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 Cartland
James, author of consumptive has been around since the beginning of time in photography blog years and I'm happy to announce his book, subtle, beautiful and understated.
7x7 inches / 78 pages / 68 tritone photographs
hardcover with dust jacket
Available for purchase from Blurb.com: http://tinyurl.com/BlurbSuginami
all the photographs from Suginami can be previewed on Flickr:
http://tinyurl.com/SuginamiPreview
also see an interview by Stacy Oborn at her blog The Space In Between:
One Thing Done Two Ways: Elijiah Gowin and James Luckett on Making a Book.
18 February 2009 - 8:57am — Philip Cartland
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 Cartland
"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 Cartland
"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)
17 September 2008 - 7:48pm — Philip Cartland
There's quite a good photo book shop near Kings Cross, London, where I went hoping to find books by Bernard Plossu.
On the web, if you type in plossu.com you'll get a single page with two photos and the title: 'The Garden of Dust' (Le Jardin De Poussiere), and this is the book I thought myself fortunate to find in this little shop. But, from the first page, I was disappointed, and since this has been the case with almost all Plossu's books which I have actually seen for sale, I'm beginning to wonder if what I think he is is perhaps not what he is. There is something of the Parr in him, printing a zillion books, of which a select few hit the spot. I have not given in yet, a recent retrospective (Retrospective 1963-2006) looks promising as does that rare 'Le Voyage Mexicain 1965-1966'.
Anyway, after exclaiming too soon to the bookseller about what a great find 'the' book was, I was suddenly obligated to put my money where my mouth was. One look at the price tag, though, made me run for the nearest escape route. Despite my very particular tastes, I set about finding another book in the hopes that it would be sufficient an excuse to miss out on the Plossu.
After scouring the shelves from top to bottom, I came across a book, at a bargain price, by Miguel Rio Branco. I bought it without even asking for its plastic wrapper to be removed.
It was a new 1998 first edition, perhaps there were too many copies around and he had trouble selling it - I don't really know how these things work. It's an easy book to get hold of elsewhere too, it seems.
I'm not sure about the reproduction quality, I have a Gracielle Iturbide book, similarly printed by Aperture with the printing too contrasty for her images. Anyway, without adjacent reference, it makes not the slightest difference given the strength of the images themselves, and the book is nicely covered with canvas.
The book is a dark poetic vision, spiced with an intense and fleeting beauty. This is expressed aptly by David Levi Strauss's title to the forward: 'Beauty and the Beast, Right Between the Eyes', and indeed the book begins and ends with one of Branco's 'eyes' installations as shown in the attached images. There is something of 'Apocalypse Now' in its mood (the 'Jim Morrison' sacrifice scene at the end of the film, for example), vivid blood reds, and dark shadows, but in the book the mood is expanded on, more varied in its subtleties, slower to digest and at times uncomfortably jarring and violent.
I'm pleased to have the book. Its effect for me comes mostly from its amplified sensuality which is accentuated by being set within a saturated world of scars, violence and primal animal instinct. In that sense it is a rather sad book because though psychological and imaginary, simultaneously, it seems to reflect real individuals, real living and real suffering. It's a powerful book, perhaps turning a tad heavy, and I've probably had my fill with just this one book. Nevertheless, there are books that I want off my shelf, this isn't one of them.
To top it off, the afterword is written by Lélia Wanick Salgado and Sebastiao Salgado.
17 September 2008 - 7:46pm — Philip Cartland
Pablo San Juan's photos are buried away beneath the ever increasing pile of photographers found on Zone Zero.
As far as I am aware there are no books, no buzz, no fame no fortune, surrounding him, and I'm sure if current flavors of the month are anything to go by, there may be little surprise in that either. I'm glad it's that way, I'd hesitate to say anything myself if I were not so much in awe.
There are about 27 photos, if I have counted correctly, in this series all connected in one way or another to the theme and title: 'Monsoon'. At irregular intervals, perhaps attached to specific images, we're given a quote, for example this one:
"Little by little I feel sleep coming on, made drowsy by the sweet novelty with which the tropics receive their travelers before showing them the claws of their petrifying desperation." ~ Carlos Fuentas
If you've made it far enough to have read a quote, there is little point in me breaking it down further, you'd have to be a cold stone not to be then moved by San Juan's wind and rain, joy and sadness.
