fototazo: Alec Soth

Showing posts with label Alec Soth. Show all posts

5.17.2012

Interview: Blake Andrews, Part II

This is the second of three interview posts with Blake Andrews. The first part can be found here. The third part will be published next Thursday, May 24th.

f: Alec Soth started off a recent article he wrote on Martin Parr in the Minneapolis StarTribune by calling him the Jay-Z of documentary photography.

BA: I think what Soth was referring to is a sort of hyper-contemporary vibe. Both Parr and Jay-Z seem to have a hand in many cultural outlets nowadays. They almost define contemporary. But also both have a loose experimental quality. Always moving into new territory. And the fascination with bling. Truth is I'm not a huge fan of Jay-Z. I'll take MF Doom over Jay-Z.

f: In respect to your plea for more interactive posts - discussed last week in the first part of this interview - complete the following photographer-musician analogy. Martin Parr is to Jay-Z as Blake Andrews is to Woody Guthrie.

BA: I'm guessing this relates to my survey from several months back comparing Dylan and Frank. Guthrie for a few reasons. First of all, he was absolutely prolific. Many photographers make a point of never going somewhere without a camera. I suspect Guthrie was like that with his guitar. He carried it everywhere. If he couldn't fit the guitar he at least had a pen and notebook. I doubt there were many days when he wasn't writing songs or lyrics. Second, he was fiercely independent and had a deep suspicion of institutions which I share. I am deeply cynical about corporations, government, and general group-think. Third, he was a bit of a renaissance man. He wasn't just a songwriter. He was an artist, a dad, a writer. And just a good spirit in general. So I admire the guy. I wish he'd written a blog.

I've had a tickertape message on the bottom of my camera for years. It says "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS" A direct homage to Guthrie.

f: And as a way to push towards interactive posts, I would like to invite you to make a creative competition for other photographers with me, the results of which we can publish both here and on B.

BA: One competition that I've been curious to try is based on predicted outcomes. You set out 20 well-known photos by famous photographers from a wide variety of types and eras. Then people rank them from most favorite to least favorite, 1 to 20. Then collate, average, and form a general ranking based on all voters. That's the simple part. The second layer is to have people guess at the overall rankings before they're revealed. Perhaps this would happen during the initial voting, or shortly after. Then collate predictions. The person who predicts favorites most accurately is the winner. This would only work with a large enough pool of voters. At least 100 or so.

[This contest is now live! You can participate by clicking here.]

f: You have actively explored the medium itself, working with panoramas, color and black and white, a range of formats and cameras. You have published your images as playing cards and are working on a faux-postcard project. What drives you to expand the range of approaches to photography in this way? Is there something you feel you can do with these explorations that 35mm black and white cannot do?

BA: My camera experiments have typically been winter flings. When the days get shorter and the rains set it, it's not as easy to roam outside with a camera. But I still need to make photos. So I've explored a variety of ways to shoot inside using flash or slow shutter speed or combination of the two. I've toyed with Noblex, Diana, Holga, digital point 'n shoot, Fuji Instax, etc. The only common denominator is that they're all hand held. They're quick 'n dirty cameras, no tripod, no fuss. Typically I go on a serious bender with a camera and shoot the crap out of it for a few months before the buzz gradually wears off.

That's fine for winter. But during nice weather I kick into high gear and that's basically 35 mm black and white. That's been the core of my work for the past 20 years. It feels right because it rewards experimentation and multiple frames. There's very little penalty for pressing the shutter, as opposed to say 4 x 5. I know that for most people 35 mm is a dead form. It's seen as anachronistic and passe but I can't help it. It's just how I see. If I want my photos to get any attention it probably has to be in another format. So I've tinkered with many methods, but 35 black and white still gives me the most satisfaction. I shoot a few rolls every day from about May through October.

I think whatever you use you need to commit fully to it. You can't be fiddling around wondering what camera to use. It has to be one or the other, and ideally just one lens too. You have to see and think like a camera, and that's hard to do if you're shuffling between several. At least that's my experience.

f: A related question: you have said in a previous interview that as a child, you thought photography was a mere recording of a scene and because of this you weren’t interested in it. It’s interesting, then, that despite expanding the range of approaches to photography as mentioned above in the previous question, that one of the few lines you do not cross is that line between “straight” and “constructed” photography. What keeps you on this side of that line? Have you ever tried constructing a scene for an image?

