Mexico Notebook: Interview with Diego Berruecos

From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

Hannah Frieser, Jaime Permuth and I are collaborating to explore contemporary photography in Mexico. We're looking at trends and how they relate to traditions; events, institutions and venues; as well as pursuing conversations with curators, academics, gallerists and photographers on what's happening currently. This collaborative project will feature a variety of types of posts including interviews, book reviews, published letters, portfolios of images and more.

Hannah Frieser is a curator, photographer and book artist and former Executive Director of Light Work. Jaime Permuth is a Guatemalan photographer living and working in New York City and a Faculty Member at the School of Visual Arts.

Today we continue this series with an interview of Diego Berruecos by Mark Alor Powell.

Diego Berruecos was born in Mexico City. He studied photography in the Escuela Activa de Fotografía and also studied in the London College of Printing. He was a grant winner of the Jóvenes Creadores program of FONCA (2007-08) and in the Programa de Arte Actual of Bancomer and of Carrillo Gil (2009-2010). He has taken part in various group exhibitions including "Espectografías: Paradojas de la Historia," MUAC; "Shattered Glass" at The Americas Society, New York; "and "Resisting the Present," Museo Amparo/ARC/MAMVP, Paris. His individual exhibitions include "Ebb" at Proyectos Monclova and "PRI: genealogíaa de un Partido, El uso político del fenómeno solar" in Gaga.

Mark Alor Powell was born in Decatur, Illinois in 1968 and is originally from Detroit, Michigan. He currently lives and works in Mexico City.

Powell has exhibited in museums and galleries throughout Latin America, The United States, Asia and Europe, including The New Museum in New York, The Museum of Photography Archive in Mexico City, Ten Haaf Gallery in Amsterdam, PHotoEspaña, Tokyo Photo and the Urbis Museum in Manchester, England. In 2007, Mark was invited to photograph his hometown for the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).

Powell published his first book Very Important Person (Diamantina, Mexico City) in 2006 and was included in the book Street Photography Now (Thames and Hudson, London, 2010). In 2013, he won the 4th Editorial RM Fotolibro prize for his forthcoming book Open at Noon to be published and formally presented at Paris Photo in November, 2014.

Other posts in this series include:
Interview with Mariela Sancari
Q&A with Eduardo Jiménez Román
Q&A with Claudia Arechiga
Q&A with Nahatan Navarro
Contemporary Photography in Oaxaca
Q&A with Aglae Cortés
Q&A with Maria José Sesma
Interview with César Rodríguez
Q&A with Nora Gómez
Q&A with Melba Arellano
Q&A with Jorge Taboada

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From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

En español abajo

Mark Powell: To begin, I would like to ask you to tell me about your background as a photographer: how you got started and what inspired you to start taking pictures and what you like most about the medium?

Diego Berruecos: I am the son of a father who was a painter. Since I was young, I have seen and been surrounded by lots of painting, but I never had the urge to draw or paint. When I began exploring photography, I loved the possibility of reproducing pictorial scenes without painting them myself. I studied in the Escuela Activa de Fotografía in Mexico a couple of years, and from there I went to London to the LCP [now the London College of Communication]. I think it was there where I began to find my path in photography.

MP: In Mexico City, you are the editor of the magazine Gatopardo. Does your job as an editor influence your work as a photographer?

DB: I started as a photo editor for Travesías, a travel magazine. I think subconsciously you begin to compose in different ways as a photographer when you are around editorial work as an editor. Now I look at a photo I used to think was a travel photo and it is another thing entirely. The type of photo reportage in Gatopardo is a type of work I've explored little myself. I think that the investigative journalism in the articles has influenced me more, the way writers do all their research. But there is a whole part of my personal work that I do not think mixes at all with my editorial work, for example all of the archival research of the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) I think ends up having a very specific photographic aesthetic that I control very little.

From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

MP: Your project "PRI: Genealogía de un Partido. La Solución Somos Todos" ("PRI: Genealogy of a Party. We Are All the Solution") is a selection from an archive in Mexico City. Can you tell me a little about the collection and how you discovered it, and the how the idea of this project developed?

DB: I found this collection of photographs in the Archivo General de la Nación (The General Archive of the Nation); they are part of the private collection of Porfirio Muñoz Ledo who at the time was president of the PRI. Over time he abandoned the PRI and became one of the most critical political figures in Mexico. These photos are from an album of the 1976 presidential campaign that [José] López Portillo won with 96.4 percent of the vote. The opposition was so discouraged by PRI fraud that they didn't compete. For me, it is a key year in the history of Mexico, because it demonstrates the PRI structure at its peak. The machine of the totalitarian state was completely oiled.

MP: I really like when photographers do something outside of taking pictures and dive into something like you have done with this archive. It offers a unique vision and voice from many possibilities - plus, the action of adding another layer to the photographic act creates this whole new fresh platform. Please describe your motivation and desire as a photographer and how it inspired your selection.

DB: I think you're quite right, photography is a medium in which references are constantly sought, the eye is recording on our personal hard drive images that stick with us, and when you check archive material, you're running into things that catch your attention and maybe you've already seen them somewhere else, there between this other layer that you mention. To me, it was very natural to select this material using the framework of reference that I sought (the party in power not wanting to leave office). Everything that fit into this broad framework fit into my selection.

From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

MP: I love this quote attributed to the PRI: "No somos ni derecha ni izquierda sino todo al contrario" ("We are not right nor left, but completely the opposite").  Can you give the reader a brief synopsis and meaning of the PRI in Mexico?

DB: Haha, the quote is great. For me it has to do with how the PRI has managed to bend in all directions under different circumstances, and with how it costs them all the effort in the world to define themselves. It even reminds me of Cantinflas [ed: a Mexican comic actor sometimes referred to as the "Charlie Chaplin of Mexico"] - it's like the PRI turned into Cantinflas.

MP: Have you identified any of the photographers who originally took the pictures? Are these independent photojournalist or contracted political photographers? What were the original purpose of these pictures?

DB: I have not been able to contact these photographers. I guess that they were hired to document the campaign and if they did well, they were hired to stay and photograph the administration. Each administration has their photographer. I greatly respect the work of these photographers. But I am also interested in the question of whether these images belong to the nation. Do they belong to everyone? Do they belong to the current government? Can we use them? Alter them? And most of all, the question of if we can take them out of the archive so that more people can see/use them.

