Reading Shortlist 11.11.11

The Reading Shortlist is an occasional post with a listing of recommended readings and links. A recommendation does not necesesarily suggest an agreement with the contents of the post.

Elinor Carucci, Ruben Nátal-San Miguel, Alan Rapp and more to be added, School Of Visual Arts Lecture Series available for free download via iTunes

Stephanie Dean, F-Stop Magazine, ""Smile!": A Polemic on Fine Art Portraiture"

Matt Eich with Joerg Colberg, Conscientious Extended, "A Conversation with Matt Eich"

Mat Gleason, The Huffington Post, "The Career Benefits of Boycotting Charity Art Auctions"

The Hacker Factor Blog, "How I Met Your Mother Through Photoshop"

Darius D. Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson, New York Public Library Lecture, "Publish Your Photography Book"

Cord Jefferson, Good, "Should Journalists Who Witness Killings Try and Stop Them?"

Jonathan Lethem, Harper's Magazine, ""The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism"

Daido Moriyama, Japan Society, "An Evening With Daido Moriyama"

Errol Morris, The Diane Rehm Show [guest hosted by Laura Knoy], "Believing Is Seeing"

Zoe Strauss, "Atlanta Celebrates Photography Lecture: Zoe Strauss"

Ryan Tate, Gawker, "End Online Panhandling Forever!"

8.16.11 Reading Shortlist

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

Gerry Badger, American Suburb X, "Garry Winogrand: I Don't Give a Rap About Gasoline Stations - The Winogrand Problem" (1988)

Rachel Been, Slideluck Potshow, "Interview with Elinor Carucci"

Paul Graham, "The Unreasonable Apple"

Lauren Henkin, "Casual Consumption"

Darius Himes, "What Is a Document and What Is a Style?"

Randy Kennedy, New York Times, "When Life Gets in the Way of Art"

Pedro Meyer, ZoneZero, "Are Too Many People Taking Photographs?"

Amy Stein, "A Few Questions for Steven Ahlgren"

f100: Owen Bruce, Tamar Latzman, Kathryn Parker Almanas, Dimitris Triantafyllou

© Owen Bruce

fototazo has asked a group of 50 curators, gallery owners, blog writers, photographers, academics and others actively engaged in photography to pick two photographers that deserve (more) recognition - the underknown, the under-respected as well as not-appreciated-enough favorites. A little more information on the project is available in the first post in the series here.

Today we continue the series with responses from Elinor Carucci and Pieter Wisse.

We began the series with responses from Nicholas Nixon, Matt Johnston, Blake Andrews, John Edwin Mason, Aline Smithson, Colin Pantall, Michael Werner, Liza Fetissova, Laurence Salzmann, Bryan Formhals, Richard Mosse, Shane Lavalette, Amy Stein, Amani Willett, Wayne Ford, S. Billie Mandle, Leslie K. Brown, Gordon Stettinius, Marc Feustel, Hin Chua, Adriana Rios Monsalve, Daniel Augschoell and Larissa Leclair.

Respondent: Elinor Carucci is an Israeli-American photographer. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and the NYFA Award in 2010. She was chosen by Photo District News as one of its “30 Under 30” in 2000 and won the International Center of Photography’s “Infinity Award” for Best Young Photographer in 2001. She is currently working on a body of work about her children. Previous bodies of work include Closer which was published as a monograph in 2002 by Chronicle Books and republished in 2009 and  Diary of a Dancer which was published by SteidlMack in 2005. She was interviewed on fototazo in May here.

Selections: Owen Bruce and Tamar Latzman.

©  Tamar Latzman, Video Still from the series View from a window (Sunset), 2008

Respondent: Pieter Wisse runs 500 Photographers which will post the work of 5 active photographers a week for 100 weeks. The weblog, started April 5th, 2010, accompanies an edit of images by the selected photographer with a short biography and summary of the work. The goal of the project is to develop a single-source database of great photographers. Rotterdam-based Wisse is also the owner of Four Eyes Photography & Art, a gallery and bookstore that publishes Four Eyes Photography Magazine and that also recently published Wisse's own book, I Believe in 88.

Selections: Kathryn Parker Almanas and Dimitris Triantafyllou

Both photographers are very capable of looking at their deeper inner self and transforming it into solid, multi-layered and question-raising bodies of work.