BA: I have constructed images for the blog. The postcards, for example, are constructed. I substituted blue skies for grey. For applications like that or for commercial applications I think constructing images is fine. But for examining the world, which I think photography does very well, constructed images aren't very interesting to me. They don't show the world so much as they show what's in someone's mind. Nothing wrong with that. I'm just more interested in the world. And that applies to other forms too. I only read nonfiction. I generally prefer documentaries to fictional films. I guess I have my quirks.

f: In a Wired article on photobloggers, you also mentioned what you’d like to see less of in the photography world: “Less 6 x 7 aspect ratio color photos of the human-nature interface delicately composed, with everything in focus; less portraiture with desaturated colors; less perfectionism; less constructed images and more found images; less commercial advertising on blogs; and less equipment talk.” Building from this previous list, please list the 10 most painful trends in contemporary photography in 2012, in reverse order from 10 to 1 with 1 being the most painful.

BA: I will probably get in trouble here. First of all, everyone is totally free to do what they want. As with any Top Ten list, please take these with a grain of salt.

10. The widespread inability among practitioners to differentiate an average print from a great one.

9. Thought before seeing. It should be the other way. Shoot first, ask questions later.

8. Conscious perfectionism and unconscious imperfections.

7. Film growing more expensive as it gradually phases out.

6. The planned obsolescence of most cameras in use now, and the correlating obsolescence of work being made with them.

5. Neo-pictorialism. I am all for shooting Holga / Diana / Instagram, as long as the material isn't sappy. But when blurriness combines with an overly sentimental vibe, it feels like something that was done, and better, 100 years ago.

4. Photos without credits attached. Every photo printed or online should include some reference to the creator's name. I'd guess that less than half actually do.

3. The idea that everyone's a photographer. Everyone has a thermometer in their medicine cabinet. That doesn't mean we're all doctors.

2. The conflation of a photographer's life story with their images in assessing aesthetic merit.

1. Homogenization. In photography as well as in the broader culture, homogenization is the most powerful, evil force we face. All 7 billion of us are unique. Be yourself.

f: And what gives you optimism for the photography world today?

BA: 10. The ocean of photographic archives currently being put online by various public entities. A very powerful resource in all sorts of ways, some not even thought of yet.

9. Street photography's apparent revival. Possibly a reaction to photography's hyper-conceptual direction.

8. Cupertino. Post. Applesauce.

7. General improvements in color printing over the past decade. 40 years ago good color prints were generally inaccessible. Now they can be made by anyone.

6. Looking forward to the return of Jesus Christ my lord and savior. I'm expecting him to help me fine tune my portfolio.

5. The decreased environmental impact of picturemaking. The marginal cost to the environment of taking a digital snapshot is virtually zero compared to the age of paper and chemicals. Of course the planet is already fucked anyway so I'm not sure it matters much in the end.

4. The decline of matting in galleries. It's about time we phased out this Victorian relic. Maybe glazing will be next.

3. The idea that everyone's a photographer. Never has photography been more accessible to all. Moholy-Nagy said "the illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the camera as well as the pen." I think we have finally, only quite recently, arrived at that future.

2. The photobook renaissance. These are the glory days of photobook publishing.

1. Every time I press the shutter I'm an optimist. The idea that the next image will be special is what keeps me going.

5.14.2012

Project Release: Shane Lavalette

fototazo publishes new photography projects, providing an early look at images from selected artists. Today's Project Release is from Shane Lavalette. This work, commissioned by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, explores the American South using music as an entry point into the region. The project will soon be published through a successful and ongoing Kickstarter campaign. In addition to presenting these 12 images, Lavalette has also answered a few questions for us about the project

fototazo: How did the collaboration with the High Museum come together?

Shane Lavalette: In short, the stars aligned.

It was Danielle Avram Morgan, former Curatorial Assitant to Julian Cox at the High, who initially reached out to me with an interest in my work in 2010. Danielle had finished her MFA at the Museum School in Boston where I went for undergrad, so that was our earlier connection. We didn't really know each other, however she kept an eye on my pictures since then. I sent some images along and received a positive response from both her and Julian. They invited me to visit to Atlanta and view some of my prints together in person. It was there that we started talking more in depth about the museum's "Picturing the South" commission series and the possibility of me making new work in the South. During my visit I looked at the current photographs on display by Alec Soth (Black Line of Woods, which later became Broken Manual), and got a peek around the High's collection to see past commissions by Sally Mann, Emmett Gowin, Dawoud Bey and Richard Misrach, among others. Some time after I returned to Boston, Julian got in touch again and asked me if I'd be interested in sending in a more direct proposal for this commission series. And, well, it went from there.

