Capitolio by Christopher Anderson

Early into Christopher Anderson's Capitolio we are faced with a horned demon exorcised by a cross held aloft over its head. It is this one image which metaphorically sums up the presidency of Hugo Chavez and the polarized nation of Venezuela. The poor tend to see Chavez as a saint while the wealthy few - the four hundred year old elite - paint him as the anti-Christ.

Caracas has become the murder capital of the world and Anderson ushers us into this violent street life filling the journey with a tension that lingers through the book. Guns are drawn and a sidewalk becomes a smear of blood, hoods are lined against a wall arms spread - the dark shadows impenetrable and threatening.

Anderson allows some breathing room with a short parade of architecture and the general populace, less threatening and full of life - sexuality and sensuality perhaps providing the relief from the day to day pressures. Industry is nationalized and the petro dollars that used to flow freely become the source of Chavez's New Deal, Bolivarian Revolution but portrayed by Anderson, the industries seem run by incompetents. It all has the tenor of waste and unprofessionalism. One sleeps on some torn cardboard while the machines sit idle; another man seemingly gets swallowed by the truck he repairs.

Anderson tends to portray Chavez as some type of creeping, dictator-in-waiting who has two faces - one a populist president, the other a demon in sheep's clothing. One spread compares a portrait of Simon Bolivar opposite a stencil of Chavez's face over which someone has written 'capo' - meaning mafia leader. The politicians presumably in his cabinet fair no better as one tugs at his pants wearing a suit which seems to be far too constricting. By book's end Chavez is shown with the same horrific relish as a monster in a B movie - a Tor Johnson of Latin America whose base instincts of greed and gluttony cause his eyes to roll into the back of his head.

Anderson owes much to predecessors like Klein and Alvermann for the way he has constructed his journey book-wise. The photos bleed across double page spreads and are chopped and diced to make graphic layouts with dynamic results but for all of the visual excitement I feel the content relies too much on their trickery. Anderson tries his hand at using the same image in cinematic ways by blowing it up in stages to create a zoom effect. One spread that does work wonderfully of a streetcar and its chanting passengers is a visual delight.



Capitolio's political editorializing seems unexpectedly right-wing and at worst, propagandistic. Is this simply representing the opposing views? If so, why does the last "chapter" before villainizing Chavez describe hoards of soldiers in the streets resembling a scene from Pinochet's playbook. This closely followed by a stencil saying: "Men are like stars, some generate their own light while others reflect the brilliance they receive." The pages that follow are of Chavez enjoying mass public adoration.

Capitolio's bright communist red cloth covers are certain to get attention, as is the elegant presentation and printing which is finely accomplished with a great looking matte lustre. Capitolio was published by Editorial RM out of Mexico City.

Anderson has said "I sometimes imagine Caracas as a living breathing animal. Obscured by the darkness it appears both violent and sensual, but perhaps it's true nature will only be revealed at the moment it devours me." Those contradiction abound in Latin America but it seems to me that what has devoured Anderson is his own bias, which seems evident throughout most of this book.

When Boredom Strikes by Joachim Schmid

When I first wrote about Joachim Schmid I asked several questions about the current state of mass image making; with all of the images that exist, is their continued proliferation necessary especially in a time now where cell phones now have cameras? We are producing more images than ever, could the reliance on images and visual material alter our vocabularies and the evolution of our ways of communication? Is this all just one more metaphoric example of how we do things impulsively and fill our lives with objects that we tend to store away and ignore until we decide to clean house? So the next time you aim the cell phone camera or put the Leica to your eye, consider what it is that you are bringing into this world. Is it necessary? Will you love it and take care of it? Or will they fall into the hands of others to see what we can no longer see?

Schmid has continued his investigation into the habits of amateur photography with a series of Blurb produced "Black" books. The project "Other People's Photographs" came about by trolling the internet for material on image sharing sites like Flickr and using keywords to find patterns of photographic behavior "focusing on the repetition of word, rather than the repetition of image. These are books about photography but from a more “light-hearted” perspective."

The first in this "Black Book" series is called When Boredom Strikes and it holds 156 photos and captions made when the "photographer" was bored. Boredom causes people to point the camera where ever and however the impulse directs - at shoes, at pets, at the ceiling, at the fabric patters of their pants. In some ways these pictures are experiments on the part of the taker and in other ways they are disposable images made just to fill time. Often full of humor and "light-hearted" as Schmid describes but, as a whole, the book is loaded with sadness. The subtext of the amount of boredom at work, at play, in everyday life can't be ignored. One image even is of a man's penis while he is masturbating. We have become a society that is even bored while masturbating.

On a positive level one could say that when we are bored is when we actually start to really examine our environments. This book proves that we are at least inquisitive to "see" through photography what those surroundings look like in photos but I doubt that most of these images would be considered a second time by the taker at later dates. Whether or not this is true, they are here for us to consider.

When Boredom Strikes is the size of a hardcover novel, vertical in format and printed in text quality black and white. By reducing all of the images to black and white, Schmid levels the field of good to bad photos. The captions reveal various attitudes and oddly, many seem to be apologetic in referring to their "creations" made while boredom struck. In combination with these apologies and the fact that these were posted to image sharing websites is a curious means of admittance.

