65: Alireza Abbasy

Alireza Abbasy
untitled, from the series "Streets, Amsterdam"
2011

Series Statement: Just like many others, what got me into photography was not a burning desire to create art, but simply curiosity. Lots of it though. And I knew one place that was very accessible and always full of surprises: streets, obviously! I started photographing streets, and over time, I quit digital and started using 35mm film, which totally changed the entire experience.

This image is part of my ongoing series of street work. I’m shooting this series freely; I don’t have a concept to work on, and I don’t intend to convey any particular emotion or message. It’s pure street photography: the combination of streets and a man with a camera in hand!

I’m shooting this body of work in Amsterdam, which is a city that would give you absolutely anything you wish; from heaps of bikes to a cross-legged man in the air whose only connection to the ground is a cane!

For information about submitting your work to the fototazo gallery project, click here.

The Image: Dina Litovsky, "Midnight Snack"

© Dina Litovsky, Midnight Snack, 2010, from the series "Bachelorette"

Dina Litovsky: A year ago I started to shoot a long-term project documenting bachelorette parties. I have long been interested in this event as a fascinating contemporary rite of passage for young women where female bonding is performed in a conventionally atypical female way – through a night of sexual games and indulgent drinking. This was the first bachelorette party I shot.

Atlantic City, past midnight. The bachelorette party activities began at 7 am that morning with a limo ride from Brooklyn to the Borgata Hotel, present giving, two-hour getting ready session, formal dinner, gambling, a few bottles of champagne and a bottle of vodka. By 12 am the group was divided, a few girls wanted to continue partying 'til morning, the rest were ready to hit the bed. The room was becoming a battlefield of opinions. Taking matters into her own hands, one of the participants, having left her husband and three kids at home, was unwilling to call it a night and jumped on top of the bachelorette (pink shirt) and her friend for an impromptu striptease. The bachelorette, unknown to most, two months pregnant at the time, was amused but unmoved. This shot of the interaction between the three women is one of my favorite images from this project.

Publisher Q&A: Christy Karpinski of F-Stop Magazine

In October we posted a short, straightforward conversation with Shane Lavalette about Lay Flat, the independent publisher of limited edition photography books and multiples that he founded in 2009. The questions from the conversation with Lavalette have been adapted and given to 11 more publishers and editors that represent a variety of sizes, orientations, and audiences in the photography publication market - both on and offline. As a whole, the 12 posts aim to provide a snapshot of the current publishing landscape.

Today's post is the 12th in the series and features responses from Christy Karpinski of F-Stop Magazine. Previously published are responses from Lavalette, Michael Itkoff of Daylight Magazine, Ray Potes of Hamburger Eyes Photo Magazine, Jeffrey Ladd of Errata Editions, Barry W. Hughes of SuperMassiveBlackHole, Bryan Formhals of LPV Magazine, Lee Grant and Tom Williams of Timemachine Magazine, Jason Fulford of J&L Books, David Bram of Fraction Magazine, Daniel Augschoell of Ahorn Magazine, and Alec Soth of Little Brown Mushroom Books.


Publication: F-Stop Magazine
Location: Chicago
Format: Online

fototazo: What is the backstory on how F-Stop Magazine formed? What gave you the drive to create a photography magazine?

Christy Karpinski: I started F-Stop in the fall of 2003. At the time there were very few online photography sites that just showcased images, most were commercial oriented sites or tech sites. So my desire to see a lot of photography in one place motivated me to create the magazine along with wanting to share work I found interesting and inspiring.

f: What is particular or unique about F-Stop? What separates you from other publishers?

CK: I think what makes F-Stop somewhat different than some of the other online publications is it’s "group exhibition." I aim to include photography made by people who are new to photography as an art form as well as more established photographers, hoping to both encourage and support photographers at all stages.

f: What is your process for deciding what to publish from the submissions received?

CK: Most of the issues have a theme or an idea that is meant to guide and inspire the content. I like the notion that by putting together many images by many different people that have some connection to an idea, a sort of conversation can begin to happen. So when I am going through the submissions I am looking for a variety of images that speak to or about the theme in different ways ranging from "inspired by" to "right on." I am also looking for strong images, engaging composition and all that very subjective criteria that one applies when looking at photographs, but I really try to see beyond my own taste in photography and include things that push at my assumptions, but it is definitely still my point of view.

f: How do you view the contemporary landscape of photography publications as a product and as a market in relation to the past?

CK: I think maybe I don’t view them as a product so much as a vehicle / platform / method / way to show photography in a contained sort of package. There are images everywhere asking to be looked at and it can be overwhelming, where in the past it took a focused effort to find fine art photography projects and publications were the most accessible way (for me anyway) to see the work. I think now, the many different online publications with varying perspectives, become a way to navigate and narrow down the possible imagery to take in.

f: How has working on the magazine influenced your personal work and your aspirations in photography?

CK: I’m not sure if it has influenced my personal work directly, but I have at times chosen "themes" for an issue as a way to work out an idea by looking at other people’s photographs. I think also it has helped me keep perspective on having one’s work chosen to be included in something, I’m very keenly aware now of how subjective that process is.

Working on the magazine and interacting with photographers from all over the world has given me a very different sense of THE photography community. It is much broader than the one I experience live-and-in-person in Chicago, which for me is encouraging - that there is an audience for all sorts of imagery.

f: What has been your highlight in working with the magazine?

CK: I think the highlight has been each time I have met a person whose work I have included in the magazine, people from all over the world, its pretty amazingly cool to me.

f: What is next for F-Stop?

CK: Most likely F-Stop will largely continue on as it has. I have many ideas of things I would like to do or ways I would love to expand the F-Stop community but usually it comes down to not having enough time or the limits of my own design / technology skills.