I deeply appreciated their encouragement.

f: Why did you decide to use music as your entry point into exploring the South visually?

SL: It was rather daunting to propose something to do that would resonate with such a strong collection the museum was building, and also represent a complex region such as the South. Having grown up in the Northeast my whole life, originally from Vermont, I knew the entry point would have to be with what was familiar. Over the past few years in particular I had grown interested and fond of old time music, and dived into listening to everything from blues to gospel ballads to bluegrass. Music was a fertile topic for photography, but I knew early on that I wanted to explore it more playfully so I avoided any real documentary outline for myself. I intended to visit historically relevant places and musically significant people but allow that to simply be the thread that would loosely tie things together. This opened up my practice in a completely refreshing way.

f: You are currently fundraising to make a book of this work on Kickstarter. Talk about the importance of making this work into a book in addition to the museum exhibition.

SL: As soon as I began shooting, I felt the sense that this would be my first book. Given the musical impetus the pages of a book actually lend themselves quite nicely to the photographs. In a book you have sequence, movement, themes, stories, rhythm, repetition, etc., which all compliment the nature of the work itself.

I'm thrilled that the project already passed its initial funding goal on Kickstarter. I'm hoping the momentum continues as the more support I can garner for the project now, the more doors it opens for the publication.

______________

Shane Lavalette (b. 1987, Burlington, VT) is an American photographer currently living in Upstate New York. He received his BFA from Tufts University in partnership with The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Lavalette’s photographs have been shown widely, including exhibitions at the High Museum of Art, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Aperture Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, The Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Musée de l’Elysée, among others. His editorial work has been published in various magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Vice Magazine, The Wire, Pig Magazine, CODE and SLASH. Lavalette is the founding Publisher and Editor of Lay Flat as well as the Associate Director of Light Work.

4.26.2012

Shifting Lines: The Increasing Consideration of Documentary Photography and Photojournalism as Fine Art Photography, Part I

In the latest in a recent series of articles on Thomas Hoepker’s September 11th image, Joerg Colberg of Conscientious published a well-written piece entitled “How we give photographs meaning.” In the post he opens up several threads of potential conversation: the importance of including context when reading an image, all photographs as fictions with no inherent meaning, the ethics of photojournalism, meanings as constructs, etc.

Given I agree with Colberg’s main points (and to dwell on the few second-tier points I have questions about seems nitpicky), I’m going to build on the conversation his piece continues by pulling out one particular thread of his post. This will also be a way to slow the conversation down and explore in depth one of those potential conversations his essay opens.

Colberg writes (my italics):

“The meaning of a photograph is a construct that involves a group of people operating
against a specific background (news, art, …), subject to the group’s personal, cultural and
political biases. I think what we should be talking about is not how truthful photographs
are, but how truthful we expect them to be, given the background they’re operating in.”

This quote raises a slippery question: how do we know what background we are operating against? Just where are those lines between fine art photography, photojournalism, and documentary photography?

It’s not immediately clear how we should approach establishing those lines in a photographic world in which someone like Alec Soth, to choose an example, can call himself a documentary photographer while simultaneously being a member of the premier photojournalism agency in the world and having a retrospective at a major contemporary art museum. Is it a question of where we see the photograph? If the same image is in both a gallery and a newspaper, should we say we’re operating against an art background in one situation and against a photojournalistic one in the other? Or is it a question of subject matter so that a picture made to describe a war, for example, is inherently photojournalism? But then what to make of Richard Mosse’s Infra? Is a photograph what the photographer says it is? Joel-Peter Witkin surely couldn’t claim his work is documentary. Then is it the observer that decides? What if you and I differ in opinion - who’s right?

To make things more complicated, the question is also a temporal one – the lines between genres are alive, constantly moving and shifting to reflect cultural changes, historical events, prevailing intellectual winds, and the photographic marketplace.

To look at these questions, I’m going to dust off and cannibalize a paper for this post that I wrote a few years ago that explores the history of the relationship between these three genres. More historical than polemical, it examines how the 1970s in particular played an important role in forming the contemporary photographic landscape of more elastic definitions that we live in today.

