Brassai: Letters to My Parents (1998)
By Brassai, Excerpts from the intro to, Brassai: Letters to My Parents, 1998. I was delighted to notice in the letters that from the start I saw photography as a way to uncover and record the world that surrounded me, the city in which I lived, as comprehensively as possible. There were a good […]
Boris Mikhailov – A Terrible Beauty
What does it say about us who look at them? A Terrible Beauty By Sue Hubbard Boris Mikhailov is sixty-three, has dyed black hair, a white moustache and a young wife. Born in Kharkov in the Ukraine, he has recently exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery, just been awarded the Citibank Photography Prize and is […]
Lars Tunbjörk – Alien at the Office (2004)
“When I photograph now,” he said, “I try to imagine that I’d never seen a place like this before.” Lars Tunbjörk: Alien at the Office By Joshua Kors Whether Lars Tunbjörk is a visionary or simply a weirdo with a camera, perhaps that’s a matter of opinion. Certainly Tunbjörk, the acclaimed Swedish photographer – winner […]
Roswell Angier on Larry Sultan ‘Pictures from Home’
Imagine the difficulty of undertaking a portrait project with your own parents as subjects, in which the exercise of critical awareness, and compassion alike, become part of the collaborative enterprise. Excerpt from “Train Your Gaze: A Practical and Theoretical Introduction to Portrait Photography” (2006) By Roswell Angier Imagine the difficulty of undertaking a portrait project […]
John Szarkowski On Robert Frank’s Book ‘The Americans'” (1986)
I saw it I suppose very shortly after it was published, when I was still working as a photographer myself, and it was, frankly, shocking. I sensed the power in it, and the authority about it but there was much about it that I didn’t like… The Americans was received with mixed critical reaction. Not […]
Diane Arbus: Imaginary Lives, Subjective Projections
“Arbus reveals the powerful ability of photography to lie, but also it is a testimony of how the lie is not mere betrayal, but a far-reaching human necessity to escape factual reality, the human urge to create and believe in stories, to draw mythical worlds and the inter-subjective life’s alternative narrative.” Imaginary lives, compulsive […]
William Gedney: Journal Entries on Kentucky, Sex and Diane Arbus
“There are two ways of looking at a thing. Either you feel that a thing must be perfect before you present it to the public, or you are willing to let it go out even knowing that it is not perfect, because you are striving for something even beyond what you have achieved, but […]