From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

MP: Looking at the photographs, it shows a rich and amazing photographic skill set in Mexico and a certain Mexican style. Some of the pictures remind me of stills from movies of the Golden Era of Mexican cinema. What do you think of the relationship between Mexican image makers and the idealized visions of government?

DB: Great question, and an entire topic in itself. I think it is very difficult to separate these points. How are they creating the image of Mexico that power wants to create? Is there a clear and defined line around this? It is changing and is it consolidating? I think there's something in the faces of these pictures that show a depression with no way out, reflected in the Gaze of several of the Mexicans in these pictures. Especially when they do not know they are being seen by the camera and we do not know if their mood is created on purpose, or if it is there only to be registered.

It is very difficult to answer this question. Very interesting.

From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

MP: López Portillo, in the midst of a campaign, appears in the photographs as this big figure, dripping in propaganda, yet on the periphery there are a lot of revealing signs of the time - society, people and street life, etc. According to these pictures, what was life like in the 1970s in Mexico?

DB: That's difficult, Mark, I was born in 1979! I think that throughout the campaign López Portillo is presented as the next King, and that's the purpose of the campaign: that people can meet their King.

In his term everything happened, there was a super oil bonanza and a mega crisis. Somehow everything happened to us in those six years, it was quite a roller coaster. All thanks to the bad management of the government in those years.

MP: What are your eventual plans for this project?

DB: I have always seen this whole project ending with being published in a book composed of many smaller books. But I've always liked the opportunity to play with the exhibition format. I always change the way I display this work and I love that freedom and possibility.

From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

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Mark Powell: Para empezar, me gustaría pedirte que nos cuentes de tu experiencia como fotógrafo, ¿Cómo empezaste y qué te inspiró para empezar a tomar fotos?  ¿Qué es que más te gusta del medio?

Diego Berruecos: Soy hijo de un padre pintor, desde chico vi y estuve rodeado de mucha pintura pero nunca se me dio dibujar o pintar, cuando empecé a explorar la fotografía me encantó la posibilidad de reproducir escenas pictóricas sin pintarlas yo. Estudié en la Escuela Activa de Fotografía en México un par de años, y de ahí me fui a Londres al LCP. Creo que fui ahí en donde empecé a encontrar mi camino fotográfico.

From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

MP: En la Ciudad de México, eres el director de la revista Gatopardo. ¿Tú trabajo como editor influye tú trabajo como fotógrafo?

DB: Empecé como editor de foto de Travesías, una revista de viajes, creo que inconscientemente uno empieza a componer de otra maneras cuando tiene de cerca el trabajo editorial. Ahora yo revisé la foto que yo creía de viaje antes y sí es otra cosa completamente. El foto reportaje de Gatopardo es un tipo de trabajo que he explorado poco, creo que me ha influenciado más la parte de la investigación periodística de los artículos, la forma en la que los escritores hacen toda su investigación. Pero hay toda una parte de mi trabajo en donde no creo que mi trabajo editorial se mezcle, toda la investigación de archivo del PRI por ejemplo creo que termina teniendo una estética fotográfica muy especifica y que controlo poco.

From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

MP: Tú proyecto "PRI: Genealogía de un Partido. La Solución Somos Todos" es una selección de fotos de un archivo en la Ciudad de México. ¿Nos podrías contar un poco acerca de la colección, cómo la descubriste, y la manera en que la idea de este proyecto desarrolló?

DB: Este colección de fotografías las encontré en el Archivo General de la Nación, forman parte de la colección particular de Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, que en su momento fue el presidente del PRI. Con los años abandono al PRI y se convirtió en uno de los mas críticos personajes de la política. Estas fotos vienen de un álbum de la campaña presidencial de 1976, que gano López Portillo con el 96.4 por ciento de los votos. La oposición estaba tan desanimada con los fraudes priístas que no compitió. Para mi es una campaña clave en la historia de México, por que demuestra la estructura priísta en su apogeo. La maquina del estado totalitario estaba completamente aceitada.

From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

MP: Me gusta mucho que los fotógrafos hagan algo fuera de tomar fotografías y que se sumergen en algo así como lo que has hecho con este archivo. Como fotógrafo nos ofreces una visión y voz única de las muchas posibilidades de como interpretar el archivo, y además, la acción de añadir otra capa al acto fotográfico crea una nueva plataforma fresca. Por favor, cuéntanos de tú motivación y tus deseos como fotógrafo y como te ha inspirado esta selección de fotos del archivo.

DB: Creo que tienes mucha razón, la fotografía es un medio en donde constantemente se buscan referencias, el ojo va grabando en nuestro disco duro personal muchísimas imagines que se nos van quedando, y cuando revisas material del archive, te vas topando con cosas que te llaman la atención y que quizás ya habías visto por otro lado. Ahí entre este otro layer que mencionas. Para mi era muy natural ir seleccionado este material con el marco de referencia que buscaba (el partido en poder no queriendo dejar el poder) todo lo que entrara en ese marco amplio cabía en mi selección.

MP: Me encanta esta cita atribuida al PRI: "No somos ni derecha ni izquierda sino todo al contrario." ¿Nos podrías dar a una breve sinopsis del PRI y contarnos sobre su significado en México?

DB: Je je je, es muy buena la frase. Para mi tiene que ver con que el PRI ha sabido inclinarse según las circunstancias para todos lados, y le cuesta todo el trabajo del mundo definirse a si mismos. Incluso me recuerda también a Cantinflas, es como el PRI Cantinfleando.

From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

MP: ¿Has identificado alguno de los fotógrafos que tomaron las fotos? Son fotoperiodístas independientes o fotógrafos contratados para registrar hechos políticos? ¿Cuál fue el propósito original de estas imágenes?

DB: No he podido contactar a estos fotógrafos, supongo que son contratados para documentar la campaña y si les va bien chance se quedan en el sexenio. Cada sexenio tiene a su fotógrafo. Yo respeto muchísimo el trabajo de estos fotógrafos. Pero también me interesa la cuestión de si estas imagines son de la nación? Son de todos? Son del gobierno en turno? Si las podemos usar? Alterar? Y sobretodo sacarlas del archive para que mas gente las pueda ver/usar.

MP: En cuanto a las fotografías, estas muestran la gran habilidad fotográfica que está presente en México y sugiere un estilo mexicano. Algunas de las imágenes me recuerdan fotogramas de películas de la época de oro del cine mexicano. ¿Qué piensas de la relación entre los creadores mexicanos de imágenes y las visiones idealizadas del gobierno?

