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1000 Words

There are so many good on-line photography magazines now, and 1000 Words is one of them, “dedicated to contemporary photography in the UK and beyond”. As its name suggests, it includes writing about photography as well as images, and publishes some excellent illustrated reviews of photographic books.

Two things in particular appealed to me in the latest issue, #16, now on-line (there is a small oddity on the web site which means that if you access the 15 back issues they also have #16 at the top right of the page.) But this one really is #16, though there doesn’t seem to be any way to create a ‘permalink’ to it.

Outstanding in this edition is the work of Vanessa Winship from her book ‘she dances on Jackson‘ mentioned here a couple of months back, with a thoughtful review by Deputy Editor Michael Grieve. The book is finely produced and

But there is also a beautiful essay ‘Tractor Boys‘ by Swedish photographer Martin Bogren, with an essay by Christian Caujolle, one of the founders and artistic director of Agence Vu. There is a splendid unity in these black and white images.

Life Force

Life Force magazine is a free, online, monthly reportage magazine which celebrates the art-form of the photo-essay. Started in 2011 it is sponsored by what it describes as “The quality British national newspaper, the Telegraph”, a publication I view with few positive feelings.

The paper, often referred to as ‘The Torygraph’ generally represents the views of the Conservative Party and its owners, the Barclay Brothers, reclusive British businessmen who also own the Ritz Hotel and much else. The tax affairs of the various companies they own have often been questioned and they are attempting, according to residents, to take over the Channel Island of Sark (they own around a third of it and have a castle on Brecqhou, an island a few yards away from the mainland which is part of Sark.)

But Life Force seems to be untainted by all of that. Its title an obvious reference to Life Magazine, it also gets in the name of the most famous British picture magazine on its front page where it states:

“It has been described as the “Picture Post of the 21st Century” – a photo-led magazine that explores the world and the human condition through the narrative use of photography.”

In its issues it has published some fine photography, living up to its “vision” to

“use photo-essays to entertain and enlighten whilst at the same time never missing an opportunity to speak out for those in need or without a voice ” and reflecting its statement “We don’t believe in voyeurism or in the exploitation of those less fortunate than ourselves.“

The title Life Force also refers to the kind of content it publishes, photo-essays that “capture life by observing and recording fleeting moments of human energy that are about hope, strength and optimism, despite perhaps adversity.” It also reflects the desire that many photojournalists have – including its editor Damian Bird – to “empower those that figure in our photography.”

It really has published a great deal of fine photography – and you can still see the previous issued back to the start in Jan 2011 (click on the menu item ‘*This month’s photo-essays* to see the content.) The list of contributors is impressive, with links to their web sites.

The October 2013 issue contains Greg Marinovich‘s Dead Zone, The Last Samurai by David James, Kashmir by Ami Vitale, editor Damian Bird‘s Camp Afghanistan, Ladakh India by Kalpana Chatterjee, Senegalese Cotton by Sean Hawkey, Myanmar by Catherine Karnow, 21 Days in China by Raymond Gehman, Andrew Gehman‘s Mason-Dixon Line, an interview (with some of his portraits) with Terry O’Neil and work taken by David Eustace as a part of the advertising campaign for the Lumix G6.

All the essays are worth a look, though I found those by Marinovich, James, Vitale and Hawkey of most interest. You can also possibly sign up for a monthly newsletter giving details of each new issue, though I’m not sure if this worked when I tried it.

Marville’s Paris

I imagine that the US the National Gallery of Art in Washington is currently closed (I’m writing this on 1 Oct 2013) courtesy of the US Republican Tea Party’s opposition to heath care. I can’t at all understand their opposition to what appears to be a very sensible if rather limited measure on public healthcare, any more than I can understand the current UK government’s push to privatise our NHS here – now well under way through various back doors. As a great supporter of our NHS I was sorry not to be at the march on Sunday when over 50,000 people went to Manchester to show their support. Or as one presenter on our BBC radio – once another great British institution but now sadly compromised in its coverage of UK events – put it ‘some people say as many as ten thousand‘. If the police estimate was 50,000, you can be sure it was rather more.

Assuming at some point before January 5, 2014 US Republicans come to their senses and allow US Museums to reopen, those within travelling distance of Washington should make for the exhibition Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris which opened there on 29 September, the first major US showing of his work with a hundred photographs. The NGA page also has a link to a good set of 18 photographs, Paris in Transition, including work by Marville and others. It says the show is in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a search on their site reveals around 20 works by Marville with images on line.

