Life as a Night Porter by Chris Shaw

For ten years, Chris Shaw worked as a night porter in several London hotels. The chores of a porter on the night shift seem much different from their brethren who see the light of day. There is little time spent carrying bags to rooms, handing over the keys and receiving a few bucks tip. Instead, his energies seem spent on keeping the patrons from having sex in the hallways and alerting the maids when someone has spilled the contents of their stomach on the flower carpeting.

Life as a Night Porter published by Twin Palms in 2006 takes us through an average night shift as we tag along with Chris Shaw.

Shaw’s errands this night are attending to people locked out of their rooms (while naked). Getting that drunk passed out on the bathroom floor back to their room. Keeping an eye out for the hookers. And, oh, there is something wrong with the clothes iron in room 405. To fill the time in-between these tasks, Shaw photographed.

Hookers and limo drivers and the regular hotel staff are all cogs on the same wheel. Somehow the hotel runs and manages to hold onto its façade of exaggerated elegance even though we come to find that depravity has rotted the foundations.

Don’t get the impression that Chris Shaw is any the wiser just because he is the photographer. He is along for the ride as long as it keeps a roof over his head and a few dollars in his pocket.

According to Shaw, he came into this world of working in hotels because, one morning in 1993 he went out ‘to get the papers,’(he liked to drink) and returned two weeks later to find his girlfriend had changed the locks on their apartment. So he got a hotel job.

Shot with a cheap Centon camera, Shaw’s photography is raw and ugly and fits his subject perfectly. Contrasty. Grainy. Unfocused. Dusty. Underexposed. Overdeveloped. Light leaks. Sprocket holes. Badly dodged. Poorly burned. And finally, after the print is processed and dried (archivally of course) the caption is applied via Sharpie marker directly to the paper in his often illegible scrawl.

And what are the captions? Insights into the mind of a night porter.

“Keys like bats…like keys…like bats”

“The staff are always…………..the worst.”

And under one photo of a woman joyfully pulling up her dress to show off her underwear; “One door opens and another one hits you in the face.”

The book is well designed with its oversized format and the printing is as good as the originals would allow. It was printed in an edition of 2000 casebound copies. If I had one complaint, it would be that the content never quite gets over the top as it hints toward. It seems a little light with 50 pictures and most of those are portraits of the other staff. Seeing that this is a hotel of Shaw’s creation, I want the shift to go on longer. I want it to tire me out so that by the end, I feel like I’ve stayed up all night. It does however suitably suggest that this job is mostly spent fighting off boredom.

As Shaw says: “It is a hotel of my own imagination. In reality, the hotels bear little resemblance to my pictures. It depends on how you look at things. In my experience, heaven and hell are right here on earth – and you can stay in either.”

These pictures are far from the inner circles of hell, but sure enough, they are very distant from heaven as well.

Book Available Here (Life as a Night Porter)

Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work

I think at this point in the realm of contemporary German photography it would be nearly impossible not mention the influence of Bernd and Hilla Becher have had on at least two generations of photographers. Since the passing of Bernd Becher on Friday June 22nd 2007, I thought it appropriate to mention the book Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work published by MIT Press.



Both Bernd and Hilla were born at a time (1931 and 1934 respectively) where as teenagers they lived within a devastated post war Germany. Born in the Siegerland, Bernd experienced first hand the landscape of the German iron industry as a child. In photography, they focused their early attentions towards the architecture of that same coal industry which they saw as examples of a pre-Nazi Germany and a steadfast foundation held against the reconstruction architecture that was taking place.

Using August Sander’s Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time 1929), Karl Blossfelt’s plant forms and Albert Renger-Patzsch’s machine studies as early guides, they developed a working method of classification of various architectural structures they referred to as “Typologies.” Exhaustively working from subject to subject (cooling towers, blast furnaces, gas tanks, etc.) and by often displaying their results in large grids, they came to recognition in the art world as being minimalist or conceptual artists. This was a reading of the work that was far from their original supposed architectural mission.

Their approach to photographing was to reduce every aspect of personal style in order to emphasize the impersonal aesthetics of the buildings. This included the necessity to photography the structures straight on and from a height that provided a neutral vantage point. They look neither up nor down at their subjects, thus reducing the potential for politicizing these industrial structures. The 1920’s and 30’s depictions of industry celebrated it and held it up as signs of political or modern power. The Bechers neither monumentalize nor renunciate. This approach brings forth a notion in the viewer to compare one structure to the next. One pleasure of their work is following their direction.

That notion of comparison is what sets the Bechers apart from other photographers interested in types like August Sander. With Sander we look at his portraits one at a time and there is a clear division between each image. They are separate worlds that share common threads of humanity. The Becher’s types are linked physically by their presence as series. To see only one image on display in a show would amount to seeming like staring at an orphan. This, of course, is primarily because we know their working method and have been conditioned (or poisoned). To the unconditioned, could one photo from their work stand individually like a Charles Sheeler photograph?

Aside from their personal work, they were also the team behind the famed photography program at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf whose star pupils included Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Demand, Candida Hofer and Andreas Gursky. Their Freie Kunst (free or open art) program at the Kunstakademie was based on a master-student relationship. Although only Bernd was officially employed as a professor, the importance of Hilla’s contributions to their collaborative art led them to often conduct critiques of student’s work in their home. They served as individual mentors to students and only at their sole discretion did they then granted a diploma after they felt the student had achieved independence. Andreas Gursky was awarded this distinction in 1987 after six years of classes with Bernd Becher.



