BY STEVE BISSON

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce ‘The Plot Thickens’, an exhibition and 250-page catalogue marking the gallery’s 35th anniversary. Comprised of 100 photographs acquired and assembled over the last five years, The Plot Thickens revels in the richness of the medium through works by its greatest masters interwoven with prints by the anonymous and unknown. The majority of images are being exhibited and published for the first time.

© photographer unknown, Untitled (Greece), ca. 1900

Viewed as a whole,‘The Plot Thickens’ is an idiosyncratic, unorthodox survey of photography traversing three centuries. The earliest work in the exhibition is Charles Clifford’s moody study of the Alhambra, circa 1858; the most recent is Lee Friedlander’s bullet-riddled “NO SHOOTING” sign, made in June 2014. Photographic objects by Sol LeWitt, Jess, Christian Marclay, and Bernd & Hilla Becher find affinities with Charles Sheeler, Helen Levitt, Thomas Eakins, and William Eggleston. A found snapshot of an all-female wedding, dated 1930, appears near Nan Goldin’s 1978 self-portrait as a dominatrix and an 1860 daguerreotype of two girls holding an image of their deceased mother.

© photographer unknown, , [All-female wedding party], October 7, 1930

In the catalog introduction, Jeffrey Fraenkel asserts, “Singling out artists is still what makes a gallery.” Eadweard Muybridge and Diane Arbus—two very different artists whose work contains seemingly inexhaustible achievements—are among the photographers who make repeat appearances throughout ‘The Plot Thickens’. Other artists included are: Mel Bochner, Katy Grannan, Alfred Stieglitz, Kota Ezawa, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard, the Louisville optician who left behind an unforgettable body of work at his death in 1972, at the age of 46.

© Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Untitled, 1964

Fraenkel Gallery opened in San Francisco in September 1979 with an exhibition of recently discovered albumen prints by the nineteenth-century photographer Carleton Watkins. Since then, the gallery has presented more than 300 exhibitions exploring photography and its connections to the other arts, and published 55 books on subjects ranging from Edward Hopper’s influence on photography to the sculptor David Smith’s multi-decade involvement with photographs, as well as the complete library of Diane Arbus and nine monographs by Lee Friedlander.

© unknown photographer, [Bank robber aiming at security camera], March 8, 1975

THE BOOK

'The Plot Thickens' is a major new book published to mark Fraenkel Gallery’s 35th year. The publication is an unorthodox survey of photography traversing three centuries, with 100 photographs by artists as wide-ranging as Diane Arbus, Robert Adams, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Mel Bochner, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Katy Grannan, Helen Levitt, Christian Marclay, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Eadweard Muybridge and Alec Soth. Interwoven with these works is a trove of prints by the anonymous and unknown. Nearly all of the photographs are published here for the first time.

The hardcover catalogue for ‘The Plot Thickens’, designed by Katy Homans, extends the gallery’s deep commitment to publishing, as seen in earlier books such as The Eye Club, Furthermore, and The Unphotographable. The printing of the catalogue’s meticulous reproductions has been overseen by Trifolio s.r.l. in Verona, Italy.

Hardbound
256 Pages
100 color illustrations
Introduction by Jeffrey Fraenkel
Fraenkel Gallery, 2014

© Fraenkel Gallery

BY DIETER DEBRUYNE

1. Tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots?

An old camera from my father and the act of remembering.

2. How did your research evolve with respect to those early days?

I worked at a 1hour photo service. I discovered the value of this personal form of diaristic photography. I love “snapshot” photography, because it records everyday life but it is a very personal form of photography.  An image is often produced to support the act of remembering. Images become significant; they are a material trace of the past preserved for “posterity”. Regardless of the subject matter, the images are traces of loved ones, cherished moments… The act of remembering is the very core of my photography.

3. What do you think about photography in the era of digital and social networking?

Digital images loose value. Printed images don’t. The dark room is a very important part of my process: the printed image is more tangible than a digital one. A print can be touched, passed around, looked at, and written on. There is a connection between my self-awareness, my photographs and the printed image.

On the other hand, photography is for everyone, it’s a visual language. So I support social media to connect people with the same interest, and I see the digital world as a platform to reach more viewers.

4. About your work now. How would you describe your personal research in general?

Diaristic, and an investigation into the value of images, as well as self awareness. 

5. Do you have any preferences in terms of cameras and format?

Compact-cameras, and film. I prefer the invisibility and straightforwardness of a compact camera.

6. Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?

Leight Ledare ‘Double bind’. Last year I was very impressed by the exhibition of Leigh Ledare at Wiels, Brussels. I had the opportunity to meet the man behind the work during a tour at the exhibition. His work is a great inspiration for my diaristic point of view. A document of an intimate life at a higher level. For his latest project, Double Bind (2010), American artist Leigh Ledare arranged a trip to a remote country house where he spent four days photographing his ex-wife, Meghan Ledare, whom he had divorced five years before. Two months later, his ex-wife returned to the same location, this time with her current husband, Adam Fedderly, a photographer. He also documented her for four days. This results in this doubled process of about thousand images in total, both strangely intimate and strangely similar, sharing a certain erotic ambiguity and encompassing voyeurism. Working with photography, archives, film and text, the focus of Leigh Ledare’s practice lies in an investigation of how we live, not merely at the level of identity but at the level of our projected desires, motivations and aspirations. His famous photographic essay ‘Pretend You’re Actually Alive’ already pushed photography to its limit.

7. Three books of photography that you recommend?

- ‘Snapshot photography: The lives of Images’ by Catherine Zuromskis;
- ‘On Photography' by Susan Sontag;
- ‘Camera Lucida’ by Roland Barthes.

© Thomas Vandenberghe | Urbanautica Belgium

BY STEVE BISSON

1. What are your earliest memories of the relationship with photography?

The first photographic memories coincide with my personal visual memory. I am very far away, inaccurate, out of focus. Innocent, pure, emotional. The first album of family photographs, pictures of grandparents on the walls, those of my family on documents and passports. The first seeds of the construction of a nascent personal visual grammar and selective formation of taste and style.

2. How has this relationship evolved over time, and at what point are you today?

Subsequently, things have changed a lot through the academic training in architecture, the visual culture fueled by photo books and direct relationships with the Italian and international masters of photography. With time everything changes. Today photography is to me so many things together: a profession, with all its rewards and annoyances, a challenging and interesting research and a passion, alive and exciting.
The pleasure of surprise always feeds my intellectual curiosity. Today I find myself as at the beginning of my path, feeding an unchanged desire to learn, to discover new, exciting, and surprising things. Citing Marcel Proust: «The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes».

© Gianpaolo Arena - Ha Giang, Vietnam, 2014

3. Can you introduce us to your project ‘My Vietnam’. How have you developed this work? Tell us also of the publishing project you’re working on?

The photographic project was born from a trip of 30 days in Vietnam. Venice - Ho Chi Minh extremes of a journey. My cultural imagination had formed with the tragedies of war films, by the images and visions of Coppola, Stone, or Kubrick up to the most recent Tran Ahn Hung. My Vietnam was very different, a trip across the country, steeped in the personal, beyond stereotypes. I found a welcoming country, open and intriguing. Greatly enigmatic and mysterious. A door to the Orient.

Many pressures towards modernity, with so much positive energy and a lot of contradictions. I remember very intensively an episode… I spent the first night in Ho Chi Minh City in the heart of the ancient city, where the houses are stratified and where they find space as they can.
It was late at night but I could not close my eyes a bit for Jet Lag and a bit for the deafening noise of traffic and the music coming from a room at the base of the building of my hotel. Suddenly, after hours of junk music, I recognized immediately “Go Bang” by Dinosaur J in the remix of François Kevorkian, with its syncopated and spastic rhythms and its BANG, BANG, BANG. Epiphanic apparition! In those moments the former Saigon seemed New York, plus the colored and ‘sweaty’ neon, the sticky and clammy air and the sweetish Eastern atmosphere. A window to explore alien territory with new eyes. 

The difference between the little that I knew before, and all that I have seen, lived and that excited me later, formed the main body of my photographic work. In part, my approach was documentary, part travelogue and, to a lesser extent, a narrative description. Coming back after a year having gained the experience, depth readings, and new visions, had a different meaning. The desire was to try to finish what I had started. The look was different, the search was more targeted, the reasons were more accurate. I have gone to the extreme border of China, crossing the mountainous region of HA Giang. The material produced in a total of two months of time is equal to 100 rolls of film in medium format. Hence the work of selection and editing developed in several months with the idea of building my publication on the topic. From the wilderness and desert areas liminal to the urban textures, from the great empty silent to chaotic urban densities.

© Gianpaolo Arena - Ha Giang, Vietnam, 2014

I am looking for an international publisher able to believe in this type of project and to make the best of what was produced in 3 years of research. Part of the work was presented at the Fondazione Fabbri, Villa Brandolini, Pieve di Soligo, TV, within the festival “F4 - An Idea of Photography” by Carlo Sala, then in Rome by Camilla Boemio at Galleria Anteprima d’Arte Contemporanea and during the International Festival of Rome at Macro - Museum of Contemporary Art, where it is on display until 11 January 2015. A good representation of the latest new images is available in this interview and on this blog, curated in collaboration with Camilla Boemio.

4. Tell me about a place that you would like to photograph sooner or later?

They are many. All those where I’ve never been. Greenland, Patagonia, Mexico, Cambodia, Japan, China, Nepal, the Caucasian territories of Azerbaijan… For their possible future developments in different fields I find interesting the exponential growth of suburbia and the improper forms of environmental resistance and ecological resilience in place. The most frequent question I ask myself is: how the medium of photography is important in giving us the ability and the knowledge to decipher our relationship with the contemporary world?

5. You are one of the founders of Landscape Stories, online magazine of photography. Why was this experience started, and how has it evolved?

The magazine was founded by the ideas and discussions of three friends to see something that was not there yet. Landscape Stories grows and develops with a new approach, open and interdisciplinary. With Claudio Bettio and Andrea Gaio we decided to present a series of thematic proposals, which could involve in addition to photography also literature, art, music, cinema, architecture, following only our elective and editorials preferences. Quotes, references and tracks become red wires functional to the development of the narrative. A story in pictures in the form of collection, accompanied by an editorial and extracts from literary texts that reinforce the theme and help to frame the cultural climate in which the photographic project develops. Currently, after 18 monographs, we published in the pages of Landscape Stories, through magazines, directories, forums and social networks, thousands of photo projects and editorials. Among others, we presented the following international authors: Thomas Stuth (Germany), Mitch Epstein (U.S.A.), Nadav Kander (U.K.), Roger Ballen (U.S.A.), Alec Soth (U.S.A.), Guido Guidi (Italy), Larry Sultan (U.S.A.), Michael Wolf (Germany), Frank Gohlke (U.S.A.), Jem Southam (U.K.), J H Engstrom (Sweden), Adam Bartos (U.S.A.), Mona Kuhn (Brazil), An-My Lê (Vietnam), Mark Steinmetz (U.S.A.), Joachim Schmid (Germany), John Gossage (U.S.A.), Massimo Vitali (Italy), Mike Brodie (U.S.A.), Raimond Wouda (Netherlands), Raymond Meeks (U.S.A.). Among the featured interviews: Axel Hutte (Germany), Richard Rothman (U.S.A.), Simon Roberts (U.K.), Olivo Barbieri (Italy), Hiroshi Watanabe (Japan), Lise Sarfati (U.S.A.), Ferit Kuyas (Turkey), Francesco Jodice (Italy), Peter Brown (U.S.A.), Max Pam (Australia), Spencer Tunick (U.S.A.), Karin Apollonia Muller (Germany), Valerio Spada (Italy), Hans-Christian Schink (Germany), Doug Dubois (U.S.A.). 

© Gianpaolo Arena - Hanoi, Vietnam, 2014

6. Is there a number of Landscape Stories that you’re more connected with or that you want to tell?

I am bound to each issue of the magazine, really. Each selection monographic was born in a different way and is designed and developed long before. Sometimes the red wire is dictated by literary texts, most often by the quality and quantity of photo projects. Those who remember more, for the strength of the theme, are: LS 07 | TREES, LS 09 | ADOLESCENCE, LS 12 | RIVER, LS 15 | MOUNTAINS. The last LS 18 | FAMILY has involved an extraordinary sequence of authors, among others: Trish Morrissey, Thomas Struth, Doug Dubois, Sage Sohier, Larry Sultan, Laura McPhee, Joanna Piotrowska, Leonie Hampton, Alex Cretey-Systermans, Bertien van Manen, Nicolai Howalt, Alain Laboile, Raymond Meeks, Susan Worsham, Fred Huening, Petra Stavast, Lesly Deschler Canossi, Martin + Lindsay, Seba Kurtis, Julian Germain…

7. Through Landscape Stories you also worked on educational activities, in particular workshops. This way you met important photographers and especially many people eager to improve themselves and to confront. What lessons you learned from this experience? Of all the photographers who surprised you the most?

The organization of the workshop, organized together with Giorgia Sarra, are an important reality for the exchange of ideas and discussion on photography, today and tomorrow. The last, curated with Tre Terzi, Vincenzo Castella, Simon Roberts, Francesco Jodice, Raimond Wouda, between Venice and the Dolomites, places of excellence where you are surrounded by the beauty and Sublime, accounted for the extraordinary opportunities for debate and discussion between talented photographers from all over Europe. I have learned from each experience different things, each in its own way precious and unrepeatable. The greatest wealth lies in human and professional exchange, and hence the seeds for the cultural growth of tomorrow are thrown. Humanity, passion, generosity and energy of teachers as the opening, the interest, the desire to get involved and the curiosity of the participants have been surprising. Some memorable episode … talk to Francesco Jodice and find that we are both fanatics of Italian detective films by Fernando Di Leo and Enzo Castellari. Feel Vincenzo Castella remember his relationship with Luigi Ghirri and Lewis Baltz or tell the blues of the Mississippi Delta and the field recordings of Alan Lomax.

