Let it all go - Bill Burke's 'Mine Fields'
My intrigue in 'Mine Fields' arises from my own long standing desire to make a 'diary or travelogue/docu-scrapbook'. The Peter Beard 'thing'. I have the same infection with Max Pam's, "Going East". I was lucky enough to get a shrink wrapped copy of this book (Thanks Sheldon!) and will review it down the line too. Somehow, though, I get the feeling that my life is neither fucked up enough nor remarkable enough (as if those are the only criteria!). Certainly in Burke's case we have bits of both.
'Mine Fields' is a loose 118 page narrative, travelogue, collaged together in a patchwork of images, ephemera, clippings, writing and documents, sandwiched between glossy boards (the glossy boards finally grew on me).
It documents a Cambodia with it's 'limbs blown off' so to speak, entwining simultaneously a narrative of Burke's divorce turned ugly, a 'Mine Field' of its own. I guess - could be pushing it a bit here - the book might be likened somewhat to the psychological journey, in "Apocalypse Now", of Martin Sheen down the river into his own soul.
In some respects, while the 'documentary' snippets give us a sense of what is going on in Cambodia, torture, train attacks, terrified prisoners, limbless victims, I suspect a great part of the catching interest lies in Burke's personal story. I spent a while digging out dates dates: divorce: 1991, girlfriend abortion: Feb 1990, and then, somewhere you read the quote:
I'd hardly said a word to my wife, til I'd said yes to a divorce ~ Apocalypse now.
I don't want to trivialize the suffering in Cambodia but I do feel something about the book is a little too melodramatic perhaps, too blatant a symbolism, both "Apocalyse Now" and "Heart of Darkness" - in a good way - suffer from this. "The Horror, the Horror".
Recall another Conrad story, something to give us that vision of a pointless battle over property... Remember, 'Out Post of Progress'? Two men, waiting for a delayed steamer deep in the jungles of the Congo, end up shooting each other in a hazy fit of sweaty madness, and why? All over the last bag of sugar!
MINE!
Reminds me of my previous bosses... psychological desperation over the trivial, so true, also, in both divorce and war?
Well, nevertheless, I love puzzling the pieces of Burke's multidimensional story together. In a way it's like reading a gripping novel, except that the reader will need to fill in the spaces between shards. Who is this photographer fellow Burke, to what extent does he implicate himself, how guilty is he?
Let's face it, a messy divorce, or likewise, a civil war, is much easier to read about that to live. But being the narrator you can build your own story, color it, gloss it and let your reader project the great traveler's desire to pickup and leave, light a unrestrained fag again, push the line, live out of the box… LET IT ALL GO! That's exactly what I want to do...sometimes.
Paul Seawright's Invisible Cities
Seawright in conversation with Russell Roberts:
RS: For some your work might be in danger of creating a neo-colonial perspective as it is firmly situated within the narrow confines of the Western art world. Is this something you have considered?
PS: Obviously I have considered it, worried about it even. After my first trip to Africa I considered moving on to something else, uncertain how to resolve what was inevitably going to be problematic, no matter how I approached it...
...I'd argue that an external perspective has value and maybe is even enhanced by a post-colonial perspective, or at least a perspective that rejects the dominant Western iconography of the African continent.
Seawright recognises that Africa is a photographers trap. His method, which give priority to a 'neutral' and muted stance, attempts to deny dramatisation
I wonder though, if, by rejecting the dominating iconography, by stepping into his specialised world of art, and succeeding, that by this very action, he stumps himself. Perhaps, with this book, he'll fail to find appeal, and so also fail to inspire the prerequisite deluge of imitatative imagery straining to establish its own domination (Africa is to be avoided like the plague, I've noticed). No, I doubt it. I detect, even in Seawright's desolation, his vacant spaces, a faint pictorialism, a seductive aura, even if it is conceptual, that inspires us viewers, even while our attention is called to notice the buzzing electricity that bypasses the shanty town
This book contains an introductory text by John Reader, and, at the back, a coversation with with Russell Roberts. I would set it right beside Guy Tillim's Avenue Patrice Lumumba on the shelf.