Behavior and photography is endlessly fascinating now that everything has a camera attached to it. The images may not be often worthy of serious consideration for many viewers (although Schmid would argue the exact opposite I am sure) but when collected and presented as a common impulse, we see where we connect and what that connection says about us. It is a group portrait of sorts, for better or for worse.

Note: For other series, check out Schmid's "White" books and the limited "Grey" versions as well. http://schmid.wordpress.com/

Born of Fire: Steel by C.A. Stachelscheid

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the new book of photographs made by Ulrich Mack in the Ruhr region of the industrial landscape from the late 1950s. One of the industries occupying that land was steel smelting plants and a recent book discovery called Born of Fire: Steel offers an inside tour to some of those same plants that Mack photographed from the exterior. These two books sitting side by side offer very different approaches and tenor to the industry of the region.

Born of Fire: Steel could be just another 1950s era book championing an industry through mediocre photography and an overinflated sense of the public interest in such subjects, except the photography is actually the strong point. Yes there is the ubiquitous sentimentality and romanticism of the workers. All seem to be approaching a day in the smelting plant as an adventure instead of the grueling, sweat box that it probably was, and whatever exhaustion may have been present in such factories has been replaced by faces full of fascination or steady concentration.

The photos were made by C. A. Stachelscheid and the book was designed by Dr Wolf Strache. He opens his essay with a picture of a "Modern industrial man" in profile presumably stoking a furnace. Lit by an amber light offset by the bluish hues of the background he is a portrait of knowledge and professionalism - a perfect companion to the machines and infrastructure of the plant. Stachelscheid adds captions which appear in-between groupings of photographs and their content reads with the same fervor as a propaganda booklet.

"Even the most advanced technology cannot do without him. He is one of many; his name not recorded. But the camera reveals his qualities, his bearing, his being. Here is strength; but it is not to be wasted. Here is courage; but governed by caution. Here is also, plainly apparent, a sense of responsibility for complicated and costly processes."

Stachelscheid works all steps of the steel-making process from mining to the final products with a strong concentration on smelting steps which offers some of the more visually dynamic photos. Sparks flying and yellow streams of molten steel flowing from blast furnaces into ingot molds are favorite moments of photographers but
Stachelscheid's photos also reveal a concern for making complete photographs. This mediation is addressed in the captions as well; "Has the photographer assembled an effective composition just for the sake of the shot? A natural suspicion, but an unjustified one. This is how bent sheets are nested for better transportation."



The printing of Born of Fire is the third character of the book beyond the photographs and captions. The four-color offset renders colors in aged and unrealistic hues which enter in an element of fantasy to the "reality" of the work floor. Looking at times like hand-tinted photos, they are impressionistic and idealized. The close-up still-lifes overemphasize the clash of color and a few seem to follow in the steps of Keld-Helmer Petersen. One downright surreal image of a man measuring the precision form of a steel tube has the man's head, shoulders and arms seemingly trapped inside the ring of steel offset by a disturbing paint can of red gore entering into the right of the frame - quite a photographic magic act.

Some of the pairings of photos across page spreads is the other element that lifts Born of Fire above the expected. Certainly not all, but several are amazing compliments which reveal fine instincts on the part of the publisher Strache in understanding the difference between a book and individual photos.

Is Born of Fire: Steel a great book? Not by a long shot but it surely has its moments of surprise that extend beyond the quirks of printing and spectacular subject. I was certainly pleasantly surprised enough to pick it up several times so for 10-15 dollars you might take a chance. Published in 1956 by Verlag DBS Dr. Wolf Strache, Stuttgart.

Errata Editions Books on Books #5-8

I've had some trouble finding the time to write lately because it is crunch time for the next titles in the Errata Editions Books on Books series. I am trying to keep all of our contributors on the deadline for printing in October and, well, it is a bit like herding cats. Make that, herding cats that are really good photographers and writers.

The response to the first four titles in the series has been great even with the severe downturn in the economy, so much so we are ready to publish the next four books. People have understood our project and approach and we thank everyone for the feedback and support. Especially thank you to the artists who are turning out to be the biggest supporters of all. Out of over a dozen that we have approached in just the last few months, only one decided not to participate (and even they did so throwing high compliments towards our books and mission). That, and our being named 'Publishing House of the Year' at PhotoEspana assures us that we are on the right track.

The next four, Books on Books #5-8, share the connection with a photographer working a specific place at a specific time but each with very different results. And they are...



Books on Books #5: William Klein’s Life is Good & Good for You in New York - Trance Witness Revels is regarded as one of the most influential and groundbreaking photo books created in the last half-century. Published in 1956, its visual energy captured the rough and tumble streets of New York like no artbook had before or has done since. Books on Books 5 reproduces in its entirety Klein’s brilliantly photographed and designed magnum opus. The American Art historian, Max Kozloff, contributes an essay called William Klein and the Radioactive Fifties. ISBN: 978-1-935004-08-0, Hardcover, 160 pages, 9.5 x 7, $39.95. Release date Trade Edition: February 2010



Books on Books #6: Yutaka Takanashi’s Toshi-e (Towards the City) is a landmark two-volume set of books from one one of the founders of the avant-garde Japanese magazine Provoke. Published in 1974 and considered the most luxurious of all of the Provoke era publications, its brooding, pessimistic tone describes the state of contemporary life in an unnamed city in Japan undergoing economic and industrial change. Books on Books 6 reproduces all one hundred sixteen black and white photographs that make up the two volumes. Photographer, writer and book historian Gerry Badger, contributes an essay called Image of the City - Yutaka Takanashi's Toshi-e. ISBN: 978-1-935004-10-3, Hardcover, 176 pages, 9.5 x 7, $39.95. Release date Trade Edition: February

Where the first two in this set address politics and class with a more metaphoric approach, the next two do so in more overt ways.



