Reading Shortlist 1.20.15

From "LaToya Ruby Frazier in Conversation with Dawoud Bey"

The Reading Shortlist is an occasional post with an eclectic listing of recommended sites, 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.

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David Campany, The 'Photobook': What’s in a name? Campany is a favorite photography writer and here he lays out a history of the photobook and references a series of further readings on the subject. He also weighs in on Parr and Badger's The Photobook: a history series.

Diane Arbus talks with Studs Terkel (March 28, 1973). A conversation between Diane Arbus and Studs Terkel in 1973 about her wealthy upbringing, the relationship of money and art and also, sadly in retrospect, about suicide.

From "Lick Creek Line" © Ron Jude

Mark Alice Durant, Saint-Lucy, Ron Jude. One of the better interviews I've read recently, Durant asks Jude about the space between what photographs promise to deliver and what is actually communicated, the photobook versus the book of photographs, Jude's press A-Jump Books and a whole lot more.

LaToya Ruby Frazier in Conversation with Dawoud Bey. An hour conversation focused on Frazier's newly published "The Notion of Family." Frazier shows perhaps a surprising faith in the continued power of the documentary tradition.

Le Luxe, 2011 © Roe Ethridge, 

Carl Gunhouse, Light Leaked, What's Going on with Photography? Gunhouse with a thought-provoking investigation of contemporary practice happening at the junction of work created a decade ago by Alec Soth and Roe Ethridge. He also suggests, "The old battles are dead."

Loring Knoblauch, Collector Daily, In Defense of Ferocity. A collector's challenge to other collectors to buy difficult, emotional, raw photography and the reasons why.

Allen Murabayashi, Peta Pixel, 8 Legal Cases Every Photographer Should Know. Everyone's least favorite important subject, your rights as a photographer, as illustrated by eight important legal cases.

oatmeal.com, Should You Buy a Selfie Stick? For those of you still unsure of whether or not a selfie stick is for you, this handy buyer's guide will help you decide.

The Tavis Smiley Show, Thomas Allen Harris & Deborah Willis — "Through a Lens Darkly". A short audio interview sketching out the African-American experience in photography as both subject and creator.

From the series, "The Grey Line" © Kristine Potter

Hrag Vartanian, Hyperallergenic, The Downside of Art Going Viral. Kristine Potter published images from her series "The Grey Line" which explores the movement from civilian to military officer, on Buzzfeed. The images went viral and were subject to homophobic slurs which pushed her to ask for their removal. The interview tackles the complicated question of the context for viewing images.

Reading Shortlist 11.7.14

Still from the video "The Archive of Modern Conflict"

Six weeks of vacation has left me with a lot of reading to catch up on so I'll start the site back up with a Reading Shortlist post. The Reading Shortlist is an occasional post with an eclectic listing of recommended sites, 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.

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Blake Andrews, B, Carving the Rubble. Andrews presents a level-headed navigation of both Winogrand's legacy and the critical reaction to it.

Aperture, LaToya Ruby Frazier in Conversation with Dawoud Bey. The conversation focuses around Frazier's work and first monograph.

Adam Bell, Paper Journal, Ricardo Cases – El Porqué de las Naranjas. Bell's reviews continue to elucidate with the cleanest of writing.

Jonathan Blaustein, A Photo Editor, Interview with Mishka Henner, Parts 1 and 2. An interview as insightful as it is funny covering, among other things, print-on-demand, the planet Earth as Picasso's guitar and the 21st century hustle, as Blaustein dubs it.

Carl Gunhouse, Light Leaked, "What’s going on with Photography". Gunhouse looks at art history to trace the lines that have lead us to today's historical moment in photography and makes his bet on which two contemporary photographers will be remembered by history. Hint: I'm not one.

From the article "Can Photojournalism Survive in the Instagram Era?" by Jeremy Lybarger
Image © Celia Shapiro, Timothy McVeigh, 06/11/2001, from the series "Last Supper" 

Jeremy Lybarger, Mother Jones, Can Photojournalism Survive in the Instagram Era? This is an ancient piece (for the Internet) and has been much discussed, but if you've never read it, it shows Fred Ritchin at his most lucid and convincing and I would say Ritchin is the most forward thinking voice in public conversation on photography today.

Steven Naifeh, Vanity Fair, NCIS: Provence: The Van Gogh Mystery. A forensics-based reexamination of Van Gogh's "suicide" concludes it wasn't a suicide after all.

David Walker, PDN Online, Photo Blogs Are Proliferating: How Photographers Can Make the Most of Them. Interesting for a one-stop comparative look at fees paid by major (corporate) photo blogs and a good reminder to actively consider where you publish your work instead of posting anywhere that will let you.

Richard West, Source Photographic Review, The Archive of Modern Conflict. A 15-minute video looking inside the archives and a conversation on access and the meaning of the collection with curator and editor Timothy Prus.

Project Release: Shane Lavalette

© Shane Lavalette, Bill on His Porch, 2011, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

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, Devil's Crossroads, 2010, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

© Shane Lavalette, Ground Zero, 2010, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

© Shane Lavalette, Praying Hands, 2011, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

© Shane Lavalette, Tommy's Bed, 2010, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

© Shane Lavalette, America Street, 2011, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

© Shane Lavalette, Spit in the Swamp, 2010, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

© Shane Lavalette, Alvin at Church, 2010, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

© Shane Lavalette, Rev. Dennis's Bible Castle to God, 2010, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

© Shane Lavalette, Po' Monkey's 70th Birthday, 2010, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

© Shane Lavalette, Athens Morning, 2011, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

© Shane Lavalette, Spirit Bottles, 2011, courtesy of High Museum of Art, Atlanta

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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.