Should you ever need to know the Spanish for ‘Fish Eye lens‘ it is ‘objetivo ojo de pez‘, which explains the name of the Madrid-based OjodePez magazine (link is to the English version) which recently invited Aaron Schuman, the Editor of the on-line SeeSaw Magazine to guest edit Issue #13, and you can now see work from it on line (and perhaps be amused by its little Capa falling soldier logo.)*
Schuman’s issue is ‘This Land Was Made for You and Me‘, and his land is of course America, as seen by Ryan McGinley, Alec Soth, Jessica Ingram, Richard Mosse, Stephen Shore, Colby Katz, Kalpesh Lathigra, Todd Hido and Tim Davis.
It isn’t actually the work by the best known and most fashionable of these that appeals to me most, although all of the stories have their interest. I’ve seen this work by McGinley too often before; perhaps this isn’t Alec Soth at his best (though there is one image I like very much,) and certainly Stephen Shore‘s work here will not enhance his reputation.
But anyone with an interest in documentary photography will find much to attract them, and I particularly liked the work of Kalpesh Lathigra on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and Tim Davis‘s ‘Retail’, night images of simple houses in small-town America, their windows reflecting the garish retail neon of petrol stations and fast food outlets.
Also on the site are two videos related to the issue, with a 10 minute feature ‘Two Way Street’, shot for public broadcasting in California, in which Todd Hido looks at how he takes his pictures of models in carefully chosen hotel rooms and outdoor scenes, mainly at night, as well as editing them for a book. It is a video I found of considerably greater interest than the on-line page spreads. A shorter piece looks at ‘Hunting Rabbits‘ by Colby Catz, and there are other videos related to earlier issues – work from which can also be seen as well as other material on the site.
Although you can see a good selection of images on line, the text is reproduced too small to read easily, and you will need to buy the print edition for that and the essays by Geoff Dyer, Joerg Colberg, Michael Famighetti, Robert Fitterman and Aaron Schuman. Someat least of these writers appear prolifically on the Internet (who doesn’t these days) so you will have a good idea what to expect. There appears to be no UK distributor for OjodePez, though it is available in USA, Switzerland, Germany and Australia as well as Spain, but it may be available through some gallery shops etc.
Aaron Schuman‘s own Seesaw is one of the best of on-line magazines, and it’s a pleasure to view and mention again the Winter 2008 issue, including work by Reiner Riedler who I met at ‘Rhubarb’ last year, and others including ‘Lot 116′ an intriguing set of black and white images found in Brighton (UK), 2007 by Schuman.
* Note
The interface for OjodePez uses a lot of java, which on my machine it isn’t quite fast enough, and certainly not always intuitive. At first I got the impression that there was very little content on line and thought that perhaps I needed to subscribe to see more, but after a while I realised how it works. Regular users of the site – and I suspect the site designer – will doubtless regard it as a model of elegant and clear interface design.
Click on the picture to go to the first page of the story, then page icons in green at top right (though the may go on to the next line at the left) show the available pages – click the second of these to go to the next and so on.