According to Nuria Enguita, who wrote the statement,
"Pablo San Juan travelled for three consecutive years in search of the living image of the monsoon, uniting within his photographs specific times and places and those already mentioned moments of a more abstract, more diffuse condition."
I'm reminded that it takes as long or longer to create, and luck may only allow half the coherence, half the poetry or music. Sadly Pablo's images may well be glanced over a thousand times by eyes that are attuned to the speed of change, the endless cycle of topicality and trends, or the obsession with originality. We don't need a biography, a statement by the photographer, nor an interview, it's all available there before your eyes in the images themselves.
17 September 2008 - 7:44pm — Philip Cartland
A while ago I visited the photographer's gallery and saw Guy Tillims pigment printed series, 'Leopold and Mobutu". I also bought the book of the same name. It's a tall washed out book of mixed color and black and white photographs compiling snippets of physical evidence of Mobutu's lost grandeur and King Leopold's great colonial land grab (spearheaded by his agent the explorer Henry Morton Stanley).
The preface of the book couldn't be written by a more authoritative man than Adam Hochschild whose short text summarises what he has covered in depth in his own book, King Leopold's Ghost - namely the extraction of ivory and, subsequently, wild rubber by means of a brutal system of forced labor, to feed a booming Western appetite (arising from advent of the bicycle tube and later the automobile).
While untold millions of Congolese (estimated to be 10 million!) died and Leopold is said to have generated todays equivalent of one billion dollars of profit, in modern times, Mobutu still managed to exceed Leopold's monetary feeding frenzy 4 times over in his 32 yrs. of rule.
Tillim's images string the past and present together: Stanley's barely discernible veranda overlooking the Congo river beside side Mobutu's looted and abandoned palace veranda, while in the foreground/present UN helicopters fly in and out and child soldiers train to kill.
Images of intense Graham Green-like atmosphere and masterful 'accidental' composition, particular to Tillim, fall between the dead scenes.
At a time when it feels more comfortable to forget about Africa - its heart draining lunacy swinging simultaneously with its seduction - Tillim manages to bring alive a neglected chunk of history, renewing the 'traditionional' 'Heart of Darkness' spirit and blending it with historical fact. It's a semi softcover book printed in subdued color and matt texture matching its content.
Images >>
17 September 2008 - 7:43pm — Philip Cartland
I really used to get heavy under the eyes with portrait photography. Then the portrait turned modern (contemporary...or whatever). Well what does that mean? I really am going to avoid talking about Avedon, I might just nod off (sorry)...... I guess, what I mean is, suddenly you get your subject standing in the middle of the frame, kind of like in a measured way, just standing there almost as though to say I am what I am, here I am. That's why I suppose I like Pieter Hugo's 'subdued' portraits besides the obvious nature man in his environment. It's refreshing for me not to see an old car, a signboard, street, a mundane sparsity or a weird over ambiguous 'meaningful' gesture.
These images remind me of a guy I knew called James, last time I saw him he'd got into a drunken fight and lost two of his front teeth. James was not to bright, in the 'educated' sense of the word, i.e. he couldn't read nor write. He had trouble putting a three pronged plug into a wall socket, he spent an awful lot of time, in an HIV world, sleeping with prostitutes and anyone else available (consequently he found himself followed by a string of kids), and he spent every penny he earned the same day he received it. But he'd come from another world completely. Give him a panga (big chopping knife) and a thick branch and he would carve out the most delicate cooking spoon. He knew all about honey and bees and what fruit certain birds liked and what animal made such and such mark on the ground. He was, just, like so many Africans today, being crowded out by a world that has enforced western style education and lifestyle.
17 September 2008 - 6:51pm — Philip Cartland
Coming from a rather 'information sheltered' upbringing in Kenya, I was exposed rather late to the photographers who make it into the history of photography compilations. Those that I was exposed to, seem unremarkable in comparison. Their work mostly graced the coffee table, or the touristy section of the bookshop, with titles like, Beautiful Kenya, or Vanishing Africa (some of them awesome photographers in their own right).
One of these photographers, Mo (Mohamed Amin), made it really big though.
I remember him for two things, his pictures of sunsets - some that showed the sun so high in the sky that the scene could never have been so orange, as though he'd not been bothered to wait, and had thrown on an orange filter to get the effect - and for his images of "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular."