Books on Books #7: David Goldblatt’s In Boksburg stands as one of the most important observations of a middle-class white community in South Africa during the apartheid years. Published in 1980, it presents an accumulation of everyday details from the community of Boksburg through which a larger portrait is revealed of white societal values within a racially divided state. Books on Books 7 reproduces all seventy-one black and white photographs as well as Goldblatt’s eloquent introduction to the work. The noted writer and editor, Joanna Lehan, contributes a contemporary essay written for this volume. ISBN: 978-1-935004-12-7, Hardcover, 112 pages, 9.5 x 7, $39.95. Release date Trade Edition: February



Books on Books #8: Koen Wessing's Chili, September 1973 is a shocking document from a socially concerned and politically engaged Dutch photojournalist. Published in 1973, just months after the fall of Salvador Allende to Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’etat, it describes the tense days of the military attempt to root out public opposition in the streets of Santiago. Books on Books 8 reproduces every page spread from Wessing’s gritty documentation of Chile’s darkest historical moment. The art historian and film theorist, Pauline Tereehorst, contributes a contemporary essay called The Man in the Grey Suit. ISBN: 978-1-935004-14-1, Hardcover, 64 pages, 9.5 x 7, $39.95. Release date Trade Edition: February

As before each of our studies also includes Book Production notes, Biographies and Bibliographies of each artist. As the start of any series is really an experiment, we have made some improvements based on the feedback from the first four titles. We have increased the page lengths so as to allow larger illustrations and many more double page spreads. We are continuing to approach a variety of writers and matching them with books so there we can offer a chance to hear many voices in the series.

The limited edition of sets of all four will be available for pre-order starting now. These are special copies with a tip-on image debossed into the book cloth. Shipping for the limited editions is planned for Mid-December with the trade edition hitting stores and other venues in the Spring so please SPREAD THE WORD. To purchase a set of the limited editions please use the paypal button on the shop page of the Errata Editions website.

Also for the regular readers of 5B4 I will be doing blog posts from on-press in China during the book production so you can follow the daily progress of printing. If you like what we are doing, write about us. This series depends on you. Please help in any way you can.

Thank you for your support from the Errata team - Valerie, Jeff and Ed.

Handbuch der Wildwachsenden Großstadtpflanzen by Helmut Volter

Staying in the realm of plant life for another few moments I want to mention a great book from a graduate of the Institute for Book Arts in Leipzig, Handbuch der Wildwachsenden Großstadtpflanzen (A Handbook of Wild Plants in our Cities) by Helmut Volter.

This was a thesis work of design and book craft which takes its starting point as a field guide to wild plants in German cities. Part science and nature and part intoxicating design, Volker presents a herbarium of specimens which fight to grow between cracks in concrete and modern architecture. In a wider field of view, these plants seem no more than untamed weeds but upon close inspection they have the natural art of form that Blossfeldt celebrated in his own studies.

Volter taped his unmanicured specimen clippings down with all of their imperfections in entangled roots and insect chewed leaves and photographed them against a plain white background. Bisecting half-pages of light-weight paper give brief descriptions of each plant species. The book is divided into various spaces where different plant life can be found including; backyards, sport fields, ports and canals, on building rooftops, in rail yards and literally sprouting on the streets and sidewalks.

Unfortunately for me all of the texts are in German so the finer points of description and perhaps deeper examination are beyond my grasp. Still, Handbuch der wildwachsenden Großstadtpflanzen is a visual feast which can stand on its own and apart from the texts.

Karl Blossfeldt: Working Collages

From a printer's standpoint one of the more interesting aspects is the ability to pry into another's contact sheets. They have their way of leveling the playing field. Even the greatest of practitioners fail over 95 percent of the time but even so, the near misses can be sobering - just check out the 80 some of Robert Frank's contacts reproduced in the Looking In tome from the National Gallery.

I have students who, after developing film the first few times on their own, jump straight to prints without making a contact - editing from the negatives. In my experience, the worst photographs look the best as negatives and vice versa so the contact is always a necessity and not only as a record of images. Gilles Peress used to say that they allow the ability to "recreate the walk;" a way of following process and perhaps understanding instincts, allowing potential insight for honing. I like that idea that contacts represent not only a chain of images but the ebb and flow of instinct. Even some things can be gleaned from bad photographs. Some, like myself however, guard their contacts as if secreting away a stash of porn - as if chance viewing by another would amount to being exposed, risk embarrassment, or discovered to be a fraud.

There are many uses for contact prints and a book I recently picked up examines a mysterious set of 61 "working collages" - essentially reconfigured contact sheets from the grandfather of German New Objectivity, Karl Blossfeldt. Karl Blossfeldt: Working Collages published by MIT in 2001 presents all of these sheets offering a new way of perceiving his life's work.

These sheets are mysterious because Blossfeldt during his lifetime apparently never mentioned their existence to anyone let alone explain his method or intended use. They are not typical contact sheets on the whole but cut up and reorganized groupings of his now famous plant studies. From a historical standpoint, many questions arise; were these used to categorize various species or types (not always)? Were they used to coordinate negatives and prints (the numeric notations belie this)? Were they used to create a working model for planning books (could be)? Or, as the essayist Ulrike Meyer Stump asks, "could they be showing us a forerunner of conceptual art?"