DB: Gran pregunta, y todo un tema. Creo que es muy difícil separar estos puntos. Como se va creando la imagen de México que el poder quiere crear? Hay una línea clara y definida de esto? Va cambiando y se va consolidando? Creo que hay algo en los rostros de estas fotos, que muestran una depresión sin salida, reflejada en la Mirada de varios mexicanos en estas fotos. Sobre todo cuando no se saben vistos por la cámara y no sé si este mood es creado a propósito, o si esta ahí solo para ser registrado.

Esta muy difícil responder esta pregunta. Muy interesante.

From the series "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

MP: López Portillo, en medio de una campaña, aparece en las fotografías como esta gran figura, rodeado de propaganda, pero en la periférica de las fotos hay una cantidad de signos reveladores de los tiempos, la sociedad, la gente y la vida de la calle, etc. De acuerdo con estas imágenes, ¿como era la vida en la década de los setentas en México?

DB: Está difícil, Mark, yo nací en el 1979, je. Creo que durante toda la campaña López Portillo, él es presentado como el próximo Rey, de eso va la campaña de que la gente pueda conocer a su Rey.

En su sexenio paso de todo, hubo una súper bonanza petrolera, y una mega crisis. De alguna manera nos paso todo en esos 6 años, fue toda una montaña rusa. Todo gracias al pésimo manejo del gobierno en esos años.

MP: ¿Cuáles son tus planes eventuales para este proyecto?

DB: Siempre he visto todo este proyecto con una salida editorial, un libro, compuesto de muchos libros mas pequeños. Pero también siempre me ha gustado la posibilidad de jugar con el formato de expo, creo que siempre cambio la forma en la que exhibo esta trabajo y me encanta esa libertad y posibilidad.

Installation view "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

Installation view "PRI genealogía de un partido" © Diego Berruecos

How Do We Understand a Photograph?

© Irina Rozovsky

What is the psychological process through which we understand a photograph?

This simple, straight question would require a doctoral thesis to consider fully and I have a few other obligations during the next three years and I'm sure you do too, but that shouldn't prevent us from meditating generally on the question as photographers.

The education of the eye plays a large role in how we understand an image; this post is an exploration of how a photographer who has had formal education and/or learned through experience in the field might understand a photograph. This overlaps in many ways with the way anyone understands an image, but also has its particularities as we will see.

This process of understanding is mutable, subjective, image-dependent and varies according to what number beer you're on; what follows is an outline exploring one possible way that the different ingredients in the process might come together to bring an understanding. I've broken it down into four parts: recognition of the image and physiological reaction; starting analysis; finding subtle relationships and analytical conclusions; and meaning. As a conclusion I talk about why and how we might undermine this process as photographers.

Why talk about this? This type of examination can help us in critiques as teachers, fellow students, friends or reviewers. It can also give us a way to think about making our own work: looking at how we understand images can allow us to borrow ideas from others, identify problems with and improve our own work and also manipulate the process of understanding to our benefit.

This post complements and builds from a post called Considering a Photograph written last year.

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WHOLE IMAGE RECOGNITION
Look at the lead image by Irina Rozovsky from her project One to Nothing for a few seconds. At the moment of looking at it, do you see the entire image all at once?

To clarify this question, I'll loosely reference a similar question asked by Jorge Luis Borges in his essay "An Investigation of the Word" about language and impress you by referencing Borges at the same time.

Do you understand this sentence as an entirety as you read it?

Or do you understand it in clusters: Do you understand / this sentence / as an entirety / as you read it?

Or do you understand it in individual parts, word-by-word as you go along: Do / you / understand / this / sentence / as / an / entirety / as / you / read / it?

And if the sentence is much shorter - "I must go" - or longer (I'll spare you), how does that impact the process of how you understand it?

To bring this question back to photographs and to Rozovksy's image, in the first fraction of a second upon seeing the image, we first attempt to recognize the entire "sentence" - that is to say the whole image - as opposed to first looking in detail at each "word" (a hoof, a rock, a fabric on the camel's back). We have an innate drive for immediate whole image recognition as a first part of understanding an image. We want to have a sense of the whole before we spend a minute looking at the hoof (barring prior use of hallucinogens).

How we get to that recognition has variables. We'll discuss a few to get the idea. One is density. If the image is low density like this image by Rozovksy - we can most likely understand it as a whole directly. We can read the whole sentence and understand it all at once, as we might with "I must go."

© Carolyn Drake

In a denser image with more parts to it, such as this photograph above by Carolyn Drake from her series "Two Rivers," we would be more likely to achieve whole image recognition in a different way. Instead of being able to recognize it immediately in the initial glance at the photograph, instead we would be more likely to rapidly look around the image and create in our mind a series of groupings or "clusters" that we then use to recognize the whole. This is a process that takes on the order of a second or two. We see the three figures on the left and the painting above them as a cluster; the central swimmer and those paintings above as a second; the torch and Olympic rings painting on the right and the boy climbing out of the pool as the third. Our eyes bounce around for a moment until we construct a whole from these clusters.



A second variable is image size and/or our distance from the image, both of which relate directly to density. Here on the screen, at this average size, the images fit in our visual field and density is compacted, but not too much. We can look at the two photographs we've considered and achieve whole image recognition either directly or by clusters, but in either case fairly immediately.

Seeing these same images at 100 inches square on a wall, however, the process of recognition changes. If an image overwhelms our visual field, we're much more inclined to construct the whole image from clusters than to see the whole immediately. In fact, if the image becomes large enough, we probably would need to look at the individual constituent parts that make up the clusters to recognize the photograph. Going back to our analogy with reading a sentence, recognition via constituent parts would be the equivalent to understanding a sentence word-by-word.

Similarly, a very small image, like Drake's image at 100 pixels wide below, can also affect the process of recognition. Ironically, it also makes it more likely we will need to rely on clusters or their constituent parts to recognize it. We try to pick out what we can - the central figure perhaps, the pool, the guy on the left - and then draw conclusions of what the image is of.

A third variable is tonality. Images with a very collapsed range of tonality - think of the text images from Amy Elkins' "Black Is the Day, Black Is the Night" (example below) - create more likelihood of coming to a recognition of the whole through clusters or perhaps even by the constituent parts that make up a cluster. Seeing the whole is rendered difficult by the tonal range.

There's a question of image reading that I'm undecided on that I would like to insert somewhere and here seems as good of a place as any. People say images are read left to right in our culture as with text and from right to left in countries like Israel where text reads in that direction. This competes with another idea that I won't try to engage here, one of visual hierarchies which states that we would see a big, pure red blotch, let's say, before a small gray one, or a face before feet. I'm not sure how those two – directional reading and visual hierarchies – relate, but I believe both ideas are important and relate to this first phase of recognizing an image.

