Categories
COMMENTS GUEST POST INVISIBLE CITY

Jn-Ulrick Desert on ‘Invisible City’, a personal reflection

The following is a personal reflection on this month’s book ‘Invisible City’ by Ken Schles. If you would like to add your own personal reflection from seeing the book for the first time. Email us mail@photobookclub.org

I have selfishly carried my copy of this wonderful book with me 3000 miles to my new home in Europe, since 10years now. I knew the work was beautiful then and i had no idea (youth) that that landscape (including the people) captured so artfully by Ken’s vision would morph or fade away- it now seems like a tsunami has hit what we all called home turf (east-village)- New York let alone the USA is indebted to Ken to have captured such a seminal period of American history so well (and i remind everyone that the book is a mere tip of the iceberg which he chose to reveal). I understand (and can see) that this book has influenced videos and films such as Pi (π) which is well worth seeing. Indeed I remember Newmath gallery and Mario and Craig Coleman and an atmosphere that I sometimes see only vaguely echoed here in Berlin (perhaps that is why i live here now- trying to re-enter Ken Schles’ Invisible City)

– Jn-Ulrick Desert

Categories
BOOKS GUEST POST INVISIBLE CITY

Ken Schles On: The Photo Book Club Process

First off I want to thank Matt and Wayne for taking on Invisible City for the Photobook Club. They didn’t have to do it. But I’m glad they have.

Photo Book Club and Ken Schles' Invisible City

The project of the Photo Book Club interests me: it’s about photography books, something I’ve been interested in and engaged in as part of my practice as a photographer for over 25 years. But there is something else that piques my interest here as well. You see, making lists of importance and photography share a common thread—one I also connect to the writing of history as well. All are activities to seek out and present hierarchies of importance. We do it all the time, in the choices we make, how we focus our attentions. When we gravitate towards something, I don’t think it’s necessarily about popularity. And even when it is, it’s almost always about something else as well. At their best, these attentions, these choices are about significance. And the question of significance interests me deeply.

©KEN SCHLES

Significance is something that this blog takes aim at and something photography targets at as well. Flusser calls photographs “significant surfaces” —they are two-dimensional surfaces that signify something. And significance is very much of importance to us humans. We are signifying creatures. It’s what we do. Maybe it is because every one of us operates from a unique and insignificant point in the universe: a deep subjectivity that we struggle to overcome through social activities. We are compelled to ‘discover’ what is significant and share our discoveries: for survival’s sake, certainly, but also for what nourishes us.

©KEN SCHLES

We can take someone else’s word for what is important or significant, which of course, we do all the time, but do those opinions have as much meaning as when we investigate and make these evaluations for ourselves? For me photography has always been about that kind of questioning. I test images against ideas, I test ideas through the work I do with photography, rather than simply accept what I am presented with. I don’t tend to let images ‘wash over’ me. I search for meaning.

And I believe that’s the project of the Photo Book Club as well. The Photo Book Club evaluates significance and relevancy, expanding our insight into the possibilities of what specific photo books can offer. That is why I am keen for this Photo Book Club process.

– Ken Schles

Categories
COMMENTS GUEST POST

Aya Takada on Cafe Lehmitz

Our thanks to Aya Takada fro producing this text on Anders Petersen’s Cafe Lehmitz which is featured here in both a Japanese and English translation. As well as checking out her website, you can follow Aya Takada on Twitter.

It is in the photo exhibition “Rat Hall Gallery” in Tokyo in 2007 that I first met Cafe Lehmitz. The first impression I saw reminded me of the book jacket from ‘Weegee’s people’, the production and typography were splendid. However it is the latest Cafe Lehmitz by Schirmer/Mosel that exists in my hands now.

If the book is opened, it is possible to put your own body to Cafe Lehmitz.