There have been several volumes published over the years of the Becher’s work. The MIT Press has been responsible for the publication of at least seven titles. Grain Elevators (2006), Industrial Landscapes (2002), Framework Houses (2000), Water Towers (1988), Cooling Towers (2006), Typologies (2004) and the most recent, Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work (2007). I think several, if not all of these titles, had originally been released by Schirmer Mosel in past years.

All of the titles follow the same sense of design down to similar trim sizes and stark white dust jackets and typography. The printing in all is very well done.

The difficulty I have with most of their books (admittedly I only have two) is that the experience of looking at this work in book-form reduces the power of discovery that is evoked when the work is seen in a grid. I have seen shows of theirs where the work was not in a grid and the same sense of loss was felt. I’m sure many readers have many different experiences when looking at these books but I also find it difficult to keep from establishing a steady page turning rhythm that becomes precisely metronomic.

The book Typologies published by MIT in 2004 does present the work in grids. Out of all of the books, this is my favorite. The only problem is that, now that you have a dozen or so images on each page, each image is reproduced too small. One only gets the basic essence of the works at those thumbnail sizes. To be successful, I imagine the book would have to be approximately 4 x 5 foot in height and length (with a special stand to hold it vertically). Perhaps MIT Press could take one from the playbook of Taschen in this special case. Regardless, it is a beautiful book well worth looking for.



Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work by Susanne Lange is the most recent of MIT’s Becher publications. Lange, who was given access to the photographer’s archives, analyzes the work and method of their fifty year partnership.

Although slightly light on the number of reproductions, 53, its purpose is for study where as the other titles are for the photographs. For me the most interesting aspect is the last third of the book where we are treated to several in-depth interviews and a section of travel notes from Hilla.

Tuesday, September 27, 1983 (Alabama, United States)

Today was a grim day. Not only did we have lots of bad luck but we also miscalculated the weather and were too late to notice that the afternoon would have been perfect for taking photographs.

In the morning we start to develop yesterday’s films. In the daytime we have the problem of not being able to get the bathroom properly dark. Apart from the bathroom window we also block the corridor window with the second mattress from the car. Around midday we notice the mattress has slipped and has started to burn (from the lamp underneath). It looks harmless and we pour water over it, but it continues to smolder within, Bernd then wets it thoroughly and places it on the car as it already stinks so terribly inside…

The second piece of bad luck: all the exposures of a shot in Fairfield are clouded, almost black. After lengthy attempts to reconstruct the situation we come to the conclusion that Bernd’s brand new bellows have detached themselves from the frame perhaps owing to the heat. Bernd has had enough. “For all the creature comforts, this trip is simply not worth it.”

What is additionally interesting about this book is that within the plates section, similar structures are paired on facing pages but the span of time between the two exposures is often many decades. The consistency towards the photographic approach even after 30 or 40 years is remarkable. Especially when you read that they eventually were working with two cameras in different places on the same site. Their approach was so uniform it became one vision shared by two.

With the recent loss of Bernd, this almost fifty year collaboration has come to an end. I find it fascinating that the two could sustain a project for so long and keep working within such strict parameters.

I find it sad to say that we may never see this kind of study achieved in photography again.

Book Available Here (Life and Work)

Book Available Here (Typologies)

Book Available Here (Industrial Landscapes)

Passing Through Eden by Tod Papageorge - Distribution Update

Several people have written to me asking where to buy the Tod Papageorge title Passing Through Eden (published by Steidl) as when I reviewed that book it wasn’t officially in the stores. I had purchased my copy at the Pace MacGill Gallery from a small stock of advance copies they received for the exhibit. I did see one or two copies float through The Strand bookstore here in NYC but that was all.

Well, good news is here, the wait is over…I have been told that they are now being distributed and can be found through your local independent bookseller or directly from the publisher Steidl.

Buy online at Steidlville

La Jetee by Chris Marker

The filmmaker Chris Marker, throughout his career, has questioned photography and filmmaking and their roles in storytelling and representation of life. His films have often defied categorization. They are part documentary, part self portrait, part history, and part fiction. They challenge representations of history, time and memory and the technologies that record and mediate them.

Chris Marker, who was born Christian-Francois Bouche-Villeneuve, adopted his nom de plume in the late 1940’s and until the 1990’s he created an odd punctuation for it as well. In many of his films he is credited as Chris.(period) Marker. As he is reclusive and refuses to grant interviews it has only been guessed as to whether he adopted this to “leave a mark” as his last name implies as additionally the punctuation seems to “pin” itself to the films. There are very few photographs of Marker as well. When requested, he often sends an image of his favorite animal / alter-ego Guillaume the cat.



Curiously, Marker with a rather defeatist attitude turned to film rather than still photography in the 1950’s because he would “never be, say, Robert Frank.” Regardless, his films use still images as a part of the storytelling and three of them, If I had Four Camels, Remembrance of Things to Come and La Jetee, are created totally from still images.



La Jetee, his legendary film made entirely from photographs has been tirelessly cited as the inspiration for Terry Gilliam’s film 12 Monkeys. I say tirelessly but I probably would rather use the word annoyingly as Gilliam pursues the story and plot twist of Marker’s creation in a modern filmic language that Marker had abandoned for his remarkable film La Jetee. Marker “slows” film down to the individual frame by filming not action but photographs of action. Shot probably with a 35mm still camera common to any photographer, he assembled a complete 29 minute film narrative from these separate photographs.