There are other variables we could surely include, but I think the point is made: our initial drive upon seeing an image is to have whole image recognition; how we arrive there depends on variables. We take the path of least work. If we can see the image all at once and immediately, we do so. Other times we need to build a recognition via clusters or, if that fails, look at the constituent parts of an image. Regardless, the initial drive upon seeing an image and the first step to understanding an image is to recognize the whole.

© Amy Elkins

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PHYSIOLOGICAL REACTION
Another immediate element of seeing an image is physiological. An image of a murder scene causes one reaction, porn another. A camel in a desert dries my mouth, an image of a pool makes me feel cooler, especially in the heat wave we're currently in. I am not sure if we feel something bodily before we come to recognize the image as described above, or if the physiological reaction can come before recognizing what we are looking at. I think it's the latter. We have a visceral reaction to blood, for example, as soon as it hits our eyes and before we recognize the whole image. Regardless, I would say that both belong together in this first phase of understanding an image.

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STARTING ANALYSIS
When we recognize the image as a whole, the next step in understanding an image is not just seeing what it is, but how it's built. We shift from reaction to analysis. We go back and look at the clusters again, and then at their constituent parts. Once we recognize the image, we investigate. The process begins to become more verbal, an inner dialogue about the image develops. As we see these parts, we name them and make basic visual relationships.

Take a look at the first cluster on the left of Drake's image, for example. We see that there are three people. A fence that's mostly out of focus. A lane line. Lots of white and - hey look! - the reds and yellows in the lane line repeat in the wall painting above.

We also begin to see basic latent structures and geometries. This is probably one place in the process where photographers separate from others in terms of our process of understanding images. There are patterns of squares, circles, triangles that begin to pop out at us through our history of looking at images and training.

In Drake's photograph we see triangles:



Squares:



And geometries and structures in two-dimensional images aren't just two-dimensional; in this image we can tease out three-dimensional forms as well, like this pyramid:

Looking back to Irina Rozovsky's image, there’s a central triangle:

And lots of little triangles as well as lines of thirds through the image:

We could also understand the image as a series of boxes:

Or as circles:

Concurrent to this process of recognizing the geometry and structure of the photograph, we begin creating some initial questions and beliefs about the photograph. For example, where the fuck is the camel's head? The legs look like human legs in a burlap bag. It's a square, medium format, film photograph. Look at the incredible range of fabrics that make up the saddle! We also notice more details amongst the parts. What's that yellow brick wall back there doing or separating? And is that a second built wall slightly behind it?

The second phase, to summarize, is about the shift from an initial reaction to the photograph to exploring how the image is built in terms of technique and form; the beginnings of analysis of content through asking questions and stating initial beliefs about the image; and a further investigation of constituent parts or details.

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FINDING SUBTLE RELATIONSHIPS AND ANALYTICAL CONCLUSIONS
We begin to find and analyze more complex, subtle relationships as we spend more time with the image. Look, for example, at how the body of the central figure on the starting block is a square that's the same shape and size as the door behind him in Drake's image. Look also at the hands of the people in the left half of the frame, especially the hand of the blurred man in the foreground and that of the woman outside the pool. Look at how their gestures connect them visually. Their gestures also echo in the boy's hand in the water below the woman and in the painted swimming figure above them. Like 16th-century Mannerist paintings that rely on hand gestures to communicate interior states of being, all of the figures in this cluster convey a gestural motion of action and they work together to give Drake's image movement.

With further exploration we see the symmetry of the two red torch and Olympic rings paintings on either side of the image, a symmetry repeated in the two painted female swimmers in the center above the figure standing on the starting block, and then discover how all of this symmetry is playing against the odd figure swimming horizontally to the left of the two women reaching upwards. There's a central formal disruption of the image's symmetry by this horizontal swimmer that's important to its success.

In addition, the underlying tensions and the balance of the image is both understood as well as viscerally felt with extended time. We both recognize and feel the relative air and space around the central swimmer and begin to sense the importance of how Drake has loaded the edges of the image. There's an accumulation of objects on the left and right edges; on the left the blurred man and the painting on the wall behind him create a lot of weight on that side, which is balanced by the pinching of the number on the last starting block, the second pinched form above it and the pinning down of the upper right corner by the joist and rafter joint. The weight on the left edge and the three points of pinching on the right edge create a delicate stability and elevate the dynamic feel of the image.

We also begin conclusions on what we're seeing. Questions that arose earlier are decided upon. In Rozovsky's image, for example, given the lack of blood or trauma and the body's upright position, we conclude that the camel's head must be tucked to the side and that part of the image's strength is the angle Rozovsky chose to give the illusion of the camel as headless. On the question of the presence of a second yellow wall in the background of Rozovsky's image, the line begins to feel too straight to be natural and we conclude it's clearly man-made. While the line is very smooth to the left, it's more granular to the right in the same way as the bricks or stones in the wall closer to us. It ultimately feels inconclusive, however, and while there is evidence it could be a second wall, it may also be perhaps a path of some kind.

To continue with the section summaries, the third stage is an appreciation of more complex and more subtle formal dynamics within the image and the start of conclusions on the questions raised earlier. More questions will arise (and be answered) as viewing continues, but here is when we begin to see a number of conclusions.

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MEANING
Finally, we begin to think about and associate the image beyond itself, the last step of understanding an image for ourselves. To create an example, look at how the boy on the left in the water could also be the same boy on the right leaving the pool. Same age, hair, body type. It could be viewed as an entering and a leaving, a play with time and space; it could be a moving from the sea to land or from risk to safety.

What's more, the central younger man could be this boy but older, now grown into his body, the boy(s) in the image will become this man. Taking it a another logical step, maybe the central figure, now in the full strength of his body, will become the man on the left in the foreground, who appears to be a slightly older man, maybe 40. He is past his physical prime, looking back across time to see himself on the starting block, then back further in time to see himself as the boy in the pool. By making this man almost anonymous via the aggressive crop and by leaving him out of focus, Drake makes it easier for this vision back across time to not only be his, but ours.