Created between 1926 and 1928, the "collages" contain all of the images that later appeared in Art Forms in Nature, his book from 1928. The numeric systems and notes often contradict the various theories as to their intended use. The thought that these represent types is sketchy since Blossfeldt often dissected his specimens into unnatural shape and form, he didn't seem as interested in finding archetypal plant life. From this we may presume compared to the final images that these sheets reveal groupings which might be reducing the objects down to their most basic decorative design.

Seeing these apart from guessing Blossfeldt's intentions, the sheets, like in other grid systems, force the individual images to give way to formal arrangement and more sculptural dimensions. We are much less interested in the subjects but with the new order and effect of the system that has taken over. The visual experience taken as a whole brings to mind scrapbooks and other imperfect orderings or material where there is both elements of the personal mixed with the public. They tease our desire to make sense of method - why some are cyanotype and others are in sepia - and at the same time we accept the whole as a beautiful and unique unified work of light and shade, form and content set upon a cardboard backdrop.

Richter had his Atlas and Lewitt his photogrids. Divorced from their practicalities, sketchbooks, guides for process, source material reveal undeniable works of art. This book begs the question of where that "art" first appeared.

Ruhrgebiet by Ulrich Mack

Photographic reproduction in books has vastly improved since the early letterpress or offset printing. Gravure had its richness and as duotone improved, the scale of grays has been increasing steadily leading into tritone plates and ever finer screening technologies. The gold standard of 600 line screen and quadtone printing in the Lodima Press books was the farthest I have seen the process achieve to mimic even the large format plates from Nicholas Nixon's 8X10. Oddly, as photographic reproductions have improved to this point there is another movement which is leading in the opposite direction with more work simply existing on-line at a screen resolution of 72 dpi or in poorly printed Blurb books and the like.

The idiosyncrasies of cheaper printing can be a joy. The uneven and dusty callotype plates of Atget's first book Photographe de Paris has its charm for me because they feel touched by the pair of hands that made them and since Atget considered himself to be a craftsman rather than an artist. so for me it is a more fitting match more than the beautifully done recent books of his work. Not every book needs a 600 line screen or a quadtone plate to be felt by the viewer but undoubtedly those improvements seduce with their clarity and exquisite tonal range.

A new printing system developed by Dieter Kirchner, High Definition Skia Photography, is a process which has gone even further to define a longer visible range of tone and deeper black range in ink on paper to create the most natural three dimensionality to date. The German publisher Moser Verlag in Munich has just released Ruhrgebiet from the photographer Ulrich Mack which was one of the titles that came home with me from the Arles festival last month.

In the autumn of 1959, Ulrich Mack left Hamburg with two Leicas and films and stayed in the region between the rivers Ruhr and Emscher for a couple weeks and was drawn to describing the industrial architecture which dominated the landscape.

Making images just for himself and without plans for publication, he explored the hard edges of factories and coal mining plants as their structures contrasted with the oft heavy gray sky. The division between sky and ground is disrupted by these beautiful monstrosities which seem to be absorbing the light and gathering it like dust on every surface - the dampness from rain providing some necessary highlights.

Mack's vision attempts an objectivity which would later be played to the umteenth degree by the Becher's and their students but Mack's photographs hold a balance between a metaphoric hellish cast and underlying joy in his depiction of this wasteland of productivity. Often climbing among the structures, he looks out from elevated vantage points and fills his frames making complicated compositions full tension between bending forms and hard right angles. Highways split the frame and although a human forms are not prevalent, their cars break the stillness and announce their presence. If it weren't for their inclusion, the smoke stacks and gigantic spinning wheels of the mining operations would seem to be performing under their own will.



The plates in Ruhrgebiet were created through the aformentioned Skia High definition printing and being this is 35 millimeter negatives and not large format, one could question the match of such a high quality process used for the presentation of a somewhat rough medium. In my mind, the match is necessary as the results show what is little respected from contemporary photographers of what that tiny format can achieve. His working with small format emphasizes the atmosphere of the subject as the sense of grain and grit, although very fine, is so pleasing to survey.

The plates in this large format book are almost 16 x 20 in size and the paper has the same feel as double-weight fiber printing paper. This choice suits the work wonderfully. With vellum interleaving paper between each print, it feels more like a portfolio of bound prints than a traditional photographic book. The ability to become engulfed by the images set apart from the book's wide margins deepens the sense of richness and tone.

All plates are oriented to the vertical so manipulation of Ruhrgebiet is a bit cumbersome but with it lying flat there are few books which I have that seduce my attention on such a grand scale. One minor but important criticism is that this book, partly due to its scale, is a delicate object. The binding is sound but the slipcase due to its surprisingly weak design is too fragile to sustain the weight and size of the book. The contemporary approach of the title design to the cover and binding construction - albeit delicate - keeps this work from the ghetto of boring and uninspired presentation of which this work could have easily been subjected.

With its beauty comes a price - a very high price of 500 euros. The printing, although an achievement, may make a book like this impractical. It is certainly work that merits such a treatment but being that the process is 4 or 5 times as expensive to produce as a regular book will certainly limit its access to many wanting to see a copy. This is a collector's item of a very limited quantity, 400 copies, each is signed and numbered by the photographer.

