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 […]

Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Last Decisive Moment (2004)

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 […]

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 […]

‘The’ American Photographer – William Klein (2003)

William Klein is an American photographer. One is tempted to say that he is the American photographer   By Anthony Lane, Excerpt from Nobody’s Perfect: Writings from the New Yorker William Klein is an American photographer. One is tempted to say that he is the American photographer; among his coevals, only Richard Avedon can match […]

Nan Goldin’s Bohemian Ballads (2003)

Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a Taxi, NYC, 1991   “People commonly think of the photographer as a voyeur, but this is my party, I’m not crashing.”   Excerpt from, Phototextualities: Intersections of Photography and Narrative, University of Mexico Press, 2003 By Alex Hughes and Andrea Noble The work of the American artist Nan Goldin, […]

Tony-Ray Jones: “A Day Off: An English Journal” (1974)

Blackpool, Lancashire,1968 ‘I want my pictures to bite like the images in Bunuel’s films which disturb you while making you think. I want them to have poignancy and sharpness but with humour on top.’ – Tony Ray-Jones By Ainslie Ellis, originally published as the introduction in A Day Off, and English Journal, 1974. In San Francisco […]