Project Release: Alejandro Cartagena's "Car Poolers"

Today's Project Release is Alejandro Cartagena's Car Poolers. A selection of images from this new project were published on Friday in The Guardian; to complement that post, we are publishing eight images from the project including six not that have not been published before.

Alejandro Cartagena (b. 1977) lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. His work has been exhibited and published internationally, and is in collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Cartagena won the Critical Mass book award, and was named one of PDN's 30 emerging photographers. He was also a finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Prize, selected as an International Discovery at Houston FotoFest, a Hey, Hot Shot! finalist, and a featured artist at the CONTACT Festival in Toronto. He is currently teaching at the Faculty of Visual Arts of the University of Nuevo Leon. He is represented by Circuit Gallery in Toronto.

Car Poolers
These images are a rare view into how car-pooling is practiced by workers in Mexico. They are also keen observations on the issue of overgrowth in Mexico where suburbs are being built in lands far away from urban centers causing greater commutes and consumption of gas. All images are taken in the city of Monterrey, Mexico where I live.

64: Yanina Boldyreva

Yanina Boldyreva
untitled, from the series "Glass"
August 2011

Series Statement: In this project I wanted to open up the theme of how our memory works in its selectivity, subjectivity and discrepancy. Immersing is the travel inside yourself and the past and the filing of everything that you meet on the way. Certainly, I didn't wanted to illustrate memories, I'd like to believe that from memories it is possible to create the kind of artistic image that is typical of people of my generation or even for people more generally. It's surprising as these things are combined into one card of memories; something that seemed common and everyday looks absolutely different for all.

Investigating this idea I have chosen some key themes. My house, friends, nature, a family. These clear and concrete images, nevertheless, do not always arise in memory how we would like. We look at a photo where we are among a happy family and we remember only the departed silhouette of a mother. When someone wants to recall an image of a friend, he comes up with only the color of his jacket. Somehow, my project develops the things that we consider central to ourselves, but these things also happen to be absolutely vaguely unidentified.The immersion in the past - an attempt to leave my past by creating new images to replace lost ones. There are fleeting sensations which can be more important than official memories are considered to be. They talk about our life and many more truths. The edge between art and realistic perception of life is very thin and sometimes vanish completely.

Portfolio: Guillermo Srodek-Hart, Short Stories III

Guillermo Srodek-Hart has a show at the Dina Mitrani Gallery in Miami from February 9 to March 30 called "Short Stories." The exhibition includes images taken during the artist's travels to photograph interiors in remote rural towns outside of Buenos Aires. These interiors - frequently crowded with highly organized objects - tell as much about the lives lived there as about the spaces themselves. Accompanying the photographs in the show are texts that further explore the lives of the people that the artist encounters in these isolated towns.

This is the third of three posts in which we will present a selection of these images and their complete accompanying texts. The first two posts can be found here and here.

Srodek-Hart (b. 1977) studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, Boston, and received his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He was awarded the Klemm Prize in 2005 and the Petrobrás Award 2006, both in Argentina. In 2008, he was among the 30 artists chosen to be part of the book Contemporary Argentine Art, Artista X Artista. His work is included in the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan.

© Zorro, courtesy of the artist and Dina Mitrani Gallery

Zorro

The instant a rodeo horse is released from the post, he feels the whip of the crop punish his body as his ribs get punctured by the spurs. Blinded by light and terrified by the howls of the crowds, the animal becomes pure instinct. He must, at all costs, rid himself from the man on his back.

Pasarotti, the Zorro’s keeper, explained: ‘Animals don’t murder people. That is something we do to each other. I never liked it when Zorro got called ‘The Murderous Horse’. What happened that evening was that on the second jump the rider lost his reigns and was left with nothing to hold on to except his legs arched around the animal. At that point he should have jumped, but for some reason his boots got stuck in the stirrups. In one buck, the rider’s body was thrown forward right as the horse’s head came back. He landed on Zorro’s nape and his chest got crushed. There is a photo on the wall that captured that instant. It burst right there.’ (Points to the small photo that hangs above a bronze plate on the wall).

‘People were saying that he had killed the rider by repeatedly kicking him, but that’s not true. I talked to the guy who did the autopsy and he confirmed that the cause of death came from a broken thorax. It was the first blow that did it. The gaucho was dead while on the horse, and because his boots got stuck, the animal went one way and the rider went the other, and that’s when he got kicked all over. I think his leg got fractured too, but he was already dead by then.

© Tala General Store, courtesy of the artist and Dina Mitrani Gallery

Tala General Store

I remember my mentor from college explaining why he did not photograph people. He said he felt like an undertaker, turning humans into zombies each time he tried to shoot one. It didn’t matter whom he pointed his lens at; the result always resembled something close to a mortuary portrait. As he said this, he would make an ass of himself, rolling his eyes backwards and half-opening his mouth looking like a cadaver. Thus he explained why in his long photographic practice people would barely appear in the compositions.

I think about being an undertaker. The places I photograph look alive in the print, but in reality, they have been sentenced to death. Death by progress, by cultural changes, by the economies.

Many of the locations I have gone back to, years later, have been demolished, closed, or their owners passed away. Others are still there, looking more decrepit.

Leaving people out of the compositions does not make me less of an undertaker. I am like the reaper, walking into these old stores and silently presaging their death to come as I take their photo.