Anna Fox: Photographs 1983-2007

The work of Anna Fox may be off your radar but she is an important figure in British color photography that arose from the West Surrey College of Art and Design in the mid 1980s. Her highly charged photographs, lit by flash, are a mix of social observation and personal diaristic projects which placed her apart from the male crowd of Paul Reas Martin Parr, and Paul Graham who were forming the 'second wave' of color photography. A recent mid-career retrospective book Anna Fox: Photographs 1983-2007 published from Photoworks covers 25 years of her work.

Her earlier projects - Work Stations (1986-88), Friendly Fire (1988-91) and The Village (1991-93) - are concerned with rural places and cultures, gatherings of people and the physical dramas which are played out in each situation. In Work Stations she describes the work spaces and offices of mid-80s Britian with a flare for agitation. Her photographs and the accompanying captions taken from articles in business magazines reveal (or create) a sense of an internal warzone where worker comraderie is left to the weak and the corporate climb is a matter of survival of the fittest. Quotes such as, "Should a competitor threaten to kill a sale, the modem would provide a lifeline back to base computer" and "Fortunes are being made that are in line with the dreams of avarice" sit under images of workers seemingly absorbed in newly adopted attitudes inspired by Thatcher's free market policies.

It is fitting that Fox follows this project with Friendly Fire, a series where she plays 'war photographer' among corporate sales teams as they foster team spirit by blasting away at one another with paint-ball guns in abandoned army bases and on de-commissioned farmland. Their macho role playing is overlooked in one image by a blood-splattered cardboard cutout of Margaret Thatcher, flashing a friendly and encouraging smile on a job well done - perhaps mistaking the corporate workplace with the Falklands.

The Village, the third in this trilogy, explores a picture postcard English village. The underlying violence behind its creation alluded to in the adopted values of the business market in the first two bodies of work, extends into this series with its attitude of privilege and goals obtained. Shot both in black and white and color the pictures have the frenzy of the the former but her camera moves in for claustrophobic details which reveal anything but delicate nature and sophistication of its citizens. A chatting elderly couple seem to be attacking one another, while at a social event, a young woman's hand-turned-claw is grasped and highlighted by Fox's moody flash.



A switch in her work towards ideas of 'home' comes with the series Afterwards in which she photographed the aftermath of rave parties in rural Hampshire, her hometown. Amongst the detritus of broken bottles, cigarette buts and trash, ravers sleep off the previous night's event in a series of pictures which create a portrait of broken home life and make-shift families. After the splurge of immediate gratification, the country sleeps off its hangover.

In 41 Hewitt Road, Fox turns her camera on her own domestic scene which, considering the chaos and run down atmosphere of this North London flat, seems to be an extension of the Afterwards party pictures. Children's scribbles on the peeled paint walls and the grim of dirty hands evident on every surface presents a crumbled foundation for family. A dead mouse on a stretch of green carpet, a dead worm on a tile floor, a note penciled onto a door-jam that 'Martin Parr Called' and a violently scratched out child's drawing on the wall, point to a reality that violently undermines the national values and bourgeois spirit of the upper class. It seems to be a household where the children have taken over and all rules have been thrown to the wind resulting in a cross between a drug den and an artistic playground.

One of my personal favorite series came from Fox in 1999 with an artist book called My Mother's Cupboard and My Father's Words which interrogates family relationships through text and photos. She introduces the series with, 'My father was ill for many years and as his illness developed, his frustrations grew. I kept a notebook recording his outbursts, mainly directed at the women in the family, and at the same time photographed my mother's incredibly ordered cupboards.' Next to an image of a cupboard full of wine glasses sits the caption, 'She's bloody rattling again. Can you stop your bloody fucking rattling.' Next to a stack of plates, 'I'm going to tear your mother to shreds with an oyster knife.' And opposite a pink decorative plate and crystal, 'Bloody bitches. Filthy cows.' Though deeply disturbing, these pairings of 14 photographs with 14 outbursts, have an underlying twist of humor through the extreme violence of his wordings in the face of the defiance perceived from the order of the mostly fragile objects.



A large part of Fox's work comes in the way of confrontational portraiture. Her Zwarte Piet series which are straight forward portraits of Dutch citizens painted in blackface and dressed as the assistant to Sinterklaas. Neither descriptive of the larger tradition as a whole nor an endorsement of this complicated masquerade with its racial overtones, Fox opens the dialogue to a host of questions concerning gender and race, values and perceptions, and cultural change. Photographically these portrait works hold less power for me than the aforementioned series on work places and village life. Certainly they are subjects worthy of notice and loaded with content but formally the individual photographs suppress my full attention for her concerns.

A few of her other portrait series - In Pursuit (1989), Back to the Village (1999- ) - explore the festivities, cultural events and customs woven into the fabric of the surrounding villages in Hampshire. Theatrical and overtly absurd she often photographs children as they dress for Halloween or as participants in nativity scenes continuing ritual and acting out arcane activities. Macabre in tenor, she portrays both the old and young as citizens in a community lost in their own performance and spectacle.

Featuring tastes of all of her projects to date, including many not mentioned here, Anna Fox: Photographs 1983-2007 is a fine volume which has me asking how work this interesting hasn't found its way to my shelves before. At almost 400 pages and with essays from Val Williams, Jason Evans, David Chandler and Micke Bal, this full evaluation of Fox's oeuvre is a pleasant discovery which demands an immediate searching out of her previous books that somehow slipped my attention. Might I suggest you do the same.

