Photographers | >Re-PHOTO

Yangtze and More From Photomonth 2010

Nadav Kander’s Yangtze – The Long River is the outstanding show of Photomonth 2010 both in its scale and its concept. The exhibition continues until 13 Nov 2010 at Flowers East and comes from several voyages that Kander made cover the river from its estuary to the source during a three year period. His journey along the river, shrouded always in the light orange brown haze of pollution gives us an insight into the rapid growth of China, with image after image showing people dwarfed but remaining significant by the giant structures erupting around them.
He says in the gallery notes, “The photographs are an emotional response to what I saw. I gave them simple titles so that viewers are encouraged to respond subjectively before seeking the facts.”

I’m not sure how well that latter idea works in the gallery, and I’d recommend that anyone visiting the show go first to watch the video being presented where he talks about the pictures and his ideas, which to me was vital in really appreciating his work. In it he also says that one single picture – a line of washing hanging sturng between rough wooden posts leaning against a wall under the huge girders of some giant bridge in Shanghai- for him sums up the whole process he was observing, and it was certainly one of my favourite images.

I took only a very quick look at the book published to accompany the show which includes “ca. 77 color ills” (couldn’t they count?) and although the work on display covered the two main areas of the ground floor gallery with three or so more tucked away (one of my favourites hidden in an office) there were rather fewer pictures on show than that. But even so there was a certain repetitive aspect which after a while I found slightly disturbing. The prints were very big and I often found myself moving in close to look at the people in them, and felt that perhaps occasionally the photographer might have done the same rather than always keeping a distance. The closest he comes is to a group of five, picnicing under a multicoloured umbrella on the riverside with a large bridge behind them, and I think it no co-incidence that this picture is featured as the largest of four images on the gallery handout.

The weakness – and I think it is one – is not in the photographer’s project, but in the selection of images for the gallery show. On Kander’s own web site (its the first item under ‘Work‘ on the menu) there is a more varied selection of 49 images. Also on the web you can watch the video being shown in the gallery on YouTube.

Upstairs Flowers was showing another very fine show, which again I mentioned briefly in an earlier post on its opening night, Edmund Clark‘s work ‘Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out’ which combines some startling images from Guantanamo (though many of the images I found most telling were absent from this particular showing) with images in the homes of former detainees now trying to rebuild their lives. All of the pictures are without people, but Clark builds up a very strong atmosphere in these very carefully framed images. Also on show are some of the letters and cards sent to Omar Deghayes, a Brighton resident who was held for 5 years in Guantanmo.

You can see a few of Clark’s photographs on his web site, but rather more on Lensculture. I wasn’t convinced that the ‘Letters to Omar’ actually added anything to the show and would have preferred to see more photographs. As well as this show at Flowers until 14 Nov, there is another show of this work across London at Photofusion in Brixton until 26 Nov 2010.

A couple of doors down the Kingsland Road is the printspace, where there were a series of large portraits of dogs looking out of closed car windows, ‘Mute‘ or ‘Dogs in Cars’ by Martin Usborne. Superb control of lighting and every hair apparently manicured into place, these seemed to me to be great examples of advertising photography – and taken on a Canon DSLR seemed to blow away the arguments for ‘medium format’ digital. But somehow the very gloss of the finish seemed to take something away from the impact of the work, and looking at them I couldn’t feel they had been deserted but felt they were being watched over not just by the photographer, but a whole team of assistants, stylists, art director and proud owners.

Another short walk takes you to the Red Lion in Hoxton St, where an exhibition by the Shoreditch Group of London Independent Photography (LIP) continues until 20 Nov 2010 – go up the stairs to the right of the bar. The show, which includes personal work by members and a group project ‘Parallels’, is as you would expect from such a group uneven, is worth a look. But having tried the beer, I’d advise going the short distance to one of my favourite London pubs, the tiny Prince Arthur in Brunswick Place with a well-deserved reputation for serving a good pint – and sandwiches (nothing fancy) at sensible prices – though unfortunately rather uncertain opening hours.

Talking of pubs and shows, another LIP member Anne Clements, has a show ‘Don’t Pass Me By‘ in Photomonth 2010 at the Jerusalem Tavern in Britton St, Clerkenwell which opened a few days ago and continues to 26 Nov 2010.

