A Portrait of Takuma Nakahira (2005)

By Masashi Kohara Who is Takuma Nakahira? A photographer of the bure, boke1 style. A member of the Provoke group. An essayist and photography critic, a political activist, a photographer who talked too much, a photographer who lost his memory, a photographer who forgot his mother tongue, a legend… Takuma Nakahira, who influenced many photographers […]

Garry Winogrand, Public Eye (1981)

Winogrand’s pictures are usually packed with astounding quantities of incident and “information,” a catchword popular among practitioners and students of street photography during the early ’70’s. By Pepe Karmel Photography critics raised on the classical elegances of Stieglitz and Cartier-Bresson still consider Garry Winogrand’s photographs haphazard snapshots, mach as 19th century academic critics saw the […]

The Indecisive Moment: Frank, Klein, and ‘Stream-Of-Consciousness’ Photography (2004)

 Half the time the photographers seemed not to have even looked through the camera. Far from seeking the perfect composition, the ‘decisive moment’, their work seemed curiously unfinished. It captured ‘indecisive’ rather than decisive moments.   By Gerry Badger “Frank… and Klein brought to the decade a feeling for its woes which, in retrospect, synthesizes […]

Daido Moriyama: Investigations of a Dog (1999)

 Stray Dog, Misawa, Aomori (1971)   Moriyama is conspicuous for the brutality with which he distorts photographic description: his pictures are sooty with grain, blotchy with glare, often out of focus or blurred by movement, often defaced by scratches in their negatives.   By Leo Rubinfien, October, 1999 The photographer Daido Moriyama, whose first U.S. […]

Interview with Julius Shulman (1990)

“I had been blessed with an innate, a built-in, quality of design composition–of composition, not just design composition.”   Interview with Julius Shulman Conducted by Taina Rikala De Noreiga at the Artist’s home in Hollywood Hills (Los Angeles), California. January 12 & 20, February 3, 1990. TAINA RIKALA DE NOREIGA: Let’s start by you telling […]

Camilo Jose Vergara: “The New American Ghetto” (1991)

 Vergara shows exactly what has happened to these neighborhoods. By essentially dumping the new shelters and apartment buildings in devastated, minority neighborhoods on the outskirts of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Harlem and the Lower East Side, the city was able to avoid many lawsuits from powerful community groups.   By Frederique Krupa, November 21, 1991 […]

On Lisette Model

Along with Berenice Abbott and Weegee, Lisette Model became a photographer of New York. The city–the place became very important to Model–even her portraits are uniquely anchored to place. By Elsa Dorfman, Ann Thomas on Lisette Model (Published by the National Gallery of Canada to accompany an exhibition of Model’s work which travelled in the […]

Richard Avedon: Avedon’s Endgame (2002)

Ronald Fischer, Beekeeper, Davis, California, May 9, 1981 Initially drawn to actors, Avedon also sought out people with a highly cultivated sense of themselves as characters—subjects who could collaborate with him in the creation of an impromptu performance. By Maria Morris Hambourg and Mia Fineman Essay from the exhibition publication, Richard Avedon: Portraits (Harry N. […]

Chris Shaw: “Life as a Night Porter” (2006)

  The graveyard shift is no doubt a motherfucker.   By Doug Rickard, ASX, June 2010 The graveyard shift is no doubt a motherfucker. You try to force your body and its natural clock over to an artificial one but it never really adjusts so you just live in a weird sort of phantom world […]

EIKOH HOSOE: “Subject Matter”

Ordeal by Roses #32, 1961-1962 By Eikoh Hosoe (This talk was presented by Eikoh Hosoe at a Twentieth Century Masters Tribute to Yukio Mishima.) I am Eikoh Hosoe, a photographer from Tokyo. It is a great honor for me to speak on this special occasion about my collection of photographs of Ba-ra-kei, or Ordeal by […]