© Gianpaolo Arena - Hanoi, Vietnam, 2014

8. In addition to photography you are a big fan of music. Urbanautica houses successfully your editorial ‘Undercover’. It’s extraordinary the bond that over time has united influential photographers with bands and songwriters. An example for all William Eggleston who is also musician. How did you get to this?

I am a curious, passionate and ‘omnivorous’ music consumers since I was a teenager. My discography has 10,000 albums but curiosity about the origin and transmission of sound remains an irresistible attractor. Of course the interest and love for alternative musics were vehicles for introducing me to different cultures and worlds. Seminal experiences generate insights in all art forms. Undercover allows me to make room for these plots, indicate paths, suggest hypotheses. William Eggleston, among others, weaves his name with those of Big Star, Alex Chilton, Primal Scream, Chuck Prophet, Silver Jews, Joanna Newsom.

I like to think that the glossy perception of the color and light of the American master favors somehow a special joyous musicality where the irrational chaos of things magically takes shape and becomes accomplished. One of the insights that I would like to do next on ‘Undercover’ is on the covers of the albums and aesthetics of a musician, not a photographer, always shrouded in mystery and existential hermitage, Jandek. All of his albums, published by his own label ‘Corwood Industries’, describe in the blurry covers indistinct faces and shadows, details of a house in suburban Texas or musical instruments. A thick visual and audio corpus, monotonous, disturbing. A poor poetic to describe a disturbing and obsessive microcosm.

Of course the incestuous relationships between photography and the arts are numerous, promiscuous and indefinite. Think about how the cinematic visions have influenced the work of photographers and vice versa. I think of Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog or Godard. In other fields: Jeff Keen, Harry Smith and Kenneth Anger. We could go on forever and continue to shuffle the cards. In this regard, there are two phrases indicative «You have to listen to the eye before looking» - Jean-Luc Godard and «I talk in pictures, not in words» - Peter Gabriel.

9. One of your recent projects is CALAMITA/À. An initiative that is gathering a large interest and a number of significant photographic contributions.

The project in its editorial format, and design exhibition is curated by Marina Caneve and Gianpaolo Arena. Photography is the medium of choice to investigate the urban landscape and identity of the northeast Italian. Art, sociology, urban planning and photography combine to define the identity of the territory with a multidisciplinary open approach. CALAMITA/À aims to ensure that the area in question will become a laboratory and a privileged place of observation. The platform was created as a tool of territorial investigation, which through a planned research, wants to deepen the ongoing changes, to generate debate, to revealing and critical points of view, to attract interest and knowledge around a nodal place still to be defined, that of Vajont.

The wave of the October 9, 1963 suddenly marks an instantaneous and irreversible change in the landscape. The catastrophic event clears places, memories and destinies. The identity of these places were wiped out, leaving room for a new and chaotic urban layout. The morphology of the territory, the topography, infrastructure networks, the architecture, the social context are some of the subjects of analysis examined. Currently about 50 authors with different scopes are involved. Artists, writers, musicians, graphic designers, filmmakers are developing their own site-specific project. An important role is played by the residents and those who live on the territory, with their experience and their experiential memory.

An important part comes from the new editorial ‘Collateral’ which currently houses the works of international photographers like Céline Clanet, Richard Petit, Bärbel Praun, François Deladerriere, Yannik Willing, Pascal Amoyel, Pétur Thomsen. The section devoted to interviews issues will become increasingly influential. The interviews are designed as insights and windows on the world and have as their object: the catastrophe and calamity, the territorial and urban changes, mutant identities, geopolitics, climate change, the global market, the architecture, the tourism industry, ecological issues, migration and social marginality, minorities.

© Gianpaolo Arena - Hanoi, Vietnam, 2014

10. Could you name three books of photography that you are very fond of?

'Early Color' by Saul Leiter
'The Democratic Forest' by William Eggleston
'Hidden Islam' by Nikolaus Degiorgis. And here you can find 10 other books.

11. What are your plans for the future?

The launch of the new monograph of Joël Tettamanti “Works 2001-2019”, where I wrote an essay. The book was published by the Swiss Benteli Verlag in various editions and the graphics design by Onlab. The first months of 2015 I will be part of a couple of juries of international photography awards. In February, with Landscape Stories I will participate on the exhibition of Italian photographic publishers at 21er Haus, a new contemporary art space in Vienna. From March 2015 the programming of new workshops will bring LS to collaborate with numerous international photographers. 

I will continue to curate the projects ‘My Vietnam’ and ‘CALAMITA/À’ and trying to accomplish the editorial publications for both. An editorial collaboration dedicated to Australia, between Landscape Stories and Heidi Romano and Photobook Melbourne Festival, will see the light in the coming months. And of course the new issues of the magazine, new interviews and the new editorial Dream books and Books reviews.
In the immediate to find, buy and listen to the box of 44 CDs of Glenn Gould: ‘The Complete Original Jacket Collection’. Reading the full interview on the ‘Abecedario’ by Gilles Deleuze, the complete set ‘Heimat’ by Edgar Reitz and ‘La Jetée’ by Chris Marker… The end is just a new beginning.

© Gianpaolo Arena | urbanautica Italy

Urbanautica is pleased to announce the collaboration with the platform of video art Filmessay to strengthen the debate on representation of the image in a ‘cinematic’ perspective, when picture becomes motion. Filmessay is glad to present the New Zealand online Festival ‘Goodnight Kiwi or: Tonights broadcast has now ended, regular transmission will resumer at 6:00am’. A project curated by Mark Williams and CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand

WHEN AND WHERE

From 20.12.2014 to 04.01.2015
Free streaming, sign up from HERE
Page of the festival HERE 

© Festival manifesto featuring New Zealand photographer Harvey Benge from the series ‘Against Forgetting’. («For the first thirteen years of my life I lived with my parents in the Auckland suburb of Mt Roskill. Our family home was a modest, two bedroom, flat roofed, weather-board house, which my father had built around 1940».)

THE PROGRAMME

Before the advent of 24 hour broadcasting in 1994 the evening closedown of New Zealand state television was signaled first by a two-minute animation called the Goodnight Kiwi, then followed by several hours of either static or a television test pattern.
These 12 videos are offered as a collection of alternative sign-offs, transitions into the post-broadcast hour and/or potential place holders to fill the twilight hours between regular broadcasts.
Alternately humorous, abstract and challenging, Goodnight Kiwi presents a series of direct addresses to the viewer. Recognising the ubiquity of the internet across the globe, this programme is designed to be broadcast somewhere between the hours of 2-4am.
Reflecting the often solitary and ritual nature of technological occupation, Goodnight Kiwi variously offers aesthetic transformation, mass media critique or moments of personal reflection arising from the effects of exhausted wakefulness.

The selection proposed by the curator Mark Williams starts with ‘Coloured Bars’ a production by Daniel von Sturmer (time: 7’ 09”, 2008). Coloured Bars of dripping paint ooze silently down the screen, slowly forming the image of a SMPTE-like television text pattern. 

© Daniel von Sturmer, ‘Colour Bars’

With 'Untitled (Hair Transposal Video)' Bryce Galloway undertakes an obscure grooming exercise for dealing with male pattern baldness using the camera as a mirror. Galloway exploits his own baldness to poke fun at social vanities and the cult of appearances/cult of youth.

Bryce Galloway is a transdisciplinary artist who works across fanzines, drawing, writing, music, performance, installation and video. Galloway’s work is always comedic and usually autobiographical and self-effacing.

© Bryce Galloway, ’Untitled (Hair Transposal Video)’, time: 11’ 12”, 2011

POD by Bronwyn Holloway-Smith (time: 3’ 55”, 2008) is filmed in a single take, and depicts a mysterious circular shape tracing the images of occult symbols across a white surface plane. The “occult symbols” in question have been sourced from, and defined by, a conservative Christian New Zealand publication. Originally created for the ADA symposium event “Séance for Nam June Paik” (Christchurch, Feb 2008), the work not only responds to Paik’s contribution to the development of Video Art and the locale of Christchurch, but also touches on ideas of religious and social tensions, invisibility and the intangible, spirituality, and memory.

Working in the expanded field of contemporary painting, Miranda Parkes explores the languages of abstraction while making dynamic work that is not bound to its conventions. Parkes makes objects that walk a line between painting and sculpture, are contingent on their environment, inclusive and engaged with the real world. The video works are “like photographs thick with time”; one-take meditations on found incidents in the everyday environment that play on formal elements. In contrast to her unruly paintings, Parkes videos are light, yet compelling and lend a poetic element to her practice as a whole. ‘Boob Reflection’ by Miranda Parkes (time: 2’ 05’, 2011) moves in this direction.

'Fleeced' by Brit Bunkley (time: 4’ 22”, 2005) is a video composite of short video vignettes that obliquely refer to psychological, environmental, and social-political dislocations set within rural settings of the Southern North Island of New Zealand. «I grew up on an Island in New England in the USA near a military air base during the cold war. I moved to a house in the middle of a sheep paddock in New Zealand in 1995. In the valley, dead animals regularly float down the Whanganui River. A famous postcard of a “Maori maiden” was photographed on this river at the beginning of the last century. A sacred volcano, Mt. Taranaki looms on the horizon».  

'Ghost Town' by Mike Heynes (time: 7' 33”, 2011) is a dystopian travel diary. A point of view tour through a recently deserted city.The ghost town is an artificial ruin, an anti place constructed using other modeler’s rejects. Titled in lower case, it is not a specific town. This work represents a new direction, a move away from the grotesque, towards the uncanny, a conscious shift from an interest in character, to an exploration of place. These mass produced model buildings are empty, suggesting that this is a post consumer world and that capitalism has failed.In 1906 German psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch first described the uncanny “as something one does not know one’s way about in”. Installed as a single channel video projection, the intended effect is disorienting, an endless looping journey where all the streets start to look the same.

© Mike Heynesm, ’Ghost Town’

'TV Hooks' by Ben Holmes (time: 5' 44”, 2005) is part of a series of instructional videos made between 2005-2010 that were sent out with different accessories as part of a mail-based participation game. Their premise was to show participants how to perform different tasks and how to take part in a covert communication system through the use of various collusive actions, markings and signals. Initially they also incorporated a points and prizes system.

Goodnight Kiwi presents the work ‘This is Driving me Quackers’ by Gemma Syme. «Gemma Syme holds a cheeky attitude towards ideas of gender and sexuality. She addresses issues of gender without holding onto lingering binarisms, and begins to blur lines of conventional sex differences. Her works plays along the fine line between objectification and empowerment, but doesn’t present any sort of closure on these issues». [Abby Cunnane]. Gemma Syme works in video, performance and music. She has been involved in a number of performance works and exhibitions at venues including Enjoy Gallery (Wellington) and The New Zealand Film Archive.

'Light' by Clinton Watkins (time: 6' 01”, 2009) perpetuates fragments of time by stretching, repeating and therefore suspending a minute moment. High-speed video technology encapsulates in slow motion and detail unknown to the human eye. Visual subtleties, nuances and movement are amplified at 300 frames per second.

© Clinton Watkins, ’Light’

Lydia Chai’s ‘Moon Rising’ (time: 4’ 36”, 2008), so conceptually similar to Clinton Watkins, films the progression of the moon across the sky in real time. 

'Binary State' (time: 12' 51”, 2010) as the overall practicve by NA Royal focuses on the difficulty of communication. «Presently I am investigating how the body operates as a gestural system and I am asking what happens to communication when this system is deconstructed and its elements are re-configured and subverted by time-based media. Within this I am interested in the psychological effects of fear, tension and anxiety that we experience when confronted by an increasingly sophisticated system of manufactured ritualised beliefs. The aim is to draw attention to the ways in which our conscious realities are constructed and manipulated by Mass Media.»

'The Twilight Drone' (time: 48', 2010) is an experimental video that aims to resurrect the concept of the “ambient film” stipulated by Brian Eno. Set to a minimalist soundtrack of steady, undulating organ drones and rhythms, this static-POV video tracks a group of three silhouetted figures moving in a loosely triangular pattern in the snow. One of the figures is an unwitting participant in the others’ choreography, which means the cyclical flow of movement is constantly being renegotiated. The editing of the video, which includes stark contrasts, ghosting, inversions, speed changes, overlays and colour blocks, evokes the bluntly unnaturalistic techniques of 1970s/80s video art.The Twilight Drone is the conclusion of Johannes Contag’s Sleepy time trilogy, the first two being instrumental music albums (‘You Are Feeling Sleepy’, ‘Schlafwandler’). As the name infers, the Sleepytime cycle aims to shift the audience’s perceptive faculties into a somnolent state somewhere between meditation and daydream, free from the trappings of the causal intellect.

THE CURATOR

Mark Williams is the founding director/curator of CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand. Established in 2012 CIRCUIT supports New Zealand artists working inthe moving image through distribution of works, professional practice initiatives, commissioning of works and critical review. CIRCUIT issupported by Creative New Zealand, the arts council of New Zealand. In 2012 Mark Williams took part in the Asia New Zealand curators tourof Japan, China and Korea. Subsequently he co-curated (with CityGallery curator Aaron Lister ) Moving On Asia: Towards a New ArtNetwork 2004-13 (CityGallery Wellington 2013). As an independent Williams has curated and presented a number ofinternational touring programmes including The Artists Cinema (BangkokExperimental Film Festival 2012); Peoples Television (co-curated withLaura Preston, Paris Les Rencontres, Pompidou Centre 2011); ObjectLessons – A Musical Fiction (co-curated with Laura Preston, Adam ArtGallery, Wellington 2010; Malcolm Le Grice – The Image of Time(various venues NZ/Aust 2010). From 1999-2010, Williams worked at the New Zealand Film Archive in theposition of Exhibitions Manager/Project Developer. During this periodhe presented a number of international screenings at institutionsincluding LUX (London), Pacific Film Archive (San Francisco),Anthology Film Archives (New York), Other Film (Brisbane), WORM(Rotterdam), Kunstmuseum (Liechtenstein), Hamburg Film Festival(Hamburg), Arsenal (Berlin).

© Circuit | Filmessay | Urbanautica

BY SHEUNG YIU

When it comes to the question ‘which photographer is worth watching’, who else is better to answer than the practitioners themselves. ‘Photographers Tag Photographers’ (PTP in short) is an interview series that does exactly that. We talked to photographers, about their projects, about their journey and about inspirational photographers. To open the series, I talked to one of the most prolific Hong Kong artist, Leung Chi Wo (梁志和). Leung incorporates photography, sculpture and installation into his art. His work discusses our relationship with almost everything, our relationship with culture, our connection with media, our experience with images.

© Leung Chi Wo +  Sara Wong, Office Lady With A Red Umbrella. Chromogenic print, 100x150cm, 2010

© Leung Chi Wo, Postcard of 1950’s Queen’s Road Central, printed circa 1980. Found object, 10.5x15cm, 2010

1. Growing up, have you ever imagined being a photographic artist

Not really. I didn’t think about being an artist even after I graduated from art schools.

2. What is your first camera? What is your first memory with photography?


Nikon FM2. I only remember there was an old Agfa medium format camera at home but it was only used by my father or brother. 

3. When did you start to see photography as an art form/ a way of expression? 


In my second year in college, I borrowed my brother’s SLR camera and spent the whole summer in the US travelling. I killed so much film. It was kind of like a combination of tourist experience plus art student’s projection of art. I didn’t learn photography in my college years at all. ‘Photography is art’ has never been controversial in my development. I remember even when I was in art school where photography was not taught. I consciously added photographs into my works, perhaps I was just being rebellious.

4. Is your art school training important to your photography? 


I considered my undergraduate years a general education and I enjoyed a lot of exposure to social science too. I think it’s important to have it as a foundation to acquire further knowledge. My study in a photography short course in Italy and museum internship in Belgium in my postgraduate years was important for it prompted me to consider to practise art seriously. Of course, my MFA study was a stage that I transited to be a practising artist. Photography for me is not only a technique, tool or medium but a subject to think about, sometimes I take it as a metaphor. Sometimes I made work about photography that is not photographic.

5. What are you working on now? 


I am working on my first survey show in OCAT Shenzhen in April, 2015. It is an installation/investigation about my first experience in Shenzhen when I was 5 in 1973 in addition to a selection of existing works. I am also collaborating with Sara Wong for our exhibition in Blindspot in March, 2015. We have worked on our last two projects, He was lost yesterday and we found him today, and we have done so much writing for our object installation Museum of the Lost. He was lost is a self-portrait series, referencing unidentified individuals and Museum is a collection of objects in which we found those unidentified people and we try to give them certain identity for sure in failure.

6. How is your research process?


Looking for links, between me and other things, in particular seemingly unrelated things. Lots of desktop research but sometimes working in libraries and archives.

© Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong, Young Girl In Blue Jumping Up, 100x150cm, 2014

7. Photographers are unique visual artists in a sense that they put reality in new contexts, in front of new viewers of completely different cultural backgrounds. What do you want to achieve in your project ‘He was lost yesterday and we found him today’?

It is a performative project. The artists performed to mend the holes in the grand narrative of history (in our own words). It was a process to extend a split second into hours (of our studio shooting). It was a ritual to imagine being lost in the history but at the same time to immerse in the paradox that the artist is always known in the art production.

For the viewers, I hope they can examine the experience of viewing a photograph through the re-enactment of gaze. We always look for found images that we understand a little but are confused at last. Certain mystery, but something we thought we could explain (and we failed of course). Just like we come across thousands images every day but only manage to remember few, and among them some for no reasons! So, maybe we want the audience to experience our viewing experience, something more perceptual, less reasoning. That’s why we isolate the context against a colour backdrop. (Politically speaking, if the grand narrative of history is about reasoning, this project is about unreasoning.)

8. What is the story behind the idea of the project? Was it an ongoing conversation between you and Sara? 

We first did a public art commission with the similar idea and were really excited to continue. Back in 2010, we collaborated on a project titled ‘She was lost in the past and we found her today’ for the Tamagawa Art Line Project curated by Toshio Shimzu.

During our research trip in Ota, we found a recent publication of photos of Ota in the 1950s. Although the city and the architecture have changed a lot, a few of images around the train station were still recognizable. We picked one which was taken right outside the station 50 some years ago.  The woman who looked back in the foreground captured our attention immediately. Contemplating this void of identity, we decided to stage ourselves (in this case Sara Wong) to link up the site and the photographic representation with the time and the unidentified person, in the hope that our own being could fill up this void left by the history.

9. Your work often present photography in unconventional formats. Why?

I guess first I was not a trained photographer and was very ignorant about formats in the beginning. As a visual artists, I made work out of the contexts and tasks in my research. I would acquire new techniques and skills for some projects. Format is a narrative element for my visual expression. A large photo would allow life scale experience.

10. Are there any mentors/ photographers/ young photographers/ artists that you draw inspiration from?
Paolo Gioli, Walker Evans, Eugene Atget, Tomoko Yoneda… not sure if my work is inspired by them but for sure I like their works very much.

11. How does Hong Kong inspire you artistically? Living in a city with such dense visual elements, does it influence your aesthetic and artistic thinking? 


The history and the place are things that one need to explore by oneself. However, I don’t think I got much visuals from HK. Sometimes I find them annoying. I like to think about relationships and reasons.

12. Any great exhibition that you recommend?

Jeff Wall at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
. Ching Chin Wai at Exit Gallery, Hong Kong

13. Every interview, we ask photographer to tag another photographer who creates significant work to the contemporary photography scene in Hong Kong. Who is your choice?
Ng Sai Kit

© Leung Chi Wo | urbanautica Hong Kong

BY STEVE BISSON

Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present Beverly Hills John, an exhibition of new work by John Waters. This is the artist’s third solo show at the gallery, and will be on view from January 9 to February 14, 2015, at 509 W. 24th Street, New York.

For 50 years, John Waters has provoked the idiosyncrasies and hilarities of the movie business – the childhood stars, the trade lingo, and the false depiction of the ugly and the heroic. His photographic work (since 1995) has taken on politically charged topics of “cinematic correctness,” religious lunacy, and media manipulation. A recurring theme of Waters’ oeuvre is the appropriation of images from other directors’ films then rendered into storyboards that change the meaning of the first celluloid frames. Within these “little movies,” as Waters calls them, the artist redirects and highlights the damaged narrative that the public often overlooks.

© Loser Gift Basket, 2006

More personal and self-critical, this new body of work seeks resolution to a set of questions about Waters’ own experiences, or as he describes them: his childhood fame issues, his fear of false glamour and nouveau-riche comfort, his ongoing sexual attractions, and the possible horror and risk of a “careericide” with dignity. In Self Portrait #5, Waters portrays himself as a despised dogcatcher, nostalgically yearning for the days he was hated by the “moral” guardians. In Beverly Hills John, he imagines himself with a plastic surgery makeover, lip and cheek augmentation, Botox, and an alarming hair transplant. Hysterically poking fun at his own vulnerability in these images, Waters also sincerely asks whether his reinvention invites self-parody. Regarding these depictions, he writes, “Since I haven’t made a film in ten years, must I give my entire life’s work a facelift? Now that celebrity is the only obscenity left in the art world, where do I fit in?”

© John Waters, Badly Framed, 2006

In the main gallery, Waters draws from his notoriety as a film director to present a new 74-minute video entitled Kiddie Flamingos. The video shows a table read of Waters’ X-rated 1972 cult film Pink Flamingos, rewritten as a children’s movie with an all-kid cast. Waters hopes that this defanged and desexualized sequel is even more perverse than the original, transferring innocence into a new kind of joyous, G-rated obscenity.

Other works in the exhibition speak to Waters’ concerns about the contemporary art world more directly, the jargon of success, and the debatable definition of a ‘classic.’ In Congratulations, Waters riffs on the infamous red dot once commonly used in galleries to indicate a sale. In Library Science 1-10, Waters juxtaposes literature with related pornography, and in Cancel Ansel, he challenges the role of art to wreck the past. All of these statements at their core are a call to viewers to overthrow hierarchy and interrogate the very value systems in which we all participate. This is the pillar of Waters’ craft, and the severity of his comedy.

© John Waters, No Vacation, 2007

John Waters Is a National Treasure by JerrySaltz

«I don’t remember where or when, but I once read that the great artist, filmmaker, and true national treasure John Waters said of the late, equally great gallerist Colin de Land of American Fine Arts, “Colin broke the curse of fame for me.” 
I think that what Waters was referring to is that whenever anyone as famous as he is enters the art world as an artist, be it James Franco, Jay Z, or Tilda Swinton, the art world usually recoils, blasting their efforts, deeming their mere presence dirty and crass. Waters is right: Once upon a time, when he showed his work at that storied gallery, he and his work were spared this trial by fire. That is because it turns out that not only is Waters one of America’s best moviemakers, he’s also an outstandingly original artist. By now he’s had more than 50 solo shows around the world, making ganglike groupings of grainy pictures shot from his TV screen, featuring nicely sleazy, funny, punny pictures, with Waters’s obsessions of porn, poop, lowlife, stars, and marginalia ever-present. (A new show of his work, “Beverly Hills John,” opens at Marianne Boesky on January 9).

No one gets the cross-section of showbiz and fandom like him. In giving us these extraordinarily particular individuals and distinct visages — both psychological and visual — Waters gets you to know in your bones that the more we are part of a vast crowd of people who idolize someone or something, the more alone and special we feel in our idolization. These are the tribal roots of his art — maybe of all art: the mad adoration and the giving-up of self in order to become more of one’s self. In the same way that Hamlet is so deep that each of us has our own understanding of Hamlet, Pink Flamingos is so specific, if demented, that each of us who reveled in it has our own version of Pink Flamingos. Waters also makes great, telling text-pieces, little index cards with “to-do lists” made up of scores of items, all written in and then crossed out in teeny writing in an orderly fashion. This is one busy, smart, anal-retentive, driven, deeply squirrelly artist.

© John Waters, Cut / Uncut, 2006

Ditto filmmaker. Film critic David Thomson described Waters as “the classic modern homosexual movie director with wit, courage, and mischief.” That is a compliment, though no one would ever call Steven Spielberg, say, the “classic American heterosexual movie director.” No matter, Waters says: “I used to run to see the films that they told us in Catholic school we’d go to hell if we saw.” As Thomson put it, Waters is ”dangerous, dirty, naughty, and middle-aged.” Regardless, Waters is a special New York case. (Don’t get upset, Baltimore.)

Waters, whose filmography includes classics like Pink Flamingos, Mondo Trasho, and Female Trouble, as well as Hairspray, Polyester, and Pecker, started making films at 17, when his grandmother gave him an 8mm Brownie camera for his birthday. A turning point for him and America came in 1963 when he met transvestite Glenn Milstead, whom he gave the name “Divine” and cast in a series of films. The rest is infamous history and pure art. 

Shooting films in gutters, alleys, and laundromats (for the neon lighting), Waters built an audience on the midnight-movie circuit in Baltimore, Provincetown, San Francisco, L.A., and then New York. As for how his films were received, he said, “Nobody was saying they were good, and they never played in real movie theaters, but the audience was rabid. Every person was on drugs in the audience, every person was on drugs in the movies themselves, and I was on drugs when I thought them up. And the exhibitors would put down sawdust on the floor because of all the puking.” Rabidness is something artists understand and relate to. And everyone seeing the film also being in it gets back to the uncanny tribalism of his art.

© John Waters, In My House Series: At Home, 1998

All that is the groundwork of an extraordinary life lived in art. Waters has had cameos in The Simpsons, My Name Is Earl, Hairspray, Seed of Chucky, and Homicide: Life on the Street. His annual top-ten film lists for ArtForum are fantastic. His books kill as well. Maybe a modern American Mona Lisa is the photograph of Waters hitchhiking while holding a destination sign that reads, “The Frick.” My heart, and those of all art lovers, melted. With all this, he works a strict schedule: five days a week from 8 a.m. sharp until 5 p.m. I could go on about how he’s drawn his mustache on with a Maybelline eyebrow pencil every day since age 19, has taught film and writing classes to prison inmates, is obsessed with culture and the news, and reads five newspapers daily and gets 100-plus magazines a month. And he loves Justin Bieber.

I love that Waters identifies as a dual citizen of Gotham and his home Baltimore. He has said, “I’ll ask myself, ‘What do I feel like doing this weekend? Do I feel like going to a redneck biker bar in Baltimore that I love, that totally accepts me, and where anyone else who went there would get beat up? Or do I want to go to an art opening in New York?’ I love doing that, too … I never go in the middle. That’s my success, because I never have to be in the middle. I never have to be around assholes.” (I’ve always been too frightened to introduce myself to Waters, as I often fear I’m something of an asshole.) I love that Waters is one of us, one of those celebrities you see walking around town and feel secretly pleased with yourself for living in such a cool city. Spotting his visage, those alert, beady eyes, and that gentleman-dandy  decadent-lecher thrills me with the presence of a true Bohemian prince of the city».

© Marianne Boesky Gallery

BY SHEUNG YIU

Tseng Kwong Chi was a Hong Kong born photographer active in the New York Art Scene in the 1970s and 80s. Son of an exiled Chinese nationalist, he lived a legendary life, moving from cities to cities, studying art and finally settling down in East Village in the comrade of emerging artists. He is the pioneer in identity politics, one of the first that opened the discourse of multiculturalism. His most well-known series of self portraits of his posing in front of famous tourist attraction in a Mao suit are now showing in Ben Brown Fine Art in the artists intended mural sized format. I had the pleasure to interview the director of Tseng’s estate, Tseng’s sister and choreographer, Muna Tseng in December on Kwong Chi’s life and work.
[The Q&A is a edited transcript of the real interview]

…

© Tseng Kwong Chi, New York, New York, 1979

1. What brought the family from Hong Kong to Canada, Paris and later settling at New York? How was the journey like?

The journey started with my parents leaving China, and Kwong Chi was born in Hong Kong in 1950. Our childhood in Hong Kong was quite idyllic. He went to St. Joseph Boys College. He was 16 years old when we left to Vancouver, Canada during the unrest in Hong Kong in 1966. My family thought we should stay together, the entire family immigrated to Canada. I think it was rather traumatic to both Kwong Chi and me. As adolescent in Vancouver, it was quite a shock, so when Kwong Chi went to College, first in Montreal and then in Paris, it really felt like he had found where he wanted to be. He studied art, which was his passion and after that arriving to New York was really like a dream come true. We both came to New York to be an artist in 1978 and he befriended a group of artists in downtown New York, which was very vibrant. It was a long journey. I think his artistic persona and maturity as an artist finally began when he found his place in New York.

2. Was he always an artist?

Yes. Ever since a child, he was very proficient in Chinese painting, he studied ink and calligraphy painting and he was very good. He could copy anything. He was kind of a rebel, even as a child he would not just copy things. You know how the Chinese education encourages exact copying of famous paintings and calligraphy. He would always have his own flare, his own personal take on things. Even as a child prodigy in Hong Kong, he had already shown a lot of promise. In Vancouver, he did some huge murals for the high school. It was a natural calling really. When he first went to Paris, he started with paintings. He found it rather lonely painting in the studio. He preferred to engage with people in the streets with his camera. He was very much inspired by Bresson, Lartigue and other french photographers.

3. How his training in Paris prepare him as an artist?

I think it was very seminal. The training was excellent. The Académie Julian was where Matisse studied. He learnt a lot of technical knowledge and was inspired by beauty all around the city. His eye was very much shaped in Paris. He would often go to museums and be exposed to great arts through the ages.

© Tseng Kwong Chi, Paris, France, 1983

4. How is the art scene in NYC like when You and Kwong-chi arrive at the scene in 1978, particularly in the point of view from a foreign artist?

It was a very vibrant downtown scene. Kwong Chi never wanted to be identified as an Asian artist. One of the first people he met in New York was Keith Haring in the East Village. That is where we lived. He became very good friends with Keith, as well as with Kenny Scharf and art students from School of Visual Arts. They became a tight circle. I was part of the dance world in New York. I was invited to join a professional dance company when I arrived. We were very lucky to find our place fairly quickly and began our lives there as artists.

5. How does his friendship with Keith Haring, Basquiat and other artists inspire and influence his work? 

It is a “fluid” kind of time. They were constantly collaborating, exchanging works. Kwong Chi would photograph all of Keith’s shows. He travelled with him. All the photographs would have a very clear point of view and style. You could look at a photo by Kwong Chi of Keith, and it would look very different from other people’s photographs of Keith. He was never interested in taking a photograph of a work of art on the wall as documentary, he wanted to capture the spirit, the climate, the gustos of all the people. I think he was very clear with his own style of photography in his self portrait series. It is very formal and many of the compositions have such classical beauty. It always has a conceptual backbone to it, which blends with performance art and using the self. Timothy Greenfield Sanders once described Kwong Chi’s work as ‘Ansel Adams meet Cindy Sherman’. You look at some of his beautiful landscapes, which resemble Ansel Adam, but the disguise in it, Who is He? There were a lot of dressing up and performing for the camera and for each other in that group.

© Tseng Kwong Chi, New York, New York (Brooklyn Bridge), 1979

6. How did the idea come to his mind? How was his research process?

I think artists do not necessarily research and then after a lot of deliberation start doing things. I think artists have this sixth sense of some compulsion, impulse to make art. I think Kwong Chi’s impulse came quite early and it was somewhat sparked by this incident of our parents visiting us in New York and taking us to Windows of the World, which is the restaurant on top of the World Trade Towers. It was a fancy place and there was a dress code of suit and tie. Kwong Chi did not have a suit and tie, so he wore his Chinese uniform, the Mao suit, to the dinner. The matradee took one look at him and treated him like a VIP, thinking he was some sort of ambassador from China, and we got very excellent service. Something clicked in him, he never told anybody that he was going to put on that uniform and went all over US and Europe and photographed against the backdrop of great cities and landscapes. His process was to go out and do it. He persisted in doing it over 10 years. He started in 1979, and his last photograph was taken in Italy in 1989. It takes a certain real believe in making rigorous body of work - never giving up, never changing and being very disciplined to go about it for 10 years like what he did.

7. When I looked at his work, the sun glasses, the mao suit, the tourist photos, the artist’s pose, the self portraiture, I saw it as a visual representation of the Sino-US relationship in the 70s and 80s. What is the artist intention for the series?

The series started with him reflecting on Nixon’s visit to China, and how the diplomatic relation was very official but superficial, nothing much was really being done. When I spoke about the artist impulse, tapping something that may rise up from the subconsciousness, Tseng was also informed of the world politics. He was very smart about his role in the world. Even though he was accepted into the “white downtown art world”, he was also apart from it. So I think the series is very smart in having these political underpinnings without it being “in your face” kind of slogan art. Instead of being confrontational, he thought the art should speak for itself.

© Tseng Kwong Chi, East Meets West Manifesto, 1983

8. Kwong Chi refers to himself as an ambiguous ambassador. Born in colonial Hong Kong. but grew up and received education in the western world. Was his identity always a crucial part of his art and his life?

Yes, but the identity is a reflective one. One can have one own self of who he or she is, but the reflection is really how one is perceived by the outside world. In the 80s, there were really less focus on “foreignness”. It is not until the 1990s and 2000s that the academic circles started building theories around multiculturalism. In the days when Kwong Chi was making his work, I think there was less discussion and less dissecting of these issues. It is very interesting to think that in 2014 in Hong Kong with all the student protests, how people are perceiving these issues of identity, the West and the East, the marriage of the two.

I think if he were alive today, he would be very interested in what is happening in Hong Kong and the issues that Hong Kong citizens have to grapple with. He would very much like to see the young people make protest and make art to address these identity issues in a more oblique way. Maybe the answer is not so straightforward. I think artists often provide answers that are not so black and white, posing the questions without giving the didactic answers.

…

Installation view Ben Brown Fin Art, Hong Kong. The exhibition “Tseng Kwong Chi: Citizen of the World” is being held in Ben Brown Fin Art, Hong Kong. The Gallery presents a comprehensive set of Tseng’s work, including his iconic work “Hollywood Hills, California” and “Paris, France” in the striking mural-sized format (180x180cm) for the first time. The exhibition continues until 24th Jan, 2015.

© Estate of Tseng Kwong Chi | Ben Brown Fine Art | urbanautica Hong Kong

BY STEVE BISSON

Christophe Guye Galerie is pleased to announce the group exhibition ‘Urban Spirit’ featuring the art of Stephen Gill, Will Steacy, Beat Streuli, Sascha Weidner and Michael Wolf. These artists study the ‘location’ and the ‘human’ in different ways. Depending on the degree of presence or absence of ‘places’ or ‘humans’ in their photographs, they create a suspense which stimulates the viewer to narrate his or her own story. Although the works offer suggestions, these stories are ultimately created in the viewer’s imagination based on his or her own cultural and social background.

«’Urban Spirit’ connotes a commitment to an open mind, promises of cultural diversity and opportunities for optimal individual/collective development in urban  areas. Each city is distinguished by its unique character and its very own flair. Cities are able to influence our identity, not least by means of the architecture generated through their histories. People may be proud of their cities or in a love-­‐hate relationship with them, but nonetheless still attracted to urban lifestyles. As diverse as the city appears to its inhabitants, so are the impressions it leaves behind. Since the expressionists like Otto Dix, Otto Pankok, Ludwig Meidner or Max Beckmann, for whom the metropolis was a central motif, the theme of the city has been taken up again and again under the changing socio-political conditions of art. The art discourse of the last decade was increasingly based on the premise that the city can be understood as a socio-network of actions and interactions among its inhabitants. The city may act as a venue and theme of artistic actions and interventions, while it is at the same time itself a performed event constantly being performed anew.

The exhibition Urban Spirit shows five internationally active artists working with the subject of the city. With a sometimes ironic, sometimes critical eye, they record in addition to cityscapes not only the city’s transitions, facades and details, but also the city’s people and advertising. Different approaches and views concretise in the photographs. Depending on the degree of absence or presence of places or people, the photographs create a tension that stimulates the viewer to think of her own story for the image. Although the works hint at the stories they might aim to tell, the viewer forms her own in her imagination, informed by her own cultural and social background.

© Michael Wolf, Transparent City #12, 2007

Such an effect is realised by Stephen Gill, especially in works connected to his home, the London borough of Hackney. He draws on and documents aspects of everyday life, often relying on austere and reduced compositions. As no one has done  before, Michael Wolf records in breath-­‐taking images the specifically visual aspects of one of the most densely populated cities of the world. Without roads, sky, or horizon, space flattens into an impervious abstraction of urban expansion. Wolf’s disorienting vantage point gives the viewer the feeling that the building might extend to infinity – a feeling that perhaps really corresponds to the spatial perception of the inhabitants of megacities. In contrast, Will Steacy documents life in the harsh urban areas of America that are in economic decline. In Sascha Weidner’s photographs,the visible urban reality is translated and condensed into enigmatic images. Depending on the context, these images create new narratives. Working with the motif of the crowd – one known to art since the 19th century – is Beat Streuli, who has dived with his camera into the pedestrian flows of western cities for more than a decade. Zoomed-in on with a telephoto lens are close-­ups of irritating intimacy – illuminations of the universality of human activity in the contemporary metropolis.» [Dominique von Burg]

Stephen Gill (*1971, UK)

Stephen Gill likes to test the limits that photography imposes on him. As a conceptual artist – and also a bit of a sociologist and poet – he experiments with various unusual methods such as burying photos (Buried), creating lavish collages with flowers and seeds (Hackney Flowers) and placing objects in the camera so that they leave their traces on the film, causing confusion about the scale of the images (Talking to Ants). His aim is  to encourage the spirit of the place to become trapped in the emulsion like amber, creating a series of surreal interventions in the photographs. He physically inserts bits and pieces of detritus inside the camera body before photographing his local surroundings. Streets, housing estates, markets and canals provide the backdrop for images embedded with various forms of plant life, insects, plastic and even tiny fragments of broken glass from a car headlight. Objects thus appear simultaneously both behind and in front of the camera lens, creating curious juxtapositions between surface and reality. As a result, flatness counters depth to disorient our perception of different pictorial planes. What we get is a multi-­‐layered and heightened sense of place, form and texture that works to harness not just what the area looks like, but also how it feels.

© Stephen Gill, Untitled, from the series Talking to Ants, 2009-2012

Beat Streuli (*1957, Switzerland)

The lone person in the big city crowd has been a central theme of modern art since Poe and Baudelaire. For more than a decade, the eye of Beat Streuli’s camera has been diving into the streams of passers-­by in western metropolises. Streuli photographs from the distance with a telephoto lens, but his portraits of contemporaries, picked out from the anonymous streams of pedestrians, have nothing surreptitious or voyeuristic about them. The people are highlighted, but not laid bare, for the distance is reciprocal. The photographer’s distance and discretion match the strange, dreamy alertness with which pedestrians in big cities walk past one another. They size one another up fleetingly, but the short duration of the glances – however intense they may be – permits no indiscretion. As in Streuli’s works, everyone is very briefly skimmed-­‐over many times by the glances of many people, but nobody feels or behaves as if he or she is under scrutiny.

Will Steacy (*1980, USA)

Will Steacy’s best-­known project Down these Mean Streets is a socially-­‐conscious series of photographs depicting life in rough urban areas. The series examines fear and the abandonment of America’s inner cities. Photographing only at night with a large format view camera, Steacy works in a set routine by walking between the airport and central business district of each city he photographs. America has turned its back on cities; years of neglect have left these cities with limited resources to repair themselves. Neighbourhoods crumble with no local economy, public education systems barely meet requirements and low-­‐income housing is a nightmare as violence and drugs reign, making survival a number-­‐one priority. America is at a crossroads as it struggles to escape the wrath of the Great Recession, laying off teachers and firefighters at an alarming rate in order to balance city budgets, still at war and searching for its place in a changing global economy. By addressing the loss and despair that prevails in the urban communities, Gill’s aim is to reveal a modern portrait of the American inner city, as problems and issues cannot be solved if they are not first identified. The city glows, strangely beautiful but vaguely threatening, as a picture of urbanity and its attendant vices – it is not a forgiving portrait. His work has been compared to that of Barney Kulock and Paul Graham. 

© Will Steacy, Purse, San Francisco, from the series “Down These Mean Streets”, 2010

Sascha Weidner (*1976, Germany)

Sascha Weidner’s works are evidence of a radically subjective view of the world and the single human in its environment. At first glance, the photographs taken with a medium format camera show people acting within harmless landscapes. Often, the site of the incident is not closely defined; in the close­‐up, only a small part of the surroundings is shown to the viewer. The camera’s gaze is direct and documents in detail what  is depicted. The ruthlessly-­‐used close view does not answer the questions that confront the viewer. Why is the man in the branches of a tree? Is he looking for closeness or shelter? Why is he hiding? Looking at Sascha Weidner’s photographs, the feeling of suspense arises. The subtly used and diffuse light primarily supports this feeling. This establishes a tension that is not resolved until the end. The “hidden” makes ascha Weidner’s photographs poetic and above all melancholy. The emotional closeness of these works put Sascha Weidner’s motifs and methods in line with those of photographers such as Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmans and Ryan McGinley. 

© Sascha Weidner, fragmente II, 2013

Michael Wolf (*1954, Germany

Michael Wolf is known for his large-format architectural photos of Chicago and primarily of Hong Kong, where he has lived for more than 15 years. His series Backdoor is a surprising and at times shocking visual journey through the narrow streets and urban wastelands of one of the most densely populated corners of the world. Wolf captures the lives and living conditions of his neighbours through the traces they leave on the city’s dense architecture and dark back alleys. He explores the idiosyncratic ways that Hong Kong’s residents adapt to their environment and improvise within their urban locale. It’s a humanistic tribute to the ingenuity of city-dwellers. Big cities can sometimes seem like immense visual abstractions. The jam-packed juxtapositions of diverse styles of architecture — all compressed into dense overlapping vertical spaces — can be seen as things of rare, man-made beauty. These soaring glass-walled environments also invite a sometimes perverse delight in voyeurism. Michael Wolf’s series The Transparent City captures both of these aspects nearly perfectly in his recent photographic study of downtown Chicago. Wolf positions himself on rooftops or in the windows of opposite buildings to achieve  the most amazing vantage points for each scene. He waits for perfect light at the time of day when twilight and interior light render the building walls nearly invisible.

© Christophe Guye Galerie

BY DIETER DEBRUYNE

1. Tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots?

My first picture was of my parents on a holiday. I remember the moment as, and because it felt like, being significant. I think my initial interest in photography originates there, in photographs as personal souvenirs or, when not so personal, as a document. I also remember, when I was a child, in search for a subject, taking a picture of a flower in the garden.
And when I was sixteen I did a photo shoot with my boyfriend. I was always interested in photography, but it didn’t seem to be within my reach to actually do something with it or tackle it seriously, until I was 22 and decided to go to the Academy.
Pictures with a personal content, with imperfections, or flawed – like an unintentional finger that penetrates the image – were the ones that intrigued me and that I experienced as most interesting.
As for me, photography, and by extension art in general, has always been about communication, conversation. Primary with myself, then with the work of other photographers and finally, if you bring it into the world, with the viewer.

2. How did your research evolve with respect to those early days?

Technically I’ve advanced of course, but I still prefer not to aim for a technically correct picture or smooth image. I think most of those are totally uninteresting, and I prefer to leave some space for the coincidence to take part. I also like to balance on the border of making a totally bad image, and an image that’s drawing attention because of that reason, and in this way becomes interesting or valuable again.

© Nathalie Nijs

3. What do you think about photography in the era of digital and social networking?

Most people are constantly taking pictures and sharing them, we’re being blown away with images, more than ever. But amidst all, that photography has kept its value and relevance, as the distinction between the different kinds of images and their significance is still there.
The reproduction and spreading of images has become much easier and faster. You have a much wider range of people to connect with nowadays, a larger platform to spread your work than before social networks boomed. The rate has increased in all areas. Let’s say, 20 years ago, you could operate from a feeling of being the only one practising a particular kind of photography. While today, after a little search of exploration, you stumble across people worldwide that conduct similar investigations or who operate in the same field. It makes it more important than ever to safeguard your uniqueness. In a way things have become easier, more accessible. On the other hand you need to set your goals higher.

4. About your work now. How would you describe your personal research in general?

Limited due to my condition, but it doesn’t restrain me. I don’t mind working from a restriction. It also creates a certain clarity and focus. The thing that hasn’t changed, and is according to me maybe the most important element, is the fact that the way you look at things is more relevant than what you’re actually looking at.

5. Do you have any preferences in terms of cameras and format?

I always carry a compact camera with me and I use a DSLR for portraits.

© Nathalie Nijs

6. Tell us about your latest project ‘Hindsight’.

In January I’m showing recent and new – digital only – work in 44Gallery in Bruges. I don’t expose often, since it demands a lot of energy which I don’t always have.
Pictures, or the act of taking a picture, create a distance, and I think that’s partly why I am so passionate about them. I paraphrase Hegel, who argues that it is only possible to understand an epoch (an event), or even your own life, as it comes to an end (with hindsight). It is not possible to fully understand what is going on around you. Clarity only comes with time, and I would add, with distance.

7. Is there any contemporary artist or photographer, even if young and emerging, who influenced you in some way?

At the moment? Maybe Calin Kruse. I have to admit that most of the contemporary photographers I appreciate, and who are doing interesting things, work analogue. 
I also like young photographers like Alexander Saenen, Pierre Liebaert, Dries Segers. In his own way, each of them, breaks through the boundaries, or the limitations of classical photography, and finds new or alternate ways of bringing his images.

© Nathalie Nijs

8. Three books of photography that you recommend?

I’m not enough adept at (recent) photography books to give advice, but again I would say Calin Kruse seems to be doing interesting things in this area. The book I tend to go back to most often is probably Robert Frank’s Moving Out. And the book here recently reviewed by Peter Waterschoot on Cyril Costilhes book 'Grand Circle Diego', is one of the first where I experience, the atmosphere in the book as quite overwhelming, even though all the images are digital.

9. Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?

I’d say Leigh Ledare in Wiels, in 2012. Again, I experienced the more personal work about his mother and ex-wife as challenging.
And I just saw VIBRATIONS OFF by Honoré d’O, it is no photography, but so refreshing and liberating.

10. Projects that you are working on now and plans for the future?

I’ll continue my usual day to day photography. I’d also like to proceed in making portraits, or taking pictures of people I know, as I’ve recently been starting again. I also have plans in the long run, to work on a book, and there is a new path I’d like to explore. But I can’t say too much about it yet. It’s just something I always bear in mind, I don’t know when, and if, it’s going to take me somewhere. If I already knew what I was in for, I wouldn’t even bother starting. I always have to be able to surprise myself.

© Nathalie Nijs website and blog | urbanautica Belgium

Mapping with a pyrograph, the melting away of the Lewis Glacier on Mt. Kenya.

These fire lines I have drawn indicate where the front of the rapidly disappearing Lewis Glacier was at various times in the recent past; the years are given in the titles. In the distance, a harvest moon lights the poor, doomed glacier remnant; the gap between the fire and the ice represents the relentless melting. Relying on old maps and modern GPS surveys I have rendered a stratified history of the glacier’s retreat. Photographing time’s thickness, trying to expose it’s ‘layeredness,’ is something I’ve been attempting in different settings and through different channels for the last dozen years.

It seems entirely appropriate to make these images here. Mount Kenya is the eroded stump of a long-dead, mega-volcano. Photographically, I hope to re-awaken its angry, magma heart. The mountain has an especially fierce demeanour, the peaks are childishly sheer and ragged, and since I first saw them I’ve been thinking of Gormenghast and Tolkien. The ‘Fire vs. Ice’ metaphor I employ is especially delicious for me. My fire is made from petroleum. My pictures contain no evidence that this glacier’s retreat is due to man-made warming (glaciers can retreat when the don’t get sufficient snow, or if the cloud cover thins, for example,) but it is nonetheless my belief that humans burning hydrocarbons are substantially to blame.

But there are romantic reasons to be here too. To be next to the ice is to feel privileged: like you are beside a colossal, sleeping giant. I imagine being close to a darted bull- elephant feels the same and I’m reminded of a 17th century Dutch painting of bewildered burghers contemplating a beached whalefish. Close-up one senses the immensity of the ice mass, its coiled, dormant energy and its colossal longevity. And, of course, the glacier’s cold, resigned indifference. One is chilled by an overwhelming feeling of one’s own smallness and transience. Englishmen have been feeling this way about mountains for 300 years, since Romantic, Grand-Tour travellers first astonished Swiss inn-keepers with the request for help in climbing to the heights. Nobody had done that before; for the fun of it, because it made you feel whole, because it fed the soul.

Another Englishman on another mountain. History repeats, but this time as tragedy. To think that in ten or twelve years this magnificent glacier that has endured for millennia will exist only in photographs, is unbearable. The feeling I have for the losing of the Lewis can only be called ‘grief.’

Simon Norfolk on Mount Kenya from Ekaterina Ochagavia on Vimeo.

So, see it now before it’s gone: get over there quick before Mount Kenya is just an unadorned rocky stump, robbed of it’s innocent, frozen crown. Unless of course you feel that flying around the world injecting tonnes of hot CO2 into the troposphere in order to witness the melting of Africa’s glaciers, is just a little too ironic.

This feature was commissioned by The New York Times Magazine.The artist would like to acknowledge the inspiration provided by Project Pressure in the making of this work, and the technical help with GPS mapping

© Institute | Simon Norfolk

BY STEVE BISSON

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition of the work of Alec Soth. On view from February 5 – April 4, 2015, Alec Soth: Songbook will feature approximately 20 new and never-before-seen photographs.

© Alec Soth, Near Kaaterskill Falls, 2012

Celebrated for his haunting and influential portraits and landscapes in such acclaimed books as Sleeping by the Mississippi, Broken Manual, and NIAGARA, Alec Soth has recently turned his lens toward community life in the country. From 2012 to 2014 Soth traveled the United States looking for signs of social life in our era of virtual social networks. To aid in his search, Soth assumed the increasingly obsolescent role of community newspaper reporter. From upstate New York to Silicon Valley, he attended hundreds of meetings, dances, festivals and family gatherings.

With Songbook, Soth has stripped these pictures of their news context in order to highlight the longing for connection at their root. Fragmentary, funny, and sad, Songbook is a lyrical depiction of the tension between American individualism and the ongoing desire to be united.

© Alec Soth, Miss Model Contestants , 2012

© Alec Soth, Near Gainesville, Georgia, 2014

Alec Soth (b. 1969) is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work has been presented at numerous museums, including solo exhibitions at the Jeu de Paume, Paris; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Among his many publications are Dog Days, Bogotá; The Last Days of W; Fashion Magazine; and the LBM Dispatch series, with writer Brad Zellar.

Soth has been represented by Fraenkel Gallery since May 2013. In conjunction with his exhibition at Fraenkel Gallery, photographs from Songbook will be presented concurrently at Sean Kelly, New York, and Weinstein Gallery, Minneapolis. To accompany the exhibitions, Mack Books in London has published the hardcover book Alec Soth: Songbook, featuring 75 tritone plates.

There will be a book signing with the artist at the opening reception for the exhibition, on Thursday, February 5, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. As a complement to the exhibition, Alec Soth will post new cameraphone photos on Fraenkel Gallery’s Instagram feed (@fraenkelgallery).

Known for his haunting portraits of solitary Americans in Sleeping by the Mississippi and Broken Manual, Alec Soth has recently turned his lens toward community life in the country. To aid in his search, Soth assumed the increasingly obsolescent role of community newspaper reporter. From 2012-2014, Soth traveled state by state while working on his self-published newspaper, The LBM Dispatch, as well as on assignment for The New York Times and others. From upstate New York to Silicon Valley, Soth attended hundreds of meetings, dances, festivals and communal gatherings in search of human interaction in an era of virtual social networks.

In Songbook, published by MACK, Soth has stripped these pictures of their news context in order to highlight the longing for connection at their root. Fragmentary, funny and sad, Songbook is a lyrical depiction of the tension between American individualism and the desire to be united.

© Fraenkel Gallery | Alec Soth

BY FRANCESCA ORSI

Daido Moriyama was a booster in the late 60’s of an unconventional “on the road” Japanese photography. With an approach extremely scratchy and with sharp scrapes he revealed, as an investigator, the multifaceted and contradictory reality that appears to our eyes. Moriyama photographs the life as a mystery, like an enigma, and uses photography  not to find an answer, but to put together the infinite puzzle from which life is represented. Without necessarily wanting to find the last piece.

© Daido Moriyama Tokyo, 1978, courtesy of the artist

There are special subjects that characterize his style. His contrasted white and blacks feed voraciously of everything: whether it’s a lush rose or the head of a fish, or children in the street or the naked body of a woman sitting on the bed. Moriyama is recognizable among all, he is the photographer with no apparent logic, but you can read a drawing behind every shot. The desire to instill the intrigue of life with a deliberately random and fragmented look.

© Daido Moriyama Hippie Crime, 1969, courtesy of the artist

© Daido Moriyama Highway, Shizuoka, Japan, 1969, courtesy of the artist

The CIAC of Foligno exhibits until January 23, the retrospective ‘Daido Moriyama. Visioni del mondo’. It finds its own sap in showing Moriyama’ s shots as anchors, moments that the Japanese photographer has snatched from his life, in the course of his travels around the world. His photographs draw from a very specific literature, and the imagery that is enclosed leaks out from the words written by Jack Kerouac. Those images captured from life, and of which we feel the immediate energy and thrust to meddle immediately to the whole.

In many, among young photographers, fish from the well of Daido Moriyama’s photography, making him a clear model to learn and get started from. His visceral imagery goes straight to the stomach and perhaps, for most people, this way of photographing is also a way to filter and facilitate their own task. Whites and blacks are often only scenic elements, a escamotage to fill the gaps, and another way to control the reality from which to draw the subject of the image. Moriyama instead teaches not to look for it; it’s the reality that will magically surprises you, making it appear without you realizing it.

© Jean-Marc Caimi, ‘Daily Bread’

The merit of Jean-Marc Caimi - on display until January 23 at the gallery Interzone in Rome with his project “Daily Bread” - is to use the imagery of Daido Moriyama as a starting point, not as a mere copy of the master, to be able to finally find his own style. There is the same use of contrasted whites and blacks and there is the same focus on a multiple and contradictory reality, yet, in Caimi’s shots there is also irony. Among the many elements that emerge from his work irony seems absolutely what makes it different from many others. Sharp irony, almost irreverent, that makes you smile with a hint of realism even when facing those “uglinesses” that are simply part of the whole.

About Jean-Marc Caimi

French-Italian photographer and journalist, Jean-Marc Caimi works as a
freelance for Redux Pictures. His pictures mostly cover humanitarian and
social topics. In parallel, his career follows a series of intimate and more
personal projects; in 2014 these photographs were released as a book,
"Daily Bread" (T&G Publishing). The same year he also published the book "Same Tense" (Witty Kiwi Books) with a series of images shared with colleague Valentina Piccinni. 

© Jean-Marc Caimi, ‘Daily Bread’

Some of his latest documentary works include stories about the mentally ill convicted, the revolution in Ukraine, the daily life of Mafia ruled
neighborhoods in Naples, the consequences over people and environment of pollution in contaminated areas in Italy, religious pilgrimages in the era of Pope Francis, the veterans of the war in Libya, the human rights violation in Azerbaijan, the refugees from North Africa in Lampedusa, the crisis in Greece, the Zimbabwean refugees illegally crossing the South African border in search of a new life and many others.

© Jean-Marc Caimi, ‘Daily Bread’

His reportages have been published worldwide in magazines, newspapers and media such as Time, Newsweek, The Sunday Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, CNN, Al Jazeera, and many others. He’s 2014 WPO finalist, has been selected and exhibited in the 2013 Delhi photo festival, won multiple prizes and exhibited at the 2013 PAA awards in Czech Republic, included for two years consecutively (2012/13) in the American Photography prize catalogue, He won the “Biennale di Videofotografia” in Alessandria (Turin), where his work where showcased. He has been exhibited during the 2013 Format Festival in Derby (UK), at the festival Entre Margens in Portugal and in Braga at the Encontros da Imagem with the project “Daily Bread”. Photographs from the book Daily Bread in 2014 became three exhibition in Sweden (Vasli Souza gallery), Japan (Reminders gallery) and Italy (Interzone gallery). He also worked as the didactic director of a photography course dedicated to refugees and migrants living in Rome.

© Interzone Galleria | Daido Moriyama | Jean-Marc Caimi | urbanautica Italy

Women Photographers with portraits of people and landscapes 
curated by Tina Schelhorn
Linda Troeller, Mariette Pathy Allen, Mary Ann Lynch, Regina Monfort 

Galerie Lichtblick, Cologne
20.12.2014 - 01.02.2015

© Mary Ann Lynch, Forever Marilyn

Mary Ann Lynch: ’Forever Marilyn’
The Enduring Legacy of Marilyn Monroe photographs 1992-2012

2012 marked the 50th anniversary of Marilyn’s death and passage from pop culture icon into the timeless realm of myth, legend and worldwide permanent fame. “For fifteen years, beginning in 1990, I photographed Marilyn Monroe throughout the world, from Puerto Rico to Paris, and from Equador to the Mojave Desert and throughout the United States. I got used to seeing Marilyn‘s image wherever I traveled, and meeting fans, devotees, admirers, impersonators, and those fascinated with her – everywhere. After working on the project for two years I realized that I could go anywhere in the world and hold up a photograph of Marilyn Monroe and get a smile. She‘s a global ambassador of Love. Call her a screen goddess or an icon, a legend, a role model or a modern-day Aphrodite or Venus – however we think of her, Marilyn lives on.”

MaryAnn (Bruchac) Lynch, born, raised and based in New York State, is traveling widely. Photographer/filmmaker, publisher/writer and Director of Mary Ann Lynch Productions. Married with a son and daughter and grandchild. She lives surrounded by family. «Self-taught, I gravitated toward cameras as a child, inspired by an uncle with a Graflex. Later I took workshops with Ansel Adams, A.D. Coleman, Robert Heinecken, Joyce Tenneson, Minor White and more. My bio and website reveal some of the terrain I‘ve covered over the past 40 years of photographing and creating audiences for photography.»

…

© Regina Monfort, No Crybabies

Régina Monfort: ‘No Crybabies’

Régina Monfort is a photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Brittany, France in 1958, she studied photography in Brussels, Belgium before moving to the Unites States in 1984. She worked with abstract, experimental portraiture and body landscapes before engaging in the documentary tradition. In 1994 she began photographing young people in the Latino Community, a short walking distance from her own home in Brooklyn. Over the years her work has continued to explore the human heart.

In 1998, she was nominated in the Human Spirit Essay category for the annual Alfred Eisenstaedt Award in Magazine Photography. That same year, with grants from the NewYork City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, she produced outdoor audiovisual presentations in Brooklyn parks. Her work exploring the impacts of methamphetamine addiction on individuals and families in Topeka, Kansas, was awarded the 2005 French Bourse du Talent for Reportage. No Crybabies.  «Twenty years ago, I walked beyond Grand Street. In the heart of Brooklyn, New York, I befriended young souls growing up quickly in a deeply rooted Latino community, striving for love and respect. Over the course of nine years, I felt immersed in their hopes and dreams. The photographs were born out of trust, as moments of grace and sorrow unfolded daily before my very eyes …».

…

© Linda Troeller, Chelsea Hotel

Linda Troeller: ‘Chelsea Hotel’

Linda Troeller, a resident for twenty years at the Chelsea Hotel, is an award-winning photographer. “My photographs at the Chelsea Hotel investigate the power of place and social and physical borderlines. The Chelsea Hotel is where I have felt the most comfortable being an artist. There was an accepting atmosphere. I met people such as Alexander McQueen who talked to me in the lobby, came to see my photographs and invited me to his fashion show. Such influences and the skylight over the famous staircase inspired me to make an image wearing a Zach Posen dress. Zac was absorbed by Bohemia, like myself. He hung out there as a teenager. Self-portraiture has a long tradition such as artists Lucas Samaras, Nan Goldman, and Taryn Simon who weave their personal evolution to the larger sphere with their projects. My self-portraits show a mental space, a kind of physical manifestation of the hotel itself mingling sadness‘s with the rapture of new beginnings.”

© Mariette Pathy Allen, New Jersey 1968

Mariette Pathy Allen: ‘New Jersey 1968’

“I was hired by the State Museum of New Jersey to capture “the face of New Jersey”. The Philadelphia and NJ photographs, taken in 1968, represent my earliest photographic series.”
Mariette Parhy Allen has been a professional photographer, writer and speaker on behalf of the TG community since 1978. She is the author of Transformations: Crossdressersand Those Who Love Them and The Gender Frontier, which won a 2004 Lambda Literary Award. Her photographs make a significant contribution to Leslie Feinberg‘s Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis
Rodman, illustrate Riki Anne Wilchins‘ Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender and are included in many other books.
She has worked on five documentary films, the most recent being A&E — Investigative Reports “Transgender Revolution”, and Southern Comfort , which won the Grand Jury prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Mariette has been on the staff of the Transgender Tapestry since the mid-1980s. She received a Trinity Award in 1991, an award from Fantasia Fair in 2001, for her artistic contributions on behalf of the transgender community, and a Rainbow Award at IFGE 2006. “TransCuba”, Mariette‘s new book was just published by Daylight Books.

© Galerie Lichtblick

BY STEVE BISSON

1. Tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots?

I think my passion for photography emerged in high school, when I had a chance to attend photography classes with two brilliant photographers, who actually shaped my way of thinking about this media.

2. About your photographic work now. How would you describe your personal research in general?

Everything I have ever done focuses on urban landscape or the city in general. I was born and raised in Warsaw, so naturally this city became my very first inspiration and a subject to investigate as well. I believe that our surrounding may often tell us much more about ourselves than our appearance. Therefore in my personal work I try to analyze what we, humans, build or leave behind – shortly speaking, how we construct our surrounding. Moreover, I like to take pictures alone, observing what is going on around me for long minutes. This, to be honest, makes me a rather poor portrait photographer. Maybe this is also one of the reasons I focus on human in an indirect way.

© Krzysztof Sienkiewicz, Warszawa, from the series ‘Urban Collage’

3. Do you have any preferences in terms of cameras and format?

I take photos almost exclusively on negative films, both medium and large format. I take pictures rather rarely and after a long consideration, so I’m more or less able to afford this manner. Yet I’m currently considering buying a digital camera because of the cost of negatives.

4. Your project ‘Urban Collage’ is an investigation into the Polish urban landscape. On the transformation of its face. It highlights conflicting aspects in the transition to a Poland fully integrated into the modern European context. How do you see this process?

I was born right after the communist era, so what I know about those times is what I’ve been told, what I’ve read and… what I have seen. To me Polish urban landscape is full of signs marking the events and issues of the last century and the recent years as well (the devastation during the World War II, social realism in architecture, current capitalism and shortsightedness in urban planning). That is why I chose to investigate our surrounding as a pretext for a deeper analysis of how Polish society has changed throughout that time. Moreover, for the last couple of years I was looking for an appropriate approach to describe Warsaw and the general concept of a “Polish big city”. Sometimes I think this might be it.

© Krzysztof Sienkiewicz, Warszawa, from the series ‘Urban Collage’

5. In the series ‘Backstage’, you focus on the ‘non-places’, and you quote the anthropologist Augé. You recall the impersonal dimension of the built space of many cities. More generally the series evokes a role of photography as a means to offer a different perspective on reality. Can you comment on this?

Photography is a lie. By that I do not mean to depreciate its importance or the ability to describe our surrounding, emotions or important social processes. I want to highlight that photography is all about making choices and, at the end of the day, presenting just a tiny fragment of the subject we were working on. Therefore whatever we do with this media, we always present a particular perspective of the reality: not only our own, but also the one shaped by the very mechanism of creating photographic works and projects. For me this is extremely inspiring, especially in the case of documentary photography. In my Backstage project I wanted to focus exactly on a very small aspect of these non-places: their form, colour, their appearance.

6. Is there any contemporary artist or photographer, even if young and emerging, that influenced you in some way?

Yes, definitely. I’m very much inspired by the works of Mark Power, Bas Princen, who is a magician to me, not a photographer, and, to some extent, Stephen Shore.

© Krzysztof Sienkiewicz, Warszawa, from the series ‘Urban Collage’

7. Three books about photography which you would recommend?

Melody of Two Songs by Mark Power, Pastoral by Alexander Gronsky and almost anything by Bas Princen.

8. Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?

I had a chance to see Constructing Worlds exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in London recently. The moment I saw (and experienced!) Hiroshi Sugimoto’s architecture photographs on a wall will remain in my memory for years.

© Krzysztof Sienkiewicz, Kraków, from the series ‘Urban Collage’

9. Projects that you are working or plans for the future?

My plan for 2015 is to close my investigation on Warsaw as a part of the “Urban Collage” project and focus on other big cities of Poland, but it all depends on funds. I would also like to sit down with books and do the historical/urban analysis of the places I took pictures of.

10. Let’s talk about the Polish photography scene. What’s your general opinion?

In my opinion Polish photography scene is extremely interesting for two reasons: it is developing very fast with lots of promising, emerging photographers and, on the other hand, we have a large body of work from twentieth century yet to be analyzed. I believe many of Polish photographers, apart from those who already do (like, for instance, the photo-collective Sputnik Photos), demand wider recognition.

© Krzysztof Sienkiewicz, Łódź, from the series ‘Urban Collage’

11. What are the Polish photographers or the projects that you have recently liked?

Just to point out a few: I’m very happy to see that Łukasz Biederman is working on his nocturnes again. I also like Wiktoria Wojciechowska’s work in general and Tomasz Łaptaszyński’s project entitled Antiquity Now.

12. Why did you choose to collaborate with Urbanautica? And how will you help us to better approach and understand the Polish photography scene?

The very first reason is that I simply really admire what Urbanautica does and what kind of photography is presented on its pages. To have an opportunity to participate in this project is very important to me. I am a young Polish photographer myself, so I believe I do have an insight into what is happening on the Polish photographic scene and hopefully will be able to present that via Urbanautica.

© Krzysztof Sienkiewicz | urbanautica Poland

BY DIETER DEBRUYNE

1. Tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots?

My first serious attempt in pursuing photography was when I was doing research on rural-urban migration flows in China. At that time I was studying Chinese Culture and Language at Leiden University. During an exchange year at a Shandong University in Jinan, China I decided that it was more beneficial to get closer to the subject I was researching. My first shots were portraits of migrant workers, a group of young workers I followed for some time. I always had an interest in photography and this was the perfect tool to submerge myself in a topic. So I picked up a camera and bought all the film I could afford and started shooting. All the films were developed in my bathroom. It was then that I decided that photography was a good way to tell stories and reach a wider audience. Upon my return I enrolled at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague (Kabk) and got accepted.

© Jan Rosseel, ‘Belgian Autumn. A Confabulated Story’

2. How did your research evolve with respect to those early days?

During my education at the Royal Academy I learned to think more conceptually. In the beginning my work was a lot more grounded in the tradition of photojournalism. The first two years at the Art Academy I was still looking for a way to express myself in a way that suited me. It was not until the last two years of my education that I started experimenting with storytelling ideas and techniques. The first test was at a summer school program with Jodie Bieber  where I first discovered a good way to mix fact and fiction in a photo essay. For me it was an important starting point to create a photographic language that gave me enough room to experiment at at the same time stay true to the story.

3. Tell us about your educational path. What are your best memories of your studies? What was your relationship with photography at that time?

I had a bit of an odd educational path I suppose. I started my education at Hotelschool ‘Ter Duinen’ in Koksijde. After working in various fine dining restaurants around the world for almost ten years I decided to study Chinese Language and Culture at Leiden University. After an exchange year in China I enrolled at the Royal Academy of Arts (Kabk) in The Hague. After the second year at the Academy I did an exchange program at the Danish School of Media and Journalism and finally graduated in 2013 from the Kabk. I guess there has always been a visual element in my education at some point, from cooking to photography.

© Jan Rosseel, ‘Belgian Autumn. A Confabulated Story’

4. What were the courses that you were passionate about and which remain meaningful to you?

It is hard to pinpoint a specific course. At the Kabk I enjoyed mostly courses that challenged the way we perceive the world and also the way we can build our visual literacy. I suppose most of these courses are meant to think about concept and context, rather than aesthetics. Seeing the process as an important part of the work, and not only the final outcome. At times the process and experiment were more important than the result.

At the Danish School of Media and Journalism I was really enthusiastic about the multimedia course by the Bombay Flying club. It was a new way of storytelling that really opened my eyes to the possibilities to create stories in a new way and to mix different kinds of media.

5. Any professor or teacher that allowed you to better understand your work?

I think that all my teachers have played a role in creating a better understanding of my work. But more importantly I have always looked outside my education to get more insights. Not only did I look for other photographers to talk about ideas but also people with a background in science or philosophy for example. At the Kabk I think that Corinne Noordenbos, the head of the photography department has played a significant role, not only in my own education but also in the philosophy of the photography department. At times it was hard to keep questioning your work over and over again but by slowly getting to the essence of the work it would become a lot stronger.

© Jan Rosseel, ‘Belgian Autumn. A Confabulated Story’

6. What do you think about photography in the era of digital and social networking?

Despite of all the bad news and people claiming the end of photography and photojournalism I think that we live in a very exciting time. The possibilities to get your story out have grown significantly. The digital era has a lot of benefits and it has created a lot of new opportunities for photographers to get their work published and shared with a large audience. One of the most significant changes for me are the possibilities of publishing photo books in a way that was very difficult ten years ago. Nowadays any photographer can publish a photo book and directly showcase it to people who are interested in small edition or handmade photo books. My first book was a self published book and thanks to social networking it was sold out in two days.

7. How would you describe your personal research in general?

In general my work is about 90% research, both theoretically and visually. I suppose I am quite classical in the way I do research. I try to gather and collect as much information as possible. From there I start to create a framework that allows me to visualise the research. In visualising the research, the role of interpretation becomes more present.

© Jan Rosseel, ‘Belgian Autumn. A Confabulated Story’

8. Do you have any preferences in terms of cameras and format?

I generally shoot on various formats at the same time. Especially when I am still in the research phase. Sometimes a specific format gives you the control you need or forces you to be more considerate about your framing. When I am on an assignment with a really tight deadline I shoot digitally otherwise I still shoot film or polaroid, which I prefer.

I love working with my 4x5 large format as it yields a big negative and gives me a sense of concentration. Furthermore I shoot anything from Mamiya 7 to Rolleiflex 6x6 and Holga cameras. I use different formats because each camera forces me to rethink a specific topic again. Actually it is not that important which camera you use, as long as it works for you.

9. Tell us about your latest project Belgian Autumn. A confabulated History.

The project Belgian Autumn. A confabulated History. is a story about the ‘Brabant Killers’ or the ‘Bende van Nijvel / Tueurs du Brabant Wallon’ as they are called in Belgium. It is a story about a gang of unknown criminals that killed twenty eight people during supermarket raids in Belgium between 1983 and 1985. The story is a visual research into one of Belgium’s greatest enigmas. The project is based on the collective memories and borrowed memories from eye witness accounts, police reports and newspaper clippings.

10. Is there any contemporary artist that influenced you in some way?

There are a lot of artists that I think are really good, from a wide variety of art forms. Architects Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid. Painters Zhang Xiaogang, Michael Borremans and Francis Bacon. And I am an admirer of the seeming simplicity of Anish Kapoor.

One of the most influential visual artists to me has always been Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci. Not only is there a lot of depth in his stories, he is also an exquisite aesthetician.

Photographers I would say Rafal Milach as he is also a great photo book maker, Dirk Braeckman for his wonderful printing technique and Taryn Simon for her zealous research and exquisite presentation.

11. Three books of photography that you recommend?

A) ‘Tranquility’ by Heikki Kaski

B) ‘Ponte City’ by Michael Subotzky

C) ‘In the car with R’ by Rafal Milach

12. Is there any show that you’ve recently seen that you find inspiring?

There is one show that comes up straight away, even though it is not that recent. The exhibition by Sarah Moon at the Botanique in Brussels. There are not that many exhibitions that are the perfect harmony between space and subject matter but the exhibition by Sarah Moon was mind blowing.

The exhibitions ‘Ponte City’ by Michael Subotzky at FoMu in Antwerp. The exhibition ‘Love Radio’  by Anouk Steketee at Foam in Amsterdam. Both of these exhibitions were not only well researched  projects but also well balanced presentations that made good use of the space. I guess I am always interested in an exhibition that reacts to the space where it is presented.

13. Projects that you are working on now and plans for the future?

I am currently working on a new version of the book Belgian Autumn. A confabulated History. If all goes well it should be ready in spring 2015. Furthermore I have a few exhibitions planned for 2015 in Tokyo, Rome and Antwerp and also teaching workshops about photo book making in Rome and in Tokyo in spring.

At the same time I am doing research on a new project evolving around the notion of memory and historical events.

© Jan Rosseel, ‘Belgian Autumn. A Confabulated Story’

14. How do you see the future of photography in general evolve? 

The future of photography looks quite promising. I think that there will be a shift in the way people use photography for storytelling purposes in a new and refreshing way. The possibilities are almost endless with the use of various techniques. We will probably see more interactive ways of dealing with photography. The use of video is also increasing as cameras that produce high end images become more affordable. I do not see this as a threat to the industry but rather a way for people with smaller budgets but a lot of creativity to experiment and get their work out. There is surely an overabundance of images already but seeing new and interesting work is worth the visual overdose.

© Jan Rosseel | urbanautica Belgium

BY SHEUNG YIU

Inspired by the proliferation of art during the Umbrella Movement and in a good will to uplift spirits, a group of Hong Kong graphic designers, media workers and photographers teamed up to bring a dash of creativity to the city under its political haze. They called themselves Ying Light Painting (形.光). I talked to Alex and photographer Simon Lun about their intriguing project.

(The conversation below is moderately edited for fluency. A: Alex, S: Simon)

Please introduce the project you are working on now.

A: The whole project started in October. The current environment of HK is quite depressing and full of negative messages, the team want to do something to bring positive energy to others. We focus most of our effort in the Umbrella Movement since they are the one who need a lot of support and encouragement.

From ‘Hong Kong Update & In-Depth Look At Roots Of Conflict’ in Popular Resistance. Daily Movement News and Resources

Since the pictorial possibility of ‘pixelstick’ is unlimited, we have tailor-made many different images or quotes for people to choose. We believe they will share the photos in their own social network and spread the encouragment to more people.

How do you prepare before shooting?

A: We leveraged on a LED stick which can be programmed to show different colors across time. Using long exposure, the LED stick will be able to generate a completed picture. Since the visual generation depends on the person who handle the LED stick, the final outcome will be different and every picture is unique.

This is a latest technique developed in US last year. We believe we are the first group in HK to use such equipment to take light painting photos.

Based on different project, we will design the images that we want to photograph, and then picked the right spot in the city to take our pictures.

Do you have any new projects in progress after the umbrella movement?

A: We are working on a project to reconstruct old/ disappearing places in all parts of Hong Kong using light painting.

Are there any mentors/ photographers/ young photographers/ artists that you draw inspiration from?

A: During the Umbrella Movement, we find out that HK people are very talented and creative. We are inspired by a lot of public art pieces in different occupying sites.

S: In the field of light painting, I must mention Janne Parvianen. He is a talented artist who paints landscape with light and produces exceptional photographs. 

How does Hong Kong inspire you artistically? Living in a city with such dense visual elements, does it influence your aesthetic and artistic thinking?

A: We don’t have an answer to this. But we do believe we can do something great because we love our city. This is our source of power and inspiration.

From ‘Hong Kong Update & In-Depth Look At Roots Of Conflict’ in Popular Resistance. Daily Movement News and Resources

Growing up, have you ever imagined being a photographic artist?

S: I liked to paint when I was younger. I thought I would become a painter, but I soon gave up the idea because my family told me that painters’ fame only came after their deaths.

What is your first camera? What is your first memory with photography?

S: My first camera is a Canon PowerShot A70. I bought that to replace my old family film camera. I was in primary six, I brought it to school to photograph my primary school graduation. I was amazed that I can review the pictures instantly and look at them on my computer. My interest on digital camera and its technology grew.

When did you open your eyes to photography and start to see photography as an art form/ a way of expression?

S: Camera is a medium that records light. We thought we can have more fun with light. Not only do we use flashlight and LED stick to render images, we want to establish a relationship between the rendered images and the environment.

Have you attended art school? Is art school training important to your photography?

S: I graduated from a digital visual design course offered by City University of Hong Kong. I am studying media and cultural studies. I learned basics about the mechanism of camera. I think one cannot better it photography through ‘training, but through experimenting and practicing.

All members of Ying Light Painting: Simon (top left), Alex (below left 2)

To see more of their work, check our their Facebook page.

© Ying Light Painting | urbanautica Hong Kong

Carlier | Gebauer, Berlin
08.11.2014 - 24.01.2015

carlier | gebauer is very pleased to announce the European premiere of new works by photographer Paul Graham, opening November 7th, 2014 from 6-9pm. Does Yellow Run Forever? is Graham´s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Violet bedding swathes a sleeping woman, her arm poised in a gentle arc across her brow. A double rainbow emerges from a verdant field. Dark clouds hover above a pawn shop where luminous rays of light cut through the clouds to illuminate their readiness to buy gold. Variations of these three motifs comprise Paul Graham´s latest body of work: pieces of rainbows arcing across the Irish landscape, crude gold-pawn shops dotting the streets of New York, and tender images of a woman (his partner) asleep in bare-walled rooms, to reveal bittersweet dreams of desire deferred and the promise of happiness that might be found, if we only knew where to look.

© Paul Graham, ‘Pawn Shop, Ozone Park, New York, 2013

© Does Yellow Run Forever?, 2014, exhibition view at Carlier | Gebauer

Does Yellow Run Forever? takes Graham´s nuanced approach to the ephemeral and quotidian, introduced with ‘a shimmer of possibility’ and ‘The Present’ but shifts it from the scale of the social to a more personal and emotive context. Large colour photographs taken between 2011 and 2014, hang with expansive breadth at varying heights from neck snapping to just off the floor. Shamelessly embracing the cliché of photographing a rainbow, or one’s lover, these poetic juxtapositions articulate an exploration of desire and hope: the breadth of our
dreams, the narrow aspirations of chasing only wealth, and the enchantment found at the rainbow’s end. Dreams, love, hope, wealth, magic and reality collide in the alchemy formed by these three simple elements: the air becomes gold, our dreams become visible, and wealth becomes worthless.

© Paul Graham, ‘Senami’, Auckland, NZ (grey room), 2011

Graham established his reputation through colour photographs of exurban cityscapes in contemporary Britain. Early series like “A1—The Great North Road” (1981-82), “Beyond Caring (1984-85),” and “Troubled Land,” (1984-86), exemplified his interest in locating traces of history within the everyday. These concerns informed the artist‘s later projects in Northern Ireland, in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in Japan, and for the past 12 years, in the United States.

On the occasion of this exhibition, Graham has produced a unique small format book, published in collaboration with MACK.

© Paul Graham, ‘Co Clare, Ireland, 2014

Paul Graham was born in 1956 in England and lives and works in New York. He has been awarded the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography 2012, the most prestigious international award for photography. His work has been the subject of more than eighty solo exhibitions in internationally renowned institutions including the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate Gallery, London. Paul Grahamʼs work is included in such important public collections as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Arts Council England, the V&A Museum and the National Museum of Photography, London; the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany; and the Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, as well as in significant private collections worldwide.

© Paul Graham | carlier | gebauer

BY STEVE BISSON

1. The video ‘Cobertores’ has been recently selected by Filmessay for a special streaming session. Can you tell us something about this project?

'Cobertores' started during my practice of walking around São Paulo, the city in which I was born. During one of my walks, I found an object that got my attention: a bunch of clothes on the floor. The clothes had an ambiguous form; sometimes it looked like a human body, sometimes a bunch of blankets. This ambiguous form of the object interested me. I was thinking at the blanket as an object that covers and protects, a metaphor for the creation of “someone’s home”. I started to document every blanket I found in the streets of São Paulo with my camera, and organize the photographs through a typology method. After that, I’ve felt a necessity to expand my work to the materialization of the object, so I decided to do a public intervention in the city, using the same blankets I had been documenting. The intervention happened during two days at Vale do Anhangabaú in São Paulo downtown and the outcome of this project is a video. ‘Cobertores’ has many connections with my previous works as an object between private and public, that are in constantly transformation. Beside that, I have always been interested in architecture and urban signals, in the area between private and public space. I’ve found out that architectures elements are always present in these arrangements, as well as in several photos I’ve been taking since 2001. ‘Cobertores’ is an eclectic experience and a true source for my research.

© Luciana Benaduce, stills from the video ‘Cobertores’ 

2. Can you introduce us to the project ‘Paisagem’?

'Paisagem' is a project inspired by the pictorialism movement in photography. Since I have studied some photographers from this movement I was attracted by the style and the way of projecting an emotional intent to the viewer’s imaginary. Afterwards I started to develop this series trying to follow an impressionist approach, often manipulating manually the focus and light in the camera. The intention was to lose the relation with the real and get a soft atmosphere, nostalgic and dreamy photography’s.  

© Luciana Benaduce

3. What about ‘Azul’?

'Azul' is an experimental project in the nature. I used expired positive films with my rolleiflex camera and a Canon Ae1. The results was not predictable and I was captured and interested in this process.

4. You now live in Amsterdam after growing up in São Paulo. How was this change and how is affecting your artistic research?

It was a big shift. I was used to live in a big city where everything looks chaotic and out of order, which was a source of inspiration for my work.
When I arrived in The Netherlands I found the opposite country where everything works well and is in a perfect order. The citizens are much more integrated and connected to the public space, this led my work to adapt to this new environment.  During my Master I found a very interesting post-war generation architect who illustrated his vision on the use of the city, in which unsightly areas of urban space were transformed into usable and architecturally interesting playgrounds. He designed in Amsterdam more than 700 playgrounds with a humanist architecture, which meant an architecture for the community, in the city of Amsterdam, at post war. Nowadays you can still find a few in the city, one of them is at Vondelpark where  my public intervention ‘Hut’ took place.

© Luciana Benaduce, Barão 955

5. I really like the series ‘Entropy’. It impacts on the infinity growth assumption of the Enlightenment. As well it reflects a distinctive character of the city of Sao Paulo.

That is true and the curious part is that the project was developed in Utrecht. This series was part of my research during my master at HKU in Utrecht. The research was focused on the relationship between private and public sphere through the perspective of the objects. I was interested in appropriation and transformation of an object that already existed in between public and private sphere in the city. These photos were taken during 3 months, following the demolition process of a public building in Utrecht.

© Luciana Benaduce

6. Any exhibition you have seen that got your attention in the past? 

Cildo Meirelles at Pinacoteca São Paulo, Philip-Lorca diCorcia at De Pont Museum in Tilburg, Yael Bartana at Venice Biennale, Jeff Wall at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam are some of those.

7. Any artist that you find vibrant and interesting in this moment…
Francesca Woodman and Bernd and Hilla Becker always! Berna Reale, Zoro Feigl, Henrique Oliveira, João Castilho.

8. Plans for the future?
I’ll be working on the publication of a photo book. Be inspired and keep researching.

9. Books that you would not want ever off the shelf?

'Cartas a um jovem poeta' (Letters to a Young Poet) by Rainer Maria Rilke. 'Esculpir o tempo' (Sculpting in Time) by  Andrei Tarkovsky.

© Luciana Benaduce | urbanautica Brazil | Filmessay

Steve Bisson editor of Urbanautica was selected among 12 internationally acclaimed photographers and curators for the Jury of Life Framer Award. «The award is judged each month by a different world class photographer or industry leader with a wealth of experience and expertise to their name. They provide a critique of their favourite images, giving you valuable feedback from a top professional.» Steve Bisson will be selecting and commenting on the winning images for Life Framer Open Call of January (deadline January 31st). Life Framer is an award designed to source and showcase outstanding photography from amateur, emerging and established photographers. We aim to bring exposure to talented photographers from all over the world. Their talent, their stories, their lives… Here you can learn more about the prizes.

INTERVIEW BY RALPH WILSON

Steve Bisson of Urbanautica is at the helm of Life Framer this month, leading judging for our ‘OPEN CALL’. We chatted to him about Urbanautica, art as a way of bringing people together, and the end of photography as we know it… 

Hi Steve! Thanks for sharing some time with us. Where in the world do we find you and what’s keeping you busy?

I live with my family near Asolo, a very small medieval village in the foothills of the Veneto region, in Italy. I try to keep myself busy with books and writing. I earn my living with art direction activities with companies, museums, artists, galleries and anyone who is really interested in working with me. I also try not to keep myself busy when I can.

'Experience of Space: Landscape in Photography', Exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2014
Curated by Steve Bisson

We’re delighted to have you as judge for our fourth call for entries. This one’s a little different as it’s an Open Call and so anything goes… Have you judged photography prizes before? What are you looking for in a winning image, as opposed to a series or a body of work?

I believe that a good photograph is not necessarily a knock out. It can also be something that gives you a hand. I have been invited to some juries before, however I do not particularly like to judge. I approached photography because I felt that I could learn something from others. I never stopped believing in this. For me a single image or a series make no difference. It is how they speak to me that is of interest.

You’re best known for Urbanautica – can you tell us a little more about the platform, how it began and what it sets out to do?

It all started as a form of personal research. The goal was to investigate how and why people represent their world. The first result was a kind of online archive. As time went on, I felt the need to communicate with other people on the outcomes of the research. And so slowly other people came with their ideas. And later came exhibitions, publications, reviews, and much more. Urbanautica represents an almost spontaneous evolution of a will to share a vision with the world. For this I know that one day there will be someone else to help me continue this journey.

Exhibition ‘Mother Russia’ at The Salt Yard, Hong Kong, China, 2013

We understand that Urbanautica now has an international network of curators. What’s the idea behind this new curatorial force and how does it work?

The basic idea is to have a decentralized structure of curators who can better represent Urbanautica in single countries. In this way we can better monitor what happens in the local scene and also be closer to the people, to the exhibitions, to galleries, bookshops and curators. Everyone can develop direct relations with the territory, and make them grow. The results are impressive. In Belgium the first country where we started, with Dieter Debruyne and Peter Waterschoot, the participation was beyond expectations. We are open to anyone who is willing to contribute to the idea and the network.

Beyond Urbanautica there’s a host of other things you’re involved with –among them Galleria Browning. Can you tell us a bit more about it? With the gallery being located in Asolo – a small town in Italy – is this a way to show that culture and origins matter in this social media ruled, post-geographical world?

Asolo is a very small town. The art, however, occupies several centuries of history here. Many artists stopped this way, from the poet Robert Browning to Freya Stark. From Hermann Nitsch to Nam June Paik, to name a few. A medieval village still intact, with no franchising and fakeness. Everything is on a small scale. Since I came to live in this place I felt the need to contribute to its preservation, thereby facilitating the exchange with arts. For two years I directed a festival of films on art and after that I took over the direction at Galleria Browning. Here, we are far away from any commercial logic. There are around 200 inhabitants of the village. What I am looking for is to stimulate a no-profit conviviality that begins with an opening of whatever and ends in a “tavern” with a glass of wine, local food and a friendly chat. What I want to convey is that art is not a market price, but a way to bring people together, create friendship, dialogue, debate, awareness. The artists I’ve met in the past two years have been very happy to contribute to this vision. Asolo is a perfect place for this. I do not know how long I will keep directing the gallery or living in Asolo, but for the time I’m here I will try to contribute to the life of the village in this spirit. Italy is full of similar villages that are in the process of being abandoned, as they don’t have the speed of the world. Yet it’s paradoxical that in some countries they rebuild these realities as many dioramas of a Sunday afternoon.

‘Dis / close’, Book by Ng Sai Kit, Osage, 2014. Essay by Steve Bisson

And we’ve heard mumblings about ‘PHOTOSYNTHESIS’. We are under the impression that you are working on one of the most promising photography and curatorial platform we’ve seen for a while. Can you divulge any more…?

The idea behind Photosynthesis is to engage our huge following in the creation of a very accessible thematic archive on photography. We all spend a lot of time on the Internet. However the time we devote to research is increasingly reduced. At least for me it is. Thus we wish to provide to our readers a simplified access to selected information, while encouraging contextually a real exchange between people.

How did you fall in love with visual arts and photography? What’s the best piece of advice you could give to an aspiring photographer or curator?

Well it’s not easy to answer this question in a few words. The visual arts have affected me as an opportunity to understand more about myself. The way we represent the world says a lot about us, and our inner landscape. We are what we see. Here’s my first tip for an aspiring photographer. To a curator I would say firstly try to become an artist.

Do you have a favourite photographer you’ve discovered through Urbanautica?

Yes me. I do not have a favourite photographer. What we look at is transformed with ourselves. So no image is ever really the same to two people. The moment that we look at it, it ceases to belong to those who have made it. Like any story, once told, it lives its own life. It’s curious, when you read a story it is as if you were re-writing it. I can therefore say that I am my favourite photographer. Also I guess the best photographer is someone who I can meet every day and who speaks to my heart as if he/she knew what I needed in that moment. I like to think of being able to meet a different one every day. And fortunately this still happens to me. Even with unknown photographers. And they are precisely those who I prefer to meet. We have to put ourselves in a position of listening, and the world will surprise us always. And maybe that’s why often the photographers that have impressed me were women, because of their natural predisposition to accept life.

'Ocean Beach', Book by Douglas Ljunkgvist, Kehrer Verlag, 2013. Essay by Steve Bisson

Who do you think are the most exciting artists working with photography right now? Who’s really pushing the boundaries?

Here too I would like to be provocative. I believe that like never before humanity, even in photography, is pushing its boundaries. The point is that we do not know where. The nihilistic prophecy has come true. There is no future without a purpose. So I think photography is more useful to those who make it rather than to those who consume it. We’ve explored almost everything that was out there to be discovered. We must now find ourselves. If this is true then photography is a good exercise to find the right fit within the world, no matter who is watching you.

And finally, carte blanche – anything else you’d like to add?

Yes, I wish everyone a Happy New Year! Be your change!

© Life Framer | urbanautica

BY SYLVIE DE WEZE

1. You studied ‘Visual communication’. What is the difference between this and a ‘classic’ photography degree?

The multidisciplinary approach of the medium. The main idea that influenced me in the visual communication department at La Cambre was that you have to express your concept in the most relevant medium. We gained basic skills in illustration, typography, video, animation, graphic design, edition, etc. (in the applied arts field). I loved this freedom, this multidisciplinary interest and the way of transposing it into personal artistic research. In most of the other art departments (including photography) at La Cambre the starting point of the work is in a specific medium.

© Stéphanie Roland, dead zone, _ _ - _ _ 

2. What is the most valuable lesson you learned at La Cambre Brussels, where you received your education?

La Cambre learned me that talent or being naturally gifted means nothing if you don’t have the will and the energy to develop your work. I never felt particularly talented nor hopeless, so I was really stimulated by this idea.

3. When did you choose photography as a principal or preferred medium?

I started taking evening classes in photography when I was 16 years old and I really loved it. Especially the process of developing black and white film. I loved the feeling of being in a dark laboratory. I’ve always pursued photography, but began to take the medium more seriously at the end of my training at La Cambre, developing the series “Les enfants-modèles”.

4. You use other media as well. What effect do you to intend by mixing several media?

I am interested in the potential experience they can offer to the visitor, in their potential to interact with the visitor and to create a spatial experience.

© Stéphanie Roland, Portraits, _ _: _ _, thermochromic silkscreen cards, 2011

5. Which fascination lies at the base of your series “Les enfants-modèles”?

I feel concerned about a certain idea of happiness that is implicitly imposed upon us from our childhood to our death. I really love the way filmmakers like Pasolini or Hanneke deconstruct this vision of happiness in their work. I have a strong interest in the connection between death and photography. The theme resonates in all of my work.

6. Which part does digital manipulation play in your photography?

Digital manipulation is just one tool among many others to achieve the result I want. However, I’m frugal with manipulation because I like to construct real things for pictures and I love to try to find the best light possible for my pictures. However, coming from another background, I find the orthodoxy of some photographers who are afraid of or reject digital manipulation weird. It’s just a (relatively) contemporary tool that can be carefully chosen to work with or not.

7. For “Ideal City" you turned to science. What did you gain from this collaboration?

I came to realise that there exists more common methods and problems in the artistic and scientific research than I’d ever thought, even if they constitute two different worlds. Both share the same hunger for experimentation and an interest in serendipity (Serendipity, sometimes called ‘accidental discovery’, is originally an unexpected scientific discovery. The result of a combination of fortuitous circumstances in the context of a search for another subject) .

© Stéphanie Roland,Museum of XXIst century, _ _ -  _ _ , from the series ‘Ideal City’, 2013

8. What were your main sources of inspiration for “Ideal City”?

A mix of literature, movies and scientific readings:
"Brave new world", Aldous Huxley
"1984", Georges Orwell
"The black hole", Charles burns
"Martian Chronicles", Ray Bradburry
"Melancholia", Lars Von Trier
"Solaris", Andreï Tarkovsky
Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings
Boards of Canada’s music
"La jetée", Chris Marker
"12 donkeys" and "Brazil", Terry Gilliam
NASA pictures
ESO newsletters
"Science et vie" magazine.

9. How do your new projects come into being? How would you describe your personal research?

First of all I’m obsessed with a lot of mental images. I try to draw or express them in the little notebooks I always keep with me. Sometimes I organize and stage the picture. In parallel, I read and see new things around me. The process oscillates between intuition and new knowledge about the topics that are of interest to me.

© Stéphanie Roland, Piscine, _ _ - _ _, from the series ‘Time Suspended’

10. You’re keen on applying different techniques like thermochromic printing. What is your latest discovery and how do you intend to use it?

I am working on a photo book in augmented reality, but it is still work in progress.

11. Is there any contemporary artist or photographer, even if young and emerging, that influenced you in some way?

I’m influenced by photographers that ‘construct’ new realities such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Demand and Gregory Crewdson. Philip Corcia-Di Lorca’s early works also fascinate me because of the way he injects fiction into everyday moments. His approach is related to George Perec’s interesting notion of the”infra-ordinaire”. I’m also passionate about the notion of time in photography and video. There lies my attraction to Bill Viola and David Claerbout’s work. Bill Viola’s retrospective in the Grand Palais in Paris was a great moment of amazement to me.

12. Which photo books are on your bucket list?

"Sweet-earth experimentals Utopia in America", Joel Sternfeld
"Gregory Crewdson", Gregory Crewdson
"Moments before the flood", Carl de Keyzer
"Het zwart gaat", Anouk Kruithof & Jaap Scheren
"Will they sing like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty", Max Pinckers
"Soeurs, saintes et sibylles", Nan Goldin
"Your house", Olafur Eliasson
"RGB colorspace atlas", Tauba Auerbach

© Stéphanie Roland, Violette, _ _  - _ _ , from the series ‘Les enfants-modèles, photographie’, 2011

13. Can you sketch us the most recent project(s) you’re working on?

I’m working on a new photographic series about family rituals, weddings, ceremonies, etc. And I’m also the artistic director of a movie inspired by my pictures. That’s a very interesting project I direct together with Benjamin Behaegel, an amazing Parisian movie maker. He saw my pictures in an exhibition and proposed to collaborate on a short movie we shoot in February 2015. A new fascinating field is opening up to me.

14. Tell us something about your upcoming shows abroad and/or in Belgium?

In 2015, I will cross the ocean for shows in Richmond (USA), San Francisco, Montreal and Quebec. I will also have a huge solo show in July at Triangle Bleu, the gallery that represents me in Belgium. There I will show a varied and new body of work and some in-situ pieces.

© Stéphanie Roland | urbanautica Belgium