This was done as an experiment in storytelling, but also relieved him of one difficult and costly problem with shooting such a story. He wanted to make a science fiction or futurist film but could not accept the cost that normally comes with such a project. Shooting stills allowed for a more creative approach and avoided complication. (Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville could serve as another fine example of how to make a futuristic film without resorting to expensive sets or special effects.)



Interesting fact about La Jetee is that William Klein (credited as Bill Klein) and his wife Janine appear in the film as beings from the future. William Klein also narrates the story. What is additionally interesting is that Marker is credited as the only photographer for La Jetee, but there are a few shots in the film that seem remarkably in the style of William Klein. Notably when the two main characters are walking in a park and children run through the scene. This isn’t to say that Klein actually shot those few photos but rather to point out that Marker, as a photographer, had remarkable instincts towards capturing subjects on the fly.



One other image that caught my attention was during a sequence of the film representing the destruction of Paris in a World War. This brought William Klein’s version of the apocalypse to mind.



A book of stills from La Jetee: Cine Roman was published by Zone Books in 1992. It is now out of print as very expensive when found. It is worth searching out but will do damage to your wallet.

What is interesting about the book in contrast to the film is that even though they are essentially the same, still photographs, I found the book implies more of a sense of “movement” of images. Even knowing that the film is made from still photographs, we read the book as images in motion. In the film, the images pass by with a similar sensation to a flashgun going off in a darkened room and latent images are frozen, (unmoving) on your retina.



In their Contemporary Film Directors series, the University of Illinois Press has recently released Chris Marker which is a comprehensive study of Marker and his films. Authored by Nora M. Alter, it also includes several interviews made early on in his career.

Many thought provoking aspects of Marker are brought up by Alter. For instance, in discussing “the photograph as spectacle” Alter relates the following:

Events unfold differently if a camera is trained on them. In Level Five (1996) Marker includes two examples of such influence. In one of the clips from Okinawa a woman runs across a field toward a precipice from which her compatriots are leaping. A close examination of the clip reveals that she momentarily hesitates and begins to turn back. Yet the woman recovers her resolve upon meeting the camera eye and takes the plunge. Marker then shows the same clip again, only this time he superimposes onto it images taken in 1900 from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, where an inventor demonstrates a new personal flying device. The filmmaker shows that at the last moment the inventor realizes his new contraption will not fly, but because he is being filmed, he is still compelled to jump, like the unknown woman in Okinawa, to his death. Thus the very act of tracking a film camera on an event is shown to produce actions and, hence, to have the potential to affect and steer the course of history. In Level Five (1996), even more than in his previous films, Marker problematizes the relationship between historical events and their mediated representations.

Marker’s thoughts on photography and fact as related by Alter:

By the time he made Level Five (1996), his primary concern had become that of exposing how the photographic image is both contrived and manipulated. This skepticism reaches an apogee halfway through Level Five when the camera turns to an image of the U.S. flag being raised atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima near the end of World War II. As the commentator observes, the event, presented as if caught spontaneously, has actually been carefully restaged; because the original marines were not available for the photo session, the U.S. military found substitutes.

In many of his films, “the gaze” of a subject being filmed and that relation to camera and meaning is a preoccupation with Marker. The gaze could originate from people, animals or inanimate objects such as statues. Where as Michel Frizot, in a discussion of “the gaze” in relation to the subjects of Henri Cartier Bresson photographs (HCB Scrapbook) describes the creation of additional geometric complexity within the photographic frame, Marker is fascinated with a more direct response to a filmed gaze. In Sans Soleil (1982), a woman whose return of the camera’s gaze at the market in Praia “had lasted 1/24th of a second or the length of a film frame.” For Marker, it is a representation of a fleeting instant of truth that is no longer there except as an image the moment the shutter snaps shut.



In short, Marker underscores that although film and photography may have a high degree of verisimilitude; under no circumstances are they to be taken as anything other than what they are – signs and representations.



Other titles in this Contemporary Film Directors series are: Pedro Almadovar, Abbas Kiarostami, Claire Denis, Wong Kar-Wai, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Joel and Ethan Cohen, Edward Yang and Abel Ferrera.

Book Available Here (CFD Chris Marker)

DVD Available Here (Sans Soleil / La Jetee)

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/

Eve Noire and The Island of the Fisherwomen

Since the age when cameras were made portable and didn’t require entire caravans of supplies a'la Francis Frith to create images, photography and travel have gone hand in hand. Photography was often the only way for many people to experience any sense of the world’s many far away lands. It readily brought different cultures into the living rooms and salons for entertainment or examination and study.

Within this genre of photography and cultural “exploration,” nudity has played a role in the imagery. Often photographers found their way amongst cultures that had different attitudes towards nudity, bodies and modesty.

(An interesting discussion that I heard once on the radio was centered on the different instincts of modesty women around the world display. For instance, the instinct of American women, if intruded upon while naked, is to cover their breasts with one hand and genitals with the other. Muslim women may cover their faces with their hands. Certain women in Africa will cover only their knees leaving everything else exposed.)

When photographers find themselves amongst those cultures where nudity is the norm one could imagine the various intents when making images. Are the images made for ethnographic or anthropologic interest or does the photographer have other motives? Aside from the fact that National Geographic was one source for adolescent boys to get that elusive and coveted clear view of naked breasts, it may be quite clear in that publication at least, the intent seemed true and clear. Other books however seem to pose as an anthropological study but in reality are an early form of soft-core pornography. They represent the kind of very soft-core material that could live up on the shelf next to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The first book I am talking about in this post seems…well… suspect in its motives. Eve Noire (Black Eve) by Bertrand Lembezat published by Hanns Reich Verlag in 1953 is one title that caught my attention and spurred these thoughts.