One venue that I was surprised not to see taking any part in Photomonth was the basement at Shoreditch Town Hall. It’s a large and curious labyrinth, great for a group show as it needs to be manned while open, and really worth a visit just to see the place. I couldn’t resist going in to see the show ‘to be or not to be: a false dichotomy‘ by a group of thirteen artists based around Forest Hill in South London, curated by Dunio Mauro and advertised by a rather large pig. Unfortunately the show was only on for five days – I imagine the space is fairly expensive to hire despite the dilapidated condition – and ended on October 27. Although I didn’t find anything of photographic interest, I did enjoy much of the show, and thankfully they had provided a numbered map to find my way around the more than 20 spaces (not all in use.)

Stuart Freedman

Stuart Freedman, a Londoner born in 1967, has been a photographer since 1991 with stories “from Albania to Afghanistan and from former Yugoslavia to Haiti” published in leading magazines around the world, including Life, Geo, Time, National Geographic, Der Spiegel, Newsweek and Paris Match. He is represented in London by Panos Pictures.

In 1998 he was selected for the World Press Masterclass and the following year for the Agfa Young Photojournalist of the Year, and has gained awards from Amnesty International (twice), Pictures of the Year, The World Sports Photo Award, The Royal Photographic Society and UNICEF, and his work has been shown widely.

Looking at his new web site, it is easy to see why, with fine photojournalism is stories both in black and white, for example The Mutilated, with images from Sierra Leone, and some stunning colour work in all the essays on the site, although perhaps sometimes I find the colour a little over-saturated.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Stuart talk about his work, and there are some excellent pieces of writing on the site, as well as on his blog, Umbra Sumus (We are but shadows.) One recent piece, “I am not a witch” Well, actually I am had some sensible things to say about the Halloween scam as well as his portraits of some British pagans.

I did have a few minor problems with his new site, which certainly looks very stylish. As well as my often-mentioned aversion to sites that need you to scroll sideways (I’m still waiting for a mouse with a scroll wheel that works that way) there were some links that only wanted to work if I opened them in a new tab.

Rivington Place & Photomonth

Monday was an interesting day for me. After a few hours work on the computer I had a very nice lunch at a small restaurant in Tolworth with a couple of friends then went with one of them to London to spend an hour or so looking at some of the other shows in the East London Photomonth, (and one was in a pub) before going on the the Photographers Social in a bar in Soho. A minutes walk from a decent pub.

The following day I had a bit more time after a meeting with a friend at a London hospital and was able to see far more, including two of the major galleries taking part in the event, Flowers East and Rivington Place, before rushing to a union meeting where a distinguished and knowledgeable panel discussed the question whether street photography would still be around in five years time.

But some of the experiences finding shows were rather like those I had visiting the Brighton festival a couple of weeks ago. Galleries that according the the leaflet should have been open at the time we called but were not, one address that was a locked building with no indication that there was even a gallery there, as well as several places where a quick look through the window told us it was not worth entering. But I did find some work worth looking at, particularly on the Tuesday.

The oddest experience came when I went into a gallery on Rivington St, and asked one of a small group of people sitting around and talking there where the exhibition was. It seemed to be quite a large space, and all I could see were fairly empty walls with the occasional poster.

At first there was some laughter as I’d obviously picked exactly the wrong person to ask, but then one of the men asked to see the programme where the show was listed. He scratched his head and told me he knew the photographer, would have been happy to put on a show of his work, but that he knew nothing about it, and the show didn’t exist.

He then said that someone else had come in and asked about it a couple of weeks ago. This was a shock, apparently only two visitors in more than three weeks, and was also rather a surprise. My own show, Paris – New York – London, with Paul Baldesare and John Benton-Harris, only a couple of hundred yards away, tucked away in a side street and not the easiest place to find has been attracting quite a few viewers over the weeks as well as the normal visitors to the Juggler café it is part of. Surely it can’t just be because I’ve mentioned it here most days!

I was surprised again later, visiting one of the more interesting shows on at Rivington Place, a superb well-staffed gallery space – the first new-build public gallery in London for 40 years when it was opened in 2007 – to find that I had both shows to myself (and in each case an attendant) while I spent some time looking at ‘Ever Young’, showing 60 years of photography by James Barnor, born in 1929 in Ghana (he tells about his early career here on ‘Nowness‘) and now living in London.

Much of his studio photography from Ghana seemed a little ordinary, but there were a few images that stood out, and in the 1950s his ‘Ever Young Studio‘ was visited by many leading figures around the time that Ghana, in 1957. As well as the studio photography he was also working for a newspaper, The Daily Graphic, and later for Africa’s most popular magazine Drum.