4 March 2009 - 10:26pm — Philip CartlandFig. Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin
"Styleistically, they [Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin] avoid the overtly creative, opting instead for a paired down, formal approach bordering on neutrality"
Take the book Fig. Now I really think this is a great book, and hearing the authors speak has only confirmed to me that they are onto something new, they're breaking conventions and they're a smart pair. But I hardly ever pick up the book.
Does theory overwhelm me? Do I need to cognitise pain and suffering and injustice to renew it's effect on me? This covert description of suffering is still feeble, humans will do what they do, we don't need a conceptual memorial, we just need the killing, and therefore the recording of it, to stop.
Picture 01 - Room 202, Hotel Des Mille Collines, Kigali, Rwanda, Picture 02 - Heather Models 1, London UK
Yet there is more beauty in the passport blandness of the image on the right than anything to be found in Vogue. While there is no artifice in the technique, at least we can say that nature itself ignored such constraints entirely in the case of this girl and for a brief respite we can daydream
2 March 2009 - 10:11pm — Philip CartlandFrancoise Huguier - Kommounalki
I came across Francoise Huguier's book, Kommounalki which presents images taken while renting a room in a communal apartment (Kommunalka in Russian) in Saint Petersburg. This book, with French texts, is a rarity, which you can purchase for only £20.
In her own words:
My very first days in these communal apartments in St Petersburg were absolutely perplexing, and I realised it would take me several stays and an inside contact to get to the bottom of these weird, closed-off environments.
Over several years I photographed the place and the daily life of the residents – and especially of Natacha, who set the rhythm of my visits. Implicitly, and without my realising it, she became the main strand in my narrative and in my desire to be there and stay there. She embodies the quintessence of these communal worlds and the magnetism of a city that has been gnawing at me for so many years. How many times have I stood simply hypnotised by these disturbing visions of light and shade?
Who spoke to me of ghosts? Who told me that at night in St Petersburg you can see the invisible and dream of the unutterable
6 November 2008 - 1:16pm — Philip Cartland
Maya Goded - 'Good Girls'
Picture 01 - Mexico city. 1999. Patti, 16 comes from Chiapas. When she arrived in Mexico city, she was raped by several men. She was rescued by the police who asked her to testify against her rapists. Afterwards, one of the police and her lawyer put her on the streets and became her pimps.
Picture: 02 - Mexico city. 2000. Afrodita is getting ready for her first communion by her mother, a prostitute. her father is the pimp of her mother
7 October 2008 - 8:52pm — Philip CartlandLiu Zheng's, The Chinese
"The Chinese" Liu Zheng's vision of - something akin to Robert Frank's over indulged "The Americans"- is something of a retort to an enduring party line of perfect people with a perfect future under, of course, a perfect leadership, who might even be so bold as to claim immortality were their optimism not already spouting beyond capacity.
In Liu Zheng's tragedy we have Chinese who actually get old and die, have accidents or live in a less than perfect world, among a wide cast of subjects, from strippers, to beggars, to predatory business men to entertainers and asylum cases. If the 'perfect leadership' were to actually spend a moment or two reading this book they might find themselves having to sweep quite a few, well, marginal folk, up, in preparation for their perfectly happy olympics.
Liu Zheng's dedication to what appears to be a rather too true reality, allows us to register our own impermanence - we all share the same fate - while also questioning whether these Chinese are in fact marginalized and on the fringe, perhaps they are rather more the diverse norm, there might even be something of them in us.
An exceptional book, really, and in my view transcending by far Frank's self obsessed work. I always get the feeling that Frank describes something not even there. By not allowing his own interpretation - he does have one doesn't he - he's kind of letting the storm carry his work where it will.
Furthermore, while Frank seems to heavily criticize, there's always a statement to be found somewhere in his work, Zheng allows his subjects to speak. His images reflect people in a world that really exists. Were it not for the notoriety of the 'Americans', perhaps there should not even be a comparison, save the stringing of images bit. Maybe we're really looking more in the line of Diane Arbus, without the freakery side.
17 September 2008 - 7:51pm — Philip CartlandReflective reality and Ryszard Kapuscinski
I heard somewhere that journalists are second only to politicians and estate agents as the most hated among the British public. Who actually proposed this and what survey (everything has to have a survey attached these days) provided the evidence, I don't know, but I do know my own thoughts:
If by participating in life, somehow, regardless of intentions, you inevitably participate in its decline, what can you do to transcend it? Well i think, you can, at least, describe it.