The book opens with an essay that may confess that the book’s content is less anthropological and more of an appreciation of beauty. Even so, there is something about it that may strike the viewer with a wave of discomfort.
In that essay written by Bertrand Lembezat (the photographer) he starts by writing:

How could anyone possibly be black and live entirely naked? And in addition how could anyone find this beautiful? Isn't it just repulsive? Because it's completely different from our conception of how things should be?

He goes on to write:

Nothing but feelings of vague eroticism mixed with simple minded curiosity occupies their minds when they see a naked black girl or a women undressed in pure nudity. Criticism nothing but criticism enters their brains: 'These androgen masks, these shaved circle shaped heads above edgy angular shoulders...these thin skinny legs, abominable tattoos...’

Despite any criticism, their beauty cannot be denied .You just need to look at their shiny muscular bodies coming from their daily bath illuminated by the hot African sun. At dusk they balance jugs of water on their shaven skulls to the deep fountain (a cultivated waterhole); pearls of water shamelessly touch their soft skin, slowly rolling down their slender bodies.

The eternal Eve comes to the mind of the beholder. An Eve before her fall from grace. Nudity and shame do not know each other yet. A jolly innocence, an innocent happiness. We envy her for her calm naiveté, we envy her for her peace, we envy her for her lack of knowledge about shame.

A black Eve? - So what? Let us remember the verse:

"I am black, so lovely, you daughters from Jerusalem..."

Hasn't a dark beauty been the inspiration for one of the oldest and most beautiful love poems of all time?

Even Gide once said (admitted it): "The Mudang women are usually completely naked; some of them are very beautiful." And he continues: "certain women whose voluptuousness (Aristide) Maillol would have loved."



His description about their huts could be used as a description of them: "Certainly the Masa huts are unique and incomparable. They are not only strange but strangely beautiful. I like them for their beauty I don't like them because they are strange."

The essay ends there. This is Bertrand’s reasoning behind what follows which is frame after frame of nude African women and girls with exposed breasts and airbrushed pubis.



Even though they seem far removed from modern life, the subjects are often aware of what photography is, as some follow an inherent instinct to smile at the camera. The odd photos involve a form of modeling from the subjects. They are posing openly but since nudity is the norm, it may be safe to say that they are not considering what I sense to be the obvious veiled aspects of their collaboration.

Remarkably, there are some really well made photos included among the 64 plates (otherwise what would be the point of talking about it?). This is by no means a good book but it does feature beautiful and rich gravure printing and the somewhat wacky essay in German was worth my $15.00 dollars. Although Bertrand Lembezat is credited as the main photographer, there is another name credited with some photos, a Robert Carmet. There is not much to distinguish in style from one to the other besides Carmet seems more drawn to the dances and daily rituals.



Another title that was brought to my attention is The Island of the Fisherwomen by Fosco Maraini published in an English edition in 1962. This book is subtitled: An enchanting tour of an unspoiled island paradise where modern Japanese mermaids dive below the sea’s surface to wrest a living from the depths.

It features a full story in text about a “student of ethnology’ traveling to a secluded Japanese island in quest of “mermaids.” He finds them, and describes their way of life in both text and photographs. They are known as “Ama” women and they are Japanese women who dive nearly nude for mollusks to earn a living. The written story is not without its own doses of titillation and open double entendre.

The flap copy paints the tone: In the perceptive, witty text and beautiful photographs of this beguiling book, he (Maraini) reveals the charming innocence of a simple way of life, uncorrupted by the trappings of our civilization, with neither automobiles nor television nor, indeed, feminine attire.

This title goes a bit out of its way to avoid being perceived as anything less than an adventure story and ethnological study by taking its time to get to the nudity. It features both black and white and color photography. The underwater shots are entirely cast in aquamarine color. The black and white are in nice gravure.

It features some rather funny captions to the photos that come across as the equivalent of ignoring the one ton elephant sitting in the room. The caption for the second photo in from the right-side of my composite above reads: “These goggles are worn under water.”

Again, there are some nice photos and the text is actually a fun read that reminds me of a Hardy Boys adventure story (with breasts).

My point being that in certain circumstances although the subject is described in words as “uncorrupted” it was eventually corrupted. Not by automobiles or television but by photography. Perhaps unknowingly, they were all trapped by our civilization in the end.

I would like to thank Patrick Becker for his translation of the German essay in Eve Noire and also to Charlie Rhyne for loaning me his copy of The Island of the Fisherwomen.

Book Available Here (Eve Noire)

Book Available Here (Island of the Fisherwomen)

I Love Boras! by Lars Tunbjork

If Lars Tunbjork’s book Office (Journal 2001) showed us the behind-the-scenes workings of capitalism in white collar offices around the world, his new book I Love Boras! shows us the fruits of those labors as they appear in the landscape of Boras, Sweden.