In 1959 he came to England where he studied photography and joined the staff at the Medway College of Art in Rochester. In the 1960s he continued to photograph, including a number of pictures of cover girls that are included in the show, but also covering other stories of African interest including Mohammed Ali in London for a fight and BBC Africa Service reporter Mike Eghan.

In London he was trained in colour processing by Agfa-Gevaert and returned to Ghana in 1969 as their representative to establish colour processing in that country. In retirement he now lives in London, not far from Agfa’s UK HQ.

Barnor was certainly a very proficient photographer and there are several very nice images in the show, including two of people posing in Trafalgar Square and at Piccadilly Circus. But the great interest in his work is more in the different cultures and changing times it spans and to which he had access to photograph some of the leading figures particularly in Ghana, and in the relationship his work embodies between the new Africa and the old colonial power. It’s certainly a show worth seeing, and continues until 27 Nov 2010 (closed Sun & Mon.)

Also on show at Rivington Place is a fascinating set of portraits collected by the leading black intellectual and civil rights activist of the era, W E B Du Bois for the book ‘Types of American Negroes, Georgia, USA‘ and exhibited in at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle in the ‘American Negro Exhibit‘. Consisting of pictures from various sources and in a range of styles, these images challenged the racial stereotypes that were a part of the scientific thinking of that age.

Looking at them brought a number of thoughts to my mind. One was of a job I did for an Indian friend perhaps 20 years ago, taking some pictures of him and some of his friends. They were unhappy with the black and white prints I produced, but he was very reluctant to explain why. Eventually I realised that the problem was in the skin tones, which I had printed as I normally did, with an accurate tonal rendition. I made some further prints, dodging the faces to lighten them considerably to a more ‘European’ tone and they were happy. Looking at some of these images it is clear that in some of them a similar process had been taking place, using either lighting or printing to create very light (in some cases very white) skin tones. Of course the ‘ordinary’ or ‘orthochromatic’ emulsions in this era had a certain lightening effect on all portraits, whatever the skin colour.

Library of Congress Image
Image from the Du Bois album in the Library of Congress LC-USZ62-124654

Another thought I had was that many of these pictures could actually have been from my own family album. Taken away from their context there are many that would not be recognised as black. The gallery notes suggest that this collection “can be read as the origins of a visual construction of a new African-American identity” but it seems more to me to suggest that this identify is not greatly dependent on the visual. But Du Bois’s intention to produce ‘an honest straightforward exhibit of a small nation of people, picturing their life and development without apology or gloss, and above all made by themselves‘ has certainly resulted in a fascinating collection.

At the Library of Congress you can see the complete collection of 482 African American Photographs compiled by Du Bois for the Paris show online, and can download them as jpegs or tiffs (large enough to make the prints in the show.) The portraits start on the second page of thumbnails. The image here comes from that collection and may or may not be in the Rivington Place show.

It is a thought-provoking show, and other people with other backgrounds will certainly have different thoughts from mine, a couple of which I’ve shared above. In many ways the decision to present them all in the same format in two large grids on the gallery wall makes sense, but I did find myself asking what the originals actually looked like, and in some respects the online presentation does that better.

The other shows not to be missed are at Flowers East (also closed Sun & Mon) and I mentioned them briefly in a post after the packed opening there but I hope to write more about them and some other shows from Photomonth 2010 another day.

Photographers Social

Long ago, back in the days of film, every year around this time I used to lock away the colour stock and go out with only black and white in my cameras, as I knew otherwise I would waste far too much recording the changing colours of leaves. Had I got round to it I would have got around to printing a t-shirt for photographers with the message “Get over it – leaves turn brown in Autumn!”

© 2010, Peter Marshall
Stephen McLaren talking and showing photographs at the Social at Barrio Central – and as this picture suggests it was dark and crowded there. 20mm f2.8 Nikon D700

I felt something related to this as I watched Stephen McLaren‘s presentation of images by some of the photographers features in the book ‘Street Photography Now!‘ at the first Photographers Gallery/BJP Social evening at Barrio Central in Poland St this evening, though rather than Autumn colours my thoughts were about pictures mainly about and created by strong shadows and unusual lighting conditions.

