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01 Feb 09

Richard Howe - THE MANHATTAN STREET CORNERS

Interesting docu-project by Richard Howe: photographing every street *corner* in New York City.

www.richardhowe.net/...index-msc.html - Preview

nyc photography richard_howe street_scape usage

27 Jan 09

1927 photograph by August Sander

From Wallflower dispatches.

Note: no overhead power lines. Yay. (And this photo is from 1927...!) Also: no trees or plants on boulevard ...hm. Not so yay?

*But* - people put flower pots and plant baskets on their window sills. (Not visible in this picture, because it's obviously not spring or summer; the subject is wearing winter clothes.)

Greenery in the city: did the individual "green" her city first?

I was born in Duesseldorf's Altstadt (Old Town), at home in an apartment house that looks like any one of the ones pictured here. There is a park across the street from 1 Bergerallee, and the Rhine flows nearby, flanked by a promenade/ park. But Bergerallee also has no trees or greenery, except for what residents provide in pots. It's nonetheless more than tolerable.

Note the wide, wide boulevards, perfect for summertime street furniture, cafes, children playing. How did Sander catch the city so deserted-looking, I wonder...?

www.wallflowerdispatches.com/...st-sander-ret_bearbeitet-3.jpg - Preview

photography memoir duesseldorf berlin august_sander

18 Jan 09

"Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait / current work" by Chris Jordan

Fascinating project:
QUOTE
Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibililties of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2008
UNQUOTE

www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php - Preview

photography visualization statistics consumerism culture environment chris_jordan art_projects

29 Aug 08

"Image Disembodiment?", by Bernard Languillier

Found via ...? Kazys Varnelis?, Geoff at BLDGBLOG? (can't place it, but at some smart blog I read), an essay by Bernard Languillier about how the digital process is changing our relationship with printed images. It's a to-read-later piece for me right now - haven't had time to read it thoughtfully yet, but it promises some compelling insights (something a bit better than Emily Gould's recent piece in MIT's Technology Review, "It's not a revolution if nobody loses," which ostensibly bases itself on Walter Benjamin's pivotal essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction").

www.luminous-landscape.com/...disembodiment.shtml - Preview

embodiment disembodiment photography imagery digital_pictures printing bernard_languillier

many of us still feel the need
to somehow return our images to the physical world they originated from
by printing them
the death of Paper.
9 more annotations...
- Photographers will be able to create
  their images in the very environment in which their customers will in the
  end view the photograph. Standards will be defined that specify how a virtual
  fine print should be created for ultimate viewing I various possible customers
  configurations.
  - - intriguing (scary?) idea: that photographers / artists / producers would in future create work with consumer totally in mind -- puts a whole new (digital) spin on patronage. In Renaissance, patrons demanded artworks suited to specific settings/ purposes, but not perhaps as micro-managed as this...? - on 2008-09-15
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- Beyond technology though, this evolution
  will only be possible because of a much deeper change in the way people
  relate with time, stability and dependence
- I see a clear trend in which people have been taught to accept
  various aspects of their lives to be less permanent than they were in the
  past. This will reduce the need for images that have to be here to stay,
  in other words reduce the need for archival quality in photograph embodiments.
- The paradigm of property
  started to vanish with software licenses in which owners became life long
  borrowers. The concept evolved with the notion of software as a service
  where the usage of software itself becomes the good being owned.
- Another key enabler will be changes in the
  way people deal with the concept of property.
- Property becomes an instantaneous item that vanishes as time
  passes by
- I believe that a virtual fine art market
  would further accelerate and multiply creative opportunities by letting
  remote players unleash forms of artistic collaboration we are only starting
  to imagine. It does for sure extend far beyond photography.
- This along with the need to deal with more
  IT aspects as part of the fine art selling process will result in new business
  opportunities for federated online art dealership.
- This could threaten
  the survival of smaller producers. Will a few get visibility and survive
  while others cannot afford to invest in the tools and define a distribution
  network? The way shareware software is sold today provides interesting
  hints regarding suitable go to market approaches in such a context.

26 Mar 08

Street photographers fear for their art amid climate of suspicion - Times Online

Here's a sobering article on the general hysteria over "terrorism," which has resulted in getting street photographers arrested or detained or questioned. Anyone seen taking photographs, especially covertly or seemingly so, is likely to get in trouble these days. But how can you be a good street photographer if you don't conceal just a little bit the fact that you're taking photos in the first place? You want that candid moment, right?

entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/...article3574763.ece - Preview

freedom paranoia photography public_space street_photography terrorism

Matt Stuart photographs the unscripted drama of the London streets. Entirely
spontaneous, his pictures are made possible by a combination of instinct,
cunning and happy coincidence, revealing the beauty and significance of the
everyday - what the rest of us see but don't notice, moments that vanish
faster than the blink of an eye.

