The Intrepid Art Collector

Brilliant

2009-11-22T13:52:00.000-08:00

It's rare we see anything about war or politics without a filter that tells us the "correct" thing to think and conveniently omits any other viewpoint. Peter Van Agtmael's new book, 2nd Tour Hope I Don't Die, is a stunning exception. His photographs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are as nuanced as a novel -- they're heart-breaking, terrifying, sometimes even darkly humorous, and full of humanity, even in the midst of cruelty.

This book is our generation's Dispatches. Why don't the Pulitzer Prizes have a category for photo books?

See UNSEEN

2009-10-21T08:44:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow night, my blog buddy Ruben makes his curatorial debut with a group photography show, UNSEEN, at the Randall Scott Gallery in DUMBO. Ruben is one of New York's most enthusiastic advocates for emerging photographers. Go see the show, and you will be too.

UNSEEN
Artist's Reception
October 22nd 6pm-8:30pm

Randall Scott Gallery
111 Front Street #204
Brooklyn

Located on the corner of Front and Washington Streets
in-between the bridges. Subway stops: The F (York St) or the
A or C (High St).

Photo: Nadine Rovner, one of the many talented photographers in the exhibit

Book of the Year: 1959

2009-10-03T19:20:00.000-07:00

Feel that cool snap in the air? It's time to put away the summer reading; no more pink novels with pictures of shoes on the cover! It's time for a real book.

I recommend 1959: The Year Everything Changed, by my friend Fred Kaplan. He makes a fascinating argument that, while 1968 hogs all the credit for being earth-shattering, 1959 was really the year everything became modern. You'd be amazed how many key events happened in unheralded 1959, from the introduction of the microchip to FDA approval of the birth control pill.

1959 was a turning point in the visual arts too, with museums finally taking the pop artists seriously. (I would add, however, that the game-changing event for museums themselves happened in 1977, and we still haven't recovered). The book is laced with stories about artists, performers, and writers -- Lenny Bruce, Allen Ginsburg, Miles Davis, Jasper Johns, and more -- for whom 1959 was a transformative year.

Anyone who's interested in post-war culture should put down the chick-lit, put on a sweater, and get a copy of 1959.

So there, Chelsea!

2009-09-11T16:16:00.000-07:00

New York may have a slew of gallery shows opening this week, but Montreal is in full-on photography mode. The Mois de la Photo starts this week, with events and exhibitions all over town; and simultaneously, we have the World Press Photo exhibition.

If you like contemporary photography and photojournalism, Montreal is the place to be.

Domesticated in New York

2009-09-09T11:50:00.001-07:00

OK, this is exciting enough to shake me from my summer blogging torpor. As you may know from reading The New Yorker, the fabulous Amy Stein is finally having a solo show in New York. If you're in NYC, go to the opening for me -- I'm miserable about missing it. (But there's one coming up in Quebec...)

Domesticated | Amy Stein
September 10 - October 31
ClampArt
521-531 W 25th Street (ground floor)
New York, NY

P.S. Ruben at ArtMostFierce informs me that her work will also be at auction in Phillips de Pury's "Art Now" auction on September 26.

Psst! Breakfast of Champions, on sale

2009-06-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

Cereal Art, purveyor of fun art multiples, has a 40 percent off sale right now. The super secret sale code is JUNESALE. Shh.

Image: Hank Willis Thomas & Ryan Alexiev's Obama-in-cereal portrait, available as a limited edition print or poster.

Books plus

2009-06-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

What should a recession collector choose: books or art? How about both. Juliana Beasley and Shen Wei both have book-plus-photo editions out right now, for under $300. Shen Wei's is a portfolio of his best "Almost Naked" images (suitable for framing), while Juliana Beasley's knock-out "Lap Dancer" book comes with a spectacular color print. If you've been itching to treat yourself, here's where to start.

Help Humble!

2009-04-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

The Humble Arts Foundation needs your financial help, and generosity never felt so good: Support the organization by buying fabulous limited-edition photographs at 30 percent off the normal price. (Use the code HAF30 to get your discount).

Humble is one of the best, most important resources for emerging photographers, and I can personally vouch for the quality of their limited editions. Besides, who wouldn't love Susana Raab's print of Playboy bunnies serving tofu hot dogs while dressed in lettuce bikinis?

Zoe Strauss's I-95 show is this weekend!