Of course light is one of the basic tools of the photographer – where would we be without it – but at least for me the aim isn’t to make pictures about it but to use it to illuminate (in every respect) the subject.

It would be wrong and impossible to propose a complete ban on taking such pictures. Books such as Trent Parke‘s ‘Dream Life‘ show how powerful they can be. But since Trent and rather many others have pretty well ploughed that furrow out perhaps we might turn to other fields?

Stephen McLaren showed some interesting work (and I very much liked his own picture which made use of the low angle sun on a nearby street despite the comments above – from his series Coupling) with at least one image from each of the photographers concerned that gained my admiration, which isn’t a bad average, but I was left wondering if some perhaps showed too much striving after what might be called ‘Flickr approval‘ and that perhaps the hardest thing to learn as a photographer is the power of understatement. And to repeat one of my old refrains, that photography isn’t about making pictures.

I also found it disturbing that the images appeared to be projected on screen at the wrong aspect ratio changing images in a normal format into near-panoramics (I think actually from 1.5:1 to about 1.7:1 – it is a problem with some screen resolutions.*) There was too a problem with the colour, with some images at least being greatly over-saturated. I would have hoped that two of our major photographic institutions could have coped rather better with screen resolutions and colour management and hope it’s an issue they address for further occasions. Surely we should treat photographers’ work with much greater respect.

On the train home I was entertained to hear a lengthy report by a photography student on the evening, and at least he had gathered the main point from lawyer Rupert Grey (of photography specialists Swan Turton), that on the street you can legally photograph anything you like.

Perhaps the only thing that he said that was new to me was his opinion that the police probably never have the right to demand to view your images; I’d been fairly clear about this so far as journalists are concerned, but he went further to apply this to anyone taking photographs.

Most of us also know that the police have no right to delete images or demand that you do so, although in a number of cases – and he mentioned that of Martin Parr – police have insisted that photographers do so. In practice of course it isn’t a great problem, as so far the police haven’t realised that deleting files from your card doesn’t actually remove them. So long as you don’t take any more pictures on that card afterwards, it is a simple matter to recover them.

There were a few things – particularly in response to questions – that he perhaps might have been clearer about, at times because he failed to make clear the distinction between taking a photograph and publishing it. Working in public places you never need permission or model releases to take a picture, although sometimes it may be sensible to get a release or polite to ask. But many of the best pictures come from situations where neither is possible. But what he failed to explore was the increasing threat to photographers that the legal interpretation of the individual’s right to privacy – even in the absence of UK law – is already having on court judgements in this country.

Using a picture without a model release becomes a problem in contexts where that use might be defamatory. So, for example, using a picture of a person on the street to illustrate an article on drug addicts would be ill-advised unless the picture or other evidence clearly showed that person to be a drug addict. There is so far as I am aware no legal requirement for a model release to use any photograph in an advert (or in any other way), but it is a normal commercial requirement as it should remove the possibility of legal action. Contrary to popular opinion not all adverts or commercial work needs photographs to have a model releases – the last picture I came close to selling in that field was considered to be quite acceptable despite the presence of a recognisable person but no model release – but it is certainly normal practice to require one.

Grey also made it clear that there were no restrictions on photographing children – unless the images you produce are indecent. This can perhaps sometimes be a problem for street photographers in hot weather, when there may well for example be naked children running through fountains, playing in pools or running along beaches. To you or me, pictures of them might be perfectly innocent, but police and courts might take different view. And this is again an area where the privacy rights under European law are increasingly coming in to play – and at least one judge has made it clear in a judgement that the balance that has to be maintained between freedom of expression and privacy would be biased more towards privacy for minors.

I’ve heard Grey speak on various occasions before and he is obviously an expert in the field, but while it is good to know what the law is, we know that what police and others such as PCSOs, security staff and council employees try to enforce may be very much different – as examples such as the incident involving Parr demonstrate.

Perhaps the most useful and most sound piece of advice Grey gave about such situations was that photographers should be polite. I’d take that a little further and suggest that while where necessary insisting on our rights we should do so without unnecessary confrontation and where possible cooperate with the police and others. So I’m always happy to talk to any member of the public – whether in uniform or not – about what I’m doing, and where I think it appropriate to produce evidence of identity.

Commander Broadhurst at the NUJ photographers conference in May 2009 listens to photographers accounts of police violence.