Describing is what journalists do, so I don't feel so bad for liking and aspiring to the best of journalism. There is, though, a wide margin between the endless conveyor belt of cheap shots thrown out by newspapers forced to scratch out content on a daily basis (many blogs fall in this category by sprouting their particular versions of instant drama), and what could be termed literary reportage; well documented, described, commented upon, stories.
For me, regardless of actual possibilities of photography, the interesting thing about the medium is its ability to capture, for lack of a better term, a reflective reality. This is a kind of journalism, a report on perceived reality. It may only be a fraction of a second, but it's a story nevertheless, and when done in a certain way faithfully reflects reality. This kind of journalism does not cancel out imagination, neither is it separate from art.
There is one particular journalist who fits the bill for me, and there are moments in his descriptions that could easily have been photographs, they are in any case photographs etched on the memory and conveyed by words. The journalist is Ryszard Kapuscinski.
Very memorable for me, in the context of photographic lucid imagery in a written form, is his description of dogs in Angola, in his book: Another Day of Life (1976), a unique and closely observed account of the collapse of Portuguese colonialism in Angola. The particular scene occurs after the departure of all the wealthy Portuguese from their suburb properties in Luanda:
17 September 2008 - 7:49pm — Philip CartlandThe dogs were still alive.
They were pets, abandoned by owners fleeing in panic. You could see dogs of all the most expensive breeds, without masters - boxers, bulldogs, greyhounds, Dobermans, dachshunds, Airedales, spaniels, even Scotch terriers and Great Danes, pugs and poodles. Deserted, stray, they roamed in a great pack looking for food. As long as the Portuguese army was there, the dogs gathered every morning on the the square in front of the general headquarters and the sentries fed them with canned NATO rations. It was like watching an international pedigreed dog show. Afterwards the fed, satisfied pack moved to the soft, juicy mowed lawn of the Government Palace . An unlikely mass sex orgy began, excited and indefatigable madness, chasing and tumbling to the point of utter abandon. It gave the bored sentries a lot of ribald amusement.
Max Pam - Indian Ocean Journals
"It's a theme park for Europeans looking For exotica out of mainstream Tourism - not my Tea" ~ Max Pam in his Indian Ocean Journals (Steidl), referring to Lamu island
Writers and photographers alike have amply covered both the 'well trampled tourist trail' and the 'off the beaten track', but Pam is on another trail and his book, Indian Ocean Journals, guides us through his haphazard, non-linear journey.
But like Gracielle Iturbide (I wouldn't go much further in comparing them!), the success of his work depends on its ability to discredit exoticism, though, simultaneously depending on it. Pam travels extensively around the periphery of the Indian Ocean to compile his journals, and there is something of the travelers log in them, but he's mixed his encounters up, matching disparate images in pairs, linking elements of composition or gesture, confusing expectations, and therefore building a new and undiscovered micro world of poetically arranged shards.
Unlike, say Cartier Bresson, to pick the obvious, who is invisible, Pam does not hide his presence, necessarily, and often his subjects are reacting to him in a sort of east/west blend which has the effect of equalising the much frowned upon western relationship with the 'Other' (they are often looking in at him). But, then, beside the almost predatory male gaze, heightened by the buzz of hookah smoke, he brings out a girl, in half light, innocent or is it vulnerable!
Pam also made the classic book 'Going East', which unfortunately I haven't had the pleasure of seeing save in the hotlist of top collectibles by Martin Parr's book on books, but I'm far more enraptured with this one, it being close to home for me. I have read his conversation with Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Conversations with Contemporary Photographers, where he confirms my suspicions that there was something of Peter Beard in his work, whose influence seems to have stretched far into the minds of quite a few contemporary photographers (I'm thinking of Bill Burke), however it's here that his work is at risk of falling, according to my sensibility, beneath too much decoration, though he has not smothered his book in it. Peter Beard might be a dangerous one to be influenced by, while artistic devises are easily carried between artists, using Beard's might easily become an imitation.