2009-04-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

W.C. Fields famously declared that he'd rather be dead than in Philadelphia. Clearly he never envisioned a Philly powerhouse like Zoe Strauss. Strauss's annual I-95 exhibition, held outdoors rain or shine under the I-95 ramp, has become a pilgrimage for photography lovers. It's not only a chance to see over 200 photos by La Divina Strauss, it's also a great chance to collect:

Sunday, May 3th, 2009
1pm to 4pm
Under I-95 at Front St. and Mifflin St., Philadelphia

Zoe Strauss has all the trappings of fancy art world success -- prestigious grants, Chelsea openings, a slot in the Whitney Biennial, a major book publication -- but she makes her work accessible to all. Photocopy prints of the I-95 images will be available for $5, and visitors are welcome to literally take the art off the walls at the end of the show. Is there anyone cooler than Zoe Strauss?*

*She'd probably insist that Lynn Bloom was cooler. I'll give her that one.

Photo: NOT Philadelphia, but part of Strauss's I-95 exhibit.

After the Fallout

2009-04-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

"People are not supposed to live here; wild boars, rabbits and deer thrive in the lush greenery...What Don [Weber] found was a haphazard community of survivors and emigrants from other cities, who told him they preferred Chernobyl's rural peace to the urban blight of Ukraine's industrial zone...Were they afraid of dying early? No, people told him, they were afraid of modern life."
- afterword to Bastard Eden, Our Chernobyl.

One of my favorite new photography books is Donald Weber's Bastard Eden, Our Chernobyl. Weber has an unusual background for a photographer -- he was an ultra distinguished Canadian architect before trading it all in for a camera. But it seems fitting that a former architect should photograph Chernobyl, since what men built there determined everything that came after.

If you love Weber's work as much as I do, hurry over to 20x200, where two of his best images are available for the staggeringly low price of $50.

April is the Coolest Month

2009-04-23T17:33:00.000-07:00

It's that happy time again. Photography non-profits are offering their annual fundraising prints. San Francisco Cameraworks has new limited editions by Julie Blackmon (above), Brian Ulrich, Lisa Robinson, and others.

Meanwhile, the Museum of Contemporary Photography is offering a wonderful selection of prints all priced at $300. This is your chance to get an Amy Stein, folks. Don't waste it.

CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival

2009-03-22T10:15:00.001-07:00

As a Montrealer, it pains me to say nice things about Toronto, but I make an exception for the CONTACT photo festival. In May, the entire city goes photography crazy with exhibitions all over town. If you're anywhere near the Big Smoke, check it out.

FYI collectors: CONTACT also sells limited-edition fundraising prints. This year, Edward Burtynsky (who seems to be one of the most generous photographers to non-profits) donated a 20x24 print, in an edition of 25, for $5,000. His print last year sold out in about five seconds, so don't dawdle if you've been longing for his work.

Image: Edward Burtynsky. (I'm going to resist the snarky temptation to identify the picture as downtown Toronto.)

They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot

2009-03-18T11:31:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of Liz Kuball's "California Vernacular" project, so imagine my delight when this photo arrived in my mailbox as a gift. Liz has an eye for wry detail that reminds me of Joan Didion's essays about California. I can't wait to see how the series develops.

ACRIA at Pulse (March 5 - 8)

2009-03-05T12:30:00.000-08:00

I'm always a fan of art for a cause, so naturally I love ACRIA. Not only do they raise money for AIDS research, they also have a wonderful art sales program. This week, ACRIA is at the Pulse art fair, selling prints and photos by top artists for a few hundred dollars apiece. It's a good deal, and a good cause.

PULSE New York is located at Pier 40 - 353 West Street @ West Houston
Fair hours:
• Thursday, March 5: 12pm - 8pm
• Friday, March 6: 12pm - 8pm
• Saturday, March 7: 12pm - 8pm
• Sunday, March 8: 12pm - 5pm

P.S. If you can't make the fair, check out ACRIA's website.

The Little Prints

2009-03-03T13:12:00.000-08:00

Am I just getting old, or are an astounding number of printmakers making art that looks like it should be a children's book illustration?

Light Work's 2009 Fine Prints available now

2009-03-02T09:41:00.000-08:00

Light Work, an organization that supports emerging photographers, has new collector's prints for 2009: signed, original photos by Krista Steinke, Marla Sweeney, and Garie Waltzer, for $275. This is a wonderful organization, well worth supporting.

Image: Krista Steinke.