Perhaps the most amusing part of his talk related to his conversation with Commander Broadhurst of the Met and a representative of ACPO. While it was good to hear of changes in their thinking about photographers, the suggestion from Broadhurst that police on the streets would all know about this seems laughable. http://re-photo.co.uk/?p=660 It was Broadhurst who said at an NUJ photographers’ conference in May 2009 “can anybody apply for an NUJ card who has a camera?” shocking all present by his total ignorance and lack of understanding of the UK Press Card scheme (more about this occasion here.)

So while there may well have been some changes, I think we can be pretty sure that most of the police on the street will know as much about these as they have about previous statements which gave essentially similar advice such as that sent by Assistant Commissioner John Yates to all MPS officers and staff last December.

I think there have been some indications of a better attitude towards photographers by police at demonstrations in London at least since their disastrous public performance at Bank in April 2009, and I welcome this, and hope that Broadhurst’s extreme optimism is well-founded. But I’m far from sure that this has as yet had any impression so far as the more general interactions between photographers and ‘officials’ of all types on the street away from protests.

Although the ‘Photographers Social’ seems a great idea, in practice it was too crowded, too hot and too uncomfortable, and the area was really not well suited to such a large event. Like quite a few others I left as soon as the two presentations were over for the comfortable bar (and real beer at rather lower prices) a few yards away. Perhaps the BJP/PG might investigate other venues in the area.

*Display Aspect Ratios

You should check any screen (or projector) by finding the screen resolution in pixels and comparing the ratio between width and height with the actual width and height of the image. Most displays allow you to run them at different resolutions, some or all of which may be unsuitable, but LED screens are best used at their native resolution, in the case of my monitor 1680 dots x 1050 lines.

So I’m writing this on a 1680×1050 pixel screen with an image display 454x 283mm, ratios of 1.6:1 and 1.604:1 – essentially identical.

Projector or monitor displays that give markedly different ratios for these two things are unsuitable for photographers.

TINAG and Amy Whitehouse

Spitalfields has changed dramatically over the years I’ve walked through it and occasionally taken pictures there. One of the places where the change is most apparent is Spitalfields Market. One of my most talented students went there years ago and did a fine essay on the guys who worked there, handling the fruit and veg.

Last night as I walked through, there was a small crowd around a shop and looking in through the window I saw a woman with an impossible wig singing. She didn’t have a bad voice either, which rather surprised me, as this was the opening of an Amy Whitehouse shop and the paps were busily papping. I thought about taking a picture myslef, but decided I couldn’t be bothered, and hurried on down Hanbury St to the Hanbury Hall, where the TINAG festival was opening.

It’s hard to describe what TINAG is. The letters stand for ‘This Is Not A Gateway, and it’s a three day annual festival which aims to provide a platform for artists concerned with urban issues and to encourage “interdisciplinary and cross-cultural exchange.” You can read more detail in the ‘Background‘ page of their web site.

Last year, Paul Baldesare and I took part in TINAG, giving a presentation on our work then on show half a mile away in the Shoreditch Gallery, ‘Taken in London‘ and taking part in a group discussion on this and some other presentations. I’d thought about taking part again this year, as our ‘Paris, New York, London‘ was obviously relevant to their programme, but there were too many problems in actually getting that show on the road for me to put it forward to TINAG.

If you are in London today, Saturday or Sunday (22-24 Oct 2010) it’s worth taking a visit to the Hanbury Hall at 22A Hanbury St, Lodnon E1 6QR. You can see the full programme of events and exhibitions on the TINAG web-site. So far as the photography is concerned there are very definitely some highs and some lows. Among those I really found worth looking at is David Boulogne’s ‘Confessions From The City’, with a presentation of black and white images, most of which are also in his Blurb book “MAKE IT A GOOD EXPERIENCE in the City“, although they look considerably better in the on-screen show. I also liked a series of portraits of workers in a South American market, Jhon Arias‘s Portraits from Corabastos, the largest food marketplace in South America. Showing next to this is a 3-channel video by Juan Delgado who worked in the same market, with help from Arias who grew up working there, helping with his father’s business. I found his blog about making the film in some ways told me more than the actual presentation

More on this later when I have some time – and perhaps a few of the pictures I did take of this event, even though I couldn’t be bothered to photograph that young woman. I think she was the real thing, though I’ve seen more convincing Amy Whitehouse imitators.

The Three Cities of Photography

[Text of my speech at the opening of ‘Paris – New York – London‘ at the Shoreditch Gallery, London on 20.10.2010. The show continues until 29.10.2010.]