If we really wanted to work this idea further, we could include the woman as the starting point for this man's life, a stand-in for his mother and his birth. We end up with life's cycle:

We associate this interpretation of the image with the stages of man riddle of the Sphinx or with Shakespeare's seven ages of man monologue from As You Like It. We begin to build an argument, to make a comment in class and we might eventually use these ideas to write an article or book. Another observer might use the land to sea idea for a separate interpretive departure, another might build one based in gender or class or representations of sports. This ascription of meaning through interpretive argument is what art is about in the end. You can build a really fantastic image of incredible geometries and detail, but if that's all it ultimately offers, it's not nutritive for long. We give it a moment and move on, it doesn't fill us. Ultimately it's the work that gives us a lot to build meaning from that sustains, like these three images by Rozovsky, Drake, and Elkins.

This fourth and final stage of understanding a photograph, to recap, is finding the meaning of the photograph for ourselves. We may reshape our interpretations over time. The work of art reflects our ever evolving life experience and knowledge. We use our ideas around its meaning to feed the arguments and conversations around the work of art that extend out from our own personal search for its meaning to interact with the searches of others.

______________________________

© Carolyn Drake

UNDERMINING UNDERSTANDING
In a matter of minutes, we have moved from trying to recognize the image through a series of steps to arrive at our interpretations of meaning in the image, moving through the full circle of understanding a photograph.

As I stated at the outset, this type of examination of the process of understanding an image can help us in looking at the work of others and also at our own work. To extend the conversation as to how it might help our own work as a form of conclusion, great photography frequently undermines and knowingly plays with this process of understanding we've just outlined. A photographer might purposefully manipulate tone, scale, or as in the case of the image by Drake above, gravity in order to frustrate our analysis of the image. They might choose how to place the frame in order to confuse our understanding of the image or to surprise us, such as in this Mark Powell image below. These types of plays with the process of understanding trap us in the image, putting us in mental loops that complicate - in the best possible way - our reading of it.

© Mark Powell

As a final example of how a photographer might undermine the process of understanding to create a strong photograph, he or she might make a photograph that works with a very slow process of revelation which encourages extended looking by bringing us continued rewards. For example, I looked at Rozovsky's image of the camel 50 times before I saw the figure in the background who in tone and texture blends into the distant rocks, confirming it's some sort of path back there.

These loops that trap us into looking and the continued giving of more with extended looking enrich the viewing experience by creating layers of revelation, dimensionality and an ongoing sense that we'll find more if we only stay looking at it just a little bit longer. These are just a few ways we can strengthen our work by exploring and subverting the process how we understand a photograph

Review: "Looking at the Land"

© Kate Greene, untitled, Massachusetts, 2011

BASICS
Looking at the Land is an exhibition of twenty-first century landscape photographs made in the United States curated by Andy Adams of Flak Photo in collaboration with the Rhode Island School of Design's Museum of Art. The museum contracted Adams to produce the exhibition as a projection installation currently on view in their gallery alongside the show America in View: Landscape Photography 1865 to Now. The gallery exhibition is up until January 13, 2013 in Providence. Adams has also released the exhibition as an online video of the projection alongside an online gallery of the same images with accompanying texts.

The exhibition has also taken physical form for the first time at FotoWeekDC with a selection of 20 images from the exhibition being presented. FotoWeekDC runs from November 9 - November 18, 2012.

Looking at the Land has also been reviewed on PHOTO/arts Magazine, American Photo Magazine, NPR's The Picture Show, New Landscape Photography, n j w v, Time Magazine's Lightbox, and other sites.

© Joshua Dudley Greer, Imperial Sand Dunes, California, 2011

SNAPSHOT OF THE WORK
Looking at the Land is a group exhibition containing images by 88 international photographers made from between 2000 and 2012. The images were culled from over 5,500 submissions received after an online call for work as well as from the Flak Photo Collection, an online archive of images Adams has curated since 2006. The exhibition crosses the boundary of online / offline as well as presentation concepts, being simultaneously shown in Providence as a projection, online as a video exhibition and gallery, and at FotoWeek DC as physical prints. The project includes photographer responses to four questions Adams has asked them about their practice and landscape photography generally as part of the online gallery and via URL links posted with the physical prints in DC.

© Nicole Jean Hill, Highway 14, Ucross, Wyoming, 2011

CURATION AND INSTALLATION
Unfortunately, I have not - and will not - be able to get to Providence or Washington D.C. to see the projection or the installation of prints. The online exhibition consists of a gallery and video of the same images as the Providence projection. Both are straightforward, professionally produced presentations. The gallery is click through, image-by-image, with the photographer biography and their responses to Adams' four questions posted below the photograph.  The video passes through the 88 images at 10 second intervals, clocking in at just under 18 minutes long. The photographer's name, image title, and location and year the photograph was taken appear to the left of the image.

© Rachel Barrett, At Low Tide, Bolinas, California, 2009

COMMENTS ON THE EXHIBIT
There are too many images to really discuss photographers or images individually, so let's pull back and look at the exhibition as a whole.

In his essay about the exhibition Adams talks about the trends and dynamics in the work. He writes:

This survey is by no means exhaustive but it does signal the beginning of a fertile new era in the ever-evolving landscape photo tradition. It studies a cross-section of current landscape photography in the documentary style...We live in a post-New Topographics landscape where an entire generation of photographers was born and raised in suburban sprawl. Wilderness is a foreign concept. Our environment has been significantly altered. We keep nature at arm's length. Photography describes these things. 

And yet, these images are subjective interpretations, not objective facts.

As a whole the photographs included in the exhibition do indeed give a sense of a changed, evolving contemporary landscape photography. As curator and historian Alison Nordstrom writes in the NPR Picture Show review of the exhibition, many of these photographers focus on the integration of a hybrid constructed landscape and nature. The images feel collectively – but not all of them individually – like an acceptance of, maybe even a fondness for the "man-altered landscape" in this generation of suburban-spawned photographers as the landscape they grew-up in ages and matures. This fondness manifests itself in more overtly subjective, personal lens work as well as more space for beauty.

While a handful of the images stop at being merely visually clever, the majority have more sincerity and warmth in their approach to their surroundings then the critical indictments of Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, and others of the New Topographics photographers. In fact, many of the images in the exhibition seem to move beyond criticism to take stock of the poetry in the odd constructed / natural spatial juxtapositions in suburban and urban areas - the formal connection of a cloud and shadow of a tree, groups of birds taking flight from different phone poles at the same instant.

Wilderness seems less "foreign" and "at arm's length" in these images to me than reflecting, perhaps, the role of wilderness in the suburban-dweller's contemporary narrative: an element of power to respect and preserve, even while manipulating and containing what’s around us for our needs.