Good Things in Small Packages

2009-02-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

Humble Arts has a fun new way to raise money. They're printing postcard-size prints by emerging photographers -- five different images in a batch -- for $9.95. These postcards are ready to mail, to frame as inexpensive-yet-cool gifts, or to keep for yourself. Never have the words "collect 'em all" seemed so enticing.

The fist batch has a nice selection of artists: the uber-talented Bradley Peters (above), Tina Tyrell, Gustav Gustafsson, Alejandra Laviada, and John Mann, below.

Sunshine and Noir, an interview with Thomas Alleman PART ONE

2009-01-18T19:23:00.001-08:00

LH: Your Sunshine and Noir images are so evocative, not only of classic films but also of American literature. They make me think of F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Scribner should use your photos on all his book covers!) Did you have any particular literary or cinematic inspirations when you were working on the series?

Thomas Alleman: I got a BA from Michigan State in Literature, and spent most of my time with the American modernists who flowered after the first World War. Hemingway and Fitzgerald were two of my very favorites, of course---I still reread “Gatsby” and “The Sun Also Rises” every other year or so---but I also loved the hard-boiled crime novelists whose debt to Hemingway and Dos Passos is crystal clear: Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler especially, and James M. Cain and Cornell Woolrich. (Later came Ross McDonald, Jim Thompson and David Goodis---a spectacular second-generation.)

I’ve been telling people for years that that image of the sexy rental cars and those two big looming eyes (made in West Hollywood in 2001, below the old Spago site) is my Gatsby shot. Those are the huge eyes that dominate that billboard near George Wilson’s auto-garage in West Egg---which is also the motif on the dust jacket of the original Scribner’s hardcover. Somehow, no one but you has noticed that reference on their own---and even the folks I explain this to usually seem bored or underwhelmed by the story, as if it were some self-congratulatory afterthought, rather than the primary, essential motive for the picture.

Sometimes my eye catches sight of a scene or object that seems “quintessentially LA”---or, writ larger, something about which you might simply say, “Yes, life’s like that!”---and I’ll make that photograph in the most straightforward, unmediated way I know, so that the viewer is confronted with the very basic fact of that situation. Most often, of course, “the thing itself” doesn’t yield much visual value, except as evidence that’s banal and unremarkable. But almost any object or scene can become a metaphor for something else---a stand-in for another object, or for a state-of-mind or a point-of-view. A child at play can put us in mind of an abstract generality like “innocence”, but one might also detect “greed” in certain games; a child might resemble a dancer in motion, or a drunk. Since these metaphors and similes (and visual puns) are part of a cultural construct---an ardent capitalist might see a neon dollar sign as a metaphor for great prosperity and health, while an avowed anarchist or socialist might curse the symbol’s power to enslave or sicken people---it’s helpful to have a quiver-ful of cultural references when striding into the social landscape. The more references one has in mind, the wider one can cast their visual net. As I wander a single block in Hollywood, I might encounter a hundred separate metaphors, similes and puns.

Among many other sources, I’m aided by all those books and writers, aforementioned. Whether they’re “serious” or (merely) “genre diversions”, they’re always with me, and they inform the psychic space I inhabit when I’m meandering through the neighborhoods I photograph. One might be reminded of specific passages from “Gatsby” (for example), but certain objects or scenes might conjure more abstract feelings about a character or a theme, or of the whole book. Walking among the creaky old fishing boats docked in the LA harbor, one might choose, for a minute or two here and there, to view those peeling vessels through the prism of Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea”, and one might therefore pursue the nets and knotted ropes as if they were the shackles that hold a man to a wearisome life, or as worn-out extensions of his own ruined sinews and skin. Without the help of such metaphors, one might walk amongst all that stuff---the wood and canvas and rust and sag---and not have a clue about how or whether to photograph them. “Why bother?” one might ask. “Its just a bunch of…stuff”. For me---as for Sam Spade, at the end of Dashiell Hammet’s “The Maltese Falcon”---“it’s the stuff that dreams are made of.” And,if nothing else, dreams are exactly what I’m photographing. (Waking dreams…fever dreams.)

A savvy, experienced photographer can frequently “deliver” the metaphor or lesson of the photograph, where someone less adept might not make their subtext clear enough. But, just as often, it kinda doesn’t matter whether one can “sell” the metaphor or not: the metaphor’s purpose is sometimes simply to guide, cajole and enliven the photographer in the field, stopping her in her tracks, motivating her to shoot a scene that might otherwise seem unremarkable. The final picture might live very successfully on it’s own without anyone ever “getting” the metaphor. Indeed, the metaphor itself is sometimes just tortured or ill-advised or flimsy, but, as long as it turns a light on in the photographer’s mind---seizes her imagination and directs her to shoot a certain building or cloud or shadow a certain way---then it’s done its service to the process.