See more >>
But neither of those are what made him big, big. In 1984 he hit the world stage with what might as well be one of the first links in the chain of starving people pictures.
Aidan Hartley in his absolutely ripping book 'Zanzibar Chest' (see images from the book here) writes:
"His greatest triumph was TV footage, voiced over by the BBC's Michael Buerk, of the first pictures to break the 1984 Ethiopian famine. Mo's pictures whipped up publicity, rock songs and concerts that raised funds for food that probably saved a further two million from hungry deaths. He may have seemed diffident but he was as conceited as hell and never let you forget about his fame
"Mo proudly showed me his office. Covering the walls were framed snaps of Mo with Bob Geldof, Queen Elizabeth giving Mo his MBE medal, Mo with Sidney Pointer, Mo with sundry Third world despots, honorary degrees, TV awards and a platinum disk of the song 'We are the world'."
In Africa one has to be able to face blood and guts. Facing the whimsical Idi Amin is likely to make you shake your head in disbelief, while expecting at any moment a sudden death sentence after a joke turned sour. The last scene in this quite long video shows the shifting paranoid eyes of this buffoon. Somewhere about midway, Mo is filmed together with Castro and Idi Amin together.
Mo had one major talent of many, he was always on the spot:
'He was no media cowboy, no thrill seeker.... he was brave and committed, and his genius was being there when it happened.' - Michael Buerk
He died in the hijacked Ethiopian Airlines Flight 96 crash (amateur footage from cnn), November 23, 1996.
17 September 2008 - 6:45pm — Philip Cartland
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:
Tacita Dean Synopsis
Brac's Land wreck makes TV fame
17 September 2008 - 6:44pm — Philip Cartland
For Timothy O'Sullivan reality was more than the literal, direct and 'physical' reflection of the world. Truth, was simple and direct, but came from small adjustments in the literal reality that brought into play the subjective. His camera portrayed the way a place seemed rather than how it actually was.
O'Sullivan learn't his technique from documenting the American civil war. Cameras of the period could not catch the action, as they do today, and this fact forced him to build a reality of war from mundane scenes that stood around the action; the context of war.
Later in 1871 O'Sullivan joined the United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian led by Lt. George Wheeler. The purpose was to survey the land for possible future occupation, while also gaining a consensus of the Native American population. His photographs were to be used to prepare the 'Wild' West as an inviting destination for progress, not only for the sake of civilization, but for the continued funding of the surveys.
Leaders of the surveys such as King, Lt. George M. Wheeler, and J.W. Powell tended to use the beautiful, picturesque, and sublime ideologies in writing their survey reports, and hence their hired photographers usually resorted to them as well. But O'Sullivan was unique. While fulfilling the requirements of the survey he was also able to pursue his own instinct for truth and art using devices he had learnt during the civil war.
Though he photographed completely without public acclaim during his life time, he is now renowned for his ability to amplify the telluric beauty of the geological Western American landscape by means of very simple but understated techniques. For example, the top photograph in the accompanying strip of images, depicts Canyon De Chelly, New Mexico, 1873, and shows how he ever-so-slightly tilts the camera's angle to exaggerate the great towering rocks height and weight over the tiny encampment below in the valley.
Jonathan Green in "American Photography" presents Timothy O'Sullivan as something of a photographic renegade. Unlike Muybridge, for example, who added clouds to his picturesque scenic images by using his 'Sky Shade'(1) technique, O'Sullivan seems to accept the limitations of his medium. He exploited, instead, the starkness arising from the wet collodion processes lack of sensitivity to blue, by sometimes integrating the white sky into a series of balanced shades and planes of the geology creating an almost abstract image (image 2).
If there is an answer to endless question: what is reality, surely here we have it in O'Sullivan's images, and as valid today as it was then.
In Elizabeth Paul's words:
"His approach accepts the limitations of subjectivity and photography to discern and portray the whole truth or reality of a subject, and seeks, instead, to gain and portray an impression of the subject truthfully, accurately, and effectively." ~ see her excellent thesis on the subject
(1) Muybridge solved the problem using two different methods:
a - He combined a negative of clouds with a negative of a landscape, when making a print.
b - Muybridge also used a board flap inside his camera to block the brighter light from the sky during a portion of an exposure. He called the feature a sky shade.