Made within the same time period of his project Landet Utom Sig: Bilder fran Sverige (Country Beside Itself: Pictures from Sweden) the content of I Love Boras! may seem familiar. On the Steidl website, they describe the images in I Love Boras! as not used in that first book because “they didn’t fit, they were too ugly, too beautiful or too silly. Together they show a darker and more hysteric view of modern western society…”

The book begins with rampant consumerism literally smothering people with its products, colors and language. Tunbjork stifles us with claustrophobic frames that may make you feel the need to take a machete to your local Walmart just to navigate its overflowing aisles. In Tunbjork’s hands, this world is exposed for all of the gaudiness and saccharine flavored superficiality that separates us from our money. Like children we are drawn to desire things due to their color and appeal of design (or its appeal to the subconscious).

As mice in a running wheel get occasionally flipped upside down, so does the populace of Tunbjork’s I Love Boras! as he seeks out moments of awkwardness to make his point. All of what he is photographing is part of contemporary European (or American) life. The work, leisure, and consumerism in his pictures add up to a vision of purchased “happiness” with little else gained. We have become what we own. The work in this book, although by the title is site specific (Boras, Sweden), speaks of the larger machination and adaptation of it into our vacuous modern lives.

Although this has been a thread that has run through Tunbjork’s work, what is vastly different is the package of that message. Journal, who published his other titles, created a sleek and clean design that left the images some breathing room with each page lined with white borders around the images. In I Love Boras!, the designer Greger Ulf Nilson has accentuates the themes of the book by the use of a larger trim size and images that bleed to the page edge. This creates an even greater attack on the senses. This is the form that suits the photography.

From the front cover board on which is the first image is printed and into the endpapers which are other images in the sequence, we dive right in an only occasionally do we come to the surface. When Tunbjork has switched camera formats, we are then given a strip of white filler on the page that provides a small break. Although this was unavoidable without cropping the images to fit the page ratio, I do find it slightly distracting.

The book contains 164 photos and like consumerism itself, it is appropriately overdoing it. For a book that describes that culture, it certainly has learned its lessons of marketing down to the lemon and cotton candy colored slipcase that boldly announces its presence on the bookshelf.

There is no essay (one wasn’t needed) but it does come with a caption booklet which I question whether that was necessary either. We don’t really need to know place and date as it is not important to the book’s content. It does however provide the colophon for the book so I guess its inclusion was unavoidable. Or, since the only words that appear on the actual book are on the spine, they could have printed it there.

Does Lars love Boras? Perhaps the strongest critique comes from love. I know there must be a reason that the book is designed with a photo of a family loaded down with junk food on the front cover and a dog’s behind on the back. (Lars…do you not have a photo of a horse’s ass?)

I guess that’s close enough.

Buy online at Steidlville

The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings by Kaylynn Deveney

When Kaylynn Deveney relocated from the United States to southern Wales, she would have no way of knowing she was moving into an apartment across the street from the subject of her first book, a Mr. Albert Hastings.

The Day to Day Life of Albert Hastings published by Princeton Architectural Press is a combination of fine photography by Kaylynn Deveney and text and drawings by Mr. Hastings. As the title suggests, the book offers a look into the domestic rituals and routines of an aging Albert Hastings whom at the time of meeting Kaylynn Deveney, was 85.

It opens with an image of a garden pathway covered with greenery as if to suggest (like so many great photobooks) we are venturing into a secretive, secluded world. Mr. Hastings’s world is mostly hidden from view; his garden seems to be the buffer between the outside world and his day to day chores. His days are spent cooking, gardening, feeding pigeons, drinking his cup of tea (“My cuppa”), all of which seem to be the pleasure centers around which his life revolves. The outside world, though seemingly calm when it appears in the pictures, is referred to by Albert as the “Rat Race.”

Kaylynn’s photography is warm and respectful. As photographers, some approach a subject knowing that it is full of potential to make “good pictures.” Others approach a subject because of an interest in learning something through the process of picture-making. Deveney seems intent on using the medium to bridge a generational gap and befriend her seemingly charismatic and warm neighbor. Photography may have invoked the friendship but after looking at the pictures, it seems to have taken a back seat to the importance of the relationship in both of their lives.

If it were just a book of photographs alone, we might read Mr. Hastings as simply a stand in for a representative portrait of an older Wales everyman, but through his participation in the project, by captioning the photographs, we decipher his personality due to his choice of words in describing the photographs content. They often display, not only humor, but also a directness that comments on his perception of himself and photographs.

Under one photograph of a hat he writes simply “Size 7 1/8”

Under one of him near a golden lit window he writes, “I’m not talking to a ghost, I’m opening the curtains.”

His concern for the things around him is felt with warm regard. Deveney photographs a “Wind broken Daffodil” which is held upright in a tea cup due to the ingenious use of a rubber-band. He speaks of the pigeons he feeds outside of his apartment as if they have a concern with being photographed. One caption reads: “Feeding pigeons, net curtain in the way. We were quietly getting birds accustomed to camera.”

The book also contains drawings by Mr. Hastings of clocks, which in another context might amount to nothing but a shopworn metaphor for the passage of time. But here, since they are drawings done by his hand, they also reflect the control and order he exerts over his day.

There are several old photographs also reproduced of Albert’s wife who passed away in 1958. Oddly, there is a tone of melancholy that runs through the book that is felt not from Deveney’s photographs of Albert but mostly from the inclusion of these vintage photographs of his wife. These photographs, beyond Kaylynn’s presence which is felt, are his companions as well as memories. When Deveney photographs Albert with his pigeons, there appears a photograph of his wife feeding pigeons on the facing page.