Since the title of my collection is “Sunshine & Noir”, it might be obvious that one of my essential metaphors is…”noir”…whatever that is. Certainly, it’s the French word for “black”; it connotes darkness and nighttime. For a couple generations of American writers and filmmakers, it referred, obliquely, to the darkest impulses of (mostly) urban folk, and the schemes and dalliances and plots they concoct to brutalize each other. The writers of “hard-boiled” and “noir” stories depended on schemes, heists and conspiracies to move their stories forward; they suggested that there were secrets in the air, a reality below the world, and that all was not as it seemed. Appearances deceived, and the apparent guarantees were illusions: bad things happened to good people, and the best laid plans will probably go horribly awry. The rules are not what you think they are; gravity operates differently in a “noir” world. But the genius of “noir” was just that: anyone and anything could be gripped at any time, and broad daylight was as fraught with peril as midnight is. Many of Hitchcock’s greatest, most gripping scenes are set in mid-day; in much of the best film-noir, the deep shadows cast down a sun-drenched, noonday street are where the scariest monsters await---or at least, that there are desperate folks in there, hiding in plain sight, perpetrating plots that the casual stroller will never see unfolding, until it all goes bad…

My pictures are not about criminals or despairing sad-sacks; there’re no maidens-in-distress, or bungled bank-heists. But those “noir” principles---the notion that there’s a secret borne in the arrangements of the known world, and a subtext beneath all this hurly-burly---are what guide me as I walk. Their influence keeps me sensitive to the presence of all those metaphors, because that’s how that subtext (whatever it is) becomes manifest---through the metaphors. For a photographer who isn’t sure, from one minute to the next, what his picture might be, it helps to hone that state of mind, because a deadpan vision of the world as it is (or anyway, of LA as it is) would be dreary to the extreme, and hardly worthy of a second glance.

LH: Are you a fan of vintage photography? Some of your images have echos of Andre Kertesz and other vintage masters.

Thomas Alleman: I draw a straight line from Lartigue and Kertesz to Cartier-Bresson and Lee Friendlander, and onwards from there to the present moment. From the very beginning, I learned much of what I know about the photographic frame from those last two; they’re my essential heroes and father-figures. (Robert Frank, William Klein and Garry Winogrand were also very essential to me, but I’d locate them on a different lineage, because of their rawness and emotionality.) I came to Kertesz a little later (because Sylvia Plachy loved him so much), and saw immediately his seminal influence on every photographer I ever sought to mimic myself.

The central mission and practice for all those folks, I think, was to willingly live and work in the world as we know it, away from studios and lights and models and all the stuff that can be controlled and foreseen; they went straight at the hurly–burly of the known world and sought to create in-camera arrangements of that chaos that were readable and revelatory without aiming to “tame” those scenes. The world of Lee Friedlander is wild-and-wooly in the extreme, but it’s contours and gestures and echoes are somehow see-able in his framing, rather than simply anarchic. That’s always been my goal, as well---though, I must say, the Holga isn’t the best tool for that mission: I can only capture a fraction of the complexity I see in a scene, because my chosen camera can’t detail see for shit, and it’s stuck at a furry f8 (or maybe f11), which, with medium format optics, doesn’t give enough depth-of-field to demonstrate the cavalcade of information that Friedlander shows. But that’s the trade-off I’ve knowingly made, in seeking a photograph whose lines and shapes are dreamy, allusive, and psychological.

Which is also why my edits are a little grueling: even though I’ve been shooting these Holga projects for seven-plus years, and have viewed literally thousands of enlarged contact sheets, I still shoot as if I have no idea of my camera’s many, many limitations---I shoot as if I’m working with a Hasselblad, crafting streetcorner compositions that the Holga’s bizarre optics can never actually deliver. So, most of what I shoot is just plain ill-considered (though I should know better by now); on average, I get one frame per roll that’s worthy of looking at as a work-print, but it takes about 23 rolls to produce a single real keeper. (In New York City, which is dense with opportunity, my percentages are much healthier: 16 rolls yield a picture worthy of the book I’m planning.)

Sometimes I think that, if someone with a different eye did an alternate edit of all my Holga negatives, the body of work might resemble the stills from a Godard film: there’s an icy aloofness and a brooding vacuity in much of what I shoot, but the final edit disregards those impulses, and is warmer, more elegiac.