The Flying Clipper Logbook

In 1959, Staffan Wettre and Gunnar Stenstrom set sail on a summer long voyage as deckhands on The Flying Clipper, a three-masted, topsail-schooner, as it toured from the Swedish coast to the Western Mediterranean. Teenagers at the time, both men cite this adventure some fifty years later as a unique and overwhelming event that has been kept alive in photographs and diary entries in The Flying Clipper Logbook just published by Wettre Forlag.

Old photographs, short Double-8 films taken by Staffan Wettre, and diaries discovered by his son Jonas, whose fascination with the colors and quality of the material, drew him to try to assemble it into a book recalling the sights and remembrances of the two men on the verge of adulthood.

Not a sightseeing tour for them for the most part, they were worked to exhaustion between the 27 port stops maintaining the ship's cleanliness and operation. One of their more distinguished guests during the journey was Adlai Stevenson who had lost the presidential election to Eisenhower a few years prior.

Jonas Wettre beautifully pieces the journey together with word and image. The photos, with their blue-green hues are enticingly aged and invitingly sentimental. Behind the camera, Staffan records the shorelines and ports but in his best images he concentrates on images of the crew. One deck hand tries to smoke an entire packet of cigarettes at once while another, Staffan himself, shirtless, stares out to the horizon from the deck railing - an image of youth and masculinity ready to experience boundless adventure.



The Flying Clipper Logbook is a captivating mix of media - Stenstrom contributes a few copper-plate etchings and Paul Ruscha, Ed's brother, lent the title calligraphy. If I had my choice there would be more photographs and a fuller realization. It is a journey into sun and sea which I wish would reveal more of the daily life of the crew. For all of the diary descriptions of the exhausting, non-stop work, the photos seem to describe nothing of the tasks but all of the pleasantries. Of course, there was a time for photographing and a time for working but I still wish for it. Although not intended to be a "photo story" when taken, the photos mixed with the diaries contrast one another and the disconnect is felt, making the material seem a bit thin.

As an object, The Flying Clipper Logbook is well designed and printed. Snapshots and strips of Double-8 film printed with a heavy gloss varnish create added dimensionality to each page and the choice of bright white sailcloth donning the cover is perfect. A blue elastic band holds the book closed and makes for a nice accent. A separate translation booklet in English is provided.

"Sailing is necessary," the quote that graces the back cover alludes to the transformative nature of an act. For these two men, this scrapbook of a summer - this second voyage of bookmaking - may have been another act in which the transformation is realized some fifty years later, but, with a different understanding of its importance.

The Last Days of Shishmaref by Dana Lixenberg

Shishmaref, a village on a small island off the coast of Alaska, is getting swallowed by the sea. Due to climate change, the island's permafrost layer - its main protection against erosion - is melting, leaving the sea little restraint from reclaiming what is left. The photographer Dana Lixenberg stayed in Shishmaref for several weeks in 2007 at the invite of Jan Louter, a filmmaker working on a documentary about the village, and her new book The Last Days of Shishmaref shares her portrait of this disappearing community.

The 600 or so Inupiaq people who live in the community have through tradition and necessity, worked with nature. Living in such extremes, there seems to be little other way but climate change, global warming, has upset the ecological balance making their task impossible to continue on Shishmaref. Al Gore has called them the first victims of climate change.

Looking at Lixenberg's photographs we sense a community that is changing in more ways than its connection to the soil beneath it's feet. The youth understandably adopt popular American culture in dress and practice while the homes and yards are littered with piles of unrepairable junk whose only potential is to be recycled. In her photos, this visual plastic pollution is another underlying metaphor - an island and culture being claimed by many forces. Relocation, as is the plan for Shishmaref, may not be what saves this community from extinction.



The photographic description Lixenberg has adopted is that of large-format, color, often artificially lit scenes combining portraiture, landscape and still-life. It builds throughout the book with a nice rhythm and consistency. It is good work but the individual photographs contain few surprises and this for me is its disappointment over time. It is clean, well executed and seductive in its clarity, but by the end page I feel like I have just re-read a book I had forgotten about.

The design of The Last Days of Shishmaref by Mevis & Van Deursen out of Amsterdam, with its alternating groupings of photos and text, is beautifully conceived. The printing is good as are the choice of materials. The Last Days of Shishmaref was co-published in 2008 by Episode and Paradox out of the Netherlands.

Doug DuBois Signed Book Giveaway

This month’s Flak Photo WEEKEND series features work from photographer Doug DuBoi's title All the Days and Nights. A deeply personal body of work, DuBois first started photographing his family in 1984, before his father’s near fatal injury from a commuter train. Coping with the graveness of this hardship, he documents his family members through a tender lens, revealing the subtle complexities of their personalities and the dynamics of their relationships with one another. This poignant memoir engages the viewer in its emotional immediacy and showcases the tribulations of those closest to him.

Aperture and Flak Photo are giving away 5 signed copies of All the Days and Nights! To enter, browse the Flak Photo Gallery and post a link to one of your favorite photographs on Flak Photo's Facebook. Winners will be chosen at random, click here for details.