Stars of tonight’s show are the most vital cities in the history of photography, Paris, New York and London. As we know the twin birth of our medium was announced within a few days in Paris and London in 1839; New York was to dominate much of the twentieth century.

The most notable British photographer of the last century illustrates their relationship well. Bill Brandt was a German who re-invented himself as a Londoner, learnt photography in Paris, and when he had the first major solo exhibition by a living photographer in any of our leading art institutions, his Hayward Gallery show came from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

London dominated photography in the 19th century. One of our greatest photographers was Roger Fenton, honoured by a blue plaque on a fine house overlooking Parliament Hill Fields. But after a few years as our leading photographer he abandoned photography and went back to making some money instead – as a lawyer. Despite the strength of photography here, this country has never really accepted photography, never developed a culture, a community that supports it.

Paris’s great period was between the two World Wars; Atget was still working in the twenties, Henri Cartier–Bresson was young and active in the next decade and others including Capa, Brassai, Kertesz and Man Ray flocked there. But photography was just one of the arts that flourished, and the inspiration for my own work on the wall here came more from Surrealist literature and in particular Aragon‘s ‘Paris Peasant.’

One man almost single-handedly dragged the US to the forefront of photography around the start of the twentieth century, and Alfred Stieglitz in New York repeated his miracle when he published the work of Paul Strand in the final two editions of Camera Work in 1916-7. Later the city was the home for a hugely vital upsurge of photography in the form of the New York Photo League, closed down by McCarthyism at the start of the 1950s.

Alexey Brodovitch came from Paris to New York in the mid 1930s, becoming art director of Harper’s Bazaar and in the 1950s and 60s established a legendary laboratory for photographers. Two who went through that mill, John Benton-Harris and Tony Ray-Jones came to London in the late 1960s and helped to kick-start a decade of resurgence of photography here which lasted through most of the 1970s, particular through their influence on the magazine ‘Creative Camera‘, based in London, though its publisher, Coo Press was kept afloat by men in braces in the pigeon lofts of our northern cities who bought its other publications.

This was only a short-lived flutter, soon cut down to size and emasculated by a British establishment that refused to take photography seriously (and held its nose and kept it at arm’s length when it had to take it at all), and in particular the Arts Council and their ‘photographic flagship’ in London, the Photographers’ Gallery, or as I christened it a couple of years ago after its move to new premises, the zombies of Ramilees St. The gallery made only half-hearted attempts to encourage and nurture photography in this country, and these were abandoned completely in the late 1980s.

I was one of the photographers influenced by that outburst of the 1970s, and Paul Baldesare‘s work developed particularly from that of Tony Ray-Jones and John Benton-Harris.

Although a photographic culture is still almost completely lacking here, there have been a few small glimmers of hope arising if sometimes rather dimly and uncertainly from a general pea-soup of indifference. Photofusion in Brixton, Host not too far from here, and, perhaps most notably, the East London Photomonth, now celebrating its tenth year. I’m pleased to have been able to be involved with it through shows here in the last three of these.

Peter Marshall 20.10.2010

[I ended with thanks to various people and also an advert for Photo Paris, which includes the pictures from Paris on show here, as well as mentioning that work from two of us was on sale. Pictures from the opening in a later post.]

Paris Photo 2010

When I wrote about photography for About.com, one of the things I was keen to promote was photography that was taking place outside the charmed circle which was largely defined by US dealers, US galleries and US academics, with a little help from their Western European colleagues.

Of course there were photographers from outside that area who were recognised, but they were largely restricted to a few whose work had somehow been discovered in the USA and rewarded with major exhibitions there, for example the great Czech photographer Josef Sudek. His work was brought to New York by Sonja Bullaty. At the age of 22 she had escaped from a death march after four years imprisoned by the Nazis in the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen concentration camps, and hid until liberation when she was able to return to Prague and became ‘apprentice-martyr’ to Sudek. Two years later distant relatives discovered she had survived and sent her the money to go and live with them in New York, where she worked as a photographer (along with her husband, New Yorker Angelo Lomeo) for the rest of her life. It was her work and particularly her book of pictures by Sudek, published in 1978 that brought his work to the attention of the US-based photography world – and to me.