Back to public radio, NPR (it does photograph much better than the BBC) has a good report on the show by Susan Stamberg talking with curator Sarah Kennel, who has also produced what appears to be a very fine book, Charles Marville, Photographer of Paris, published by the University of Chicago Press (available in the UK in a couple of weeks.) The web site has a dozen large images from the book.

There is a good article about the book and the show by Luc Sante on The New York Review of Books, again with a gallery of images, and there are more pictures by Marville at MoMA and on Luminous Lint. Commercially many of his images are available in digital format through the Roger Viollet gallery, but I could only manage to see these as small thumbnails.

Also on line is a map of Paris with pins on it locating the sites where around 150 of his pictures were made, clicking on which gives a small version of both his image and a modern view from a similar position. There is also a PDF by Martin H. Krieger of the University of Southern California which explains the how and why this map was made.

[There may be collections of Marville’s work available on line from the large holdings of some Paris museums, but the French cultural establishment’s peculiar relationship with the Internet leads them to set up impenetrable web sites, perhaps stemming from their view of it as an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ institution and a devotion to a peculiar logic which requires a French education to understand – and certainly defeats Google. Should anyone manage to find any, please post links in a comment below.]

Marville who became the official ‘Photographer of the City of Paris‘ is deservedly well-known for his roughly 500 images commissioned by the Commission Municipale des Travaux Historiques of Paris before and after the great programme of works before and after the ‘improvements’ made by Haussman. The great boulevards were pierced through the city, designed to allow free movement of troops to put down the frequent insurrections by the people of Paris. The narrow streets which they replaced were far too easily barricaded.

For many, including myself, this work has an added interest because of the work of a later photographer of Paris, Eugène Atget, for whom, despite my comments above, the BnF has a good web site, and even available in an English (US) version (and in French only, Regards sur la ville.). Many of Marville’s better images are indeed hard to distinguish from the work of Atget, although as the latter site comments, while Atget shows only the ruins and destruction of a gutted city, Marville has an interest in its reconstruction.

Apart from some of those images of Paris, much of Marville’s work leaves me unmoved. The simple records of church doorways and statues fail to go beyond that, technically proficient but unless you have a particular interest in the thing photographed, rather boring. I want more from photographs.

Munem Wasif’s Old Dhaka

I think the first time I wrote about Bangladeshi photographer Munem Wasif was five years ago, when he was one of the five from PDN’s Top Thirty ‘New and Emerging Photographers to watch’. Later in the year I commented when the Prix Pictet bankers selected him for the commission to document WaterAid’s Chittagong Hill Tracts Project in Bangladesh, and a couple of years later there was another short post here linking to an interview on Lensculture and his work at Agence Vu.

Although I don’t ever seem to feel now that I want to work in black and white again, I still appreciate great black and white images like those of Wasif. What brought him back to mind was Chaos and Harmony in Old Dhaka on the New York Times Lens blog, which has an audio slideshow of work from his new book, “Belongings,” which “explores the rhythms of daily life in Old Dhaka” in which the photographer talks about the old city and his work.

He works with a remarkable simplicity of equipment, one camera, a 28mm lens and a bottle of water. 28mm was for many years my favourite lens too, though I’ve long abandoned working with a single lens. Perhaps I should try it again – and at the moment my back certainly thinks it would be a good idea.

The bi-lingual French/English book, ISBN: 978-2-9542266-1-3, is available in France, but does not yet seem to be on sale in the UK.

Fire in the East

A nice post on American Suburb X has Fire in the East: A Portrait of Robert Frank, a 1986 film for the Museum of Fine Harts, Houston and KUHT Public Television, written, directed and edited by Amy and Philip Brookma, who aslo narrates the film, and produced by by Anne Wilkes Tucker and Paul Yeager.

It has some nice footage of Frank himself talking, as well as the views of a number of photographers, including Louis Faurer, whose darkroom Frank shared when he first went to New York in the late 1940s, as well as Sid Kaplan, Elliot Erwitt, Duane Michals and others who knew him then or when he returned to America after travels around the world in 1953, shortly after to embark on the Guggenheim-funded road trip that resulted in a book that many see as something of a watershed in photography. John Szarkowski has a few words too. And many of Frank’s finest images appear, if sometimes rather in the background.

It was in some way a visual counterpart to Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’, the bible for a new generation. I put down my guitar, stopped singing Buddy Holly badly and entered a new world at least in my mind. If I’d heard that Kerouac had written the introduction to a book of photographs I’d probably have bought it, but it was only around 15 years later that I first saw a copy of ‘The Americans’, thanks to the guys at Creative Camera.