First, Jay Comes and Trails by Takashi Homma

Two new books by Takashi Homma, Trails and First Jay Comes, present a departure from his usual concentration on the urban and suburban world. The work, photographs and some paintings, concentrate on three basic components; snow, forest, and blood. Described with simply a few lines and contrast of color, these undeniably beautiful works sit in each book with very different tenor.

The more known of the two is from Hassla Books, First, Jay Comes. This small 5x7 inch, 24 page booklet includes more paintings than photographs. The cover, a photograph of mostly virgin snowfall despoiled by a few dark specks of red and perhaps a footprint of crushed snow. The evidence of violence remaining visible in the stillness of the natural world.

Homma's paintings follow in the traditional simple single brush-stroke tradition of sumi-e with their sparse, abstraction which gives but a suggestion of the content that is immediately grasped. The paint, especially the red and the slashing gestures with which it was applied, suggest more of an aggressive violence; speckles of blood turning into great smears of crimson.

The book's center photograph (there are only three in this booklet) depicts the scene that might have inspired the paintings, trampled snow and twigs and a center pool of blood that has seeped or been spread into the surrounding snow. Where as the other two images describe blood trailings of something bleeding being carried or dragged through the forest, this image seems to be the site of the attack.

The title, First, Jay Comes is as ambiguous and as harmonious as the work itself. As a book this Hassla edition is good but feels a bit unsubstantial and perhaps due to the paper stock it seems to clash a little with the content. That said, this edition is easiest to get and is only $12.00. First, Jay Comes was published in an edition of 500.



Takashi Homma's Trails from Match and Company in Japan is harder to get a hold of due to the difficulty in paying them but worth the extra effort and cost.

This is a much larger and altogether different take on this work. At approximately 11 x 12 inches and in combination with the beautiful OK Muse Gulliver Shiromono paper this feels like an actual fully realized work.

Trails opens to an image of mostly virgin snow speckled with a bit of frozen blood but acts as a moment of foreshadowing as the following three images have us venturing deeper into the forest and discovering animal tracks left in the snow. It is several images in that we pick up the fading blood trail and follow it to the source. The images are deeply tinted cyan which gives a cold, silent feeling and the blood an odd unrealistic hue which for me makes them less aggressive. Whatever has taken place and whether the act was made by man on animal or animal on animal, the harmony seems to be relating to the cycles of a food chain than with acts made out of anger.

As a book Trails is simply beautiful in its printing and design. Clean and simple, it has two gatefolds which reveal more photographs among the 24 pages. The cover plate is one of Homma's brush paintings and avoids announcing this as a photobook. This was published in a an edition of 700 and although the money transfer and shipping will greatly increase the cost, in Japan this book is only the equivalent of $21.00.

Empty Bottles by WassinkLundgren (a re-evaluation)

A little over a year ago I wrote, or rather ranted about Thijs groot Wassink and Ruben Lundgren's Empty Bottles being touted as the "Best Contemporary Photobook of the Year" at Arles in 2007. After generating a record number of comments a few agreeing and many strongly disagreeing with my opinion, the conversation has continued many times since with various people in person and I have been pegged as everything from a humanist to an asshole. In my original posting I mentioned being compelled to pick up the book many times mostly due to the design which is by Kummer & Herrman and that compulsion continued until I finally broke and dropped my 15 euros for a copy while in Holland.

Now the problem, not to mention the ethical dilemma, of reviewing a book that I didn't own at the time is how time effects your opinions (I didn't really "review" the book so much as rail against it). How many books do I own that have grown on me more and more over time? Many. But in case you are thinking I am setting up for a 180 turn on Empty Bottles, I am not. I find it necessary to fully express my thoughts because I do feel I was unfair and very insulting to the artists. My rant was more to the "best contemporary photobook" citation at Arles. My thought was, had photography really turned down such an alley that this had been awarded the best book at Arles which was the same year as; Sophie Calle's Take care of Yourself, Stephen Gill's Hackney Flowers, John Gossage's Putting Back the Wall, Anthony Hernandez's LA: Waiting, Sitting, Taryn Simon's American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Walid Raad's Atlas Group Volume 3, Boris Mikhailov's Suzi Etc. and Paul Graham's A Shimmer of Possibility? That citation really had nothing to do with the artists themselves. They were, from what I have heard, just as surprised. As exciting as it may be for young artists to be awarded such an honor, I just felt it was undue in regard to the larger field of work for possible nomination.

The time I spent with Empty Bottles before owning it I found the photographs themselves to be boring. To me it was expressing an idea that handcuffed the photographers to a formal strategy, and by most accounts I find such an approach uninteresting. When I see such strategies I naturally start asking why? For instance why make images that are so center weighted? Why not make each its own surprise with added formal complexity? Why not vary the distance or up the ante by making the viewer work a bit to understand what is going on? I sensed a kind of laziness at work - a dependence on an idea which never quite gets over itself to a more thoughtful execution.

The ethics of such a project have also been discussed and although I do not have the same intellectual melt-down that Simon Norfolk has been documented on Youtube, it does rest a bit uneasy. Wassinklundgren mentioned in their lecture at Kassel that as they were playing their cat and mouse game with the bottles, people would play with them too. Upon seeing what they were up to, one bottle scavenger would stand directly in the way of their lens while another would take the opportunity to snatch the bottle from the scene without a photo being made. In someways I agree with Gossage from one of his comments about the ethics in photography - it is too fluctuating and slippery a medium to determine where ethical boundaries lie with still images. Is setting a trap with a bottle anymore ethically questionable than say photographing a person from afar with a very long lens?