The book is very nicely designed and is appropriately small in trim size. It seems precious like the relationship between Deveney and Hastings. The handwritten texts (Albert’s) create a sense of the photographs as objects. The sequence is good and is broken into sections by occasional photographs of the garden, perhaps as an attempt to break the book into different days. There are seventy-five photographs and although Deveney has included a handful that are repetitive and could have been left out, it is in no way burdened by length or many superfluous images. The printing is well done.

In her essay that begins the book, Deveney writes; “This work is sited where Bert’s autobiographical vision, based in life experience and feeling, meets the eye of a stranger. Together our visions and versions of his day-to-day experience sit side by side to create a new tale. At the end of this project Bert and I, of course, maintain our individual perspective, but I think we are richer, too, for being informed by one another. I know I am.”

Perhaps through this small, unassuming book, we too can be a little more informed.

Book Available Here (Day to Day Life of A. H.)

www.papress.com

Robert Frank's Me and My Brother

As a part of Steidl’s 5 year plan of Robert Frank releases, they have just published a book to accompany the film Me and My Brother.

First the book:

The book is fantastic. Period. It has a lo-fi production feel, made to look like an aged film script. In keeping with Frank’s aesthetic, it is an assemblage of typewriter written pages and hand trimmed photographs hastily pasted into place by rubber cement.

The text is the entire script of dialogue from the film originally written by Robert Frank, Sam Shepard, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. The photographs are mostly stills taken directly from the film but I did see several images that were either production stills or frames taken from footage that hit the editing room floor.

The printing fits the tone of the book (and film) perfectly. The choice of materials and book construction is also without flaw. The real bonus with this book is that in a plastic pouch on the inside of the back cover is a copy of the film on a DVD in both NTSC and PAL formats.

Now the movie:

Robert Frank has been known as a seeker of truth. In photography, his pursuit led to the creation of arguably the greatest book to grace the medium. Me and My Brother was his first feature length film and it too broke from traditions and set off to establish its own cinematic storytelling language and form.

As a viewer I always wonder how much one might want to read into a film or body of work. In Me and My Brother I found a wealth of topics that I picked up upon after a few viewings. Admittedly, the first time I saw this film I left the theater a bit stunned, excited and bewildered by the 85 minutes I had just experienced. There seemed to be so much content but it is presented in way that was temporarily beyond my comprehension.

What I am about to describe might be better left to read after you view the film for yourself if you have not yet seen Me and My Brother. These are my readings of what the film ultimately represents so in the possibility that you do not want me to poison the well of your thinking (so to speak) with my interpretations and observations, go buy or rent the film and see for yourself. I will only say that it is a great film experience when given the patience it deserves.

For those still reading…here are some things in the film that prompted thought.

The story is centered on Julius Orlovsky, a catatonic who is being cared for by his brother Peter. It is a film within in a film that uses both black and white and color. Color is the choice when describing the false reality of the film that is being made within Frank’s black and white film. Frank’s main interest is questioning the nature of truth and his relationship to truth as a filmmaker. Can film ever really show truth?



Throughout the film Frank shows how we are always “acting” in one form or another. Having a “style” is a form of acting. Having “personality” is in essence, a form of acting too. For Frank, Julius (the real Julius), seems to be held up as a representation of pure truth. He is a man stripped of all artificial personality and intellectual self creation.



Frank comments cinematically on this difficulty with dealing with reality. In the beginning of the film, an actor is introduced to play the part of Julius because according to the director, Julius is too difficult to work with. He doesn’t want to act or perhaps cannot be easily directed. Therefore, since the director cannot distort the reality of Julius in the manner he wishes for the film, he brings in an artificial reality to portray actual reality. Enter Joseph Chaiken, who in the color sequences of the film plays Julius. The director is portrayed by Christopher Walken speaking with the dubbed voice of Robert Frank. (Interesting fact: Me and My Brother was Walken’s first film role)



This questioning of the role reality plays in film is reinforced at many points. In a scene towards the end of the film, Chaiken playing Julius, faces the camera because he has “run out of things to say.” Just as Frank directs him off camera to “say something to the camera”, a baby in the room starts crying loudly. Chaiken, faced with the reality of the crying baby momentarily tries to comfort the infant and when he fails, he leaves the room to inquire about what role he is to play next.



This is an interesting moment as we witness Chaiken the actor, when faced with reality, cannot deal with it and instead, redirects his attention towards finding a different false reality to work within. This avoidance of reality is one of the main themes of the film. As Frank mentions on the cover of the book, “At times most of us are silently acting because it would be too painful not to act and too cruel to talk of the truth that exists…”

Although I am not sure that this wasn’t part of the script, the scene I just described seems so spontaneous that I think it was a bit of real life slipping into the film. Frank’s instincts have been honed enough to allow these moments happen and to create their own meanings. In essence, it starts as an idea and the result winds up transcending that idea into something greater and more meaningful. (Interesting fact: The photographer Ralph Gibson was an assistant on this film and one image from the set appeared in his own body of work as seen below)



Similar to the scene above, the notion of redirection of attention or distraction from reality is also expressed in a scene where the real Julius remembers accompanies a young child on a trip to an aquarium and the seashore. First they are caught up in examining how the world works according to nature with observation of the fish and the shoreline of the beach. Then their attention is diverted by symbols of how the world works according to man through the fascination with a snow-globe by the child and a dollar bill for Julius.



Frank takes a poke at several issues relating to acting and even documentary photography.



Chaiken playing himself and commenting on actors relates his distrust of his profession.