Fire in the East deals with his whole career up to 1986, and the second half of it I found a little less interesting than the first. At about the time I discovered Kerouac, Frank abandoned still photography and moved into film with the 1959 ‘Pull My Daisy‘ with improvised performances by poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso and opthers playing themselves to a script by Jack Kerouac, along with other artist friends and Frank’s young son Pablo.

Grove Press (the first US publisher of ‘The Americans’) also brought out ‘Pull My Daisy’ as a book, and this was republished a few years ago by Steidl. There is an interesting article about it by John Cohen, who photographed the entire production in photo-eye magazine. A few of his pictures were used, along with stills from the 16mm black and white film.

All photographers will of course already own a copy of ‘The Americans’, but if not, various editions are available second-hand at prices from around £20 to £9,000. Should you not have it you could put it on your Christmas list and cross your fingers as to which to get, though if you are buying it yourself I’d recommend the 1978 Aperture edition which you can probably find at a reasonable price. I think my copy of ‘On the Road’ cost me 1/6d, and you can pick it up for less than a quid if you are lucky at a second-hand book shop, which allowing for inflation is rather cheaper. For free you can see some great drawings by Paul Rogers in his ‘On The Road, Illustrated’ , an image for every single page in the book, though not all on line yet.

Tony Ray-Jones Discovered Yet Again

Good though it is to see the attention currently being given to the work of Tony Ray-Jones with the show at the new at Media Space in London, it is perhaps surprising to see a video about him and the show that fails to mention Alexey Brodovitch, whose classes Ray-Jones attended and which were a key turning point in his development as a photographer. Wikipedia lists among the photographers who attended Brodovitch’s classes Diane Arbus, Eve Arnold, Richard Avedon, Lisette Model, and Garry Winogrand – and there were quite a few other well-known names.

Among the ‘Brodovitch boys’ (and most were male) peculiarly relevant to us in Britain, two names stand out: Tony Ray-Jones and John Benton-Harris, both of whom came to the UK in the mid to late 1960s soon after their studies with Brodovitch, Ray Jones in New Haven and Benton-Harris in his native New York.

The two only met up after both came to the UK in the mid 1960s, Ray-Jones probably returning home because of visa problems, and Benton-Harris staying on after meeting his future wife at a party when he came here from Italy on his military discharge to photograph Churchill’s funeral. They found they had similar and strongly felt views on photography, and both became involved in bringing the ideas and photographic work they had got to know in the USA to this country.

The best place to find out more about Ray-Jones is on Weeping Ash, a photography web site run by Roy Hammans, which has a whole section about him, including the introduction from ‘A Day Off: an English Journal’, the book published in the year following his death, which reinforced his reputation among photographers. Also there are some other essays worth reading, and one by me, from a lecture delivered in Poland in 2005, where I found his work was previously almost completely unknown. Here is one paragraph from that lecture which I think captures something of his personality:

Ray-Jones did more than take photographs in England, he gave the whole of British photographic culture a much-needed boot up the backside. He brought back from New York a brashness and an enthusiasm for the photography that was unknown in England. In 1968, having completed much of the English project, he introduced himself to the editor of Britain’s only really serious photographic magazine by announcing “Your magazine’s shit, but I can see you are trying. You just don’t know enough, so I am here to help you.” But it was his photographs rather than what he said that convinced Bill Jay that he was worth listening to, and Creative Camera published them.

His enterprise, both behind the camera and in cultural terms, was shared by Benton-Harris, who printed many of Ray-Jones’s pictures both while he was alive and afterwards. Contrary to what has been written, Benton-Harris says he was not fond of the darkroom and never a a great printer, and he suggests few of the ‘vintage prints’ were actually made by the photographer. The one print I own that was unequivocally by him is adequate but not expired. Unfortunately the prints for ‘A Day Off‘, the posthumous publication that established his reputation more widely, were made from the negatives by a commercial darkroom, who produced images in a then fashionable heavy style: too contrasty with empty highlights and blocked shadows, giving a distorted view of how the photographer would have wanted and printed his work.

Bill Jay comments in an interview in Russell Roberts’ encyclopaedic book ‘Tony Ray-Jones’, published on the previous occasion when the photographer was re-discovered for the major show at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television at Bradford in 2004, that the 120 pictures in ‘A Day Off‘ “had lots of photographs from the same shoot, and Tony would not have tolerated that...”, but it does contain those pictures which the photographer himself thought were his best work and were included in earlier book dummies he produced. Jay’s criticism has some validity, but perhaps only for half a dozen or so of the 120 images.