63: Julia Kozerski

Julia Kozerski
Ruins No. 1, from the series "Half"
2010

Series Statement: We all have at least one attribute about ourselves that causes us to be self conscious; something that causes us to feel as if we are not "normal." For myself and countless others, our weight is a constant source of such insecurity. By the time I had reached the age of 25, I tipped the scales at 338 pounds. With a body mass index (BMI) of 49.9 percent, literally half of my body consisted of fat, and I was classified as "morbidly obese." Throughout childhood and adolescence, my weight led me through spells of depression caused by associated physical and emotional issues. For so long, I wished nothing more than to physically be someone other than myself believing that doing so would make me happier.

In December 2009 I decided to take charge of my life and embarked upon my own self-directed, healthy-living journey. Through calorie counting, focus on nutrition, portion control, and increased exercise, my efforts have resulted in a loss of over 160 pounds. While I genuinely believed that my hard work and dedication would transform me into that "perfect" person of my dreams, the reality of what has resulted is quite the opposite. My experience contradicts what the media tends to portray. While it is easy to celebrate and appreciate the dramatic physical results of such an endeavor, underneath the layers of clothing and behind closed doors, quite a different reality exists.

These photographs are self-portraits. They serve as reflections of my experience and address and explore my physically and emotionally painful, private struggles with food, obsession, self-control, and self-image. These brutally honest images serve to shed light on the truth of what it is like for me to live life as Half of myself.

For information about submitting your work to the fototazo gallery project, click here.

The Image: Lauren Henkin, "Displaced 6, 7"

Lauren Henkin
Displaced 6, 7 from the series "Displaced"
(left) 2007, (right) 2008

This diptych was made during one of the most difficult periods of my life. I was separating from my husband of ten years while going through multiple health inssues. I was an emotional wreck.

During that time, I was lucky enough to be able to escape to Nova Scotia, an island in Eastern Canada appropriately referred to as East of Ordinary.

I wasn’t aware of this at the time, but I was drawn to photographing the things that I knew, in my gut, I’d be losing… the idyllic representations of the life we had built together—a house, possessions, safety, comfort, the surface of beauty that was our marriage. The image on the left was an accurate representation of how I felt, as if I could communicate in an image the question that was repeating in my mind when you realize you are truly displaced, What now?

When I returned from Nova Scotia, I started photographing in the large urban park around my house in Maryland. While the images in Nova Scotia represented the softer set of emotions—the sadness, the lonliness, the loss—the images in Rock Creek Park would show the darker set—the anger, the frustration, and the fear. Since childhood, and growing up with woods in my backyard, I had always avoided being alone in the woods. Rock Creek is a park without many open spaces, instead filled with singular paths which steer in and out of recognition.

I only recently started pairing the two sets of images, a way of acknowledging that while the photographs represent two distinct parts of the same experience, the edges outlining the emotions of divorce are never so easily defined.

Microgrant Photographer 6: Juliana Henao Alcaraz

Juliana Henao Alcaraz
Age: 20
Location: Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia
Request: Canon Rebel EOS T3 kit with 18-55mm lens
Grant Status: $280 of $280 (100%). Juliana will be contributing $220 towards the purchase.
Donate here

Juliana is in her eighth semester at Fundación Universitaria Bellas Artes in Medellín. She writes:

I like seeing how people live, how they are transformed by and transform space, their habits, their thoughts. I concern myself with everything that happens or has happened in my country, I like to reflect on these positive or negative changes because I'm from here, I live here spatially, culturally and spiritually and I know what happens daily. I also like to explore the ways of looking at life, I like to capture those beautiful moments that pass that nobody notices, I like to tell what happens to me or what I do not want to happen to me. I want to make sure people do not forget, that they appreciate small things and learn about their reality. I am passionate to express all of this in the most beautiful, peaceful and thoughtful way that I can. A photograph can do everything, can tell it all.  They touch the soul, make you think, fill you with happiness or sadness, they fill you with passion.

In my twenty years of life I have discovered that one of the things that most fulfills me is a good photo and I want my pictures to have the same effect when people look at, take in, feel and think about my own photos, I want them to make people smile, cry, think, live, love - as I do when I take them.

Portfolios

Rastros de Miedo y Vida

Azul

62: Rachel Barrett

Rachel Barrett
Cassidy
2010

Project: "Josiah's Farm"
Statement: In recent years I have shifted my attention to communal life among my peers for whom there is a resurgence of back to the land ideologies. Initially I was intrigued by the social and political significance of this movement I saw happening across the country. I wanted to investigate further, exploring the idea of collective engagement and how individuals shape their identities and understanding of self within the context of coherence among others and among the land. This project, made over five years, focuses on Josiah Early, a young man raised by a Mennonite minister in Virginia. Our lives had crossed paths in New York City and in 2006 Josiah, his best friend Ezekiel, and fellow friends began cultivating the land and their own versions of masculinity on a large property in a rural town in the Catskills. This place became their domain as they were set free and they began reconciling themselves with manhood. The photographs delve into the the desires of these young men to go to the land and create an alternative path in life. With the work I aim to explore what physically and psychologically compels them to behave in these ways, asking what makes a place a home and how do we truly define what home even means? Is the life lived one they are running to or a site of safety and an escape from a life they are running from?


For information about submitting your work to the fototazo gallery project, click here.

Photographers on Photographers: Thomas Roma by Daniel Echevarría

© Thomas Roma

In one of my favorite quotes about art, the 19th century critic, John Ruskin, describes the importance of seeing. He writes, "The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion — all in one." The essential goals of any visual artist in seeing and creating shouldn't stray too far from Ruskin's valuation. To eventually see properly, though, requires more than just wandering and lucky eyes — I believe seeing requires discipline, training, and study.