PART 2, Thomas Alleman

2009-01-11T17:17:00.001-08:00

LH: I'm amazed that your "Sunshine and Noir" photos were shot with a $17 toy Holga camera. What was the editing process like? You must have had some surprises -- both good and bad.

TA:
I’ve spent twenty-five years working in black-and-white darkrooms with negatives and silver-gelatin papers---and for a decade my prints were made for publication on shitty, porous newsprint---so I’ve learned to create real snap and swing in my midtones, and readable details in the highlights and shadows. Because of that ridiculous plastic lens, Holga negatives are unusually (and blessedly!) flat, which makes it necessary to really work all those old-fashioned printing skills, and to indulge that longtime tendency toward contrast and “pop”. Building rich blacks into the print seems to me like the obvious and essential mission, but I’ve noticed that very few other Holga practitioners actually go there; maybe their imaging strategies are more “respectful” of the natural Holga look, but, to my eye, too many of those flat, vapid prints just seem to float away before they’ve left their intended impression.

As for editing: well, that’s the underappreciated crux of the process. I learned, from years of newspapering, to edit rather ruthlessly, with deliberate fidelity to the standards of “readablility” and, when storytelling is called for, a fairly direct acquittal of that. I once heard Richard Avedon say that one of his best qualities was his dis-inclination to be impressed by his own work; he could look at the pictures with something like dispassion, he claimed, and could throw out something that didn’t work---no matter how deep his belief, in the moment of shooting, that he was creating something really great. It’s perfectly natural, I’d say, to be seduced by all the extra-sensual, three-dimensional exotica that we photographers find ourselves surrounded by sometimes---the sounds and smells of a carnival midway at dusk, the adrenaline rush of an accident scene on a busy street-corner, the spectacular intimacy of a live birth or the death of a someone who’s surrounded by weeping family. Heightened and dramatic emotion, the presence of danger or disturbance, extremes of noise and gesture---all that makes for a very rich and memorable experience for a photographer, but the quality of the ensuing pictures isn’t by any means guaranteed. They need to stand entirely on their own, and communicate with efficiency the essence of that moment that so moved the photographer. If they can’t, they’re kinda useless, and need to be set aside. (Of course, the obligations of a daily newspaper photographer to her employers and their readers doesn’t allow that luxury to often, but someone who’s creating a book or exhibition can and should ply those prerogatives.)

With that standard in mind, I’ve set aside hundreds of negatives that just didn’t capture the moment I, personally, had experienced. In fact, the photo chore that most annoys (and actually upsets) me is when I’m compelled, for whatever reason, to troll through a bunch of old negs, in search, perhaps, of some frame I need to find. When I’m made to behold, on one contact sheet after the other, all my failed ideas, I’m almost nauseated, literally. All those fancy-pants compositions and snarky juxtapositions and sly visual puns----all the stuff that seemed so smart and certain in the field, but that looked so ridiculous and boring and smug in the darkroom later---it’s all very, very humbling, and it makes me dizzy with a weird kind of grief. (I see myself as a younger person, passionately making those pictures that have survived till now as contact sheets in a box on a shelf, and I’m saddened, kinda, for that silly chump who thought he was seeing something fresh and instructive or beautiful, but who wasn’t actually as smart as he thought he was, it turns out.) Those moments serve as sharp reminders that the three-dimensional experience one has in the field can look quite different on film---and it may look like nothing worth looking at, period.

But I’ve been talking about the “bad” surprises---the disappointments. The good surprises, when rarely they occur, usually issue from that other side of the coin I’ve just described, and illustrate that old Garry Winogrand trope: “I photograph things to see what they look like when they’re photographed” (Or words to that effect.) He and I are making the same point---that “the thing seen” in three-dimensions is likely to be quite different than it’s 2-D representation---but he’s far more optimistic than I am, and somewhat more open, I think, to the delights of those discoveries. I do follow Winogrand’s dictum in the field---pressing the shutter in hopes of finding out, later in the process, what a certain scene might look like as a negatives---but I’m mostly just covering my ass, without actual hope that I’ll be enlightened by my contact sheets, later on. Winogrand, on the other hand, does hope and expect to be surprised; that’s part of his process, and he shot towards those surprises. All of which is a little perverse: Winogrand shot with a camera that could capture, in exacting detail, the surfaces of any earthly object or vista he could stand before, and yet he devoted himself to a process that depended on instinct, uncertainty and caprice in his compositions---while I am trying to maintain strict control of my frame and the arrangement of everything in it, using a camera which is famously unable see clearly or guarantee any picture you think you’re making with it. Bizarre (and self-delusional) as it sounds, I’m usually pretty confident about the pictures I’m seeing and shooting, because I’ve internalized the freaky optics of that damned Holga to such a great extent, and my experience with black-and-white materials is sufficiently deep that I can get a sense of how a given scene might be “claimed” and subverted, tonally, in the darkroom.

Every once in a while, though, I will find something on a contact sheet that really surprises me, and it’s a pretty glorious feeling when that happens. It’s like finding a dollar bill on the sidewalk below you. Mostly, this has to do with happy accidents in the framing of a scene, because the lens itself is far wider than the viewfinder, and you sometimes literally don’t know what’s in the picture when you shoot it. Also, the little jumps and bounces that the shutter sometimes makes---inexplicably, unpredictably---lead to some wonderfully spooky discoveries: in the lower right hand corner, I’ve found, one might get a ghostly double exposure that’s separated from the primary one by a quarter second, maybe. Depending on the composition and the way that apparent motion is organized in the frame, this extra little detail appears literally like a footnote, or and aside or a an addenda; it’s an update from the field, telling us a little more about how the action of that central image resolved itself.

LH: Do you feel that being a news photographer -- having to capture extraordinary moments -- influences your personal photography projects?

TA:
It’s not the lessons or experience I got from shooting extraordinary moments that stays with me in this recent “fine art” endeavor; it’s the learned ability to think through an unusual situation in real time, and nail whatever picture presents itself. Except for some of the bigger papers, like the LA Times---which have large staffs of splendid shooters who provide more great pictures than can be published on a given day---most dailies don’t have excess visual material to fall back on when a photo assignment doesn’t pay off as expected; most of the pictures assigned on a given day are intended for actual publication the next morning, and a blown assignment will wreak some havoc on the City Desk. So, a newspaper photojournalist knows that she must always come back to the office with a publishable picture, and she spends years developing an array of responses, tricks and methods for getting a shot out of almost any situation.

My Holga work doesn’t necessarily depend on a set of tricks, nor am I ever “under the gun” to bring home a decent shot, but that mind-set has, in it’s best particulars, traveled with me: wherever I am, I’m convinced and aware that there’s a picture that can be made, and that I can wrest something of sufficient interest from any scene. When the “content” disappoints, one can “shoot the light”; when the light is weird, one can shoot groovy blurs; when the world is backlit, you shoot silhouettes; when your frame isn’t wide enough, you can undercerank the advance and create panoramas. When I’m in the field, my time is never wasted; I have a feeling of hope and engagement every step of the way, because I never “write off” a situation as being un-photographable. The Holga might suffer by technical comparison to any other camera on the planet, but I’m always confident that I can make it do something, somehow; those “Hail Mary” pictures don’t often make the final cut when I’m gathering my very favorite images, but the ability to always make them keeps me active, alert and engaged in whatever scene I find myself in, rather than disappointed and disengaged because of the apparent lack of pictures to be made. After all, “staying in the game”---maintaining psychic and spiritual awareness in the immediate present moment---is crucially important to any photographic field work, whether on assignment or not, and a big part of that emotional survival is well-cultivated confidence: the true belief that you’re up to the task, that you have the tools and the heart for all this, and that you’re not your wasting time. I learned that frame-of-mind during fifteen years of newspapering.

LH: What are the challenges for a contemporary photographer of working in black-and-white?

TA:
The various means by which color photographs are presented---whether as huge prints hung in a museum or published on newsprint in our daily papers, or dispersed electronically via online blogs and e-mail attachments---have been nearly perfected (it seems). Not only that, but anyone anywhere can now capture sharply-focused, well-exposed, high-resolution color images with comical ease, even on a cellphone (by which they can immediately transmit that image to another phone a world away). As black-and-white once did, color photographs now dominate (almost) the entire playing field, from snapshots to fine art to daily photojournalism to advertising to the evidentiary document: the crime-scene shot, the insurance pictures of crumbled bumpers, the orthodontic close-up of snaggled tooth-rows.

So, black-and-white has become a specialty material. The film itself isn’t readily available, and it’s difficult to process or print well on one-hour machines that’re calibrated for color. (Digital images are naturally color files, and the counter-intuitive act of making them monochromatic is also a specialty process: whole chat rooms and web pages exist to discuss the countless methods for doing those conversions, and there’re dozens of software plug-ins available for rendering “authentic” black-and-white versions of color digital files.)

But it’s not just a matter of material---of film and paper and wet-line darkrooms that’re that nearing extinction. In a color world, the symbolic role of black-and-white photography itself has become more proscribed, more specific and specialized: black-and-white is associated with certain very narrow styles of expression, certain very specific subjects and psychological states. In particular well-worn applications---depictions of the urban poor or of war scenes in Eastern Europe, for example---black-and-white signals “authenticity”. Further, many folks who love and collect fine-art photographs believe that black-and-white speaks the photographic language more expressively that color ever could, by a long-shot. (Though, that might have something to do with the obvious fact that neither black nor white conflict with the colors of pillow-cases and wall-paper when those pictures are hung in a hallway or bedroom.)

Anyway, “expressiveness” is an attribute frequently attributed to black-and-white photography. (Conversely, many folks believe that “truth” is also a quality BW can capture better than color, despite the latter’s obvious advantage as a transmitter of pure fact; another example, I suppose, of how “truth” and “fact” can be two very different things.) Because black-and-white has traditionally been practiced in a darkroom---where the tonal relationships embedded in a negative can be subverted and enhanced in many subtle ways by the very physical, very personal dance one does when dodging and burning---it’s thought that BW reflects the mind and body, the soul and emotions, of the printer, in a way that the clicks of a keyboard retoucher cannot.

(Of course, the digital photographer has far, far more control of their “expression”, when working with picture files in Photoshop, and they have tools that’re un-dreamed-of by the darkroom manipulator. But the popular imagination embraces the vision of a tortured artist standing for hours in a dark, toxic room, creating truth and beauty with the mad flutter of fingers over blank paper, while a clock ticks. Charley Parker worked and created in a similar physical milieu, as did Hemingway and all the others; compare any of that to a guy in a well-lit office, sitting in front of a computer, listening to itunes and drinking Starbucks while he plies his trade on a Mac Cinema Display.)

But “expressiveness” is out-of-vogue these days, it seems to me. Which makes black-and-white a technique that achieves effects that are no longer of high priority to some of the cutting edge tastemakers who guard the gates of the popular culture.

Of course, the photo world is so wide that nothing is ever actually “out-of-vogue”, but I do see clear trends. Lately, for example, there’s a real distrust for pictures that seem too “sweaty”, too “passionate”---too “expressive”---in a primary sense. By “primary”, I refer to the relationship between photographer and subject in the field: we want that relationship to be more circumspect than we’ve enjoyed in the past, more analytical and aloof and deliberate. We don’t want the photograph to evince a photographer’s physical engagement with the scene---we don’t want a low angle, which implies that that shooter was laying down; we’re not into a blurred frame, which might conjure an image of the photographer in chaos or peril; wide lenses are pretty much out, because their use requires the artist to be right in the middle of the action, which is too close for comfort these days.

In the recent past, we loved the notion---the implied narrative---of that photographer standing in for us in the world, physically engaged. That groovy ethos captured the imagination of a couple generations. Recently, though, we seem to want only an intellectual interaction between the artist and the subject: we want the pictures to illustrate an idea that the photographer has had elsewhere (in a graduate seminar, perhaps), which she is now dutifully acquitting in the field, like a scientist who’s lab work intends to authenticate a confident hypothesis. She creates, let’s say, a series of view-camera images of people ranged around picnic tables in National Parks, each one photographed from almost the same distance and angle; her pictures are number “1” through “56”, and her opus (which appears in part in Aperture Magazine and is shown in Chelsea to rave reviews) is called “Sitting Down/Standing Up: Levels of Leisure in The New West”.

(The Germans seem to excel at this point-of-view---perhaps because of the influence of Bernd and Hilla Becher---but that nearly-scientific brand of photography has infiltrated all countries and genres, including high-end magazine portraiture: think of Martin Schoeller’s “Close Up” pictures, among many other examples. I must say, I do love those “big heads” of his---probably more than most folks. In fact, I really, really admire a lot of the clinical, icy-cool photographs I’ve described, but I don’t much “love” them…because…I can’t locate a touchable heart beating in them. I suspect, though, that that might be part of the point: in this post-9/11 world, the heart’s irrational habits are viewed with suspicion by many, I think, and the “heartfelt” report from the front lines might no longer seem, to some, like trustworthy evidence of the world’s true nature. Arguably, this recent generation of photographers is plying a less emotional, more aloof and “professional” approach to picture-making. I kinda get that, but I’m sure I couldn’t make those pictures.)

