Batia Suter Parallel Encyclopaediae
“The past is not dead. It’s not even past.”-Aby Warburg. Constellations, catalogues, and correlative image processing are at the fundament of Batia Suter’s efforts to respond to images that she deftly places in thick, long-running sequences, in which the associative power of images, in their constellation, invokes a response from the viewer based […]
Mary Had a Little Lamb & The Bonin Islanders Shinichiro Nagasawa
The Bonin Islanders, 2021, Shinichiro Nagasawa, Akaaka Art Publishers The Bonin Islands, or Ogasawara Islands, are a very particular, scarcely populated set of thirty islands southeast of mainland Japan. The population consists of around 2,500 inhabitants, comprising an exceptionally interesting demographic. Historically referred to as Bunin Jima, or uninhabited, the islands were visited by […]
Wat Der Fuk, Photography: Thoughts Blind Magazines Top 100
These are my initial reactions to Blind Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in Photography. As I crafted a polite response to another situation earlier this week, I have to admit that I’m a little out of fucks to give about tidying things up to be persuasive about my points, so some of this might come […]
Seriously Photography, What the Fuck Are We Doing?
Today, or at least slightly before I started writing this, I received an email from one of the world’s most significant biennial photography festivals, which awards a substantial financial prize. There are two awards, in fact. One is a general photography award to develop a new project, and the other is a book award. I […]
Anna Galí Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine
Anna Galí’s book makes me sick. It makes me sick with pain as the father of a young boy whose interior world I think I understand, but, in reality, can probably only guess at, and this will only get more pronounced as he breaks from adolescence into young adulthood. I feel enormous pain when I […]
Avo Tavitian & Daido Moriyama | Los Angeles x Shinjuku
Daido Moriyama I feel bad saying this, and you will have to read on to find more positive suggestions about this book, but I think Moriyama has become quite a pastiche of his earlier glory. I understand how he arrives at that conclusion, and frankly, most people will likely be inclined to argue with […]
Magdalena Suarez Frimkess
What appears as fok or “primitive” in the handling of Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’s exceptional sculpture is illusory. Instead, what the work relies on is a consistent production of cultural comic and cartoon icons ad infinitum, their forms shaped not by Frimkess’s vision of a new form but by the replication (at volume) of these cultural […]
Bernhard Fuchs Hayloft
There is a photograph by Frederick H. Evans from 1896, entitled “In the Attics,” in which the artist captures the improbably clean space of Kelmscott Manor, the home of Arts and Crafts movement pioneer William Morris. The photograph presents the attic as a type of raw liminal space, where the viewer can identify […]
Walker Evans on What Makes a ‘Good Photograph’ and Avoiding ‘Too Much Pictorialism’ (1971)
Elizabeth and Dora Mae Tengle, Hale County, Alabama, 1936 “‘Visual impact’ may not mean much to anybody. I could point it out though. I mean it’s a quality that something has or does not have.” Walker Evans interviewed (excerpt) by Paul Cummings for Smithsonian, NYC, Oct-Dec, 1971 PAUL CUMMINGS: Could you describe in some […]
All Women Fall in Love with Nobuyoshi Araki (And Duchamps is a Swindler) (2014)
‘Chiro’ from Sentimental Journey @ Araki In many ways, “Sentimental Journey 1972-1992” is quintessential Araki. It is a documentary of his marriage life with his wife Aoki Yoko till the day she lost her fight to ovarian cancer in 1990. By Zhuang Wubin, epSITE and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 2004 Nobuyoshi Araki, or Tensai […]
Inside Andy Warhol – An Interview (1966)
Liz, 1965 @ Andy Warhol Estate A few minutes after we arrived, the silver door to the Factory opened and Andy Warhol stepped in to offer us an inanimate handshake. Inside Andy Warhol By Sterling McIlhenny and Peter Ray The following interview with Andy Warhol appeared in the men’s magazine, Cavalier, in 1966. To conduct […]
INTERVIEW: “Just Float. A Conversation with Mayumi Hosokura”
from KAZAN @ Mayumi Hosokura Just float. A conversation with Mayumi Hosokura By Karin Bareman A young woman sniffles and wipes her nose with her hand. The gesture is utterly disarming. It makes her look so young, so vulnerable. But what on earth is she doing out there? Has she injured herself by moving through […]
INTERVIEW: Meet Gottfried Helnwein (2008)
Untitled, 2005, mixed media (oil and acrylic on canvas),192 x 249 cm / 75″ x 98″ By Stefan Jermann, originally published in Truce Magazine, 2008 My stomach churns; I’m feeling excited – not exactly nervous, but psyched. I’m driving along narrow lanes, through a bleak and lonely area, looking for a grand castle. Suddenly, just […]
Interview with Glenn Brown (2012)
Decline and Fall, Oil & canvas on board, 58.4 x 54.6 cm. 1995 “I will spend ages in front of an original and study they way the brush marks are made. Its always one of the most exciting things when looking at the painting to try and animate the way the artist made them and […]
Interview with Ben Shahn (1964)
Interview with Ben Shahn Conducted by Richard Doud at the Artist’s home in Roosevelt, New Jersey. April 14, 1964. RICHARD DOUD: I’d like to start with a general background of what you were doing prior to the time and how you managed to get with the Resettlement Program. BEN SHAHN: Well, I told you I […]
ASX Interviews James Welling (2014)
Meriden, 1991 “To be an artist in 1974-75 interested in conceptual art, there was a tremendous amount of freedom in the early 1970’s.” James Welling. Enthralled by the possibilities. A conversation with Raphael Shammaa. April 9, 2014. Raphael – At the ripe old age of 12 you started studying art. At 14 you […]
LARRY SULTAN & MIKE MANDEL: “EVIDENCE”
From 1975-1977, Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel selected photographs from a multitude of images that previously existed solely within the boundaries of the industrial, scientific, governmental and other institutional sources from which they were mined. The project, “Evidence”, was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was one of […]
WALKER EVANS: “POLAROIDS OF WOMEN”
“I’ve now taken up that little SX-70 camera for fun and become very interested in it. I’m feeling wildly with it. But a year ago I would have said that color is vulgar and should never be tried under any circumstances. It’s a paradox that I’m now associated with it and in fact I intend […]
ASGER CARLSEN: “WRONG”
Robert Frank: Contact Sheets from ‘The Americans’
(All rights reserved. Images @ Robert Frank)
Walker Evans – ‘American Photographs’ Installation at MoMA, New York City (1938)
Installation View of “Walker Evans: American Photographs” at The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, September, 1938. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Dry Bodies, Bad Dreams, Haifa Street. Found Images from the Iraq War.
“Every dried out mummy-corpse, every dead child, every snarl of these fucking dogs – it’s like they invade my dreams- I can’t get relief either awake or asleep.”
CRYSTAL K.D. HUIE: “ARKANSAS” (1972)
Berenice Abbott – The Photographer of New York City
Berenice Abbott can be considered the photographer of New York City. A revolutionary documentary photographer, Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1898, and studied for one year at Ohio State University, Columbus, before moving to New York in 1918.