I'm solacing myself, while Christies sells books for 10's of thousands of dollars, that it is still possible to find unnoticed but valuable books buried and lost among the dusty shelves. And, I'm solacing myself, that while the over-interlectualised banal threatens in every corner of contemporary photography, there are still photographers like Max Pam fighting the good fight:
"Like, for instance in my town, right? In the Art Gallery of Western Australia they paid a quarter of a million for a Jeff Wall picture 2 years ago, and it's a picture of a guy polishing his shoes, and it's totally banal! You stand in front of it - I'll stand in front of it - and we will both - because i've had this conversation and because you can't be unaware of that, because it's on the front page of a newspaper - we both say, "What's it about? What's the point? You know, why? I polish my shoes as well, okay, tell me something I don't know."
~ Max Pam, from Conversations with Contemporary Photographers (Umbrage)
Final resting place - paradise...
In 1998 Tacita Dean set out for the 'prim tax haven', Cayman Brac, a Caribbean island, in search of Donald Crowhurst's trimaran, the Teignmouth Electron. The Cayman net news outlines its history prior to Dean's journey as follows:
"After Crowhurst's suicide, the Electron was taken by salvagers to Jamaica and bought from auction in 1969 by Kingston hotelier and businessman Larry Wirth.
The Electron stayed in the Wirth family until 1973, when she was purchased by Bunnie Francis, a charter operator based at Trelawny Beach Hotel, near Montego Bay. Francis adapted and operated it as a tourist boat.
By 1978, the Jamaican tourist trade had been hit by political unrest and the boat lay in dry dock up for sale. It was purchased by George McDermot, who was living in Jamaica at the time, in 1975. He later sold her to his brother Winston."
During Winston's ownership, when Ms Dean arrived. she found the yacht lying battered and weathered upon a beach, shadowed by a solitary palm, and looking, perhaps, like the washed up bones of Crowhurst himself. She filmed and photographed the wreckage, drawing on Crowhurst's loneliness, his manic time madness, his 'Sin of Concealment', his final countdown.
While on the island she also filmed another of her, particularly quirky, coincidental discoveries, the ruined 'Bubble House'? built by a Frenchman who was imprisoned for fraud and therefore unable to finish it; Dean writes:
"Deserted, and half-completed, the bubble house stood like a futuristic vision; like a statement from another age. We thought it was a temple belonging to a sect, or a church constructed by the Mafia. We knew we had come across something other-worldly; the perfect companion to the Teignmouth Electron."
To me her Teignmouth Electron work is an exotic memorial, if you like, to madness, folly and failure, as expressed in the Crowhurst tragedy.
One must know Crowhurst's story to fully appreciate Dean's work and if the story does catch you, like it did me, the essential viewing should be the documentary film 'Deep Water' directed by Louis Osmond and Jerry Rothwell.
While this film tells almost all there is to know - making, too, an interesting parallel with Bernard Moitessier who in contrast both mastered the sea, and more importantly, himself, while forfeiting the possible glory and media heroism of winning the race, to 'save his soul' - the essence of Deans exotic bone sifting archeology, besides the artified journalism, is her tangential personal journey to the island and her driftings through the works of JG Ballard and Antoine de Saint-Exupry, in search of the unknowable truth behind Crowhurst's predicament.
Sources:
Brac's Land wreck makes TV fame
17 September 2008 - 6:44pm — Philip Cartland3 states of mind
David Goldblatt's, 'South Africa - The Structure of Things Then', published in 1998, is about homes, shops, churches, memorials, ruins, anything that resembles a structure in South Africa, and is illustrated with the clarity of a large format camera and a thinking eye. A considerable caption is attached to each image and through it we compile a mental picture of the roots and ideological structures of Apartheid South Africa as expressed through the architecture.
But by describing the subjective mental states of the Volk (Afrikaners, chosen by God) as manifest in their buildings Goldblatt steps himself out on a subjective limb. Most notably, he discovers a 3-stage change in the architectural design of the Afrikaner protestant churches beginning with the decorative and graceful eloquence of the Gothic churches of the late 19th century, through the powerful dominating, radically vertical and triangulated churches of the late 1940's to 60's, and into the enclosed womb like churches of the 1970's and 80's.
Goldblatt suggests these stages mirror the gradual growth of confidence and rootedness of the Volk, peaking after the 1948 victory of the National Party; defenders of "Christian National values against Atheism, communism, liberalism, humanism and racial miscegenation".