Adams writes that this is a cross-section of contemporary practice, but by no means exhaustive, which I agree with; his acknowledgement of this blunts what would be my main criticism and suggestion for the exhibition – a wider visual range in the edit while not necessarily increasing the number of images. While knowing he was beholden largely to submissions and images already in the Flak Photo Collection, a broader aesthetic range could be provided without compromising the thesis, providing more visual variety and play while maintaining visual coherence; a number of the images say the same thing and a sense of visual sameness pervades a section of the images. I would briefly add that while Adams overall presents a consistent vision in terms of the exhibition theme and, at the same time that I would suggest of wider variety of image-making approaches within the show thesis, a handful of images fall outside the coherence of the thematic argument he's making with the work.

A second point of critique: just based on the small sample size of photographers I’m familiar with, there is a lot of work based solely in the natural landscape still, work that could be molded by a different editor into an argument we have reconnected with or returned to nature in contemporary landscape practice. In that way, I question whether this idea of suburban-focus and nature / man-made landscape hybrids is really a singular thesis that unites much of contemporary landscape practice in the documentary style or, more likely, a particular thread that Adams identifies. If it’s the latter, I would argue for a change in the exhibition statement that moves it away from the idea that it presents a survey or cross-section and instead focuses on linking this particular work to that specific thread.

Let’s go back to New Topographics for a moment as it’s been a major topic of conversation around the exhibit so far by just about every reviewer. As written above, I believe there is generally a distance in terms of tone in this contemporary work from New Topographics. I do see, however, a technical and formal debt: both shows overwhelmingly present clean, straight, direct, frontal, 4x5 aspect ratio images. The only real large difference between the two exhibitions in these terms is an exact reversal of the role of color and black and white. While Stephen Shore was the only member of the New Topographics Ten to use color, the same percentage of those included in this exhibition (9 of 88, or basically 10%) are represented by a black and white image. The percentage similarities also roughly play out between the two exhibitions in terms of the relatively small amounts of 35mm images (LAL 8 of 88; NT 2 of 10), square formats (LAL 2 of 88; NT 2 of 10), as well as what I’ll call conceptually-lead work which is hard to define, but let’s just say it’s when the idea of the image strikes you first when looking at it, even while staying within the "documentary style" (LAL maybe 5 of 88; NT 2 of 10, i.e. the Bechers).

This common ground - beyond suggesting a technical and formal relationship between the two exhibits and a lineage to the current exhibit - raises the question of whether an issue that the curator of New Topographics, William Jenkins, labeled "a problem of style" or "stylistic anonymity" in his exhibition is also an issue with Looking at the Land, but let's discuss that down below as part of the wrap-up.

Before doing so, let me add that in a critique in graduate school, Larry Sultan talked with us about the specific difficulty of working with the landscape – it’s simply such a rich tradition to work in relationship to. That being said, I really appreciate Adams’ edit and the photographers individually for providing a large number of visually fresh images and, beyond my suggestion above of a wider edit, the editing itself is almost uniformly strong, with impressively few weak points in a 88 image line-up. I also appreciate - while perhaps not completely agreeing with - the idea that we are in a "fertile" moment and the show left me with optimism about contemporary landscape work and a new understanding of the themes presented.

© Brad Temkin, Hanging Deer, Laporte, Indiana, 2005

WRAP-UP
Lots to consider. I'll start with a couple of smaller points and questions the exhibition raises.

Let's first go back to the question of the previous section about Jenkins and "stylistic anonymity," a term which I am admittedly taking completely out of context, distorting its original meaning of an "absence of style" and using to mean "tight stylistic similarity" for my needs in this review. To what degree are we looking at a fine-tuned editorial vision that provides stylistic consistency and how much should we see this as a large number of photographers all coming from the same background and going to the same types of schools producing relatively - considering the broadest range of ways of making a photograph - similar work?

Is the issue of "stylistic anonymity" Jenkins raised about New Topographics an issue here – even if it's applied to work that's warmer and more personal, not the cold anonymity he was originally referring to?

So many photographers today are making strong, but related images in terms of aesthetics and production methods. I'm actually building to a point that’s not critical or dismissive around the point of originality, a point that's back on the conversational hot plate in articles like this one. I've felt more questioning recently, personally and by others, of the idea of photographers in the 21st-century as individuals. I'm coming around to the idea that all of what we're doing is a collective project, its group research into aesthetics, formal and conceptual ideas, and cultural themes. 5,500 submissions? Hundreds of them most likely interchangeable? The common approach seen in much of the work – but by no means all of it – to the landscape in Looking at the Land leads me to wonder just how valid the individual really is in photography anymore, assuming it really ever was valid. We are in some sort of photographic Golden Age – the number of photographers today and the quality of images produced, as shown in this exhibition, is unprecedented, even if finding truly new and fresh ideas and territory to explore is increasingly a limited proposition as the medium enters adulthood. I'd just as soon do away with individual names, contests, and the fetishism of certain work. What does it serve beyond the market and egos?

Another question this exhibition raises: what does it mean to take images from their original context and present them together in the 21st century? On the point of curation and authorship, Nick Vossbrink of n j v w has written much of what I would like to write here and I would recommend reading his review of the exhibition. In essence, he points to the exhibit as part of the trend of curation being increasingly viewed as a creative act.

What exactly is Adams' role? Photographer Mark Powell has been working on a project curating images from the Spanish-language equivalent to the website "Hot or Not." Photographer Paul Shambroom in an interview with Pete Brook, revealingly titled "In Digital Age, Sourcing Images Is as Legitimate as Making Them," recently explained why he’s giving up actually making images, instead working on projects in which he’s culling the images from Flickr. Isn’t Adams' role sourcing images very similar, besides the fact he’s generally working with better images by photographers who would like a "name"? But is this really any different from the role of the curator mounting an exhibit fifty years ago, any different from The Family of Man? Is the exhibition a work of art? Are we moving to the idea of a hybrid photographer-curator? I need a drink.

Another point I won’t attempt to answer here: it seems to me to suggest any number of issues that the suburban-born MFA photographer is generally defining contemporary landscape practice and our collective artistic vision of the landscape. This speaks quite loudly about the limited voices present in contemporary photography practice and suggests a distorted emphasis on certain spaces and their cultural importance because of the personal familiarity of fine art photographers to them.

Moving towards a conclusion, Looking at the Land excites me about the future of exhibitions. As I wrote in a previous post, I don’t think enough has been made quite yet of Adams being at the forefront of the movement of online editors to offline roles to produce exhibitions such as this as well as 100 Portraits (which Adams curated along with Larissa Leclair). I think this presents a turning-point in the relationship of online editors and bloggers to more traditional, brick and mortar spaces.