For his efforts, Stuart has picked up a little collection of pink
stop-and-search slips, souvenirs of practising a century-old art form in a
city increasingly paranoid and authoritarian.
After 11 years, Stuart is
something of an old hand. Using the street photographer's traditional tool
of choice - the discreet and near silent Leica camera - he knows how to make
himself invisible, make an image and move on. He rarely runs into trouble;
when he does, he knows his rights.
9 more annotations...
- a new poster campaign by the Metropolitan Police is inviting Londoners to
  call a hotline if they don't like the look of a photographer. “Thousands of
  people take photos every day,” runs the text. “What if one of them seems
  odd?” The poster states that terrorists use cameras for surveillance.
- “People need to understand the context,” Stuart says. “We've been mistaken for
  paparazzi and attacked since Princess Diana died. As far as the public's
  concerned, if you're a man with a camera you're probably a paedophile. And
  now, if we look ‘odd', we're also more than likely terrorists.”
- To some, the very idea of covertly photographing strangers might seem “odd”,
  even distasteful. And yet a proportion of those same people will own a print
  of Robert Doisneau's Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville, or have sent greetings
  cards showing 1930s Paris, as recorded by Brassai. Street photography has
  given us a lot. More, perhaps, than we know.
- Street photography doesn't just document what our environment used to look
  like; it shows us how it really looks now, freezing the moment to reveal the
  weirdness and magic of the split second ... Stuart's photograph of a young
  dancer, in mid-air, upside-down, in Trafalgar Square ... Mermelstein's of a
  woman out walking her pet iguana. These images reveal the surreal in the
  real, force us to appreciate that our city spaces are collages of constantly
  shifting, surprising juxtaposition.
- I ask Mermelstein whether he's ever hesitated before recording a complete
  stranger. He says he has ... “but I believe firmly that if something's in
  the public domain then one has the right to render them photographically.
  That if you're out on the street, you're in public.
  - - interesting, how that compares to France... - on 2008-03-26
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- But aren't there times when he'd rather not be photographed? “Living
  in London I'm filmed 300 times a day by CCTV, so I've got over that
  quickly.”
  - - touchE! - on 2008-03-26
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- “In France, traditionally one of
  the great centres of street photography, the law now says you own the rights
  to your own image, so street photography's become a dead art. In London
  there's a growing community of photographers, using digi- tal technology,
  not just cameras, but blogs, too, to document the city and give each other
  instant feedback.”
- “I'm not going to belittle the issue of terrorism, but this is paranoia. And
  unfortunately, since Lady Di and now this link with terrorists,
  photography's seen by many people as something that's a little ... cheap.”
- Street photography on the net
  www.in-public.com
  
  A showcase of contemporary street photographers, including work by Matt
  Stuart, plus a “masters” section, featuring the brilliant and influential
  Joel Meyerowitz.
  www.seconds2real.com
  
  An international street photography collective, with a newsletter, and links
  to interviews by and films of masters of the art.
  www.public-life.org
  
  A German-based collective, including galleries, news and book reviews.
  www.billcharles.com/merm/jeffmermelstein_1.htm
  
  Work by Jeff Mermelstein, chronicler of New York.
  www.magnumphotos.com
  
  The world's most famous photographic agency includes work by some of the
  pioneers and masters of street photography, including Henri Cartier-Bresson
  and Elliott Erwitt.

28 Jan 08

Boogie: Bleak Street Lifes (PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things”)

Interview with "Serbian photographer Boogie [who] grew up in the war-torn region of former Yugoslavia, documenting protests and the disturbing portraits of skinheads. After moving from Belgrade to Brooklyn in 1998, he started observing New York’s bleak street side of life with monochrome shots. Distinctively, his work isn’t emphatic. He doesn’t judge. He is more reporting on a not so distant universe with a fine eye for detail - and a lot of guts. He showed PingMag his depiction of Brooklyn gang life and junkies." Boogie notes: "'This whole life is a bunch of choices you make and they just made a couple of wrong ones,' says photographer Boogie about his series on junkies in Brooklyn."

pingmag.jp/...-bleak-street-life-photography - Preview

boogie brooklyn drug_addiction gangs interview nyc photography ping_mag street_life

They liked me and I never judged them. Because who am I to judge anyone? That junkie, or a gangster, it could’ve been me and you. This whole life is a bunch of choices you make and they just made a couple of wrong ones.

It came to the point where I would just go to their houses, hang out, and they were doing whatever they would do, had I not been there. It’s the moment every photographer lives for - when you become a fly on the wall…
- I guess one question might be whether society is "allowed" to make choices for them by demanding they go into rehab, or whether their right to choose (which inevitably includes stealing and degradation of others to support their habit) is paramount. It's alright for an artist like Boogie not to judge, but that's not an option for people who are victims of the junkie's crimes. Maybe we won't have an acceptable answer until the proposed vaccine against drug addiction is on the market...? - on 2008-01-28
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