially American, as seen through the eyes of one who has lived in Europe in their formative years. I get the feel of her as a kind of zoologist; studying, observing, documenting people in their unnatural environments. She stood on the outside, looking in, with few friends and few people who knew this intensely private person. And yet she had an eye for those brief moments of beauty, of the extraordinary and of humor, which can burst out before one, like a firework, in the most brilliant of ways.
Between these pictures are some of the most interesting self-portraits I have seen - her reflection in a mirror, or her self caught in a shop window, leaving a fleeting imprint on the reality around her, the outline of her being photographed as her real self seems hidden, behind a mask, alone.
Photography seemed her life, her everything, as she left over one hundred thousand negatives behind, most of which are still being processed and scanned. I cannot recommend the photography of Vivian Maier enough, as she left us the chance to gaze into an enthralling world of yesteryear.
A documentary I would love to shed some light on is the profoundly beautiful 'What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann'. It is a tender, insightful film into an incredible photographer with an enthralling, poetic eye. Last year I saw her work at the Photographers Gallery, in London, and was mesmerized. The collection included 'Immediate Family' (1984 – 94), a series, shot over ten years, of her children (which caused controversy amongst conservative Americans). 'Deep South' (1996 – 98), which consisted of a collection of ghost-like, haunting images shot at different battlefields in the American Civil War. The exhibition finished with 'What Remains' (2000-04), a series of decomposing bodies, at a research centre, in Tennesse. But these pictures are not there to shock, that is evident in the huge prints. What instead happens is that we, the audience, is confronted with the reality of death, of what happens to our physical bodies when we pass away, dissolving back into the land in which we lived in.
Throughout her work is the recurrent theme of life and death, where she has an unflinching eye, and a huge amount of courage in focusing her life's work on this. Uncomfortable to some, though utterly essential, I believe, as it makes me think of what Henry Miller wrote in his book 'The Wisdom of the Heart':
"Life has to be given meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning. Something has to be created, as a healing and goading intention, between life and death, because the conclusion that life points to is death and to that conclusive fact man instinctively and persistently shuts his eyes. The sense of mystery, which is at the bottom of all art, is the amalgam of all the nameless terrors which the cruel reality of death inspires. Death then has to be defeated - or disguised, or transmogrified. But in an attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves onto death, and to deny one is to deny the other."
The photographer David Ryle gave me a link to the following, short photography documentary, about Vincent Fournier. He shoots various space stations all over the world and composes these outstanding, strikingly clean compositions that make me smile, leaving the unspoken word of 'wow' pressed upon my lips. The lines in his shots are so sumptuous, and with an almost space-like feel to some of the landscapes he shoots, too. He seems to be in pursuit of anything to do with reaching out to the cosmos; looking here, upon our earth, at objects and stations that gaze up and out of this world and into the outer reaches of space.
You should also watch the short film on his website, also, which has a wonderfully Kubrick-esque feel to its score, making it magnificently eerie, and ever more surreal.
I was asked by the editor of Trebuchet Magazine, at the start of this year, for a photography series to be published in tryptychs. Immediately I thought of my series LOST IN NEW JERSEY, and so, with the artist Peter Venner, we put together the following collection, which was published in 14 parts.
Along with the photographs, Peter wrote the following essay to accompany the series:
The framework which generated the seemingly natural, although institutionally created, opposites of critic and artist was established in the 18th century to provide the necessary basis for which art was conceived and understood.
In this system art services critics by perpetuating the view that the artist inhabits the site of silence, vision, transcendent spirit, emotion and intuition. By contrast the critic exerts this from the site of intellect, speech, judgement and rationale. In more recent times a postmodern sensibility has become established, one that aims to dissolve the assumed hierarchy through which critics' use of praise, blame, and explanation to reveal the meaning, and therefore truth and value of a work, is rejected as being a spurious and reductive division between theory and practice.
More common is the practice of placing a text alongside a work with the intention that it be complementary as opposed to being supplementary, of course this is the intention here.
Common readings of photographs, readings shared by members of a society are reached through the intermediary of an ethical and political culture, but this doesn’t account for the personal readings of photographs, meanings that are unpredictable, private and not easily communicated. This experience, as if a detail attains distinct ‘focus’ against the background of less distinct information, happens when in the presence of fantasy; fantasy being an imaginary sequence where the subject plays a part. Ultimately meaning must come to rest somewhere, but what is it that sets the boundaries for the meaning of photographs?
The use of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of photographs and in the interpretation of photographer’s actions is now a widely accepted approach to establishing the meaning of photographs and is worth consideration here.
In brief, psychoanalysis is concerned with establishing that the ‘real’ (material reality, the real world) is not all there is; there are unconscious factors, memories and wishes that play an equally important part in our daily lives as material reality and this cannot be overlooked in any attempt to establish the meaning of things. Unconscious fantasy structures exert as actual an influence on a person's perceptions and life as does, for instance, such a force as the socio-economic conditions under which a person lives.
The key in applying psychoanalytic theory to the interpretation of photographs is in the position of psychoanalysis in not recognising a state in which the ‘real world’ exists, that is to say of approaching life in an unambiguous, lucid and self possessed way where things are perceived ‘as they are’.
‘Reality’ is only available through representation; no reality is known outside of representation. In the same way meaning is never simply ‘there’ for consumption but instead is produced in a process of substitution of one term for another in a potentially unlimited series. This is C. S. Pierce’s notion of unlimited semiosis and Derrida’s différance. In psychoanalysis there is no convenient division between normal and abnormal behaviour and this concedes truth as subjective and meaning as constructed.
Common fantasy structures contribute to constructing reality in the realm of representations (photographs), consequently and crucially there is no question of freeing representations (reality) from the determinations of fantasy but there is a benefit in the awareness of the agency of unconscious fantasy in the creation of representations.
Fantasy is perpetual transformation which doubles back on itself to repeat, but differently. This movement describes not so much a circle as a spiral that perpetually advances into new territory whilst simultaneously tracing the same figure. This metaphor fits the practice of photographers driven by fantasy, forever chasing the image that will finally satisfy the fantasy, but which, inevitably, is never found or 'captured', but very nearly many times. The process is characterised by the discharge of free energy by the most direct and rapid model available; the drives pursue their adventures by whatever metaphoric or metonymic routes the purely formal characteristics of the signifiers allow them, routes which are potentially innumerable and limitless. Photographic images and indeed the pursuit of photographs as well as the very notion of photographer may perhaps serve to regulate and organise the otherwise formless displacement of desire much as fantasy does. Fantasy then is a staging of desire and the process of photography provides a unique opportunity to act out, repeatedly.
On a different thread, common photographs - photographs that seem only to need common sense to establish their meaning - seem to fit naturally with the concept of hieroglyphs in that their form is fixed like a hieroglyphic symbol and that they seem to remain outside the purview of theory. This likeness is exemplified by a common claim that certain photographs have a significance which transcends their literal content, which may or may not be expressed in words. This concept is particularly strong in Humanist photography through what is known as ‘the decisive moment’. In a roundabout way this idea of the pregnant moment appeared in painting earlier in art history and earlier still in sculpture as the idea that art’s highest calling was to depict human expression in its ideal, all encompassing form. What results is an assumption of discursive clarity. The concept of hieroglyphs functions in exactly this way; the hieroglyph is an unambiguous symbol – meaning is set and communicated without difficulty.
In Egyptian culture hieroglyphs offer the chance of communication between the two worlds of existence; earthly existence where communication is through the ambiguous system of language and the perfect upper world where communication is unambiguous and instantaneous, through the medium of ‘vision’. Interestingly this idea runs through this period of history and into Christianity, where God, who inhabits the heavens, communicates through visions in supposedly unambiguous ways. Even today religious experience in Christianity and religion in general, is characterised this way - as a kind of pure experience attributed as a gift from or privileged momentary access to the upper (spirit) world. The moment fails to endure but lives on as personal legend and is recounted and re-lived this way. A parallel may be drawn between this process and assumptions made about photography and certain photographic practices that may shed some light on the motivation that drives photographers to make and present multiple photographs in such series as ‘Lost in New Jersey’.
About the documentary 'Somewhere to Disappear': "Laure flammarion and Arnaud Uyttenhove, two young European filmmakers, followed the American photographer Alec Soth all over America during winter 2008, summer 2008 and spring 2009. Riding in the back of the artist's van, they drove more than 20,000 miles together going from one state to another, and from one season to another. The result is a 57 minutes movie about the photographer and his project, which was called 'How to disappear in America', about people who decided to withdraw themselves from society. The road trip offers a series of incredible meetings but it also tells the story of an introspective journey."
I am eagerly awaiting to see this, a new documentary about the phenominal photographer Alec Soth. I have been enthralled by Alec's photography ever since first seeing 'Sleeping by the Mississippi'. He has such a tender, beautiful eye, and captures some of the greatest pictures and portraits I have seen in our times.