Finally, most importantly and interestingly, Adams has presented a vision of the future of exhibitions – flexible and nimble, shifting between various iterations of form between offline and online, between physical presentation and Internet video exhibition, between 20 or 88 images. In fact, this should really be referred to as the Looking at the Land Exhibition...s. As the work shifts from the screen to being projected on the wall to a physical print and the number of images included changes, the meaning of the images included changes and, therefore, the exhibition itself.

Adams’ new model also creates a change in the time relationship between the observer and the work. It’s a shift towards a multiple relationship with the work, allowing the images to be digested in parts, in the case of the online iteration, and at one’s own pace. I have about an hour in me, tops, when I go to galleries or a museum. Here online I can take a half-hour one day, ten minutes the next, digesting the work in parts, going back to and reinforcing my understanding of the exhibition instead of trying to consume an entire physical show at once. The format also allows Adams to include more elements to the multi-media presentation with the accompanying texts, enriching the experience. The online version also allows for Web 2.0 interactivity to play a role in the experience, creating an exhibit that all can refer to, facilitating comments, inter-linking reviews, and generating public conversation about the work between people on different continents.

This update of the concept of the exhibition for the contemporary audience is Adams’ pioneering gift with this exhibit, which I say even while appreciating the strength of the work and the photographers he’s selected for it.

© Todd Hido, #6097, 2006

Progress and Problems, Part III

In posts one and two I’ve argued progress matters in art photography, but that we need to change how we consider the idea of progress to fit the contemporary historical moment. Today I want to build on those ideas and move into an article by Joerg Colberg on Conscientious that has generated conversation entitled "The digital revolution has not happened (yet)."

Colberg’s post boils down to an intriguing question: just where are the digital-based projects that take advantage of the inherent properties offered by a new technology to push the boundaries of the medium in ways not possible with analog?

I’d like to respond by first framing expectations. Whatever truly revolutionary element I would hold out for in the digital era for photography I would place in the broader impact of digital technology on the field and culture, and not in the actual making of images.

The digital era has brought massive change to photography, in how we make images and how we distribute images. Given this is obvious, let’s just list a few changes, some of which Colberg mentions in his article as well: the rise of citizen photojournalism, online image sharing, an exponential increase in images created, the further democratization of photography by lowering the bar of technical proficiency and costs, the embedding of metadata in images, and the explosion in the number of photographers considering themselves professional and the subsequent destruction of the traditional commercial photography market.

The main consequences of the digital era on photography have been broadly established by now and will continue to profoundly influence our medium for decades. This – in my view – was the “revolution” part of the digital revolution. No sense messing around with words, let’s light the fire: I believe that the “digital revolution” has largely happened already in photography through broader impacts on the field, not the actual production of individual projects and images.

In terms of projects and image-production, digital forms another link in an ongoing historical chain - dry plates, Brownie, Leica, Polaroid, etc. - and now digital. This chain has been about making cameras smaller, cheaper, more portable, and easier to use and digital has generally been developed, approached, and used in line with these expectations of previous new technologies. All have tried to maintain the quality of image of previous generations of cameras as much as possible while making photography more convenient. The Brownie, for example, put a camera in a lot more middle-class hands; that was its revolution. Similarly, dry plates eliminated the hassle of mixing chemicals in the field allowing more people to take more photographs and for them to travel to new places to take them. This was its revolution; not a particular photographer or project.

So in terms of expectations from a digital revolution, I'm not holding out for something shockingly new and shiny in terms of a project or image or a new genre of photography. What I hope for is an increase in the use of digital photography to create new form and content that harnesses the advantages of a new technology to speak in a new way that move the lines of visual communication forwards. I think that is possible with individual photographers and projects.

This brings us back to Colberg's question: where ARE the projects taking advantage of the properties of this new technology to create content? He’s on to something. There aren’t many.

As an exercise – how many 35mm digital photography fine art projects can you think of? And inside of that group, how many could not have been made with an analog camera and how many are actually using the new opportunities digital offers to create images (not including post-production manipulation that’s a whole other conversation)?

Not many. Why is this?

First off, this question doesn't ask about projects investigating the medium itself – projects where the subject is digital glitch or fringing, halos and strange digital color. Those types of projects are horrible necessary investigations of technology, but aren’t what we’re getting at.  There are a number of these projects already, and I believe projects where technology is also the subject are of limited potential as an avenue headed “forward” because they don’t use the new technology to say something new in terms of visual communication.

In exchange, going with Colberg's example of Nan Goldin we have someone who used the advantages of a smaller, cheaper, more portable technology to work with her everyday life and relationships. That’s what we’re after – the weaving of technological change into new form and content, projects that have been allowed by a technology that are not exploring the media itself, but exploiting the smaller size and increased portability and new aesthetic features of the newest camera evolution to create fresh visual communication.

There are some great projects that work with digital cameras, though not perhaps as many as you would expect. Elinor Carucci, Mark Powell, Phil Toledano to start a list. These projects, however, don’t answer Colberg’s call to take advantage of the inherent possibilites of digital – all could have been made with analog. One project that I believe DOES use digital capabilities to create new content is “a shimmer of possibility.” Paul Graham uses the high burst capability of the digital camera to create questions around “the moment,” framing, and the relationship of cameras to cinema that would have been hard, if not impossible, to pull off with an analog camera and a motor drive. This, however, even if true, is an exception to the rule.

Part of the reason might be the fact that digital cameras haven’t completely followed the trends of technological innovations of the past. Digital SLR cameras are not actually cheaper, more portable, or smaller than analog cameras. Only digital point-and-shoots and cell phone cameras continue the technological trend of smaller, cheaper, more portable and those cameras, at this point, continue to have fairly severe quality limitations. Perhaps when time brings them more quality, projects will be generated that use their inherent abilities to provide new form and content. Additionally, the larger digital SLR’s do offer ISO advantages, burst modes, perhaps facial recognition technology...but we’ll run out of items on this list quickly. Digital isn’t THAT much different from analog in terms of the ways a camera makes images.

Moving beyond a few speculations around the new technology itself, I think we are more likely to find answers hidden in the implied question behind Colberg’s question. He uses the conversation around the lack of projects taking advantage of digital properties to hint at something broader - why does photography feel “stagnant and anemic” today?