The 50's and 60's where periods of huge power, dominated by fiercely skyward architecture, an Afrikaner renaissance, if you like. But as the system of Apartheid gradually came under attack, through the 70's, 80's and 90's, the churches became more inward looking, withdrawn, allowing only, for example, a minimal number of small windows opening to a hostile world, comfortably cocooning the Volk among their own company.
Though Goldblatt finds little corroboration among the church architects who, perhaps, built according to accepted requirements of the time without full awareness of any parallels in the historical course of events, in light of his comprehensive coverage throughout the book - of which this is only one tiny piece of particular interest to myself - he makes a very compelling case.
This book brings far less attention to itself than it deserves.
17 September 2008 - 8:37am — Philip CartlandCity of Shadows
The City of Shadows, compiled by Peter Doyle, brings us a selection of Sydney police photographs from 1912-1948.
Many of the book's images have no accompanying details and so Doyle might gladly be excused for therefore attaching them to the art world. However, is this premise enough for a book, and by making them objects of meditation are we not losing something?
Take photograph #4 and its caption for example: Probably 1930's, details unknown
Some pleasure, I concede, in the mystery, but was it taken to give us pleasure and does it not raise more questions than it answers?
Particularly with these images, taken as crime photography, the argument that the absence of context brings alive ones own imagination feels like a defilement of the police department's intentions, their purpose, I would presume, to document for the purposes of evidence.
In many cases, though, as in the photo #1, I see shades of character behind the eyes, a wary, withdrawn or even slightly defiant look. I see, clothes and indications that provoke my detective spirit. Here we have a phychological document, though soon we're back again to the, who, why, what, where, when? How can I make a case, or be judge?
It's easy to dump these images at the door of art, like the recent flurry of homeless vernacular photography turned arty-fact, ie into art books. Images of these sorts appear so well composed or anti-composed, even modern (save the sepia) and they all contain the holy grail of 'documentary' photography: authenticity, precisely because they were made without artistic intent... we think anyway.
One or two further observations: The book is 233 pages long, many pictures take on the double spread, some are full page. The question is, considering how many pictures there are in the archive and how difficult it must have been to break down to the final choice, why were so few images chosen and expanded over so much page spread? There are other petty niggles, but otherwise, there is pleasure in at least partial knowledge of an old criminal world, a shiver or two at the thought of what might have happened. There is some gain too, for the photograhers eye, for an artistic intention.
Most of the images can be dug out here: http://www.pictureaustralia.org
17 September 2008 - 8:35am — Philip CartlandCristóbal Hara - The Imaginary Spaniard
Cristóbal Hara has published two books of an intended trilogy 'The Imaginary Spaniard' and 'Autobiography'.
Bloody scenes (like the pictured car accident), funerals and images of dead animals may be discouraging at first, I must admit it took me a couple of goes before I was hooked, and, one could easily be forgiven for mistaking Hara for just another photojournalist with what at first may appear fairly straight forward images, but on closer inspection a specific symbolic sequencing of images emerge, giving the books their own particular meaning.
'The Imaginary Spaniard' consists of 100 or so pages of both darkness and humor. A priest stands holding forth a crucifix while a wooden penis hangs out from beneath his robe. Another's robe is adorned with a topless woman more likely to be found in a cheap men's magazines. Catholicism is defiled, it seems, but by the costumed faithful themselves.
Bullfighting, another theme, is far from glorious and heroic. The bullfighters are neither tall nor handsome nor caught in perfect posture. The bulls die ingloriously, hampered by a pack of snapping dogs, and then their bodies are dumped by bulldozer. Death, sex, power, nature and religion entwine in this fiesta-like setting, broken only by the dullest of street scenes, empty of people, interludes, like chapters.
The parting image is sad, under the baking sun a downtrodden dog looks back at us, perhaps it is on the brink of starvation.
'Autobiography', the second of the books, raises the temperature a little. Horses feature throughout, often in panic mode, while shirtless handlers display their power over them, tender only with the foals. Among this apparent chaos a picture shows two horses in private and tender fornication.
Jesus appears frequently, mirrored by wild trees or celebrated by white cloaked people from the holy processions of Easter, either look ominous or dishevelled, certainly not as the tourist would wish to see. Death and sex, religion, violence all the same themes hit the stage as the book builds to a crescendo of horses leaping through flames during what appears to be the traditional 'Luminares' fiesta on the eve of Saint Anthony's day, the patron saint of four footed beasts. Riding the horses through the flames purifies them.