There were many others too – including many from the USA – who brought pictures from photographers around the world to exhibitions and wrote about their work, and of course many photographers from around the world made their way to America and to New York – in many respects the world capital of photography – in particular. But when I started writing a professional column in 1999 it was still true that photography was very much dominated by US photographers and US opinions. There had even been some little discussion about whether as a non-US citizen who didn’t live in New York I was actually a suitable person to write about the medium (and not being American was one of a number of reasons why I finally lost the job, though it was more important that I insisted on taking photography seriously.)

I tried to do a little to educate the photographic public (and although I had many readers around the world it was mainly an American public) that there had been and was photography outside the states of the union and outside the at times narrow definitions largely set down by the Museum of Modern Art. One area of the site I set up was devoted to ‘World Photography’ and at first I concentrated on Central and South America, treating it country by country, starting with Argentina (by the time I was sacked I had got as far as four features on Mexican photography in a total of 16 from that area, 6 from Africa, 13 from Asia, 2 from Australasia, 38 from Europe as well as 23 from North America.)

Most of those from Europe were from England and France, but I had written about photographers from Hungary, Albania, Lithuania, Russia and Finland, and was preparing to write more about photography in Central and Eastern Europe when my contract was terminated. But while I don’t pretend my work had any great influence, it did I think represent a current of opinion whose time had come and others obviously shared some at least of my ideas, and photography has been opening its borders and becoming more international in the past decade.

I’m particularly pleased to see that this year’s Paris Photo has a special emphasis on photography from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. Whether or not you are going to Paris this year you can see some of this work on line, and Lens Culture has a preview of more than 300 images in a high-resolution slide-show.

Not all of the pictures are from Europe; the second image in the slide show is by one of my favourite Japanese photographers, Issei Suda. One of his books was the first book of Japanese photography I ever bought, many years ago. The slide show, like Paris Photo, is an incredible mixture with work to suit every taste (or lack of it) with quite a few images that seem to me totally pointless, but also much to delight.

See Also:

Meet Me in Paris?
November in Paris & Lensculture fotofest

Alex Ten Napel on Verve

I’ve mentioned Verve, a web site set up by photographer and photo editor Geoffrey Hiller to feature new documentary “photographs and interviews by the finest contemporary image makers today” several times before, and it’s a site where I often find interesting work, too often to write about it every time. It’s a site I’d recommend you to bookmark and browse through from time to time, or add to your RSS feeds.

As I do. And yesterday I came across some work from a Dutch photographer I met a few years ago in Poland, Alex Ten Napel. I started to write about his work at the time, impressed by his water portraits, but somehow that piece never got published (I think I may have been waiting for permission to use some of his pictures and then simply forgot about it.) The work on Verve is from his black and white series of portraits of people with Alzheimers that he made in the 1990s, and there are more on his web site along with several other projects.

Other people have written about him and published articles in various countries. On his web site you can find a PDF with magazine pages with his pictures and text in (I think) English, Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, Russian and Polish.

Alec Soth

I’ve written a few times recently about Alec Soth, and he now has a new web site and its front page says:

“My name is Alec Soth. I live in Minnesota. I like to take pictures and make books. I have a Labradoodle. I also have a business called Little Brown Mushroom. “

Go there and click on the link and you’ll find the Labradoodle is well-named. Fortunately the site also has pictures from half a dozen of his projects:

all of which need you to scroll across the page* to see more pictures. The site also has quite a lot of information about him, definitely a good idea as he must get thousands of students writing to him with similar questions and he can just tell them to look on the web site.

If you have a large screen, it’s better to click on the picture and watch them larger as a slide show, but you need to have a screen around 1500 pixels wide to see the landscape format images properly, as on smaller screens the left side menu gets in the way.

The images in the slide show good quality jpegs, maximum dimension 1024 pixels but may not look their best in your browser as they are AdobeRGB images. These will only display correctly if your web browser is color managed. You can find out more and check that on the image at top right of this Web Browser Colour Management Tutorial, which should not alter when you move your mouse over it or click on it. If you find it changes it is worth considering updating your browser. Recent versions of Firefox are colour managed (though it can be switched off) and I think Safari always has been. The only version of Internet Explorer I have is IE7, and it isn’t.

Without colour management browsers will normally display all files as sRGB (or at least roughly so) as 95% of monitors use the same 2.2 gamma as sRGB. This is why it almost always makes sense to convert your files to SRGB before putting them on the web. Very few monitors can actually display many colours outside the gamut of sRGB in any case, so if you display an AdobeRGB file on them with colour management it won’t look any better than if it was converted to sRGB, and without colour management will look considerably worse.