As a separate comment on the distrust of actors, Frank also seems to prod at Lee Strasberg and the Actor’s Studio practice of teaching “method acting” as in one scene, an actress dons an Actor’s Studio t shirt while off the film set and in her everyday life. Perhaps again, commenting on the inability for actors (or people in general) to escape some kind of acting even in their everyday lives. That would, after all, be an example of method acting carried to the extreme.



In terms of symbols, John F Kennedy makes several appearances in the film as his face is embroidered onto a small blanket or throw rug that gets unfurled at two different moments in the film. John Kennedy is perhaps the example of an image that is created mostly in the minds of the individual that remember him. He was one of the first presidents that the cameras and television loved in terms of his image. His assassination seemed to create a sense of mythic stature of his image, character and memory.



The topic of documentary photography gets address (and trampled) with footage of Roscoe Lee Browne “shooting a documentary” of the Orlovsky brothers and Allen Ginsberg while a woman off screen states: “OK, you’re a documentary photographer. Or maybe you’re like a reportage photographer. You know – that’s a strange thing, you know, because like some guy is killing a woman right in front of you – and like – you’re taking a fucking picture of it. You’re not helping a woman save her life – you’re getting a story. I mean – where’s your one to one relationship? That’s what I want to know. You’re a creep. You are some blackmailer. Wow. Because you’re always watching the privacy.”



I found it interesting that Frank does not take a swing at television. Considering that TV was still young yet very influential. Perhaps, beyond the numbing qualities of TV, Frank identified with its power of influence in matters relating to the Vietnam War which by 1968 (the year the film was finished) was raging and appeared nightly in the homes of viewers. Or maybe it is too obvious a subject at which to line up his sights. Regardless, its presence is never felt in the film.

There is one segment that does seem to be a small tribute to image making, cinema and in particular, the Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov. It is a series of shots taken on the street of intersections busy with cars and some pedestrians crossing in front of the camera while the voice over of a woman says: “Forget the film – throw away the camera – just take the strip – wouldn’t it be fantastic if you didn’t have to have a piece of celluloid between you and what you saw? If the eye were its own projector instead of its own camera? I am a camera. That’s a beautiful title – I am a camera too.”

In a 1923 manifesto, Vertov wrote "I am kino-eye, I am mechanical eye, I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it. My path leads to the creation of a fresh perception of the world I decipher in a new way a world unknown to you."



In fact, if there is precedent to the cinematic language Frank is engaging for Me and My Brother, Vertov would be that precedent from his own use of montage and nontraditional means.

“Kino eye uses every possible means in montage, comparing and linking all points of the universe in any temporal order, breaking, when necessary, all the laws and conventions of film construction.” – Dziga Vertov

Franks cinematic approach and camera work is rough. He virtually pushes and shoves the viewer into scenes and jump cuts seemingly to confound. On first viewings this film is difficult and exhausting. It challenges you to tease out its meaning while at the same time tripping you up to easy conclusions. In fact, he starts the film with a Do Not Enter sign that flashes a preliminary warning.



This is perhaps the only way he could make a film that is about questioning the notions of image reproduction and reality. Had he followed traditional filmic ways, it would have been a pointless endeavor.

Interestingly, the avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas in a 1969 review of Me and My Brother complained about Frank’s editing and the film’s final form by writing: I found Me and My Brother too clever, like trying to tell something, and play five records at the same time, and maybe stand on your head, and wiggle your toes, and do a few other things at the same time – instead of doing it plainly and to the point.

In the same article he declares: No filmmaker really shows us life as it is: all filmmakers show us their inner states.



Frank was obviously quite aware of the reaction this film might receive and pokes fun at the film and perhaps himself as during the opening titles, he shows an audience at a film screening yelling at the screen and ultimately walking out before the film even starts. Only a couple people stay seated and one man turns to the camera and states excitedly: “This is a wonderful movie. It’s great. I really like it.”



It is safe to say that I do not know enough about cinema or experience cinema on a complex enough level to challenge Jonas Mekas on his statements. But for me, in my world, I second the notion of the man in the theater that turns excitedly to the camera …

“This is a wonderful movie. It’s great. I really like it.”

Maybe you will too...

Book Available Here (Me and My Brother)

The Electa Editrice Portfolios

In the late seventies and early eighties, the Gruppo Editoriale Electa in Milano, Italy published a series of portfolios of some great photographers. These are known as the Electa Editrice portfolios.

In 1979 there were 6 portfolios published, one each on the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lewis Hine, Diane Arbus, Nadar, Tina Modotti and Robert Capa.

These six were published to correspond with the Photography: Venice ’79 (Venezia ’79) exhibition. The show and book (Photography: Venice ’79) provided a view of photographic trends from the past century.



In 1980 - 1982, they also published portfolios of Man Ray, Eadweard Muybridge, Henry Fox Talbot, Lewis Carroll, Erwin Blumenfeld, Cecil Beaton, Gianni Berengo Gardin, and Fulvio Roiter. In 1986, they published one portfolio by Francois Gillet.

I first encountered a few of these portfolios when they were selling at the Strand Bookstore here in New York City in 1987. I bought three of them. One Lewis Carroll, one Eadweard Muybridge, and one Henry Fox Talbot. They were $4.95 per portfolio. I think they also had a Lewis Hine portfolio for the same price but I passed it up because…well…I was young and stupid. There couldn’t possibly be any other explanation.

