Dash Snow is (was) a Rising Star (2007)

 “Most people thought that I was glorifying that behavior,” says the 25-year-old. “But I also saw them as horror stories.”   By Christopher Bollen Dash Snow (1981-2009) has been taking pictures since he was 11. But it was after a two-year stint in juvenile detention, at age 16, that he turned to the Polaroid camera […]

Bill Brandt: A Personal View (1970’s)

Parlourmaid and underparlourmaid ready to serve dinner, Mayfair, 1936 Bill Brandt enjoys darkroom work and likes to experiment, printing the same shot in several different ways. ‘It takes a long time to produce a good print.’ No mass production. Bill Brandt: A Personal View Creative Camera Owner Magazine, 1970s Bill Brandt’s landscapes are truly creative. […]

Geoff Dyer on Trent Parke (2008)

Photography is a generous, abundant medium and Parke is a voracious photographer.   By Geoff Dyer I was introduced to the work of Trent Parke (born in Australia in 1971, a member of Magnum since 2007) by a mutual friend, the photographer, Matt Stuart. He showed me two books by Parke, both self-published. The first […]

Walker Evans’s ‘Counter-Aesthetic’ (2003)

Gay Burke, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, October 28, 1973   As a collection, the Polaroids are remarkable in their consistent and determined attitude. They are bald presentations of individuals without mannerism or style and yet they are distinct, they are compelling, and their directness is palpable.   By Jane Tormey, originally published in Afterimage, July 1, 2003 During […]

Photography in Düsseldorf

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 […]

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 […]

Stephen Shore: “Uncommon Places” (2004)

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 […]

Gil Blank and Thomas Ruff Discuss ‘Portraits’ (2004)

“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 […]

ASX.TV: Cindy Sherman – “Nobody’s Here But Me” (1994)

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 […]

MARIANNE MUELLER: “Because the Pictures I See Don’t Exist” (2008)

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 […]

Some Sort of Place: Recent work by Roger Ballen (2005)

  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 […]

ANDRES MARROQUIN WINKELMANN: "Conditions" (2010)

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 […]