Of course if you are at all interested in looking at photographs on the web you will have already have a properly profiled and calibrated monitor – to to 2.2 gamma and D65- 6500 Kelvin – and you can read more about that on the tutorial linked above. As G Ballard explains, the Mac default of 1.8 can cause problems.

While many lesser photographers (and sites such as Magnum) are pretty paranoid about putting images on the web, limiting the size and decorating them with watermarks, Soth does neither. It’s good for all of us who like looking at his work and particularly for those students I mentioned earlier who can print them off in their reports, and for other ‘fair use‘ of the images. If your work is as well known as his, you don’t need to worry too much about the images becoming ‘orphans‘, the main reason I now include both metadata and a visible watermark on all new web images.

*I’ll possibly think that is sensible design when I get a mouse that comes with a ball on top rather than a wheel, but not before.

Photolounge/Photo-Open/Flowers East

If you are in London this weekend, it worth a trip along to the Old Truman Brewery in Hanbury St, just off Brick Lane, where in spaces T3 and T4 of F Block you can see both the Photolounge and the Photo-Open, both parts of Photomonth 10, this year’s East London Photography Festival. Both are open from 11am to 6pm Fri, Sat and Sun.

Photolounge is a three day event which gives a large number of photographers the chance to put up their own small show. The overall standard of work seemed very high, although some of the better photographers had relatively little on show. Far too many for me to comment in detail, but among the work that particularly interested me was Graeme Vaughan‘s ‘Prague: a notebook‘ and work by Jon Cardwell, Andrew Meredith and Steve Schofield. But there was really a pretty overwhelming array of talent on show, with very little that held no interest for me, a considerably higher standard than some other open events, and it reflects the enormous amount of talent in and around the capital.

Given that there are another 92 galleries and exhibition spaces on the Photomonth 10 map, this with over 200 exhibitions and events is by some way the largest annual photographic event in the UK, and has a very good claim to be the most important of them all.

The Photo-Open attracts a high standard of entries and they remain on display every day until 25 October. Also in the same building is one of those 92 galleries mentioned, the Cynthia Corbett Gallery as well as a display by Photobox of the Worlds Biggest Photobook (yes it was big, but…) to mark ten profitable years of their on-line digital printing service.

Many other shows in Photomonth 10 are an easy walk from the Old Truman Brewery, including my own ‘Paris-New York- London‘ around 15 minutes walk away (though quicker if you hop on a bus – and don’t forget you’re invited to our mid-show party on the 20th Oct.) There are over 50 venues within a similar distance, and the map, although not perfect (and our show has been put on Hoxton Square rather than Hoxton Market) is generally rather better than the Brighton one I criticised a few days ago.

But yesterday night, though I could have walked the whole way, I went instead to the bus stop at Primrose St (get off here rather than Liverpool St for the Old Truman Brewery) and took another bus the three stops to Flowers East on the Kingsland Road for one of the truly outstanding shows of the festival (incidentally they recently opened a new London Overground station, Hoxton, very handy for it.)

Upstairs was ‘Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out’, a part of Edmund Clark‘s very impressive project on the lives of the men who were held in Guantanamo Bay (and that shameful camp is still going, despite Obama’s pledge.) The show at Flowers ends on 14 Nov, but you can also see more of this work at Photofusion in Brixton until November 26 2010. Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, who almost certainly knows more about Guantanamo than any other single person, has written about this work, and hist site includes an interview from ‘Spoonfed‘ between Clark and Loredano, as well as a selection of pictures. At present the best way to see this work online is at Lensculture, where there are 30 pictures along with text by Clark – and I think gives a better impression of the project than the limited space at Flowers allows; I understand a new web site featuring the project and book is under preparation for next month.

Nadav Kander‘s Yangtze, The Long River fills the ground floor at Flowers (until Nov 13), its large prints impressive on the walls, although the opening was a little too crowded for me fully to appreciate this internationally acclaimed work. I hope to go back and take a longer and calmer look. Instead I went outside for some fresh air and to chat with some of the photographers who had come to the opening. It’s a particularly handy place as there is a bus stop right outside the gallery and so I could make my goodbyes as the 243 came along to take me back to Waterloo.

Travelling by bus in London at night is usually a visually interesting experience, although one that is difficult to capture. But I sometimes try.