These portfolios were printed in editions of 1000 and are made up of 12 loose prints on 11.5 X 15.5 inch heavy weight paper with a sheet of protective tissue paper on each. Those 12 prints sit in a black four point enclosed paper envelope, and that envelope slips into a hard, glossy paper slipcase with the title printed in bright orange on the cover. Each portfolio comes with a folded information sheet that gives a short artist biography and an explanation of the work alongside thumbnails of each of the plates. Daniela Palazzoli was the editor for the three that I have (perhaps she was for the entire series) and she contributed an essay to the Eadweard Muybridge portfolio.



From her text: “Woman throwing shawl on her shoulders (plate 11) plays on the contrast between the linear nakedness of the body and the baroque folds and volutes of the cloth. Woman spanking a child (plate 12) is a delightful subject movingly executed. It seems to be the only plate in Animal Locomotion in which the action is feigned. The illusion of movement is here created by the slow rotation of the camera around the subject, but Muybridge refrained from getting the mother to spank the child really.”

These portfolios are additionally nice in that each print is removable and suitable for framing. I have seen these reproductions described as being Heliogravure but on further study, they cannot be. Heliogravure is an etched plate process where the ink left in the recesses of the plate transfer the image onto paper and upon close inspection, they do not reveal any dot or line pattern common to offset, letterpress or rotogravure. These images definitely have a halftone dot under inspection with a loupe. Besides, I have heard that the last major publication to use Heliogravure was Paul Strand’s Mexican Portfolio produced in 1932.

For the most part, the printing is good but the process tends to block up the lower range tones and the highlights are somewhat sacrificed. They have a nice feel for a framable object but they are definitely made for the consumer market. I would guess that they originally held a retail price of $20.00 to $25.00 when they were originally published. Online, the Henry Fox Talbot and Nadar portfolios can still be found cheaply at $65.00 - $125.00.

About eight years ago I saw the Diane Arbus portfolio at Caney Booksellers in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and I recall it being around $300.00 dollars. If my memory serves correctly it contained the Disneyland castle image, the Christmas tree image, The Vanderbuilt baby head image, Brooklyn family image, the grenade boy image and…I can’t remember the rest. If any one out there owns this Diane Arbus portfolio and wants to contribute the plate list to the comments section, I’d be interested and thankful. The same goes for the Robert Capa plate list as I have not ever seen that portfolio.

By the way, do you know who the Vanderbuilt baby is in the Diane Arbus photo?



Anderson Cooper from CNN.

A special thank you to Andrew Cahan for fielding some questions regarding these portfolios. http://www.cahanbooks.com/

Conversations with Contemporary Photographers

Often when a photographer speaks publicly at a lecture or during an interview, the promise of something meaningful to be learned is strong. This promise is even stronger if the artist happens to be of legendary status within the medium.

There often is an air of hanging onto the artist’s words so tightly that it is inevitable that it slips into disappointment or at worst, outright boredom and seat rustling. Generally artists do not seem to have much to say publicly or are not willing to reveal much beyond basic process and a good side story. Or perhaps the expectations of the audience are too grand. After all, if words were so important, they would be writers and not visual artists.

They can be very entertaining though. Recently during a talk with William Klein and Max Kozloff at the International Center of Photography, a woman in a front row seat left after the first ten minutes of the interview and Klein proceeded to call after her, playing the part of an injured ego to much laughter from the audience. When a second woman in the front row, who was wearing a dress that barely contained her voluptuousness, got up to leave, Klein introduced her as “Ms. Cleavage of the ICP.” Beyond those few humorous moments, Klein mostly ignored or tended to not understand Kozloff’s line of questioning and the interview drifted slightly towards the embarrassing. All that I can remember, besides the “Ms. Cleavage” incident, is a story about Chris Marker and another longer winded one about Alain Resnais buying comic books for outrageous sums of money in the 1950’s.

An extreme example of the disappointment one can experience, was when the New York Public Library held a talk between Robert Frank and Howard Norman. After seeing the end result, there was perhaps a collective wish from the audience that it had just been cancelled.

The book Conversations with Contemporary Photographers published by Umbrage Editions in 2005 brings together nine interviews from a surprising range of contemporary artists who are forthcoming on a variety of topics. Joan Fontcuberta, Graciela Iturbide, Max Pam, Duane Michals, Miguel Rio-Branco, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Alex Webb, Bernard Plossu and Javier Vallhonrat all discuss their art, backgrounds, and experiences with different interviewers.

Each conversation is lengthy and usually weighs in at approximately 30 pages of small sized type. Due to the length, the interviewer and subject are allowed to digress into tangents that fall outside the norm of a formulaic interview. These are conversations that ebb and flow and allow for a more interesting read, allowing for the personalities of the artists to surface.

Duane Michaels has his moment sparring against what he perceives to be the pretentiousness in much of recent contemporary photographic art. P.L. diCorcia discusses the demands of the art world and being labeled a mid-career artist. Graciela Iturbide shares memories of assisting Manuel Alvarez Bravo and discusses cultural differences in attitude towards photography in the countries she has photographed.

These interviews have many moments of insight into the medium that promotes further discussion or thought. At other times though (perhaps I am cynical) I feel that some of the process of any interview is spent with the artist creating an image of themselves. In fact, that is what is separately interesting to me about this type of book. How artists speak, and how they have developed the way in which they speak about their art and process. To me, this often reveals what I perceive as their comfort level with their relationship to the medium and their work.

In the end, I think Philip-Lorca diCorcia indirectly expressed this best at one point in his interview when he says: “The deepest motivation for a lot of artists is obviously the one they all share: Their great fear they are a fraud.”

Book Available Here (Conversations)