The final series of the book leave us with burnt out effigies, paper mache and plastic cartoon like dolls, with super sexualised parts burnt, smouldering into the night. Again we are led to find out for ourselves that these effigies are burnt after March 19 celebrations, St. Joseph's Day, eve of the vernal equinox, and the beginning of Spring. This is all leading me to believe the book is modelled loosely around the various seasonal festivals.
I really like these books, but too much is spent on the burnt out effigies and throughout the carved images of Jesus, both which may have been best applied in small amounts.
I'm looking forward to the 3rd in the series.
17 September 2008 - 8:32am — Philip CartlandSouth Africa: The Structure of Things Then, by David Goldblatt
I've just bought the following book: South Africa: The Structure of Things Then, by David Goldblatt. Rather than go into the usual review I thought I would take one image and its caption (images are extensively captioned in this book). I'd first say that Goldblatt takes great pains to avoid the decorative, and further pains to make sure the full context is there. This book documents and informs thoroughly and therefore is priceless, in my opinion, not only as a record of the effects of Apartheid in South Africa, but also as a model for other documentary photographers to work with, while also acting as an antidote to the hysteria of mass market photojournalism.
"Khaki clothes for sale here': Orania settlement for the Afrikaner volk. Orania, Cape, 25th Sep 1992.
"The significance of khaki has changed for the Boers. During the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902, khaki, the uniform of the kakies or tommies, was identified with British imperialism, the name kakiebos, khaki bush, was given to one of the more unpleasant weeds, the seeds of which were imported for the first time with fodder for the British forces in that war. But to right-wing Afrikaners of the 1980s and 90s, who regard themselves as the upholders and defenders of Boer republicanism, khaki has taken on an entirely different symbolic value. Khaki pants and shirts are the working clothes of many Afrikaners farmers; khaki symbolises the attachment of the Boer to his land. Khaki became the uniform of right-wing activists in such movements as the AWB [link to a pretty grusome image taken by a member of the so called Bang Bang club and marking the final days of Apartheid].
Here in Orania, a settlement established by right-wing Afrikaners as the nucleus of a proposed Afrikaner state or volkstaat, the khaki clothes for sale at a house in the village were therefore a means of demonstrating identification with certain values. They stood for Afrikaner mobilisation in the fight for their 'heritage', their land and as working clothes they signified the ideal of 'self-labour', which was embraced by these who came to Orania. There were to be no Blacks in Orania; there was to be none of the culture of dependence of Whites on Blacks for physical work that had been endemic in South African society since its origins in the economy of slavery at the Cape.
Before coming to Orania the man of this house held quite a senior job in the city of Bloemfintein. Now he earned a fraction of his previous income but declared that he was very happy, 'I get by on very little here and I don't have to worry about Kaffirs, communists, and trade unions'."
There are more pictures from the book here
17 September 2008 - 8:04am — Philip CartlandBang! Bang!
I read The Bang Bang Club by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva in one sitting.
Before you've even hit the second page, you're immersed, bullets singing past you, rusty bars and heavy knives jabbing at you, and the smell of petrol on flaming flesh.
The insanity of racial violence bought to you by way of 'beach bum' photographers and, dowsed with dollops of intimacy and history; girl friends, mandrax and bhang parties, Reuter contracts, suicide and Afrikaner gunslinging racists (itching for a full on battle to the death with black people). Out of this chaos emerge images that win the pullizers, sell newspapers and signpost history.
But the awe dies, you've realised, that in fact, bringing yourself to within a hairsbreadth of death (yours or someone else's), might not be so heroic after all, its like voyeurism into lunacy, but once you've seen it, an apathetic deadness sinks in, faith in life destroyed when you see how much is now left to repair.
Apartheid has barely faded and the Rwandan genocide is coming alive and then Iraq and Iraq, and shit you know I've missed some. bang, bang, bang!