It was a book that reflected the style in photographic publishing at the time, with rather heavy and contrasty images, which perhaps helped it make the impact it did on many young photographers, myself included. But it was never a look that I liked much, though it suited a few of the pictures well. But the print I have on my wall of the Bacup Coconut Dancers in 1968, made by Ray-Jones himself for his 1969 ICA show is far more subtle. Sadly it was omitted from the Roberts book, perhaps under the influence of Jay’s comments, for this was one day that the photographer made two fine images of the same group – and is perhaps the better of the two.

The printing for the NMPFT show (and the book) was I think state of the art, squeezing everything possible out of some often very difficult negatives and generally impeccable. Excellent inkjet prints, often rather superior to the original vintage prints, were also made available at very reasonable prices (I bought several), and every photographer could afford to have a Tony Ray-Jones on their wall.

Ray-Jones was, as Jay commented “a very, very, careful editor.” He looked very carefully at all of his images. I’m not yet convinced that having another photographer – Martin Parr – going through his contact sheets and apparently picking out another 55 images for the current show is a good idea. For better or worse, these previously unseen images (assuming they are so – and not as in some other shows just hyped as such) are ones that the photographer rejected. I’ve yet to see the show, but those I’ve seen so far look to me more like near misses than more of his very best. The show at the Media Space also includes work by Parr, black and white images made in the 1970s when he was very much influenced by Ray-Jones, and which for many photographers remains his best work.

There is also a new book published of colour work by Tony Ray-Jones, American Colour 1962–1965 . Again I’ve only seen what is available on the web, but on the basis of this, I think it does nothing to enhance his reputation. There is perhaps a reason why after he came back to England he used only black and white for his personal work, although commissioned work was often in colour.

Benton-Harris sometimes went out working with Ray-Jones, and they shared a similar point of view. He printed much of the photographers work both before and after his death, and wrote the obituary which appeared in Creative Camera. His work too appeared in Creative Camera, with a fine portfolio in the final Creative Camera Annual (which also contained three of my pictures in a rather different style.) Later he was the main organiser behind American Images: Photography (1945-80) at the Barbican in 1985, a show which introduced many in the UK to a whole new world and also curated other shows.

His web site includes some of his better images, and includes work from recent years as well as his Looking at the English and St Patrick’s People. He is currently working on a book containing some of his work on the English, Mad Hatters – a diary of a secret people.

Solomon-Godeau on Maier

Thanks to (Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography for the post Abigail Solomon-Godeau on Vivian Maier which links to “Inventing Vivian Maier” by Abigail Solomon-Godeau on the Jeu du Paume ‘le magazine’ web site (also available in French.)

It is, as one would expect, a penetrating analysis of the Maier phenomenon, and reflects on the whole ‘fabrication’ of an art-historical model of photographic history. It contains a number of insights both into the industry around her work since its ‘discovery’ and into her motivations and practice, some of which I think are truly novel and others which although obvious have been deliberately obscured, for example the clear influences on her images of photographic work by many others, including contemporary imagery.

There are also some interesting comments about what she calls “the dubious generic category of “street photography,” a category so capacious as to be effectively meaningless” which I look forward to reading more about in her forthcoming book. I’ve long thought that it was a term that could only be rescued by some much tighter and less inclusive re-definition – and a concept that has led to much vacuous and shallow photography.

In her final section, Solomon-Godeau brings up the question that has recently emerged about the ownership of the copyright of Maier’s work. Since she died intestate, and without any known living relatives, the state of Illinois might have claims on the sale of her prints and reprints of her photographs. The intellectual property of copyright in her images, the largest aspect of her estate was at the time unknown to the state and is not mentioned in the probate paperwork. But neither was it purchased by those people who bought her effects from the storage company before her death. It could be an interesting question for the lawyers, though it seems most likely to this layman that Illinois could make a valid claim for the copyright as the existence of this property was not known at the time of probate.

Moises Saman

Don’t miss the interview with Moises Saman by Pete Brook on Wired.com’s Raw File blog. Some fine pictures and an interesting discussion. Here’s just one sentence which I hope will make you click the link above to read the rest.

‘In my opinion “professional distance” and “objectivity” are vague terms, because in my work I search for the intimacy and trust that requires me to be close to the subject, to be accepted.’

You can see more about Saman on his Magnum Photographer page, which as well as pictures has a profile and his blog, although there are few recent entries – events are presumably taking up too much of his time to allow blogging.

