Daido Moriyama: “Tights and Lips”
One of the most revered living Japanese photographers, Daido Moriyama’s work is saturated with the melancholic beauty of life at its most ordinary. His photographs epitomize wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic of finding beauty in imperfection. Moriyama focuses in on the lost and the discarded, and finds echoes of living through the breakdown of traditional […]
Educating Larry Clark (2007)
still image from Impaled @ Larry Clark Educating Larry Clark By Philippa Hawker, originally published in The Age, September 2007 The Destricted project was, in many ways, an invitation to go too far – to test boundaries and to step outside them. It’s a feature film made up of seven short works by seven […]
Asger Carlsen – ‘Hester’ (2012)
“I am tired of photography.” – Asger Carlsen By Paul Loomis, ASX, February 2013 Asger Carlsen’s new book, Hester, features twenty-one impossible photographs. Their subjects are almost humorously mangled yet unbloodied human bodies. The first image is a pile of plump flesh with stretch marks, mounded in globs atop a bipod consisting of […]
Frank Horvat with Helmut Newton (1986)
“This is why I continue accepting commissions, even though economically I don’t have to. Because making money gives me a kick, but also because 1 think it’s important for me to have the discipline, to work for somebody within a given frame. At least from time to time.” – Helmut Newton Frank Horvat with Helmut […]
ASX.TV: Ed van der Elsken – “Vali”
Eduard “Ed” van der Elsken (10 March 1925 – 28 December 1990) was a Dutch photographer and filmmaker.
The Misadventures of Larry Clark (1997)
Half the commercial photographers in America have ripped Clark off at one time or another. By Jim Lewis, Originally Published in Manhattan File, September – October, 1997 One afternoon earlier this year (1997), a woman called the Luhring Augustine Gallery on 24th Street from an apartment in SoHo. She understood that they represented the […]
Ain’t No Fuckfest: Kanye West’s “Famous” Aftermath Pornography
“I do not care if you like Kanye or his music, but if you are not realizing the genius surrounding his product empire, you may be guilty of overlooking what is actually on offer.”
ASX.TV: Ren Hang – A Portrait (2013)
Ren Hang doesn’t have a lot to say about himself. In the fine art environment, where emphasizing one’s own importance (or having representation to do so, while you maintain the air of expensive mystery) is the norm, this resistance to pretense could be considered a form of madness. But this hasn’t stopped the twenty-seven-year-old photographer, […]
Francis Bacon – “Survey”
“I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs.” – Francis Bacon Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) is largely known for his grotesque, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon’s abstracted figures typically appear enclosed within glass or steel geometrical cages and […]
Christer Strömholm – ‘Post Scriptum’ (2012)
Carla & Zizou, Brasserie Graff, 1963 Many of his photographs were taken in Paris, and anticipate the work of more contemporary photographers like Nan Goldin in that they are documents from Strömholm’s eclectic and vigorous life. By Paul Loomis, ASX, January 2013 This volume compiles photographs from several extremely hard to find books […]
Steve Kahn: “Hollywood Suites”
WWW.JOSEPHBELLOWS.COM (All images copyright and courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery and Steve Kahn)
From LA to NorCal to Queens, the Ghost is in the Machine in Kwiatkowski’s ‘Eat, Prey, Drug’
Strippers, drug dealers, and psychics (sometimes they’re the same person). By Owen Campbell, ASX, December 2014 Somewhere in Oregon, a stripper boofed molly and fainted inside a hollow cake; she may have contracted giardia. Earlier, in California, an earthquake cracked the earth and released noxious spores of mold, afflicting those nearby with what is known […]
Auto-Erotic Post-Coital Bliss – Lotte Reimann ‘Jaunt’
The duo had created the membrane of their meeting based on the physicality of the auto and their drive to intertwine their bodies through their primary, yet graceless couplings via a chance meeting in an etherized world of electronic falsettos and cum-soaked chat rooms. By Brad Feuerhelm, ASX, May 2015 The sun stretched […]
An Interview with Nobuyoshi Araki: Intimate Photography – Tokyo, Nostalgia and Sex (2006)
“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 […]
Roswell Angier: “Combat Zone”
In the 1950s, when Boston was a major Navy port, the area around Washington Street became known as the Combat Zone; the name derived from the Shore Patrolmen, who prowled the rock-and-roll bars, busting the heads of sailors. By the 1970s, when Angier spent two and half years (1973-1975) photographing the area, the sailors […]
Antoine d’Agata – “Vogue Masters” (2013)
An interview by Alessia Glaviano with Antoine D’Agata. ASX CHANNEL: ANTOINE D’AGATA (All rights reserved. Video @ Vogue, Images @ Antoine d’Agata)
Araki Loves Polaroids
“The time when a picture is taken is like an emotion, it’s like a sexual encounter. It’s like a fuck! So, timing is very important.”