17 September 2008 - 7:54am — Philip CartlandSnap Snap
Here's a little snippet from the book, the Zanzibar Chest, by Aidan Hartley:
"I managed to get a vehicle from some Tutsi guerrillas who knew me, and Lizzie piled in with photographers Sebastiao Salgado and Giles Peress of Magnum. Snap, snap, snap went the photographers, all in a line. Up ahead, a truckload of bloated Hutus blasted by RPG: snap, snap, snap. Go on for five minutes. Heap of corpses seething with maggots, partially eaten by dogs: snap, snap, snap."
A ripping book.
17 September 2008 - 7:51am — Philip CartlandSetting Sun (2)
Not surprisingly Nobuyuyoshi Araki dominates this book I'm reading, 'Setting Sun - writings by Japanese photographers'. Some photographers are quietly subtle, not Araki.
Here are some juicy bits.
"As a photographer I am confidence, overconfident - abundant - sensation, constipation sensation." - Photographic discourse at a strip show
There are quite a few self references to his own intelligence and genius:
"Why does the morning of a hangover have to be nice weather? The strong autumn sunrays hit my intelligent head and double my headache." - Photo apparatus between man and woman
"As usual I have got a hangover. My intelligent head is throbbing." - My father's lover, or, an introduction to portrait photography
Relationship politics behind the scenes of a strip show. Apparently Rika was sleeping with her sisters boyfriend, and, by the sounds of it, Araki himself. Her sister, Komadayu, tolerated it but couldn't handle it. Obviously Rika could.
"The adorable Rika, who squealed as we got into the bath together, who was so shy (yeah, right!) - women are more terrifying than photography." Photographic discourse at a strip show
Stuff-it to silent shutters and invisible masters:
"Even when I take photographs on the street, I don't hide the fact that I'm shooting. Until the person notices that her photograph is being taken, there's no motivation to release the shutter." - Photographic discourse at a strip show
Araki believes himself to be an advocate of anything woman:
"If you photograph 'something' amazing. it'll be an amazing photograph. That's obvious. In which case, the people being shot, must have something amazing for the photograph. They make big effort, women do. I cheer them on. A photographer is the cheering section for a woman's moan, and her slave." Photographic discourse at a strip show
There are couple of references to his desire to touch his dead mothers breast - can't quite work that one out myself. Also he wished he could photograph her at the funeral but received 'suspicious' looks from his relatives. Here he speaks of the phone call that informed him of his mother's death:
"I'm always up before my wife and am idle - I tooled around with my dick, as I usually do, and thought about my Mother. And yes my premonition was on the mark. The phone's ring was like a cry." - My Mother's Death, or An Introduction to Family Photography
Here's an earlier post on Araki with links to images etc.
17 September 2008 - 7:49am — Philip CartlandSetting Sun (1)
This week I found a translation of written works by Japanese photographers, called 'Setting Sun' (book sale link, short review). A cursory glance convinced me it might be worth buying.
There is too much to go into here but I thought, over the next couple of posts, I'd say a thing or two about 3 of the photographers that stood out - things perhaps, that you wouldn't pick up just by viewing a few images alone.
Ordeal by Roses
Eikoh Hosoe, quite a well known and regarded photographer on this side of the world, writes about his photo session by invitation with Yukio Mishimi (pictured in the thumb, a prolific writer, who is considered by many critics as the most important Japanese novelist of the 20th century). The book arising from this was called 'Ordeal by Roses' (Barakei) and expressed the themes of Life and death. Now, here's the story as written by Eikoe Hosoe himself:
"Despite the fact that 'Ordeal by Roses' was a document about life and death, I felt it taboo to mention the word 'death'' in regard to the theme of the book, until the fall of 1970. At the end of that summer, we changed the sequence and layout of the work for publication of a second edition. Mishima chose the titles for each section and called the final chapter "Death" then asked for my approval. I accepted the suggestion at once, having known all along that the essence of the last section was morbid. Shortly after this decision, on November 25, 1970, Mishima committed suicide by seppuku [ritual suicide, was an intregal aspect of feudal Japan. It developed as an intregal part of the code of bushido and the discipline of the samurai warrior class.] at Ichigaya Heights."
Later Hosoe writes:
Several of the photographs were blown up and used in the exhibition [called 'Yukio Mishima', held in October, a month before his death] in a section that Mishima titled 'River of Flesh', beside which he wrote: "I will never admit the decay of the flesh"
Its worth getting hold of the book to get the subtleties and details.
17 September 2008 - 7:46am — Philip Cartland