I’ve never thought that I would be good at photographing in the kind of dangerous situations that Saman has often been in. I think I panic too readily and now I’m sure I’m far too old for that kind of thing. But if you have an interest in Working in Hostile Environments, the presentation on that subject at the NUJ London Photographers Branch next Tuesday (24 Sept 2013) at 6pm may interest you. The two speakers, Laura El-Tantawy a British/Egyptian photographer living in Cairo and London, represented by VII Mentor and Guy Smallman who has worked in Lebanon, Pakistan, Iraq and Latin America, and regularly in Afghanistan since 2008 will give some practical advice and answer questions, as well as explaining why it “is NUJ policy for members to undertake Hostile Environment Training, and the value of such courses in preparing journalists for the challenges faced in such situations.”

Non-members are welcome at these meetings which are free, though if you are working professionally you should join the union. Particularly if you want to work in potentially dangerous situations. And if you are not working professionally it is a very good idea as a photographer to keep well away from them.

Julio Etchart’s Chile

Julio Etchart was born in Uruguay but settled in England and studied documentary photography in Newport where David Hurn had arrived in 1973 to found a course that became renowned around the world. It was a course based around working hard on photographic projects and the intensive criticism of students work, an approach that has produced many fine documentary photographers. In 1973 it was a breath of reality into photographic education, at least in the UK, and has since provided a model for many courses elsewhere.

Etchart spent time in the 1980s documenting life under the Pinochet regime and the opposition to his regime, both in Chile and in the UK, for the international press, and in 1988 Amnesty International commissioned a show of his work for their campaign on human rights violations in Chile.

You can see some of Etchart’s work from Chile on his web site (along with other photography) and for the next few days an updated version of the 1988 exhibition is showing at the Amnesty International UK Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London, EC2A 3EA (weekdays 9-5 until 20 Sept 2013.) It is a powerful record of the opposition by the people – particularly women – to the repressive regime.

The show is timed to mark the 40th anniversary of Chile’s 9/11, when on 11th September 1972 a US-backed military junta overthrew and killed the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende. One of its leaders was Augusto Pinochet, who later became President, stepping down in 1990. More than 40,000 people were arrested during the coup and held in the National Stadium, and many were tortured and killed. Others disappeared without trace. Wikipedia reports “1,200–3,200 people were killed, up to 80,000 were interned, and up to 30,000 were tortured by his government including women and children.” Human rights abuses including deaths and disappearances continued throughout his Presidency, and at his death “about 300 criminal charges were still pending against him in Chile for numerous human rights violations, tax evasion, and embezzlement“.

Among the other interesting sets of work on his web site is one inspired by George Orwell’s Burmese Days, produced for the 75th anniversary of its publication. Based on Orwell’s own experiences as a police officer in the Indian Imperial Police force, the book is, in Etchart’s words “one of the greatest denunciations of imperialism ever written, and a powerful critique of the colonial mindset that underpinned the system.” The photographs are best seen in the full preview of Etchart’s book Katha: In the footsteps of George Orwell in Burma (change to full page view to see it best) on Blurb. There is also a YouTube video with a spoken commentary, but to me this lacks the urgency of Etchart’s pictures and voice.

Last month I mentioned some of Etchart’s more recent work in Street Isn’t Documentary.

Getty Grants

I’m not a fan of Getty Images, but their grants certainly do support some great photography, as you can see from the winners of the 2013 grants for editorial photography. Some of the five winners are very familiar names – Eugene Richands, for many years a member of Magnum (he joined Magnum in 1978 and left twice, in 1994 and 2006), of VII from 2006-8 and Getty’s own Reportage from 2010-12. and Tomas van Houtryve of VII. I wrote here a while ago about his book Laos: Open Secret, published on Blurb, and earlier about his use of Flattr – and earlier still about his photography on another site.

Samuel James, whose earlier project Lagos, Area Boys won the 2010 Alexandra Boulat Award for Photojournalism also has a VII connection -as part of that award the project as sydicated by them. More recently he was featured on the Lens blog and picked as one of BJP’s 20 photographers to watch in 2013.

Matt Eich has also previously won many awards and grants from the the Aaron Siskind Foundation, The National Press Photographer’s Association, ShootQ/Pictage, The Alexia Foundation, and National Geographic Magazine. He was one of the photographers in PDN‘s ‘Top Thirty‘ for 2010.

The relative newcomer is Marco Gualazzini, and Italian who started work as a photographer for his local daily paper in 2004. 2013 has been a good year for him as he gained First Prize at the Premio Internazionale Marco Luchetta in 2013 and a Silver Medal at PX3 Prix De La Photographie De Paris before receiving this grant for his project M23- Kivu: a region under siege.