“It seems this is not work that a young person produced.”
There are times when you hear that kind of opinion, but on the other hand, it is through a young photographers eyes that this very pure and straight style could emerge. It seems like a conventional approach was chosen, simple and lacking in sensational images with a rustic feel.  The work is not dissimilar to that of Daido Moriyama in this respect.

©ANDERS PETERSEN

The characters are seen not as supportive as if the heart and mind, body and mutual support the body, sometimes they show a winsome look for the photographer, and
with each passing page, the subjects seems gradually to release themselves to Petersen. I feel a deep affection for the subject from the photographer.
I feel a line of vision near the sense that parents watch the child in a word to which family’s photo album is concluded. This will be able to be seen from the portrait of the photographer in the back book cover. The family is indispensable for Cafe Lehmitz.

©ANDERS PETERSEN

You might also understand the reason why this book keeps being resold as many as ten times, and being loved well.

Cafe Lehmitz is one book that a young photographer must see.

– Aya Takada

 

わたしが、Cafe Lehmitzに出会ったのは、

2007年東京のラットホールギャラリーで行われた写真展です。
ここから出版されたCafe Lehmitzの最初の印象はまさしく「日記帳」でした。
「Weegee’s People」のブックジャケットと似たタイポグラフィーを使った見事な演出。
しかし、現在、私の手の中にあるCafe Lehmitzは、「schimer/mosel」の最新版です。
中身を開けば、Cafe Lehmitzへ自分の身を置く事が可能です。

©ANDERS PETERSEN

「青年の撮影した写真ではないようだ。」
そのような意見を屢々聞くことがありますが、むしろ、まだ写真を始めて間もない若い写真家であるから完成できた作品群であると感じます。
とても純粋でありストレートな写真が多く見られます。
それは、写真の古典的なスタイルのようです。
センセーショナルな印象は少なく、とても素朴さを感じます。
森山大道に代表されるような(または筆者の後期の作品郡に近いような)、撮影時や暗室内での「マジック」をこの本で見ることはありません。

写っている人々は心と心を支え合うようかのように、肉体と肉体を支え合い、時折、写真家に対して愛嬌のある表情を見せることもあります。
ページを追うごとに、徐々に被写体は写真家に心を解放しているように見えます。
撮影者から被写体に対しての深い愛情を感じます.。
家族のフォトアルバムが完結されたような、つまり親が子を見守るような感覚というものに近い目線を感じます。
したがって、背表紙の著者のポートレートは、この本になくてはならない一枚であるように思えます。

©ANDERS PETERSEN

皆さんも、この本が10回も再販され、愛され続けている理由がよく分かるでしょう。
若い写真家にぜひ見て欲しい一冊です。

高田 彰

Categories
COMMENTS GUEST POST

Aggie Morganti on Cafe Lehmitz

Our thanks to Aggie Morganti for getting in touch to share a love of Anders Petersen’s ‘Cafe Lehmitz’.

If anyone wants to continue the conversation with Aggie, you can do so on Twitter, here.

I’ve often wondered what makes Cafe Lehmitz so special to me. It’s not only about its exquisite photography, its visual intensity, its emotive tension running through the edit. That special something is, somehow, a step backwards, hiding in the making itself rather than in the final object.

Anders Petersen - Cafe Lehmitz

I am amazed every time I flip through it by its unique way of being so rich and so poor at the same time. It is rich in all the above mentioned, and poor in pretentiousness. Straightforward, down to earth, honest-to-God report of what had to be reported – and nothing else. The book itself is stripped down to the bare essentials and it only makes me love the fancy title lettering even more, so much that I almost see it blinking on and off as a neon light from a bar would do in the dark of night.

©ANDERS PETERSEN

It’s so transparent you can see through it – or feel you’re there. And the reason why I love it so much is that I have a very personal photographic memory related to Cafe Lehmitz (I’ll be brief – promise).

So, I was around 20 and I had just started to discovery what you could do with documentary photography in terms of storytelling and powerful narratives. It was a gloomy afternoon in December, in Lucca, and I was attending photojournalist Massimo Mastrorillo’s workshop on such matters.

