Photography in Düsseldorf By Douglas Eklund Bernd and Hilla Becher began their collaborative project in 1959 (and were married shortly thereafter), at a time when German photography was mired in the same collective paralysis as the culture at large. The most prominent photographer at that time was Otto Steinert, whose Subjective Photography movement attempted to […]
“When two people make love, both people have to be naked. This (photography) is exactly the same thing.” By C.B. Liddell, The Japan Times, November, 2006 Usually reviews of Nobuyoshi Araki’s work start by pointing out the contradictions “monster,” “genius,” “pornographer,” “artist,” etc. The greatest negative routinely cited is his attitude toward women, photographed […]
Stephen Shore. Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, August 13, 1979 In 1982, a slender yet hugely impressive version of Uncommon Places was released. Its impact was felt almost immediately, forever changing the course of art photography, and securing Stephen Shore a place within the canon of photographic history. By Aaron Schuman, originally published […]
“In a way I wanted to blot out any traces or information about the person in front of the camera. I also wanted to indicate that the viewer is not face-to-face with a real person.” Gil Blank with Thomas Ruff, originally published in Influence Magazine, Issue 2, 2004 Gil Blank: Many of the portraits […]
New York based artist, Cindy Sherman, is famous for her photographs of women in which she is not only the photographer, but also the subject. She has contributed her own footage to the programme by recording her studio and herself at work with her Hi-8 video camera. It reveals a range of unexpected sources from […]
By Marianne Mueller, The Proper Ornaments, Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich, 2008 I am interested in fundamentals, in the conditions and constraints of being. Vulnerability, the everyday, banality and intimacy. Peripherals. Abstraction, energy. • What happens to things, to the shadows of trees on a wall, to pennants fluttering on a parking lot, to the sound […]
Ballen’s pictures bring to life in a variety of ways what (Man) Ray illuminated: the impulse to externalise the chaos of the mind and emotions, and the possibility that the creative process may just as soon yield a monster as an object of beauty. By Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, Art / South Africa, 2005 Certain […]
There is always an “us” and a “them”, isn’t there. You may be part of the “them’s” and you may be part of the “us”. I suppose that it depends on what you look like, your weight and sex, your skin color and where you came from or where you want to go. Also your […]
Sometimes the combining of two items, two individuals or two styles, two colors, or two races, two nationalities or two emotions, two boys or two girls, two sexes or two places… or two ages or all of these things… sometimes these things can work together to create a result that goes far beyond the simple […]
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.” Ezra Pound By Russell Ferguson Wolfgang Tillmans has consistently pushed back against whatever perceptions of his work seem most current. If he is thought of as a casual, snapshot photographer, he produces a book of formal portraits. If he is […]
Madrid, 1933 Cartier-Bresson generated the type of admiration he both enjoyed and ran away from. By Bruno Chalifour, Afterimage, Sept-Oct, 2004 A lot has been written, and more will be, about the life in photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson. If Europe contributed to the medium in the twentieth century, Cartier-Bresson, a.k.a. HCB, probably stood among the […]
Two men dancing at a drag ball, N.Y.C. 1970. By Judith Butler, ArtForum, February, 2004 The Diane Arbus exhibition “Revelations,” currently (2004) showing at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, is not difficult to attend. The crowds that circled the block to see the major Marc Chagall exhibition earlier this fall are now quite […]