I’ll boil the paper down as much as possible to get rid of what’s not to the point and polish it up a bit, but I don’t think I can get rid of the fundamental academic feel of having written it in a university setting. I solemnly swear to you, however, that I won’t use the words “hegemony,” “epistemological,” or “syllogism.”

This post will be divided into at least two due to length. Today will give the background for what happens in the '70s which will be the subject of the second (and any subsequent) posts.

______________________________________

A number of factors combined during the 1970s to accelerate the movement between the photographic genres of documentary work, photojournalism, and fine art photography that have opened into today’s era of more fluid relationships. During this decade the rise of television and the concurrent decline in the magazine industry, the rise of galleries dedicated to showing fine art photography, the museum’s firm establishment of the photographic print as a unique and collectable object and the resulting development of the market for photographic prints, the development of artist's books, the evolution of an economic infrastructure that helped sustain photographers as artists, and the questioning of the ability of photography to document or record events factually all contributed to the rise of the new era.

The boundaries between documentary photography, photojournalism, and fine art photography have never been absolute and have increasingly overlapped during the course of photographic history. The '70s built on existing trends in photography. Photographic historian Mary Warner Marien writes about the '70s milieu in a book called Photography: A Cultural History:

The presence of documentary and photojournalistic photographs in museums and
galleries was not new…Nevertheless, in the past, image-makers, audiences, curators, and
scholars had considered art photography, documentary photography, and photojournalism
as having their own separate lines of development and different social agendas. (Marien 410)

To pull out just a few examples, Eugène Atget consciously cropped the developing modern Paris around the historical construct he intended to photograph in his Vieux Paris images and he photographed in correlation to the interests of his various clients, revealing a strong subjectivity to work he labeled “documents.”

Dorothea Lange and other documentary photographers of the Farm Security Administration made their way into art exhibitions and Walker Evans exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1938. Evans defined his work as art despite often being considered a prototypical documentarian by asserting that his work does not have a utilitarian use such as a police crime scene photograph. He also noted the artifice involved in “documentary work.” FSA photographers used stylistic elements such as sharp focus, even lighting, and a frontal composition to code their images as factual and to indicate that they should be read as unbiased. “Documentary?” famously questioned Evans. “That’s a very sophisticated and misleading word. And not really clear. . .The term should be documentary style.” (Blake Stimson, The Pivot of the World: Photography and Its Nation, 210) Evans, in short, was aware of the common urge to view documentary images as mimetic, but was cognizant of the bias of the photographer’s perspective.

The Magnum photography agency in 1947 challenged the notion of what constituted photojournalism. Founded as a photographic cooperative, members of Magnum retain the rights to their photographs as well as the authority to conceive and execute their own projects. Although their work still needs to find a market, by removing the responsibility to answer to assignments designed by newspaper and magazine editors, the freelance photojournalists of Magnum defined the term "photojournalism" for themselves, broadening the scope of the genre to include longer projects done in essay form, which becomes close to indistinguishable from the type of work done by Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine. In turn, Riis and particularly Hine can be listed as either documentarians or photojournalists depending on the article or book.

Original front cover, uncredited image

Robert Frank’s The Americans (1958) marked a new era in documentary work in which individual and psychological issues replaced the historical, ideological, and political issues of earlier photographs (such as those of the FSA) and formed a style of intimacy instead of an attempted detachment. Working under a Guggenheim Foundation grant, and not under the guidelines of a newspaper editor or a government program, Frank documented 1950s American society of all strata during his cross-country road trips, photographing flags, politicians, cars, and racial dynamics. At the same time, however, he concerned himself with how the exterior world reflected his interior world. “I’m always doing the same images,” he has stated, “I’m always looking outside, trying to look inside.” (Stimson 105) The angry, bemused looks that manifest the photographer’s intrusion in The Americans might be said, according to Stimson, to be the singular moment of the document becoming art, though the document could be considered art since Atget. (Stimson 211)

From the 1950s to the 1970s, work that allowed more space for the personal and contingent in photojournalism became accepted and known as "new journalism." (Mary Panzer, Things as They Are, 27) Although more commonly associated with print journalism, the term “new journalism” became connected to photographers who injected a personal, first-person perspective into their reporting. The Vietnam War, for example, became the center of a perceived link between photojournalism and personal politics as photographers such as Phillip Jones Griffiths abandoned their supposed objectivity and took a stance in opposition of the war.

Lastly, new social documentary photographers emerged from the mix of anti-Vietnam War activism and conceptual art ideas of the era to add another dynamic to the idea of the photograph as a document. The interests of this informal group, which included Allan Sekula, Martha Rosler, and Fred Lonidier among others, included techniques not traditionally associated with documentary work, such as collage, to comment on social oppression without making "victim photographs" that evoked too much overt sympathy or voyeurism. Rosler says, "We wanted to be documentarians in a way that documentarians hadn't been…We wanted to use obviously theatrical or dramatized sequences or performance elements together with more traditional documentary strategies, to use text, irony, absurdity, mixed forms of all types." (Marien 429)

We can see that the terms “photojournalism” and “documentary photography” showed significant flexibility before the 1970s. “Photojournalism” went from encompassing the construction of events by the photographer - such as Alexander Gardner's openly rearranged Civil War battle scenes - to considering itself as objective reportage, including politics as part of its stance, and accepting first-person perspective in the form of "new journalism." “Documentary photography” went from being considered the recording of actual documents to being a passionate crusading appeal intended to provoke its audience to action with the work of Riis and Hine, a passive and objective lens with the FSA, an attempt to present psychological reality, sociological assessment, the recording of other art forms for documentation such as earthworks, and even the physical collage of images.

As Lili Corbus Bezner writes in her book Photography and Politics in America: From the New Deal into the Cold War, “documentary photography frequently intrudes into contradictory categorization; it exists uneasily, therefore, within the supposedly distinct domains of journalistic, artistic, landscape, fashion, and advertising photography.” (Bezner 1) Similarly, Beaumont Newhall, the first director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, wrote in a later edition of The History of Photography, “Since World War II the [documentary] movement has lost impetus in the organizational sense. Its tenets have been absorbed and have become essential to the fabric of photojournalism.” (Bezner 12)

To be continued Friday

3.08.2012

Interview: Andrea Modica

Andrea Modica has been exhibited across the country and is in many collections, such as The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. An MFA graduate of Yale University, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship among other prestigious awards. Andrea's work has been featured in many magazines, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and American Photo. Her five books, including "Minor League" and "Treadwell", have met with critical acclaim. In addition to teaching at the International Center for Photography, the Woodstock Photography Workshops and the Maine Media Workshops, she currently is a professor of photography at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

This interview focuses on Modica's latest body of work, Best Friends, in which she made portraits of best friends at high schools in Connecticut, Philadelphia and Modena, Italy. She previously answered a few questions for Zoom magazine about the work.

This work will premeire at Philadelphia's Gallery 339, opening May 11th and running through July 24th.

fototazo: You mentioned in the Zoom interview that this project came out of making portraits of high school students in Connecticut and finding that frequently the subjects had their best friend hanging around as you made the images – but how were you invited to this high school to take portraits originally?

Andrea Modica: A high school teacher, who was taking a one-week portrait class with me at the Maine Media Workshops, invited me to do a brief residency where he worked, the Loomis Chaffee School, in Windsor, Connecticut. When I returned to my home in Philadelphia, I found three high schools that allowed me to visit with my 8x10 camera and make portraits.

f: Unlike the portraiture in your other projects, you chose to work with a blank wall background for most of the images in this project and to remove most of the spatial context from the images. Talk about this decision.

AM: Actually, the structure of these photographs is not very different from that of my much earlier series and book "Minor League". The reason in this case is largely due to the fact that I had very little time with each pair, since they were essentially cutting classes to be photographed, so I kept things very simple. But, in fact, I like the way the subjects sometimes push against the edges of the frame, enhancing the power struggle or some other dynamic between the friends.

f: The images range from almost allegoric, such as the girl with her head to the chest of her friend, to something between sensual and sinister as in the image of the boy in a striped shirt in the background staring at his friend in the foreground who faces the camera, to the somewhat comic, for example the skinny, shorter girl and her tall best friend. To what degree did you work with the dynamics that you sensed between the subjects and to what degree did you invent the dynamics or narratives to serve the making of a strong photograph?

AM: The beautiful thing about this project is that the students chose each other. The "casting" was done and the drama began long before I ever showed up. I find the best portraits are made when I listen carefully and watch closely. Inevitably I fall in love with something that presents itself, and hopefully I step up to the plate with the skills I've honed over the years of working with the view camera. Working with the big camera often requires a collaboration between the photographer and the subject - one that is slow, and at best, encourages things to unfold.

f: You photograph with an 8x10 and make platinum / palladium prints that by their nature have something of an atemporal sensibility. The subjects, on the other hand - through clothes, shared headphones and gestures - seem of this moment. I would be interested in hearing about how you feel time functions in these images.