Kathryn Parker Almanas is a wonderful example of taking a personal situation and using a creative and intelligent way to express oneself. Using food as a surrogate for the body, creating flesh and blood with dough and jellies, she has been making still-lifes that raise questions about mortality and suffering for several years. Her consistent body of well thought-out and well-executed projects, stemming from deep within herself, touch a universal anxiety for suffering and decay.

© Kathryn Parker Almanas, from the series "Dissector and Dissected"

Dimitris Triantafyllou takes his own feelings and questions and transforms them into photographic projects. Dimitris is a photographer on a quest of introspection and personal understanding. He looks at other people and other situations, and while documenting he knows he will eventually be looking at himself. Dimitris dares to dig deep into his own soul and use it to create a multi-layered body of work.

© Dimitris Triantafyllou, from the series "Identity"

Interview: Elinor Carucci

Interviewed by phone in New York City on May 4th, 2011

New York City-based Elinor Carucci (b 1971) is an Israeli-American photographer. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and the NYFA Award in 2010. She was chosen by Photo District News as one of its “30 Under 30” in 2000 and won the International Center of Photography’s “Infinity Award” for Best Young Photographer in 2001.

She is currently working on a body of work about her children. Previous bodies of work include Closer which was published as a monograph in 2002 by Chronicle Books and republished in 2009 with a forward from Susan Kismaric. A second book entitled Diary of a Dancer was published by SteidlMack in 2005. Her work is included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Jewish Museum (New York), the International Center of Photography, The Brooklyn Museum of Arts, The Houston Museum of Fine Arts, The Museum of Israeli Art in Ramat Gan, Israel, the Herzlia Museum of Contemporary Art and The Haifa Museum of Art.

In this interview, we have tried to add to the already extensive number of interviews with Carucci that exist online. Among the best of the many interviews are those with Rachel Been on Slideluck Potshow, the community interview with Matt Johnston on A Photo Student that features a selection of student questions and also two video interviews, one a film by Christian Klinger on amadelio and a second produced by artis in 2009. A Google search will turn up another dozen.

After reading through those interviews, we decided to focus this interview on areas of her life and work less covered previously: the role of Israeli culture in her work, questions about the images themselves that complement questions in previous interviews and also on her role as an educator.

THE ROLE OF ISRAELI CULTURE IN HER WORK

fototazo: Elinor, people often talk about your work in terms of intimacy, family and also your own life experience, but as I was looking through your images, it also seems to me your work is just as much about your culture. How much do you think your work is a reflection and commentary of being Israeli in terms of family dynamics, comfort with the body, parenting...

Elinor Carucci: Yes, when I started to take pictures, I didn’t think about it at all, because I took for granted who I am, and who my family was, but especially after I moved to America, I realized that a lot of this is cultural. A lot of it is how, as you were just saying, how much more easier we are with nudity, and how intimacy is being expressed, especially among women in the Middle East. I realized that even though I wasn’t intending to talk about Israeli culture, or Middle Eastern culture, my work ended up reflecting this culture because it’s who I am and where I’m from.

f: Do you think you would be making the same images, or similar images, if you were still living in Israel full-time?

Read More>>

Elinor Carucci on Portraiture

Untitled, 2001. Tierney Gearon

Fototazo has asked twelve photographers what makes a good portrait. This is the 2nd in the series of their responses. The first was Mark Powell.

Born in Jerusalem, Elinor Carucci moved to New York in 1995. She was quickly included in an impressive number of solo and group exhibitions, including a solo show at the Gagosian Gallery and a group show at the Musuem of Modern Art. Her photographs are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, among others. She was awarded the International Center for Photography's Infinity Award for Young Photographers in 2001 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. She has published two monographs, Closer which was recently republished with a new forward by Susan Kismaric, and Diary of a Dancer. Her work can be explored here.

Elinor Carucci: A good portrait for me is one that evokes a response of some sort to the person being photographed which allows a deeper look into who this person is. I know that for me it is usually an emotional response that tempts me into the images, feelings draw me in and make me remember the image, the person, or the story, and make me go back to the image again and again.

I attached a portrait that was taken by Tierney Gearon of her mother because I can really get a sense of her mother, something about the stress of the hands, the tension of the mouth sucking the cigarette, but with her gaze far away...the contrast between these elements make this portrait complex and moving. It sends me to my own fears and anxieties, to the women that are important in my life, and how I look at them; I feel connected to this image and through it to my own life.