©ANDERS PETERSEN

To provide us with guidance and advice, he had brought some of his favourite photobooks with him (and many of them would also become a pick of my favourites later on, such as Billingham’s Ray’s a Laugh or Telex Iran by Gilles Peress). The table was literally flooded with wonderful things, and I remember this little, black and white white compact book striking me straight on. Cafe Lehmitz was special to him as well, for Massimo’s main advice to us was to follow what really means to us in our photography. To follow what literally grabs your heart and your stomach and does not let you go, to photograph what you love, in any possible way.

So, as I have tweeted before – this is what I’ve always found in Cafe Lehmitz from that moment on. Love, warmth of heart, being human, humble and true. That’s what I like about it and what I think of every time I start doing something photographic.

– Aggie Morganti

Categories
CLOSER LOOK COMMENTS GUEST POST

Chris Timothy on ‘The Valley’

Chris Timothy is a photographer and teacher from England, he runs the 21 Rue De La Hachette blog which is well worth a follow. He got in touch to add thoughts on Larry Sultan’s ‘The Valley’ with reference to key images. If you do not have access to the book make sure you check out our video from cover to cover.

Chris Timothy on Larry Sultan’s ‘The Valley’

Larry Sultans work entitled “The Valley” documents the filming of pornographic movies in his hometown of San Fernando Valley in Southern California. The Valley is an average middle class area, where homes cater for the needs of dentists, lawyers and strangely enough porn stars. These wonderful homes are rented out to the porn industry for live scenes to be captured in an aspirational setting. The strategy that ensures the body of works identity is different to that in which it is documenting is its main angle of concentration on location rather than the actors or actresses being sexualised or objectified. Sultan’s images explore the issues surrounding the questions; why would the owners of these middle class homes rent them to the industry, why does the industry want them? And maybe most importantly what are the consequences?

Why would the owners of these middle class homes rent them to the industry? Is it a sense of self-indulgence on the owner’s part or is it simply a method of further financial gain, which helps with the continuity of the middle class lifestyle? I believe it is the later. To rent out your home to the porn industry is a big moral decision and to do so is a clear indication of where you stand on the issue. However Sultan’s work discretely highlights maybe this moral decision is simply ignored and the homes are being rented out without too much thought to what the consequences may actually be. Sultan’s images show family portraits and personal photographs of the homeowners, their friends and their families, left on shelves and cabinet tops. These photographs are being captured in the background of sexual scenes and taken into the industry. While the viewers are consuming sexual media texts the home owners family and friends are on full view. Is this conscious choice of Sultan to show this demonstrating the loss of morality and care for others when a high amount of money is involved.

Child's Bedroom, Calabassas, 2001 ©LARRY SULTAN

So why does the industry want these homes? The choice of location has been made by the production companies to satisfy the needs of the consumers of the films. Remember, the sole aim of these films are to excite the viewer, so the combination of sexual gratification and aspirational images and locations will help the audiences purpose of consumption be met. To set scenes in houses, which most are not able to afford adds to the fantasy aspect for consumers and maybe most importantly adds to the escapism. Sultan’s choice of mis en scene within some of his images demonstrates this.

west valley studio #13, 2003 ©LARRY SULTAN

There is a definite juxtaposition between the property owners and the porn stars. One of Sultan’s images will focus on the pleasure and excitement of being a porn star and the next, the banality of sitting, sleeping and generally waiting around on set. This drastic change of emotion could be compared to that stereotypical view of a superficial consumer lifestyle held by the middle class. One minute you are filled with excited with a purchase that most would not be able to afford, the next this excitement has worn off.  You find yourself sitting in your museum of expensive purchases with the realisation that boredom has set in due to a lack of motivation and purpose of a lifestyle where there is no need to work towards anything, success has already been achieved.

Tasha's Third Film, 1998

Although Sultan states this work is not focused on the stars of the porn industry, after the audience views the images, most cant help but question why the actors and actresses take part in the industry. Do they perform due to a sense of aspiration and a desire to gain financial clout from a profession that is relatively high paid? Are the actors motivated by and aspire to be the very people who are renting their homes to the industry in which they work? So what are the consequences of the middle class renting out their home to the porn industry? Well, that is a matter of opinion dictated to you by your own moral standing. But what “The Valley” does clearly demonstrate is the porn industry and the films it creates are becoming more and more integrated in every day life and society in the western world.

– Chris Timothy

Categories
COMMENTS GUEST POST

Erik Saeter Jorgenson – The Valley is my favourite photobook

The Valley is my favourite photobook. It’s the one I wish I had made. As a European, San Fernando Valley is pretty much my idea of the American dream. Equal opportunities in jizzneyland. I think the first image I ever saw from the book was the one with the lady in the killer heels, and the dogs following here. I was hooked. Then I read the essay and was blown away. It was so vivid, I could feel the Cali sun (and the dried cum too). The pictures themselves are so subtle and quiet, businesslike even. At the same time, they’re more cinematic than any porno I’ve ever seen. Porn is all about putting the viewer in the film, but Sultan manages to both be really present, and seemingly invisible at the same time. I still don’t understand how he made some of his shots. Sultan was there, and from first page to last. No book has thinner pages. There have been many books about porn and the performers, but The Valley will always be my American dream.

Categories
COMMENTS GUEST POST

Personal Reflection: Kate Osba on ‘Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue’

Richards’ ‘Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue’ had a big effect on photo editor Kate Osba, her personal reflection is below.
You can find Richards’ images on his site under GalleriesCocaine True, Cocaine Blue

Everyone remembers their first love; their first kiss, first rock song that sounded like its lyrics were written just for them. My first love of a photo book happened by chance (or as I have always assumed, fate) in my college library on a late weekend night. It was my second year and I was trying to get through a paper I had no interest in. Avoiding my noisy neighbors I walked around the library floor and found a corner desk with a lone book with a navy protective cover and no title. I brushed the book aside and focused on my blank screen. While inspiration refused to strike, I picked up the sticky book and opened it, thinking nothing of it. I couldn’t believe what I saw. It hit me within seconds – I was looking at something incredible. I couldn’t stop looking, carrying it around in my bag for weeks, pausing randomly throughout the day to focus on one intense page. To this day, as I sit here looking at the images that haunted me for years, I still wonder why it was this book that found me.

©EUGENE RICHARDS

Something about Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue fired me up like nothing else. This man, Eugene Richards, had gone into one of the worst neighborhoods in New York at that time, alone, and documented a world that I had never been able to see. Growing up as a middle-class white girl in Manhattan, I knew there were parts of my city I would never know. This took me somewhere I never wanted to go to, but couldn’t stop looking at. Every shot was so rough, gritty, intense. At the time I thought to be a photojournalist, one needed to travel to a far off country to document war and suffering, I had no idea it could be a subway ride away.  It’s cliche to say, but those pictures are burnt in my mind. If you asked me to name the situation in each frame today, I could do it.

©EUGENE RICHARDS

To say a plastic coated book in a 70’s style library changed my life sounds silly, but it did. The following summer I interned at Magnum, just to be a few steps closer to the eyes that saw these things. On my first day I mentioned to my boss that Eugene Richards was my favorite photographer, and never to let me see him in person because I might literally have a heart-attack. He handed me a yellow envelope and told me I needed to bring this to Gene Richard, with an address, HIS address in my sweaty hand. To say my encounter was awkward is a generous understatement. While Mr. Richards wife told me to wait a few minutes so that I could meet her husband, I immediately told her that I needed to pee and she offered her bathroom. My response was that I couldn’t handle peeing in Eugene Richards bathroom. This might be the first time his wife was ever scared of an intern. Anyway, I met him and it was fine and I managed to not pee on myself, I met him again a few months later and was less awkward – thank you, red wine.

©EUGENE RICHARDS

I still get that feeling when I see someones work that is great, that weight in my heart, unconscious smile – though nothing will ever feel like it did in that library, but that’s okay, that’s what first loves for.

Reluctantly, I threw the address away.

Kate Osba
iamthewhat@gmail.com

Categories
COMMENTS GUEST POST

Stan Banos on ‘Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue’

Stan Banos of the fantastic Reciprocity Failure blog submitted the following piece on Richard’s ‘Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue’.

When published in 1994, Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue was perhaps the last great photographic shock documentary, and brought with it considerable controversy for depicting a certain segment of society in such a negative, nihilistic manner. My younger self very much believed in the power of those raw, stark, in your face images- believed they were exactly what was needed to expose the crack and heroin scourge that was consuming inner cities across the country, and ultimately help reform a national drug policy long bereft of any possible rehabilitative or positive consequence.

And, of course… nothing happened.

©EUGENE RICHARDS

In the interim, photojournalism has struggled to redefine and reestablish itself in a declining market, and reinvent itself in a new medium, via new technology. And yet the problem remains- critics clamoring for a new visual paradigm in photographic story telling, particularly, a new vision of depicting tragedy, hardship and conflict in a way that can command and engage our attention with those we may not encounter in our everyday lives. No short order in these austere and somber economic times when so many of us are simply striving to survive- or escape.

©EUGENE RICHARDS

Eugene Richards never struck me as the kind of man, or photographer, who was strictly out to shock. The images in Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue have an almost apocalyptic sense of urgency in their madness and desperation, and as only a master photographer can envision and present, many of those same images are also maddeningly beautiful, not unlike the “darker” masterpieces of the Renaissance. His photographs seemed hell bent on rattling you to the very core, so that even if you turned away, they would still unnerve you, haunt you, have at you until you finally removed yourself from your comfort zone and entered their twisted netherworld of existence- the very madness addiction demands.

Obviously, I can’t speak for him, but I don’t think it would be the kind of book Mr. Richards would do today. If anything, his current work is more reflective, more contemplative. The Blue Room  meticulously examines the domestic remains of those forced to abandon their points of origin, and his recent work with disabled vets, while containing many an unsettling and disturbing image, portrays subjects who could well be family members, neighbors, friends. We get to feel the main players out, get to know their stories, their lives- before, and after.

©EUGENE RICHARDS

Although the characters get to speak out in Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue, their voices are lost within the insanity that overwhelms their lives and the numerous black and white enlargements that predominate the book itself. Powerful and significant as it was, perhaps that was the one key and vital ingredient that Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue so woefully lacked- we never connected with the individuals depicted, in fact, it was hard to even think of them as individuals! They were ghosts of former selves not even they would fully recognize, beings seemingly beyond redemption, beyond human connection, and well beyond our empathy…

– Stan Banos

Categories
GUEST POST HISTORY

Robert Frank and Hugh Edwards correspondance

The following was added by William Allen, highlighting the correspondence between Robert Frank and Hugh Edwards following ‘The Americans’ (Curator of Prints, Drawing, and Photographs at the Art Institute of Chicago)

Robert Frank:

“It seems I made these photographs. I’m happy that they mean so much to you.”

“N.Y.C. May 1969 For Hugh Edwards  First with gratitude and respect to help + encourage when it mattered (1958) and now with regrets not to see in print your thoughts long before they became fashionable Your friend Robert.”

Those are inscriptions/dedications in The Americans, from Robert Frank to Hugh Edwards. Edwards was the Curator of Prints, Drawing, and Photographs at the Art Institute of Chicago. He gave quiet but effective support to emerging photographers, including Robert Frank. As Randy Kennedy put in the Times, Edwards was “a pioneering but still underappreciated curator.”

Frank had his first one-person show in a major venue at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1961. That was Robert Frank: Photographer and Hugh Edwards arranged the show. Here is the 1960 letter from Edwards inviting Frank to exhibit.

Hugh Edwards:

May 23, 1960
Mr. Robert Frank,
34 Third Avenue,
New York City, New York.

Dear Mr. Frank: It seems so long since I was in New York and talked with you on the telephone that I am afraid you have forgotten the conversations we had in regard to an exhibition. Since I came back to Chicago, I have been very busy and knew you had little time to be bothered with correspondence. However, I have not forgotten that you said you might be interested in a show and my experience with The Americans have been so many since my return that I am writing you at last, still with the hope that we may have an exhibition here.

In the last week I have completed an exhibition schedule so that I am able to give you, if you are still interested, some idea of when the show would take place. How would the period of April 28 through June 11 of next year suit you? I remember you said you would like to have some delay and although these dates-almost a year in the future-may seem distant, the time will pass much faster than we think.

I have had the museum store stock the American edition of your book. They have sold a number of copies and there is steady demand for it. We have both the French and American editions in the print room and they have been enthusiastically received by many young photographers who come here to look at the prints in our collection. This pleases me a great deal because no other book, except Walker Evans’ American Photographs, has given me so much stimulation and reassurance as to what I feel the camera was created for. I hope this does not have too pompous a sound for I feel your work is the most sincere and truthful attention paid to the American people for a long time. Although so different and not stemming from them, it may be kept in the company of Frank Norris, Sherwood Anderson, Hart Crane, Jon Dos Passos and Walker Evans and these are the best in American expression in the time I can remember. It is a real privilege to have known your pictures in their first freshness and newness. Someday they will spread to everyone and even the most sterile and analytical of intellectuals will except them at last.

I should greatly appreciate hearing from you as soon as possible in regard to what you think about the exhibition so that I may put it definitely in the schedule of exhibitions.

I hope to be in New York again, at least in the early fall, and talk with you again. As typewriters and telephones are instruments of inhibition for me, I regret I could not arrange a meeting during those days I was there this spring.

Yours sincerely,
Hugh Edwards, Curator of Photography.

The letter appears at http://bleakbeauty.com/edwards_letters.html . It is the second item, following an appreciation by Danny Lyon.

I want to thank David Travis, retired Head and Curator of the Department
of Photography at The Art Institute of Chicago, for sharing with me his
first-hand knowledge of the inscriptions of Robert Frank to Hugh
Edwards.
– William Allen

Categories
GUEST POST

Jags Parbha – Why I Chose ‘Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue’

Note: Jags, amongst others, have been suggesting books for us to look at. We aim to choose one at least every 3rd month. If you would like to suggest a book, please email mail@photobookclub.org

“I was introduced to Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue on my first photojournalism course. The cover captivated me – a woman staring into a distance with desperate eyes and a syringe held tightly between her teeth – as if it were the last moment of her life and the syringe was her only possession. I was disturbed and intrigued.

Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue ©EUGENE RICHARDS

Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue documents inner city America during the 1980s, lives consumed by drugs, poverty and gangs, rather like the crime drama The Wire. I’ve always been drawn to work which explores the ‘other side’ of society, requiring the photographer to get under the skin of their subject yet remain impartial, something only possible with patience, respect, tenacity and courage. I was fascinated by how Eugene Richards, being a white man, had gained such trust and done exactly that, allowing him to take such close and personal shots.

Was he wearing an invisibility cloak? How did he do it? How did he develop the relationships? The book redefined the meaning of photojournalism to me – it raised the bar. The term is often overused and the story badly told, but not this time.

Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue ©EUGENE RICHARDS

Picture after picture captivated me, telling me a story and leaving me haunted. I realised that a great photographer not only becomes invisible to their subject but presents their work with a respect and dignity.

If a great picture is a thousand words, this is a great novel.”

– Jags Parbha