17 September 2008 - 6:39pm — Philip Cartland
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 Cartland
If by participating in life, somehow, regardless of your intentions, you inevitably participate in its decline, what can you do to transcend it? My answer: you can describe it. In this sense I feel the images below by Antoine D'AGATA, as presented in threes and fours here on the web do exactly that.
When finally one tires of scientifically defining life (who knows we may at last come to know this is impossible), and projecting its future (we already know the universal answer to that) all that is left that works for me is visual poetry, and these photos are bitter-sweet poetry.
The series "Mala Noche" shows life in the Mexican slums.
17 September 2008 - 8:27am — Philip Cartland
The photographers gallery has an exhibition by Zineb Sedira .
The exhibit, called 'Saphir', made me acutely aware how different seeing the clarity of a nice enlarged image, is, from viewing images online or in a book - the books and the catalogue were completely unsatisfactory; like they were just further coverage, on low budget, rather than exhibits in themselves. Here is a snippet about the series from the gallery's site:
"The exhibition contrasts Sedira's re-encounter with the sights and sounds of Algiers with an awareness that while she, like other people from France, is enjoying her return to the city, some of its other residents, disenchanted young men in particular, often dream of escape across the water to Europe."
I particularly like Sedira's idea and the mood evoked by the images, despite feeling there were simply too few images and some not of high quality (i.e. one was blurry, unnecessarily, I felt, though standing further back helped). In the same turn, perhaps, because there were so few, I was not overwhelmed. The scarcity increased the value.
The accompanying film, which is viewed on two screens, side by side, almost like two stills, was stunning, and probably this is where most of her energy was spent. Here's more about it:
This play of meaning is extended through two central characters. The first is an Algerian man who walks across town, with no apparent purpose, and silently watches the daily ferries arrive and depart from the port. His image is counterpoised by that of an older woman's a daughter of the pieds noirs (a term for European settlers who left Algeria after its Independence). She inhabits the Safir Hotel, one of the grand landmarks of French colonial Algiers. Whose imposing architecture is a powerful and resonant reminder of a past that still casts its light, and shadow, over the city. Gazing out to sea from its balconies, before withdrawing to the faded grandeur of its lobbies and halls, the woman echoes the man's movement and reinforces a wider sense of languor, inertia and enclosure. Both characters circle within their own separate but parallel worlds, their paths often appear to intersect but without any conclusion.
Despite my enthusiasm I've already forgotten the film. Film seems to move through me while stills hold me. The two images above grab me, enough to allow faults I find blow away.
I really like 'Saphir'. It's universal, in the sense that we are all looking across the waters, escaping to that dream world which, in all likelihood is not what we imagine.
17 September 2008 - 8:13am — Philip Cartland
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 Cartland
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 Cartland
"Obviously there are far more areas of black than white in my vision, and the space that I'm so interested in looking is to be gotten through my use of Black as a POSITIVE space rather than a negative - (The way most photographs dict[tate]"?
Page from Gibson's diary describing his experience press checking the 'Somnambulist'.
Source: archives of the Center for Creative Photography (Univ of Arizona), I am the fortunate owner of a book, describing the best of these archive, called 'Original Sources'.
'Original Sources' has lots of interesting and rare info, including diary entries, collected pamphlets, letters and paraphernalia that reveal otherwise hidden motives and ideas behind the photographers and their images.
17 September 2008 - 7:50am — Philip Cartland
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 Cartland
Take this question put to Guy Tillim:
PM: At the same time you admit to capturing the 'worthy moment', which also points to all the countless moments of truth which go undocumented. Are there any photographs you have taken, which beyond the notion of looking for the photographic moment, have amounted to a visual lie?
and the answer:
GT: Yes, but I won't tell you which ones! Perhaps in this context there are no lies, but then there is no truth either.
Then you look at Tillim's images.
We only need half a brain to realise images lie (even quite as badly as say, the british media), and quite substantially more than a brain, bordering on superhuman abilities, to find the lie. If there is any judgment to be planted perhaps it should be sown near the intentions of the 'peddler'. In the case of the british media, the sentence? Life. In the case of Guy Tillim? The right to lie.
17 September 2008 - 7:45am — Philip Cartland
Take this question put to Guy Tillim: