New Orleans (Woman Eating), 2004 Collectively, the Shimmer books describe a chronicle of American experience circa 2004–2006, and the world presented, by and large, is a world of isolated figures, near-anonymous strangers moving past one another without much connection. By Michael Almereyda Arranged on a shelf, or stacked flat, the twelve slender books comprising Paul […]
From the Working series By Gregory Crewdson A family of three carefully unfolds rolls of sod onto their barren front yard transforming it into a small domestic oasis. A man ascends a bare, undersized tree in an absurd attempt to prune its dead leaves. A young boy sits on his Big Wheel holding a toy […]
“To be sure, that is also the expression of a particular vital consciousness.” (Essay excerpt from Der Rote Bulli ,Stephen Shore and the New Düsseldorf Photography 2010, brought to ASX by NRW-Forum Düsseldorf) By Christoph Schaden, NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, 2010 The typical historical account of the effect a body of photography exercises on its viewers unfolds […]
David Hockney smoking, Bridlington, 2008 If one is properly exposed to it and assuming that one has an “eye” for these things, Juergen Teller’s “aesthetic” becomes very recognizable. Not quite so much as to harm the effectiveness but much. Yes, in his case, this is a good thing. If pressed for a brief description, one […]
“I have no problem with that. I don’t want to feign being intimate with somebody I meet 5 minutes ago.” Interview with Richard Woodward, New York City, June 2007 RW: Let’s start with this new book, which is actually a series of books, and work backwards. How did the project originate? PG: Well, my […]
Half the time the photographers seemed not to have even looked through the camera. Far from seeking the perfect composition, the ‘decisive moment’, their work seemed curiously unfinished. It captured ‘indecisive’ rather than decisive moments. By Gerry Badger “Frank… and Klein brought to the decade a feeling for its woes which, in retrospect, synthesizes […]
From Sleeping with the Mississippi “I have big problems with Sleeping By The Mississippi, there’s parts I love, but definitely things I would do differently now. When people point to those things you’d rather do differently, you feel, ‘I wish I could’, but I can’t.” By Ben Sloat, Big Red & Shiny, November 17, 2009 […]
“I used to feel that I should not discuss my experiences. I wanted the pictures to be judged as images only…” Steven Watson Interviews Rosalind Solomon RS: I used to feel that I should not discuss my experiences. I wanted the pictures to be judged as images only, but now I feel that it […]
“Perhaps here we have stumbled upon a partial, but nonetheless astonishing description of the creative act at the heart of serious photography: nothing less than the measuring and folding of the cloth of time itself.” By Paul Graham This month I read a review in a leading US Art Magazine of a Jeff Wall survey […]
“This is and always will be where my heart is. It is what I care about.” The Muse of Place and Time: An Interview with William Christenberry This interview is the culmination of numerous conversations between Christenberry and the author from October 2004 through August 2005. By Robert Hirsch RH: Describe your family background […]
Loretta Lux: New Work (2004) Afterimage, March-April, 2004 by Jill Conner When the digital camera was introduced in the 1990s, it was predicted to displace the technique of modern photography as well as its practice. By translating light into codified data stored within a random access chip, digital technology radically changed processing habits. Photoshop […]
Thomas Ruff talks to Philip Pocock (1993) Philip Pocock: Unlike the Neue Sachlichkeit of Sander or Renger-Patzsch, there is a clear crisis of belief in the objectivity of your medium in your work. True or false? Thomas Ruff: It’s both. It’s true and false. They also used the camera as an instrument to take pictures. […]