Over the years (and so far as my budget has allowed), I've had the opportunity to build a small but nevertheless personally beneficial photobook library. Each book, in its own way, is an invaluable reference. My collection includes a few rare and out-of-print titles, most of the books are first editions and signed, almost all are in pristine shape. But one is bent with a split spine, coffee-stained, pages wavy and earmarked, and that's how I know it's the most important book on my shelf — the one I've used the most as a guide on how to see.

I received a copy of Thomas Roma's Found in Brooklyn as an unexpected gift from a professor during my Introduction to Photography course in my second year of university. At the time, I had no intention of practicing photography other than as a passing interest. I had recently moved from the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, to New York City, and I was studying print journalism and history. Photography was always a hobby, but it wasn't until I was enrolled in that class (taught by the extraordinary photographer and teacher Anibal Pella-Woo) that I even considered the idea of photographing seriously. Pella-Woo handed me a shrink-wrapped copy of Found in Brooklyn one day after class, and he said that judging from the photos I had presented, I might enjoy Roma's work.

© Thomas Roma

Years later, it's difficult to write anything too analytic about the photographs in Found in Brooklyn. I feel I've seen them so many times, I've internalized and personalized them. Writing about Roma's pictures is like trying to explain to a stranger why week after week you still get drinks at the same bar sitting in the same stool with the same friend with whom you typically have variations on the same conversation. Still, it's through this sort of comfort that you can sometimes learn the nuances of a person, or work, or even yourself.

Although I didn't grow up in New York, the Brooklyn I saw in Roma's photographs (a Brooklyn that was at times almost 20 years younger than the one I first witnessed) was the Brooklyn with which I immediately connected. Roma's Flatbush is a lovely and chaotic mix of cyclone fences, exposed electrical wires, clotheslines, imitation Greek statues, and graceful shadows, all constantly at play with each other. I might not have actually wanted to live in this neighborhood, but I knew I'd be happy living within any of those pictures' edges. In the introduction to Found in Brooklyn, Robert Coles writes that Roma is a "poet of the camera, a localist poet" who gives us "what he 'found,' the soul of a place as it is, and as it gets lived daily." I couldn't agree more. What Roma created is a succinct but expressive distillation of the characters and characteristics of a specific place at a specific time.

© Thomas Roma

Much has been made of the link between Roma's Found in Brooklyn and William Carlos Williams' poem Paterson (even Roma explored the artistic connection through his later book House Calls with William Carlos Williams, MD). I suppose there is a good deal in common with Found in Brooklyn and Paterson, but the difference in scope of the two works never quite allowed me to fully accept the comparison. In Williams' five book poem, New Jersey's Paterson is both a city and a not-so-abstract allegory of the prototypical modern man. The focus of Roma's Flatbush is a bit narrower — which is not to say it isn't as effective — and accordingly, Roma's photographs emit a special immediacy and intimacy to their viewers. These are transcendent photographs of ordinary people, ordinary buildings, and ordinary nature.

© Thomas Roma

When I lived in New York, I visited Flatbush a few times hoping to catch glimpses of the neighborhood I knew so well from Found in Brooklyn. I especially wished I could find that convertible parked at the gas station. I wished I could invite myself for a ride with that blonde basking in the passenger's seat with the summer sun pouring over her (or at the very least, console myself with a warm loaf of bread from Santo's truck after my swift rejection). But the truth is, I never saw what Roma did, and that's because I still don't see as well as he can. Maybe after I study this book a thousand more times, I'll be a few steps closer to seeing clearly myself.

Daniel Echevarría is a photographer and the co-founder and co-editor of One, One Thousand | A Publication of Southern Photography. He lives and works in Atlanta.

Portfolio: Guillermo Srodek-Hart, Short Stories II

Guillermo Srodek-Hart has a show at the Dina Mitrani Gallery in Miami from February 9 to March 30 called "Short Stories." The exhibition includes images taken during the artist's travels to photograph interiors in remote rural towns outside of Buenos Aires. These interiors - frequently crowded with highly organized objects - tell as much about the lives lived there as about the spaces themselves. Accompanying the photographs in the show are texts that further explore the lives of the people that the artist encounters in these isolated towns.

This is the second of three posts in which we will present a selection of these images and their complete accompanying texts. The first post was published on Tuesday and can be found here.

Srodek-Hart (b. 1977) studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, Boston, and received his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He was awarded the Klemm Prize in 2005 and the Petrobrás Award 2006, both in Argentina. In 2008, he was among the 30 artists chosen to be part of the book Contemporary Argentine Art, Artista X Artista. His work is included in the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan.

Leili Bicycle Shop, courtesy of the artist and Dina Mitrani Gallery

Leili Bicycle Shop

"My father was born in Chernobyl and my mom in Kiev. They immigrated to Argentina around the time when the Germans began to harass the Jews. They could foresee Hitler's war was coming. The ship arrived in Buenos Aires in 1933. They spent a night at the Immigrants Hotel and the next day they were put on a train destined to Moises Ville. At the station there was a paisano, we use that word to describe a fellow Jew. The paisano took them straight to work on the alfalfa plantations. That's how he started.

The paisanos were very enterprising people. In 1889 when the first Jews got off at Palacios station, which was the nearest spot from here, the immigration officials gave them an ox tied to an old plow and said: 'Go in that direction' And off they went. They made their way through the mud and the vegetation, they marched inland for 10 miles until they found the right spot, and built this town out of nothing.

These people came from wars, from hunger, from death. They had seen the horrors. And so they worked. They worked hard, maybe 20 hours a day. They didn't care. They were fighting for a future, starting over. They adapted. Look, I used to be a cop, and then I started fixing bikes, and I also do tombstone engravings in both Hebrew and Spanish for the whole province. This one I finished last night:

Here lies don Meyer Fritzler in the year 5771 at age 88.

The soul of the departed will last in those who survive him."

Cerutti Market, courtesy of the artist and Dina Mitrani Gallery

Cerutti Market

Via Facebook:
Guillermo / 20 December 2011
Hi Marisol, its Guillermo Srodek-Hart, we met a couple of years ago when I took a photo of the market in San Agustin. I would love to talk to your grandfather about the place. I will be traveling in January. Will someone be there?

Marisol / 26 December 2011
Hi, what's up? I do remember you very well… yes I'll be around, but the old guys will probably have the store closed for the summer holidays. I will be available as of January 15th. I have the thesis I wrote for College about the town of San Agustin.

Guillermo / 26 December 2011
Cool. I sent you a "friend request" but won't be offended if you don't accept it. Also, let me give you my cell phone and can I ask for yours please? I will be on the road most of the time and it will help me to have it handy. 011 15 61 98 06

Marisol / 26 December 2011
I accepted you! Yes no prob, 0342 155 22 19 that's my number.

Guillermo / 2 January 2012
Hey, and Happy New Years! I hope you had a good time. When you say you will be on vacations from the 1st till the 15th, does that mean you will be unavailable or that’s the best time to reach you? Thanks.

Marisol / 2 January 2012
Happy New Years!! Yes the first 15 days I won't be around it's complicated. Let's try meeting on the 3rd week. If I'm at work, it should be after 5pm in Sta Fe. All the info is in my thesis.

Guillermo / 2 January 2012
Cool. But I really would like to chat in San Agustín, where I took the photo. It's only a 20min drive from where you live. I could pick you up and drop you off afterwards. I am trying to get into the atmosphere of the places I have photographed to do my writings. If the store is closed we could sit in the little plaza right in front of the market. Looking forward to this.

Marisol / 2 January 2012
Well in that case I have to say in advance that I can only meet you in the weekend, cause that's when I go to San Agustin. Don't worry about my transportation. Safe trip and see you soon!

January 23rd 2012. Via text messages, a day before heading to Santa Fe:
G: Hi its Guillermo. Can you meet me tomorrow afternoon?
M: Look, the week is just starting and I work. On top of that my family is on vacations there is no one around. If it helps, we can start working on your project from here.
G: Hmm, I'd rather not communicate by text message on this subject. Look, don't worry, if you are busy, we can drop it. I don't want to be a pest. Thanks though.
M: No! Not by text message, I meant we could meet up here in Sta Fe and I could hand you my thesis.
G: Sounds good. But do you think we will be able to chat?
M: Yes. Tomorrow around 8pm. Dinner. Meet at your hotel. So long.

24 January 18:51pm
M: Guillermo, how are you? I have to ask, how long you will be staying in town.
G: I leave tomorrow to Buenos Aires, sorry, just one night.

I am getting dressed in the hotel. Exhausted. I've been driving since 6:30am. It's almost time to meet up with Marisol. This will be my last interview for a while. Phone rings.

M: Guillermo, how are you?
G: Marisol, how are you?
M: I'm fine, but I have a problem. I can't see you tonight. A friend of mine unexpectedly showed up and i's my only chance to see him. We are going to dinner to catch up. Sorry. But I can swing by the hotel and drop off my thesis. You can read it tonight and leave it at the front desk before you leave tomorrow.
G: Oh… ok… see you.

Thirty minutes later Marisol is standing outside the hotel. The night is terribly humid. I try to stay focused but am under severe attack by flying grasshoppers and cockroaches. Rain had finally poured, bringing relief after a long drought. It seemed every insect in the province had woken up and copulated.

She hands me a thick binder: 'Hope this helps.'

'Thanks,' I reply.

She walks towards a white car with some dude sitting on the passenger side with the door open. A hairy leg in a flip-flop sticks out. I turn, grab my dog and head over to a pizza place around the corner. Three slices and a beer. We sit in a bench. Small animals crawl around the warm cardboard box, they slip from the sweating beer bottle, tickle my neck and shoulders. They're everywhere. My pup throws bites in the air trying to catch the flying aliens. He refuses to eat my leftover cheese pizza. That's a bad sign. On the corner I spot a prostitute dressed in pink spandex. Cops drive slowly past her. She waits and then paces across the plaza to the central monument. She sits with a group of kids and some guy, probably her family. I eat and drink fast. It's not the best atmosphere, really. Back at the hotel I go through the pages of Marisol's thesis. As I suspected, it's got nothing of what I am looking for. The few things I read talk about potential developments in the small town of San Agustin. Touristy stuff. I think my brain quit halfway through it although my hand kept turning the pages. My frustration grew as I realized that the more contemporary options I had used to communicate, the worse it went for me. Facebook, emails, text messages, cell phones, it all came to nothing. This was a good lesson.

61: Ole Elfenkaemper

Ole Elfenkaemper
untitled
2011

Series Statement: Dilapidated industrial plants, a lack of sewage plants and high air pollution burden the environment. Cities like Ballsh, Patos or Elbasan in central Albania reveal the extent of the lack of environmental awareness and the indifference of big companies. Rivers, soil and lakes are so heavily polluted that it would take decades to eliminate the damage and the people have no other choice but to live in this pollution. The farmers use the contaminated water to irrigate their fields. Animals and human beings in these regions are in major health risk. Furthermore, a lack of safety measures in factories pose a potential danger for the workers. Time after time workers in the oil or steel industry pay for their jobs with their lives.

Until 2010, the goverment had initiated an enviromental program to reduce the level of pollution to a European basic standard. That program was only translated partly into action and terminated without real success. Currently, there are still plans to advance the protection of the environment. For the current government these plans take low priority, so that an improvement of the situation can not be expected anytime soon.


For information about submitting your work to the fototazo gallery project, click here.

Portfolio: Guillermo Srodek-Hart, Short Stories I

Guillermo Srodek-Hart has a show at the Dina Mitrani Gallery in Miami from February 9 to March 30 called "Short Stories." The exhibition includes images taken during the artist's travels to photograph interiors in remote rural towns outside of Buenos Aires. These interiors - frequently crowded with highly organized objects - tell as much about the lives lived there as about the spaces themselves. Accompanying the photographs in the show are texts that further explore the lives of the people that the artist encounters in these isolated towns.

Over three posts we will present a selection of these images and their complete accompanying texts.

Srodek-Hart (b. 1977) studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, Boston, and received his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He was awarded the Klemm Prize in 2005 and the Petrobrás Award 2006, both in Argentina. In 2008, he was among the 30 artists chosen to be part of the book Contemporary Argentine Art, Artista X Artista. His work is included in the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan.

Dry Cleaner's 'Japan', courtesy of the artist and Dina Mitrani Gallery

Dry Cleaner’s ‘Japan’

Two days before hitting the road, I found Ricardo Nakamurakare’s number and called him. ‘I don’t know if you remember me, I’m the photographer who uses the antique camera. I took a photo of the dry cleaner’s in 2008. I think I sent you a copy, I’m not sure if you got it.’

Nakamurakare answers in a frail voice: ‘Señor, at this moment I am not allowed to see anybody, I’m in very poor health.’

I can’t stop myself and insist: ‘I am so sorry you are not doing well. You know, all I need is a little of your time, maybe a half hour or so, perhaps we can chat a bit?’

‘It’s just that I can hardly speak, Señor. I have a health problem and I am undergoing a treatment. I can’t even leave my house.’

I care about his health, of course, but I also care about my project. I need to rescue the stories behind the photos; connect with the people before everything disappears. It’s hard to believe that Nakamurakare, whom I remember as a relatively young man, would be in a convalescent state.

‘What do you say if you give me your home address? I could swing by and we could have a cup of tea or some mate. I will be in your town the day after tomorrow, you know.’

‘You do not understand Señor, I am very sick and under medical treatment and can hardly talk at all. I have to ask you to call me in the future, perhaps I will be cured by then.’

‘Ok, ok, very well Ricardo, I truly hope you recover from your illness and I will try and get in touch with you later. Take care now.’

I nervously scratch my head. The thought of Nakamurakare’s death makes me itchy. Rejection makes me itchy.

Two days later I am driving through Saladillo, looking around for the dry cleaners. I can’t find it. I ask around. ‘Yeah, that place is about 10 feet from San Martin Ave. but I think it’s no longer there.’
I step on the gas. Getting closer to the corner. Sold. Maybe its been preserved… maybe…
I couldn’t get out of the pick up truck. Three years ago, I walked into this dark, symmetrical, humid interior. Garments saturated the ceiling like spirits in a state of suspension. Ricardo and his ancient father watched in perplexity as I danced around the tripod in a trance.

The whole place had been demolished.

Bar El Mate, courtesy of the artist and Dina Mitrani Gallery

Bar El Mate

‘It must have been at least two years since you were here, don’t you think?’ Giye asked as he held the photograph close to his face. ‘Sit. Do you want a coke?’
‘Sure.’

Tucho, who was right across from me, became very interested in what I was doing.

‘So you like all the old stuff. General stores and such? Listen, you have to go to Chacharramendi.’
‘What’s there?’ I’ve heard that name before.’
‘There’s an old store, the kind you don’t see anymore. The things they have in there! Trust me, you won’t regret it.’

Next to Tucho sits a dude who had crashed his motorcycle the night before.

‘You still have that bike?’
‘Yep. But let's drop the subject.’
‘Hey, careful with those concrete walls. They can be pretty solid.’
‘Yeah? Guess what I am having today.’ The dude lifts a bottle of Coke and shakes it.
‘Forget it, it's not like you were drunk the other night. You couldn’t even start the engine!’
‘And this place is how far from here?’
‘You have about 140 miles, going through Colonel Acha, it’s the desert road. But it’s worth it, seriously. If by any chance you have a problem, ask for the mayor, tell him you’re my friend. He knows me.’
‘You know what’s the problem with this motorcycle? That it has no clutch.’
‘C’mon! You were accelerating like a madman!’
‘No, no, the thing won’t drive if you don’t accelerate it.’
‘You are not familiar with the machine, that’s what it is.’
‘Tucho, listen, many times they tell me ‘go here, go there,’ the place is amazing, and when I show up it’s all tidy and clean, completely impersonal; it starts looking like a museum, you know?’
‘Yes but I’m telling you its got things you won’t see anywhere else in the country. Seriously.’
‘You have to be an idiot not to take the motorcycle on the street before hitting the gas.’
‘Face it, you’ve never ridden a bike in your life.’
‘Its tough man, cause if it came with a clutch I could slowly let it go and the thing would move, but this has no clutch so you hit the gas and bum!’
‘Yeah, Pintos has a pick up truck with no clutch. It’s an automatic.’
‘Oh… an automatic… And how do you shift gears?’
‘You do it by stepping on the break.’
‘What a piece of shit!’
‘I know, the other day the thing drove itself straight into some trees. It took a punishment, believe me.’

The next morning I left early to Chacharramendi. I drove for three hours and by 11am I was parking under some trees. The dashboard read 95F in the shadow. I walked up the steps and peeked through the window. My heart sunk. The place was completely septic. ‘No Smoking’ signs were plastered all over the walls and every object on display had a label printed from a computer. It was a grave.

I didn’t take a photo. Instead, I drove back to the motel empty-handed. It was about siesta time so I laid down to nap hoping my mood would change by the time I woke up.

Interview: Martin Hyers and William Mebane

EMPIRE, installation view 1

Martin Hyers and William Mebane began their collaborative work in 2004. Their work has been included in numerous exhibitions, featured in The New York Times Magazine, and included in the book Various Photographs, published by Tim Barber’s imprint, TV Books. This summer they will be exhibiting EMPIRE at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

Based in New York and Brooklyn, they work collaboratively and individually as photographers on a wide range of fine art, editorial, and commercial assignments. William Mebane is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

Photographer Kevin Thrasher has interviewed Hyers and Mebane for fototazo.

EMPIRE, installation view 2

Kevin Thrasher: How did you arrive at the decision to collaborate with Martin Hyers?

William Mebane: Marty and I have been friends for 15 years. We’re fans of similar work. Having a compatriot has been exciting and energizing for both of us. Our partnership works because we feed off of each other’s energy, and because we’re both convinced that our shared vision works for both of us and belongs to both of us.

EMPIRE, installation view 3

KT: Empire looks like it was made by one person. I think its remarkable to have worked out a system to achieve this end result.  Can you tell me about the parameters you and Martin agreed on for making the photographs?

WM: We agreed to light everything with on-camera strobe and to shoot together with two cameras. We chose to shoot everything at a distance of about one meter, which was easy because we were working with rangefinder cameras. We appreciated the forensic quality that the strobe created. We were both huge fans of a series of photos from Luc Sante’s book, Evidence, where the photographer had placed the camera underneath the tripod and shot straight down on crime scenes.

EMPIRE, installation view 4

KT: How did you edit 9000 negatives into a project?

WM: The photographs were all taken between 2004 and 2007, but we spent about two additional years working with and living with the photographs. We began by sorting the photographs into piles of similars. We then worked to tease out the photographs that we felt were most successful and representative of the range of places we had visited and of the variety of objects we had stumbled upon.

EMPIRE, installation view 5

KT: How much do you owe the work inside homes and businesses to the kindness of strangers, were people happy to give you access?

WM: We owe so much to the kindness of strangers. We approached people on the streets, in stores, at their businesses. When we asked for their help, most people were curious and happy to participate.

EMPIRE, full installation view

KT: I personally admire photographers who lurk around at night with flash bulbs, were there any interesting situations either of you got in while photographing cars and homes?

WM: Photographing at night with a huge studio strobe attached to the roof of our car makes us fairly conspicuous. The process is a bit intrusive and somewhat surprising. Often people would come out of their homes or call the police.

© Martin Hyers and William Mebane

KT: The Bentley automobile stands out to me as one of the few contemporary objects in the work. Why were you and Martin drawn to objects and interiors of a certain time period in American culture?

WM: All of the photographs were made during a relatively brief and discrete time period. We were very interested in showing the range of objects from old to new that people have in their homes and businesses and that are found out in public space. Many people’s homes and businesses are not filled with new objects, and most people don’t drive new cars. At the time that we were making these photographs (during the housing boom), there was a real sense that everything was o.k. I think that it is pretty apparent to us all now, that many, if not most Americans, do their best just to get by.

© Martin Hyers and William Mebane

KT: Your collaboration is offering a very specific view of America. What does the sum of these surfaces, structures, objects and symbols say about us?

WM: Great question. We’d hope that the process of looking at the pictures in EMPIRE would give a viewer time to pause and think about this.

© Martin Hyers and William Mebane

Kevin Thrasher lives in Richmond, VA. He received his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited in the Northeastern and Southern U.S.

60: Alison Turner

Alison Turner
Christmas Bingo In Colorado, from the series "Bingo Culture"
2011

Series Statement: Beginning in 2008, I hit the road for three years to photograph America solo, living out of a tent and bringing along my dog for the ride. While traveling in Maine, I discovered a Bingo hall and it provoked a curiosity about a subculture that I was unaware of. What I discovered was a community of dedicated players who travel to the same place, set up in the same spot, and bring along the same good luck charms with the hopes that this will be the day they win big. Itʼs a place where hope and despair come hand in hand throughout the course of the night. Every location I encountered brought in a true sense of community, each with their unique set of personalities and characters. As I continued my travels and visits to traditional bingo halls across America, I realized I was looking at a cultural phenomenon that will be lost in order to make way for new technologies in gaming and social interaction. Once these dedicated players pass on, so will the bingo halls as we see them today.

Reading Shortlist 2.12.12

The Reading Shortlist is an occasional post with a listing of recommended readings and links. A recommendation does not necessarily suggest an agreement with the contents of the post. For previous lists, please visit the site links page.

Blake Andrews, B, Reject. Andrews on his vast personal collection of rejection letters, his new approach to show applications, whether or not this is all worth it, and a copy of Robert Frank's Guggenheim application for good measure.

Sharon Boothroyd, Photoparley, Marc Feustel on Social Media. eyecurious' Feustel on the decline of photoblogging, on the impact of blogs on the exposure of new talent, and on the online photographic community.

Pete Brook, Wired, In Digital Age, Sourcing Images Is as Legitimate as Making Them. Photographer Paul Shambroom talks about his motivations for moving from his long and distinguished career making large-format images on America's infrastructure to working with found online images.

Featured Speaker John Gossage / SPE Conference at Light Work. An hour long lecture by Gossage that's part of the excellent SPE Conference lecture series that also includes talks by Ken Schles and Thilde Jensen as well as a roundtable hosted by Andy Adams about Photography 2.0.

Richard Mosse, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Through the Glass Brightly: Eastern Congo by Infrared. An excerpt of Mosse's essay from his new book, Infra. A powerful and well-thought through essay that serves as a model for anyone looking to work on their statement.

Claire O'Neill, NPR's The Picture Show, Deborah Luster: The Power of a Picture. An audio conversation with Luster who began photographing prisoners in rural Louisiana as a way to make visual one of the reasons the local countryside had become de-populated and as a way of coping with her mother's murder.

Colin Pantall, Introspective, navel-gazing nitpickers. Pantall on the problems in the contemporary photobook market and in the consumption of photobooks, especially the tendency to blindly follow tastemakers.

Adriana Teresa, New York Times Lens Blog, A Moment With Larry Fink. Teresa, co-founder of FotoVisura and publisher of Visura Magazine, conducts a interview with Fink that's biographic and that also includes questions on Fink's specific projects.

59: Juergen Buergin

Juergen Buergin
NYC, The Umbrella
2011

For information about submitting your work to the fototazo gallery project, click here.

Interview: Greg Girard

Walled City Exterior, 1987, from  "Kowloon Walled City"

Greg Girard is a Canadian photographer (b. 1955) who has spent much of his career in Asia, first visiting Hong Kong in 1974, and later living in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. He became a professional photographer in 1987, based first in Hong Kong and later in Shanghai. His work to date has examined the social and physical transformations taking place throughout the region.

In 1993 he co-authored (with Ian Lambot) City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City, a record in photographs and text of the final years of Hong Kong's infamous Walled City, demolished in 1992. This unique city-within-a-city was comprised of 300 separate interconnected high-rise buildings, erected piecemeal, and housed more than 33,000 people. In 2007, Phantom Shanghai - a monograph of his photographs of Shanghai - was published by Magenta Publishing for the Arts.

In the Near Distance, a book of photographs made between 1973 and 1985 during his early travels, was published in 2010 by Kominek Publications, Berlin. Hanoi Calling, published in 2010 by Magenta Publishing for the Arts, is his fourth book and looks at the Vietnamese capital on the eve of its millennium anniversary.

His work is represented by Monte Clark Gallery (Vancouver/Toronto). He works on assignment for publications such as National Geographic Magazine and continues to pursue long-term book length projects.

Buildings on Bat Su Street, 2010, from "Hanoi Calling"

fototazo: What drew you initially to the East and what keeps you going back there – both as a person and photographer?

Greg Girard: I don’t know if there is any single thing. There was a photograph of Hong Kong harbor in a Time-Life series of photography books in the early 1970s; it showed neon signs atop buildings, at dusk on a day darkened by rain. In the foreground was a local fisherman standing and rowing a small skiff. The clash of the two worlds (neon, modern buildings/fishing, sampans) was dramatic and yet somehow matter of fact, and I thought I’d like to be in that place, and try to take photographs that had whatever that photograph had in it. After graduating from high school I worked and saved money and then travelled to Hong Kong by Philippine freighter in 1974. I was 18 years old. Friends were heading to Europe, which didn’t interest me. I was reading the novels of writers who had set stories in that part of the world (Graham Green’s The Quiet American). Events in the news at the time also played some part, the Vietnam War in its final years was in the background. A couple of years later I visited Tokyo and decided to stay, living there for nearly three years, and then in 1982 moved to Hong Kong.

House on Yuyuan Lu, 2001, from "Phantom Shanghai"

f: Much of your work examines the themes of the social and physical transformations taking place throughout Asia. Talk with us about what you have learned during your career about the connection between the physical and social transformations of a society. How much does creation and demolition of space change a people? And how much does the nature of a people shape their decisions on how to form their physical surroundings?

GG: Early fascination with that part of the world also came in part from the question of what constitutes "normal" in a place like Hong Kong, where verticality and density are so common that it hardly registers on its residents. Within Hong Kong itself the most extreme example was probably the Kowloon Walled City, one large city block with over three hundred interconnected high-rise buildings, built without the contribution of a single architect, home to 33,000 people. I say it hardly registers but of course it does, in ways that aren’t always apparent.

In Shanghai in the mid- to late-1990s much of the city looked like it had been bombed from the air, so widespread was the demolition of central neighborhoods. It was a unique moment because at the same time the pace of new construction was just staggering. Following a directive from Beijing the city was racing to make up for lost time. Between 1949 and 1990 there had been hardly any new construction in the city, certainly not the kind of urban development for profit that creates skylines.

One of the things I wanted to look at was not simply the contrast between what was disappearing and what was arriving but rather something perhaps not immediately apparent, and that was the way the city's period architecture had been used in ways never intended. Single-family houses and apartments had been reconfigured to accommodate many more people than they were originally built for. This was a feature of life for Shanghai's residents in the New China after 1949, and especially after the Cultural Revolution. Hallways were turned into communal kitchens, car garages into homes, storage spaces into bedrooms. How that worked and what it looked like, knowing it would eventually disappear, was something I wanted to pay attention to.

Cubicle Kitchen, 2005, from "Phantom Shanghai"

f: How would you describe the changes in terms of urban development and preservation policy in Asia between your first trips there in the 1970’s and today?

GG: In Shanghai, for example, preservation was something that happened by default, when China rejected capitalism and banned private property. That was later reversed, unleashing a frenzy of demolition and construction unlike anywhere on the planet. By the time people start thinking about preservation it's usually a belated effort to slow a process that has already gone too far. It's also a sign that a society or a place has matured. Young people in Hong Kong today have an appreciation for their city and its history - as evidenced in the built environment - that the previous generation didn't.

Children on Rooftop, 1990, from  "Kowloon Walled City"