Looking through and sitting with this for a while now I do like about 8 of the 24 images. These are a few that transcend what I already expect before turning the page. In one it is how the blue cap of the bottle (photo on the second page) sits exactly between the person's feet but beyond that the image is less interesting. The cover image is finely balanced between the figure in question, the woman entering from the right, the manhole cover and the overhang of the tree with the obvious payoff is the twist of the man bending to get the bottle. Fourth image from the last in the book of a man stretching to pick up a bottle with the walkway overpasses in the background: the man balanced on one foot is beautifully described but for me additional small details like the rendering of the woman just over his shoulder in blue behind the fence and the drape of the red coat over the shoulder of the woman to the left are what would invite further investigation once we "get" the reason behind the photo.

Wassinklundgren are smart young artists who understand the desire of their audience for a good hook much like a seductive pop song. In art school when they were given a corner wallspace for their final thesis show, they integrated the photos into the space by making large prints that then had to have entire sections cut away to accommodate windows, moldings and doorways. One of their newer projects is videotaping dogs which have been tied up outside of stores waiting for their owners to finish shopping. The camera trains on the dog, handheld, from anywhere from a minute to twenty until the owner returns. The videos end with the moment of recognition of the owner and the leading away of the dog. Cute and funny, of course with a twinge of meaningful anxiety. The installation of this work is also smart and seductive - two video projectors projecting their images which meet in the corner of the exhibition space basically with the same downward vantage point as the videos were shot.

Thijs' Don't Smile Now... Save It For Later project employs a large hand mirror in a photobooth in order to describe the surrounding territory just outside the booth. These are areas where, we are also informed, no photography is allowed. As much as I like the thought, the final pictures don't fully satisfy. Again, I like the feel of the book (designed again by Kummer & Herrman) and the thought behind it but I experience little surprise in the final work.

So my final opinion has shifted a little in regard to Empty Bottles now that it sits here. I don't find it a completely "empty vessel" as I wrote originally. Since I like 8 of the 24 images I guess for me it is only 2/3rds empty. Or maybe, as my therapist suggests, I should regard it as 1/3rd full.

Open See by Jim Goldberg

In Paris walking along the Seine, a young woman stops about eight feet from some approaching tourists, spotting something on the ground. She places herself in their sightline, stoops down and a large golden ring appears in her hand. She looks at it admiringly and asks the tourists if it is theirs. After some moments of wonder, she offers to sell this golden ring to them for maybe what appears to be a surprisingly small sum of money. A few blocks further, a young Romanian boy stoops to pick up another invisible ring off the ground and the tourists pause with his questions of ownership. A few blocks further it is an elderly woman who bends down with surprising dexterity. A relatively harmless scam that gives the impression that the roads in Paris are literally paved with gold.

Since 2003 Jim Goldberg has been working on a project about the "New Europeans," that is, refugees escaping their homeland either because of war or poverty to make a new home in Europe. His new series of books, Open See just published by Steidl, brings together a multitude of voices speaking of their journeys towards a "better life."

Using different media such as multi-format photographs, polaroids, writing, ephemera and objects, Goldberg presents these fractured histories as a flow of harsh realities of dislocation where hope seems pushed to its limits. The most common denominator between the participants is the disconnect between dreams and reality. One is offered a job by a cousin only to be sold into prostitution. Another dreams of the wealth of Europe and yet faces even more poverty as racism keeps them from getting any job. It is a set of books as much about the cruelty of man attempting to take advantage of the powerless while they are in their most vulnerable state.

Like in his book Raised by Wolves, Goldberg's approach is a collaborative effort - the marginal given their spotlight. He photographs and collects the histories but also allows the subjects their own voice by way of writing on the photographs he takes of them. Often without translation, my first impression was of annoyance that I could not fully understand each person's plight but now I think that lack of translation is a strength. By denying certain information due to language barriers, Goldberg has placed us into a similar uncomfortable space as those approaching a foreign country with limited means of communication.

I found it also a way to avoid the 'refugee as spectacle' which is so prevalent in photojournalism. In an effort to describe these lives with the small hope of changing something or helping, often the subject becomes nothing more than a case in need of a solution. My only criticism is that the art-making aspect of collage and intentionally amateur, in-the-moment constructions, can feel a bit forced. It is Goldberg's scrapbook approach - perhaps identifying that the mediums he employs can only provide but a part of the story - that I am both seduced by and yet weary of.

As books, Open See is a set of four housed in a flimsy cardboard slipcase. Three books are relatively thin and concentrating on what appears to be Eastern Europe, India and Africa while the fourth is much thicker and a collective global portrait. There is little text apart from what appears in the images themselves but for two stories in the larger book on a woman sold into prostitution and a Moroccan man who's complicated and life-threatening journey into Italy ended with him unemployed and left with little option but turning to crime to survive.

The genetic lottery of where and when someone is born and the circumstances in which they arrive into is a question the Moroccan man ponders. He asks why couldn't he have been born 14km north of his birthplace. It could be as simple as a few kilometers or a moment in history that shifts a life from normality to horror. This book will mostly sit on the shelves of the affluent, those on the right side of borders, those that probably will know no hardship like those in the photos - the lucky ones, living lives that are the dream of others.