AM: Tough one. What do you think? I might be more interested in knowing what the viewer thinks about this.

f: Judith Joy Ross said about her school portraits, "I don't want the picture to explain school in some documentary sense. [I] want it be an emotional journey. I want the viewer to reconnect with what it is to be a kid." Your school portraits perhaps push for a third thing that's neither about the schools or the observer reconnecting with childhood. They seem to explore the nature of friendships, who we chose to have close to us and how we connect with others, both in the high school subjects themselves as well as in a more generalized sense through them as subjects. Would you agree? Did doing the project Best Friends change your understanding of the theme of friendship or how to work with this theme through photography?

AM: Yes, okay. Yes, I'm often surprised by how the world presents itself in front of the camera. I think these pictures are generally very optimistic, and this isn’t something I was particularly expecting or searching for.

f: You have made portraits over your entire career. How would you say you have evolved and grown as a portrait artist over time?

AM: I’m not sure I'm the person to answer this question, as it pertains to the work. I'm more interested in how photographing people has challenged me personally, and enhanced my life, providing me with gift after gift of great intimacy, both with people I know well and with strangers.

f: What portrait photographers do you go back to regularly for ideas and inspiration – and who are some newer discoveries you’re enjoying at the moment?

AM: Julia Margeret Cameron, Bellocq, Man Ray and Sander will always be among my heroes, as well as many, many of my contemporaries, including Lois Conner and Greg Miller - too many to list, though only yesterday I was very moved by Paul Graham's current show in NY, as well as Alec Soth's new show. Perhaps my greatest pleasure in looking at other people's work these days comes from returning to academia after some years, as a professor in Drexel University’s Photography Program. There is something truly inspiring about watching a young person get excited about seeing the world through a camera for the first time.

f: Lastly, who was your best friend in high school?

AM: Rosemarie Loconsolo Rizzo, who remains a close pal and confidante.

3.02.2012

Reading Shortlist 3.2.12

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 shortlists, please visit the site links page.

Andrea Frazzetta, The New York Times Magazine, "Nollywood's Walk of Fame" Frazzetta's images accompany an article written by Andrew Rice for the magazine about the $500 million-a-year "Nollywood" film industry of Nigeria.

James Dodd, Flickr, "A parting note" Dodd explains his reasons for leaving Flickr and in doing so gives an insight into the current state of what was once a central hub for photography community and sharing. He also touches on the question of sharing your work online for free.

Robert Frank, LIFE (May 21, 1951), "Speaking of Pictures" After checking out this early photo essay by a 26-year-old Frank in Paris of....chairs, I'm prepared to say The Americans is better.

Sam Grobart, The New York Times, A Review of the Lytro Camera Grobart examines the first Lytro which allows you to focus the image on your computer in post-production. Includes a link to an example image that you can experiment with.

Impossible Colors, Wikipedia A fascinating thought: that under special artificial laboratory conditions it is possible to see colors ordinarily impossible. Hat tip to T. F. Tolhurst.

Liverly Morgue In case you missed it, The New York Times launched a new blog on Tumblr featuring images from their photo "morgue" of millions of pictures. The reverse sides of the images are provided and are frequently as interesting as the images themselves.

Sebastiao Salgado, Looking Back At You This link is to part one of a six-part documentary on YouTube about the Brazilian photographer Salgado. Includes lengthy interviews, video of his working process from his cameras to his prints, and footage of him working in the field.

Alec Soth, Minneapolis StarTribune, A photographer's-eye view of Martin Parr Soth calls Parr the "Jay-Z of documentary photography." Includes a link to a second article with a video about Parr's visit to Minnesota to photograph ice this past January.

Larry Towell, CNN, Faces of the Taliban Magnum photographer Larry Towell hired an Afghan journalist in order to enter Taliban camps to make these photographs that give a face the insurgency group.

Pieter Wisse, 500 Photographers Blog, Shut down your computer and go live! Wisse eloquently gives us the reminder we all periodically need to hear. Thanks Pieter.

1.24.2012

Reading Shortlist 1.24.11

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.

5B4 Photography and Books, Facebook Albums of Photography Books. Jeffrey Ladd has created a large archive of albums on 5B4's Facebook page of still photographs of pages from photography books.

Wayne Ford, Wayne Ford's Posterous, Bruce Davidson and the New York Subway. Ford discusses Davidson's processes and experiences making the book Subway, recently re-published by Steidl.

Bryan Formhals, LPV Magazine, The Digest – Sunday, January 22nd, 2012. The latest installment of Formhals' recently launched weekly wrap-up of articles, recommended links and summarized conversations.

Jason Fulford, Vice, Gregory Halpern's Stories From the Rust Belt. Fulford, publisher of Halpern's recently released book A, does a lengthy interview with the photographer about the book and about Halpern's perspective on photography.

David Gonzalez, Lens Blog, From a Window, Details Tell the Story. An exploration of William Gedney's late 1960s and early 1970s images of the Myrtle Avenue El in New York City before, during, and after its demolition.

Russet Lederman, The International Center of Photography Library Blog, Ed van der Elsken and Eikoh Hosoe: A 30-Year Dialogue. A history of the long-running photographic exchange between the two photographers, starting with van der Esken's Sweet Life.

Mashkulture, Stanley Kubrick's Photos of 1940s New York

Alec Soth, Little Brown Mushroom Blog, On Marrying a Photographer. Soth, who we recently interviewed as part of our Publisher Q&A series, looks at the work-life balance of a photographic family through Robert Adams and Lee Friedlander in response to a reader's question.

1.19.2012

Publisher Q&A: Alec Soth of Little Brown Mushroom

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 11th in the series and features responses from Alec Soth of Little Brown Mushroom. 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, and Daniel Augschoell of Ahorn Magazine.

The last expected respondent for the series is Maggie Blanchard of Twin Palms.

Press: Little Brown Mushroom
Location: St. Paul, Minnesota
Format: Print

fototazo: What is the back-story on how LBM formed? Was there a particular need in the industry that you saw and sought to fill?

Alec Soth: In 2008, I wanted to self-publish a newspaper as a sort of celebration / requiem for the Bush presidency. On a whim, I created Little Brown Mushroom as the publisher. Over the next couple of years, I became interested in children’s books. I decided to use Little Brown Mushroom as a way to publish narrative photography books that function in a similar way to children’s books. We’ve since done four of these books. I’ve also done two issues of a men’s magazine. Little Brown Mushroom isn’t a real business. It is a hobby. My only goal is to satisfy my own particular interest at a given time.

f: What are the particular or unique strengths of the books LBM publishes? What separates it from other publishers?

AS: The four narrative books we’ve done are quite unique explorations of photographs, text and design coming together to tell stories.

f: What is your process for deciding what to publish?

AS: I make all of these decisions myself. In publishing the work of other artists, I currently have a pretty narrow interest in narrative. But this could change in the future. In the end, it is all about pairing artists with where my head is at.

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

AS: It is a thrilling time. There is a ton of fantastic, energetic work being produced all over the globe. This moment won’t last. Along with people’s energy moving elsewhere, I already sense a backlash to the quantity of books. But I’m happy to have been part of this unique moment of book production in a time where everything else seems to be on the computer.

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

AS: For me, the highlight has been making something that I’m proud of that we can sell for only $18. It feels democratic in a way that the art world often doesn’t.

f: How has working in the publishing business influenced your personal work and your aspirations in photography?

AS: I’ve always thought of myself as being first and foremost a book artist. But having a glimpse of the publisher’s side of the fence has helped me understand the complexities of getting these things out into the world. It is also helped to make me more interested in creative collaboration when I’m behind the camera.

f: What are your next steps for LBM?

AS: Right now I’m working with our designer, Hans Seeger, to put the polish on one book and am in the beginning stages of talking to another artist. The beautiful thing about Little Brown Mushroom is that there isn’t a fixed timetable. I work on this when I’m in the mood.

12.02.2011

Publisher Q&A: Michael Itkoff of Daylight Magazine

Today we begin a series that grows from an October post featuring 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 features Michael Itkoff, editor of Daylight Magazine. Other confirmed respondents for the series include Jeffrey Ladd (Errata Editions), Alec Soth (Little Brown Mushroom), Jason Fulford (J&L), Daniel Augschoell (Ahorn Magazine), Jack Woody or Maggie Blanchard (Twin Palms), Ray Potes (Hamburger Eyes), Lee Grant and Tom Williams (Timemachine Magazine), and Barry Hughes (SuperMassiveBlackHole).