A qualifying statement is necessarily before I reply. First, there are a lot of great images being created right now, as Colberg says as well in his post. I would say there are probably more quality images being made today than at any point in history on a year-to-year basis give the sheer volume of photographers, the level of visual sophistication we’ve developed during the last 150 years, and the variety of modes of working available to us today as established over the course of photographic history.

So the question of “stagnant and anemic” isn’t about the quality of images; I think it's rather about the way those images relate very closely to images of the past and to each other, about how they orient themselves. Why do we seem to see the same projects over and over? The same types of images? And especially when we’ve just been handed a major new technological toy?

As I’ve said in parts I and II of this post, there needs to be an understanding that progress will be more limited in photography as photography grows older as a medium, and that progress is about a creation of fresh modes of working and visual communication by a photographer, not a movement. The situation needs to be considered correctly in terms of expectation and history.

That being said, let’s get to a list of possible answers to Colberg's question that I hope will provide for reply posts and further conversation on other sites. I would eventually like to expand on some of the following points as well as separate posts.

Not in any particular order:

1. Group-think due to social media and the centralization of information. As a cut-and-paste from a question I asked Blake Andrews in an interview recently: The social dynamic of the photography community in comparison with other visual art forms is a very particular and highly developed one. There are very few painting or sculpture blogs in comparison with photography blogs. Photographers also seem to me much more active on Twitter and other social media forms than other visual artists. And I'm not aware of an equivalent to online discussion spaces like the Flak Photo Network for other art forms.

With all this in mind, I think of a quote from a recent interview with photographer Gregory Halpern: "Photographers can sometimes be the most conservative and least ambitious of visual artists."

I'm wondering if all this connectivity, all this common intake of information, all this drinking from the same well results to a degree in homogeneity of thought and more of a tendency for group-think than other artists in other art forms. Why is the photography community so integrated socially as compared with other mediums? Is this something that makes us more prone to being conservative in our thinking, to homogenization and to group-think?

2. The limited guardians of the gate. Photographers attend reviews that don't exist for other art forms that in large part are about networking. Many of the same reviewers appear at Santa Fe, Photolucida, FotoFest, etc. The number of major photography blogs is actually fairly small, a dozen or two. Thankfully we’re not in the John Szarkowski era (nothing against him at all) in which a single person is really the definer of what is considered quality and contemporary in photography. However, the people in charge of selecting work to show in well-considered venues is not very large – and they mostly know each other and I believe are influenced at least to a degree by each other. We remain a community of too few guardians, and a lot of those guardians have a fairly similar vision.

If you give me a photograph, I think I can pretty much tell you if a certain blog or reviewer or gallerist or editor will respond to it and thereby predict your “success.” On top of that - and this is where the problem lies - the image's chances of success are fairly consistent across many of those venues. Seen a lot of the same names across a lot of sites, galleries, and at the top of awards lists? Out of hundreds of thousands of photographers? That’s not good.

3. Issues in the broader cultural zeitgeist. As John Armstrong noted in the recent Flak Photo Books conversation based in Gerry Badger’s “The Pleasure of Good Photographs” and as Colberg noted in his reference to Simon Reynolds, there is an almost fascinating lack of cultural movement in the 2000s across all disciplines, not just photography.

Think of how quickly you can associate music and art and a cultural atmosphere with the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s...now try the 2000s. It’s not for a lack of issues – September 11th, Obama, the Arab Spring, the US involvement in two wars, global warming, religious warfare, the dawn of smart phones.

4. The Numbers Game. I am not sure how the increase in the number of photographers is actually affecting photography production, but I am sure that it is.

On one hand, I can believe that to differentiate themselves, photographers are more than ever searching for new modes, new forms, new ground in order to claim space in the contemporary landscape.

On the other hand, I can equally believe photographers are scared by the numbers game into conservatism. To find acceptance and modest reward, I think a lot of photographers ape a type of work they’ve seen, ending with a formulaic conservatism to their visual ideas. This gives the impression of seeing the same project repeatedly, or seeing an image and being able to believe one of three dozen photographers could have produced it.

5. The Moat Theory. I believe part of why the art world sticks to medium and large format film has to do with keeping a barrier between themselves and the masses. How do you create a unique visional idea against the billions of digital images created every day, many of which will be more interesting than what any one single photographer can make? By not playing the game and keeping away from digital completely. Stay with equipment that’s more expensive and less convenient and therefore less used that produces a different “look” from the masses. The flip side to this is a lot of art photography is now using the same tools resulting in a similar look, even with a wider choice of potential tools.

This also, helpfully, allows us to produce larger prints that gallery’s can then theoretically make more money from, making us a more marketable commodity.

6. Problems of geographic diversity. Who’s your favorite Colombian photographer? Favorite Israeli? Favorite Egyptian? Favorite Brazilian...that's not named Salgado or Rio Branco? Ironically, in the digital era of information-sharing, there is far too little work being produced outside of the US and Europe being seen internationally. How many photo blogs focus on South America? On Africa? On South Asia?

Living in Colombia, I can say first-hand that it’s to a degree about volume and quality of production, but that the bigger problem is that what is being produced is not being distributed. The last true barrier in photography is geography.

Sadly, I also believe the aforementioned moat theory, to the degree that it's true, also has an unintended consequence. The line drawn between art photography and the digital masses also largely cuts off the international photography world who works digitally and in 35mm, resulting in a more homogenized photographic vision. Photographers from parts of the world beyond the US and Europe are frequently cut off from medium and large format as a possible mode of working by a lack of ability to purchase and use supplies. As a case study, I live in a Latin American city of over two million people and there is not one lab in the city for me to develop medium or large format film. I believe this results in work from these areas being seen by some - but absolutely not all - venues as less serious.

7. The Hustle. Photographers are being increasingly asked to pay for promotional materials by galleries, pay to publish our books, pay for portfolio reviews, pay for contests, pay for the chance to have someone look at our work, rent the gallery space...all of these expenditures may be making us more conservative in terms of what we produce, especially in combination with the idea of the limited number of guardians of the gates. Given how expensive photography is as a medium and how more and more expenses are being shifted to photographers from galleries and publishers, it makes sense to make your expenditures count by looking at present models of success and producing work you believe a gallery will be interested in showing or a publisher in publishing.

8. The Watered Down Theory. It’s possible that there is just as much imagery being created that is pushing against trends and creating visual progress, but that today we have to sift through so much material that it feels like stagnancy.

This is a starting point list of possible ideas; I'm sure that there is more to be added. This post has gotten long - I will cut this off here, but will make a summary post taking into account all three of these other posts hopefully later this week.