Boris Mikhailov: “Case History”
ASX CHANNEL: BORIS MIKHAILOV (All images copyright @ Boris Mikhailov)
An Interview with Robert Heinecken – “Photographist” Pt. 2 (1996)
Porno Film Strip #4, 1972 Lithographic film 57 x 17 1/4 inches TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO APRIL 14, 1996 LEHMER: All right. So let me rephrase that. There was an interesting statement made by an artist about the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, that they always have photography exhibited in the hallways of the museum outside of the […]
Harry Callahan Loved Eleanor, Barbara and Chicago
“He just liked to take the pictures of me. In every pose. Rain or shine. And whatever I was doing. If I was doing the dishes or if I was half asleep. And he knew that I never, never said no. I was always there for him. Because I knew that Harry would only […]
An Elegiac Response to the Ghost of Surrealist Decadence in the Work of Paul Kooiker
@ Paul Kooiker This is where our shared habits meet concrete. All the possessions accumulated, obsessions sought and tendered in the infernal light of my psychic affairs have led me into the unforeseen garden of these earthly delights. By Brad Feuerhelm, ASX, February 2015 August, 1935 This is where our shared habits meet concrete. […]
ASX.TV: Antoine d’Agata – “Focus” (2011) (French)
ASX CHANNEL: ANTOINE D’AGATA
Five Uneasy Pieces: An Interview with Juno Calypso
Reasons You’re Tired All the Time, 2013 “I feel like this question is saying ‘can you still be a feminist when your camera is aiming at your ass?” If so, my answer is yes.” BF: Within the theatricality of your images, you seem to be hinting at a considered perception of the feminine […]
E.J. Bellocq: “Storyville – The Red Light District of New Orleans”
First of all, the pictures are unforgettable – photography’s ultimate standard of value. Introduction text to Bellocq: Photographs from Storyville, the Red-Light District of New Orleans By Susan Sontag First of all, the pictures are unforgettable – photography’s ultimate standard of value. And it’s not hard to see why the trove of glass negatives […]
An Interview with Ryan McGinley
“When I first moved to New York I never wanted to leave. I think I might have left the city once over a period of seven years.” Ryan McGinley in Conversation with Gerald Matt and Synne Genzmer, September, 2007, Kunsthalle Wien, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln Q: In your photography you take up […]
Under Nancy’s Heel, Under Nancy’s Holy Boot – The Crush Photography of John K
I’ve read enough Marquis de Sade to understand that sitting on objects such as candles, improperly folded parchment, and wax encrusted rope can offer a certain sense of pleasure within the penal system, but for some reason, the idea to sit on a bear head, magazine, or American flag had completely escaped my reasoning or […]
ASX.TV: Helmut Newton – “Frames from the Edge”
Bad Sex: Rita Lino’s ‘Entartete’
Entartete delivers solitary sex and guilt and self-revelation so fierce that sometimes it leaves you gasping. By Eugenie Shinkle, ASX, July 2015 Entartete is German for ‘degenerate’. It’s the title of Rita Lino’s latest book. Picked out in lurid Gothic script, the word greets you like the opening credits of a horror movie, leaving […]
Ren Hang’s New China
任航 摄影师 诗人 1987年出生于中国吉林长春，现居北京。在国内外做过多次个人摄影展，参加国内外各大摄影联展，摄影作品常见于国内外各类杂志和书籍，2010年获得意大利第三届特尔纳当代艺术奖，曾出版个人摄影集《REN HANG》、《ROOM》、《NUDE》、《MY DEPRESSION》、《Republic》。
Exertier French Burlesque from the 1960s
Money, Paint and Jokes – An Interview with Richard Prince (2007)
“I thought these new models were more generic and less identifiable and could make it seem like after the logo and copy were cropped out that the re-photographed image could be more my own.” An Interview with Richard Prince by Brian Appel, 2007 BRIAN APPEL: Hope you had a chance to read my review […]
Upstairs at Eric’s – Game Recognize Game.