If I sound a little defensive or even jealous about these current trends, well…I might be, let’s face it. Mostly, though, I simply recognize that they spell a certain (perhaps temporary) end to the cycle of photography like mine, which requires the artist to confront a chaotic physical world with a wide-ranging set of responses to the many ever-shifting layers of fact, line, metaphor and emotion that’re present there, and then organize that information in two dimensions, in real time. Of course, people will still do that work, but, except for career retrospectives, they won’t likely get it shown in museums (because we’ve sufficiently interrogated that style of picture-making, over the last 50 years), and cutting-edge gallerists will probably conclude that the edge has moved elsewhere. “Expressive” black-and-white images that evince the photographer’s real-time engagement with a fluid physical reality are just not on the critical front burner these days---but I couldn’t imagine having anything else on my walls, or my resume. Hopefully, the cycle will swing around again---as it always does, and as it has, in our nation’s capital, just this week---and the sweaty, expressive, witty, romantic impressions that me and many others still make will be the collectible, cutting-edge imagery of a decade hence.

Wanted: Artists with day jobs

2009-01-07T11:02:00.001-08:00

Shelley Tepperman, a wonderful documentary filmmaker here in Montreal, is planning a project about artists who have day jobs. I think she's looking more for Wallace Stevens types (insurance executive/poet) than someone waiting tables three nights a week. But here's what she writes:

"I'm seeking artists across the country [Canada] of all ages, who are recognized and esteemed by peers in their field but who, for various reasons, continue to work at a day job they like and are not just waiting to retire as soon as they "make it". The more unexpected the contrast between the person's day job and art form, the better. (E.g a musician who teaches music is too obvious... ) I may also be able to include an American character, so feel free to suggest artists south of the border if they fit the profile."

If you're interested, drop her a line at sheltep@gmail.com, with the subject line "Artists with day jobs."

Granola Utopia

2009-01-06T16:45:00.001-08:00

Of all the artistic visions of Utopia, I think my favorite is Jennifer Loeber’s new series about an idealistic summer camp she once attended. Forget cliché images of moody adolescents. Here, teenagers create their own Kumbuya world, from the moment they arrive and write in chalk, “Every person here is beautiful and wonderful.” They hug and support each other in a way that’s beautiful without being cloying.

I know second-hand what a powerful emotional experience this can be. My husband, now in his 40s, still communes with buddies from the aptly named Camp Thoreau – a place where Central Park West kids skinny-dipped, sang union-organizing songs around the campfire, and slopped the hogs with breakfast scraps. To experience an idealistic and just society – even if only for a summer – seems to change people’s lives.

Jennifer’s photos are pitch-perfect. The only thing I don’t understand is the title of the series, Cruel Story of Youth. I’m not sure what’s cruel here, unless it’s the cold slap of reality that comes afterwards.

FYI. Attention collectors (especially Camp Thoreau alumni): Jennifer has a piece in Dan Cooney’s upcoming auction of emerging artists. This sale is chock-full of talented photographers like Lucas Foglia, Shen Wei, and Bradley Peters. All bidding starts at $200.

"Heck, anybody could do THAT..."

2009-01-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

I can't tell whether this Make Your Own Famous Art post is a joke or a sign that the apocalypse is upon us. Either way, the homemade "Ryan McGinley" is a pretty good parody.

Attention Holiday Shoppers

2008-12-22T16:57:00.001-08:00

Haven't finished your holiday shopping? Did a distant friend or family member unexpectedly give you a present (which means you have to reciprocate)? Get them gift certificates from 20x200 -- my favorite branch office of Santa's Workshop. That way, your giftee can select from a variety prints or fine-art photographs and have it delivered to their door.

Buy the certificates on-line, and either email them or print out a hard copy (which you can stash in a holiday card, as if you'd been thinking of dear Aunt Whatsername all along). Elves are standing by.

UPDATE: Juliana Beasley sale

2008-12-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

Pinch me. Fab photographer Juliana Beasley's holiday sale just got even more dreamy. She's offering several additional prints for $150 to $300.

Critical Mass news

2008-12-08T10:02:00.000-08:00

The results of the Critical Mass photography contest are in. Congratulations to the winners and Top 50. They're a talented bunch (though frankly there are a couple of stunning omissions).

Image: Domesticated, by previous Critical Mass winner Amy Stein, is available now from Photolucida. I can personally vouch for the amazing-ness of this book.