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 - 11:26pm — AdminSuginami : a book by James Luckett
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.
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 - 9:52pm — AdminLiu 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 - 8:51pm — AdminMax 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)
Miguel Rio Branco
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 - 8:46pm — AdminPablo San Juan's Monsoon
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 - 8:44pm — AdminLeopold and Mobutu - Guy Tillim
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.
17 September 2008 - 8:43pm — AdminPieter Hugo and James
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 - 7:51pm — AdminMohammed Amin (Mo)
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."
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 - 7:45pm — Admin