“If there’re gonna be 100 people in my apartment, there are gonna be twenty or so who want to be exhibitionists and expose themselves to express themselves…”
HELMUT NEWTON: “Skewing Lines: On Pervs, Pearls and Sex Dolls”
Fat hand and dollars, Monte Carlo, 1986 Perfection, perfect women, and perfect sex (as if such a thing exists) may be Newton’s medium, his outer preoccupation, his aesthetic obsession, but they are not the subject of his work. Skewing Lines: On Pervs, Pearls and Sex Dolls By Lily Azrielant, Mercer Street The warm […]
Miroslav Tichý – Tarzan Retired
In the 1960s he began to neglect his appearance. He didn’t cut his hair or trim his beard and he wore a ragged black suit. Miroslav Tichý: Tarzan Retired By Roman Buxbaum “O làsce šeptal tichý mech” (Of love murmured the quiet moss) Karel Hynek Màcha, Màj (1836) When I was a little boy, […]
Focus on the Feminine Self and Set Aside the Suicide of Francesca Woodman
To interpret Woodman’s work entirely through her death is reductive and backwards-facing. It’s the stated goal of this monograph to set aside the dominant interpretation of Woodman’s work, which sees her photography as an anticipation of her suicide. Focus on the Feminine Self and Set Aside the Suicide of Francesca Woodman By Owen Campbell, ASX, […]
Todd Hido: “Fragmented Narratives” (2011)
8906, 2009 Fertilizer is to the suburban lawn what cosmetics are to the suburban face: a fickle attempt to sweep ugliness under the rug with a splash of color. By Ian Epstein I once heard someone remark that the desire to have a perfect lawn was not unlike the desire to have a piece […]
An Italian Playboy and His Villa Full of Women – ‘Carlo Mollino: Polaroids’ by Damiani (2014)
There is something of satyriasis, or Don Juanism, the male equivalent of nymphomania, in Mollino’s work, as if they were undertaken compulsively, and perhaps without joy, as part of a doomed project to reach an unattainable ideal: the tragic desire to keep thousands of women in an empty house. By Owen Campbell Carlo Mollino was […]
Humid and Moist, a High-Definition Look at Bush in Minter’s ‘Plush’
The pubes, natural, died white or starchy, mascara-black, are run through by fingers, caressed, teased out and tugged on. By Owen Campbell, ASX, January 2015 To talk about Plush in the typical language of criticism, to say it is warm, close or intimate is understatement tantamount to mistruth. Marilyn Minter’s book is […]
Antoine d’Agata – Until the World No Longer Exists
“A photograph is nothing but a lie. The space is cut off, the time, manipulated. They are two uncontrollably false appearances of an image condemned to choose between hypocrisy and good conscience and being fake.” – Antoine d’Agata “What we see is not made up of what we are seeing but rather from […]
TONY STAMOLIS: “FREZNO”
Frezno (All rights reserved. Images @ Tony Stamolis)
Blood Loss and the Spectral Dissonance of Self in Aaron McElroy’s “The Devil May Care”
@ Aaron McElroy The devil may indeed care, but there is a good chance he will simply stand idle at our emotional butchery while the moonlight plays delightful tricks along the contours of the young woman’s pubic thatch and each of her freckles is counted as a mirthful stone hurled…against an absent asbestos choked God. […]
ROMAIN SLOCOMBE: “CITY OF BROKEN DOLLS”
“MY WORK’S NOT ONLY ABOUT MY OBSESSION WITH JAPANESE WOMEN, IT’S ABOUT MEDICAL FETISHISM AND MY FASCINATION WITH ACCIDENTS” – ROMAIN SLOCOMBE, 1997 Beautiful Japanese girls are photographed in casts and bandages, victims of unknown traumas in the neon streets and hospital rooms. These are the “broken dolls” of Romain Slocombe’s Tokyo, a […]
A Conversation with Dirk Braeckman (1998)
“I try to charge my images so much, I go to such extremes in that darkness…” Conversation with Dirk Braeckman and Erik Eelbode From z.Z(t). Ludion, Ghent / Amsterdam, 1998 Is it really the role of an artist who is still active to talk about his own motivations? As a source, he is suspect. […]
Antoine d’Agata – “Anticorps” (2012)
Antoine d’Agata – Anticorps – Te zien van 26 mei t/m 2 september 2012 in het Fotomuseum Den Haag – http://www.fotomuseumdenhaag.nl Antoine d’Agata – Anticorps – On view from 26 May until 2 September 2012 at The Hague Museum of Photography – http://www.fotomuseumdenhaag.nl/en Video: Studio Gerrit Schreurs Volg/Follow Fotomuseum Den Haag: http://www.facebook.com/Fotomuseum http://www.twitter.com/fotomuseum
David LaChapelle, Neo-Pop and Photoshop (2007)
With his garish images, David LaChapelle holds a mirror up to a hedonistic, lust-oriented and affluent society. By Matthias Harder, originally published in Sleek Magazine for Art and Fashion, No. 13, Winter, 2006-2007 It is as if we were staring into the faces of Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor, as only Andy Warhol could […]
CARLO MOLLINO: POLAROIDS, ETC (1962-1973)
In a career that spanned more than four decades, Carlo Mollino designed buildings, homes, furniture, cars, aircraft. One of the most dashing figures of mid-century Italy, Mollino was famed for his design finesse and his elegant organicism. In 1949 he published an important book on photography: Message from the Darkroom. Sometime around 1960, he […]
Tape, Rope, Water, Milk and Bondage in ‘Other Rooms’
The images present a bloodless eroticism, uncanny, simultaneously sexual and absented of desire. By Owen Campbell, ASX, January 2015 Tanlines, tape, rope, water, milk, Callis shows the way things push against the body and how the body pushes back, contracts, evades. Elements like water and shade subsume the human body; rope, as it presses […]
Dreamscapes and Sensory Experience – An Interview with Bill Henson (2015)
“It was the dreamscape of the suburbs that interested me.” An Interview with Bill Henson by Sabine Mirlesse Sabine Mirlesse: 1985 is work you shot thirty years ago – what were you doing in Egypt? Bill Henson: As a boy I was obsessed with Egypt and Egyptology. I’m convinced it’s not that uncommon. A […]