Publication: Daylight Magazine
Location: New York City
Format: Online and print

fototazo: What gave you the drive to create a photography magazine and what is the story of how Daylight formed?

Michael Itkoff: Daylight is a non-profit organization that publishes books, a printed magazine, a monthly multimedia feature and a daily blog. While still undergraduates my co-founder, Taj Forer, and I were inspired to create an organization that focuses on both documentary and fine art photography projects. Originally we were going to publish our own work in a serial publication along with others but when Alec Soth signed up for our first edition we decided to pull our own work and let it stand on its own. In fact, we were the first US publishers to feature Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi and our debut issue sold out at the Whitney Biennial in 2004.

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

MI: Curating the group of artists that appear in each issue is probably the most enjoyable aspect of what we do. In addition to sifting through submitted portfolios, Taj and I spend a lot of time researching work under various themes. We attend art fairs, exhibitions, review monographs and generally keep our eyes peeled for work that might fit. Our list of photographers that we would like to work with in the future is long, varied and growing every day!

f: How do you view the contemporary landscape for photography magazines - on and offline - as a product and as a market in relation to its history? How has the product evolved in relation to market conditions to reach where we are today?

MI: There are certainly more photography magazines, in print and online, then ever before. This speaks to a growing popular interest in viewing photography that parallels the increased accessibility of image-making tools. As more and more people start making pictures on their own they will, most likely, seek outlets in which to share and critique them. As for the market, I find it interesting that there are photography magazines that suit most any budget and exist along a wide spectrum of potential platforms. There are PDF based publications, iPad apps and limited edition print runs that include signed photographs…

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

MI: That is a tough question. Although not without its frustrations, Daylight has been a very fulfilling project. There have been so many wonderful highlights over the years it is hard to select just one. Without a doubt, the most satisfying aspect overall has been our immersion into an amazing community of peers. All over the world we run into great people who are engaged with the world through photography.

f: What is next for Daylight?

MI: At the moment we are working to develop a well-rounded book program. We recently published two monographs, Bruce Haley’s Sunder and Alejandro Cartagena’s Suburbia Mexicana, and secured distribution with D.A.P. In addition, we just published the ninth edition of Daylight Magazine, which focuses on the Cosmos, and we are about to release a podcast highlighting the winner of the 2011 Daylight/CDS Photo Awards Tamas Dezso. Stay tuned!

10.31.2011

Reading Shortlist

The Reading Shortlist is an occasional post with a listing of recommended readings from other sites.

Steven Brown and Xiaoqing Gao, The Neuroscience of Beauty

Rob Haggart, A Photo Editor, Why Does Everyone Think They Need a Photobook?

Pier 24 Photography, Doug Rickard

Karen Rosenberg, Art Review: Miroslav Tichy, An Ogling Subversive With a Homemade Camera

Saul Leiter Over Zijn Werkwijze

Alec Soth, Little Brown Mushroom, At What Age Do Photographers Do Their Most Influential Work?

Street Reverb Magazine, in-sight: The Street Photographers of in-public

What Picture Would You Take to Mars?

Tom Winchester, Capitalism, Reality and Photography

7.29.2011

Donations for Leon Shambroom, Son of Photographer Paul Shambroom

In July 2010, Leon Shambroom, the son of photographer Paul Shambroom and independent curator and writer Joan Rothfuss, suffered a severe brain injury due to smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning while trapped in a house fire in South Minneapolis. This tragedy has left him unable to talk or walk and requiring 24 hour medical care and the family facing heavy expenses.

In keeping with the spirit of strong mutual support in our photographic community, this is a time when one of us needs the help of all of us.

Donations can be given through this link to: Health Advocates.

Alec Soth, Carrie Thompson and Brian Ulrich hope to hold an online version of a recent benefit auction at the Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis for Leon at a future date. We will post details when they become available.

2.26.2011

Of Interest 2.26: Susan Meiselas, Alec Soth, Edward Weston

Susan Meiselas: "The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don't belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation."

Alec Soth in his Sleeping By the Mississippi: "There is no greater joy than wide-eyed wandering."

Edward Weston: "Good composition is only the strongest way of seeing the subject. It cannot be taught because, like all creative effort, it is a matter of personal growth."

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