Outside In by Chris Wiley in Mousse (paper issue 40), about the resurgence of Outsider Art and what it means for the contemporary art world
Paul Chan by Nell McClister in BOMB, in which Paul Chan discusses his great 2003 film Baghdad in No Particular Order among thoughtful attempts at pleasing his interviewer’s pressing demand to define the relationship between his art and activism, and not to escape
Sam Kriss’ Manifesto of the Committee to Abolish Outer Space on The New Inquiry, for which the title speaks for itself
Emily Jones’ artist profile on Rhizome, whose (great) work I discovered through lurking online at my friend Cory’s London gallery space Jupiter Woods
I'm really happy to introduce some new articles that I produced for Wandering Bears' new project, Chapter No. 1!
Like them, I have been posting less and thinking about the future of this blog. Becoming busier with work while trying to maintain my own art practice has made it harder to dedicate so much time to blogging, and my focus has also been slowly shifting away from photography. I still enjoy updating my photo archive, but I have grown tired with trying to decipher the overload of online photography that used to get me so excited. I do have a ton of books waiting to be unpacked in new Reading Sprees, and lots of links for future Study Halls, and I don't intend to stop posting on here, but expect some changes to come in the near future :)
In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy this conversation between Adam Ferriss, Frankie Carino & I, as well as this interview of me and all of the other great articles and videos in this new Wandering Bears chapter. Thanks Nik and the WB team for letting me get involved and for keeping us excited and inspired in this vortex.
It's time for a new Study Hall, but this time not a readable one. I've been getting really into video works lately, and here are some of my favorites. I hope you'll find these as inspiring as I do.
Statues Also Die by Chris Marker & Alain Resnais
Grosse Fatigue by Camille Henrot
The Chief Architect of Gangsta Rap by Ilja Karilampi
Cities of Gold and Mirrors by Cyprien Gaillard (music by Koudlam)
Matt Grubb is a photographer from California currently based in Brooklyn, who graduated with his MFA from Yale University in 2011. I came across his work because we were both a part of the jpg-jpg-jpg project last Winter, and I found the image he chose to be particularly intriguing and in line with my preoccupations. So after he agreed to do an interview, I set out to ask him some more in-depth questions than usual to tackle these issues, and he even decided to ask me some questions in return. It was a fun and thoughtful process, and here is the result.
Universal Pictures 01, 2013
In what ways has your practice evolved over time?
It seems to evolve with my camera. My camera right now is big, slow and digital which I think describes the work reasonably well. My graduate school work was made with a medium format film camera which was quick, portable and frustrating, which are also probably good words for that project. Before that my camera was a massively inconvenient studio 4x5 that was filled with mold and weighed as much as a tank, so you can follow the pattern.
Solar System (iPhone), 2013
What impact did your studies have on your work?
I got to talk about my work with artists who were incredibly important to me, and my best friends and classmates were people who were smarter about art than I could ever hope to be. It was helpful and intimidating and made me realize how simply I was thinking.
Water Balloon Fight, 2013
The 'Universal' logo, along with its picture of the earth taken from space, comes back several times in your work. It's an image that is at once so loaded, the most loaded perhaps, and emptied by its ubiquity. How do you see its place within your work, and within photography more generally?
I was collecting various screenshots of the logo for a long time before I even considered it as artwork, but after showing the group of them to friends I started seeing them as very sad. It was like I was playing volleyball with Universal, where they took the most dwarfing, existential concept of the earth floating in space to sell Flash Gordon and I got to make fun of that by catching the logo off guard. Now I guess it works as an anchor throughout the work, allowing the other pictures to go all over the place without losing a home base. I’m interested in how it reads in the series to you. Does it come off as comic or serious, or does its meaning shift?
Universal Pictures 03, 2012
To me it definitely reads as pretty dramatic, with various nuances of drama; deadpan, entropic-looking, eerie... The comic is present throughout because of the nature of the image (being a mainstream commercial logo), but because we cannot ever fully represent the full earth in our mind it's not a less true or potent representation of it as if it was a 'real' satellite photograph. I guess drama and comic are bound to coexist in this image.
So I really appreciate those slight variations in the tone, I think they speak to photography's ability to record a reality (even though here it's a highly abstract one) by framing it in a certain way or under a certain light; photography at its simplest yet most effective state.
Universal Pictures 02, 2012
Text is present throughout your work in various forms (poetry, 'Universal', the titling of the images). How does it enter into your process compared to the way that images do?
Writing for me is the easiest way out. It’s the quickest way to say what I want to say in the most direct way, but it doesn’t require translation or alteration and so it feels dumber sometimes. I write a lot, none of it ever sees daylight. I hadn’t noticed the recurrence of text, but I guess I’ll say that sometimes being dumb feels fantastic and you just want to tell people what you’re thinking.
Have you ever lost faith in somebody’s work after interviewing them, or alternately realized that somebody was much more thoughtful?
Taliban Poetry Part 1, 2013
Getting to read people's answers to my questions is definitely always a window into their person, but a lot of the time it seems to fit their work pretty seamlessly, or interestingly at least. I don't think I have ever lost faith in someone's work that way, and if anything I respect the fact that some people are not the most comfortable with words or choose to be very succinct so as not to spoil their images with potentially weak ideas. I know very well how hard it is to try and put definitive words onto one's own work, so I always appreciate the effort. However, more often than not I'm super pleased with how thoughtful people's answers can be, in which case I not only appreciate their work even more but also gain new perspectives on talking about and understanding photography in general. I'm really thankful for that.
Syrian Apples, For Alessio Romenzi and the Lifeless Body of Mohammed Al Deiri, Stored In An Apple Refrigerator, 2013
Your work incorporates different types of imagery within one series, both in terms of the sourcing of the images (screen captures, stock images, text, "high" and "low" photographic equipment) and in terms of their subject matter (portraits, still-lives, street photography). How important is this interplay, and how do you go about putting all those pieces together?
Right now I feel like I’m chasing anxiety as it winds its way through different modes of picture making. It’s also a reaction to what I see as a frustrating simplification that has been happening in photography, where a project needs to be summarized in a sentence, and every photograph has to reaffirm that concept. I like the kind of dexterity of mind required to rapidly alter how you’re processing an image based on the way it’s presenting itself.
Rover Finds A Small Bright Object, 2012
What do you look for in a good photograph?
Most people can take one good photograph, and sometimes people can take one great photograph but that doesn’t really matter until they’re able to cobble it into an important structure. A book full of boring photos intelligently assembled can amount to way more than a book of isolated knockouts. It’s John Gossage vs. Richard Misrach and Gossage always wins.
Universal Pictures 04, 2012
What/who are the things/people/artists that inspire you most these days?
Buffy, Wigs, New York (good and bad).
Can you describe a productive day in your life?
Pour up (drank), head shot (drank), sit down (drank), stand up (drank), make work (drank), wake up (drank), faded (drank) faded (drank).
Plum and Bug, Athens, 2014
What would be an ideal way for your to exhibit your work, and why?
For a long time it was a book but recently I’m almost exclusively thinking about it on a wall. I’d also like to print the images on clothes and have attractive people wear them to bad parties.
As always, I'm excited to present you with a new Reading Spree! I've been reading a lot of things online lately, and listening to lots of podcasts, but printed matter still makes its way into my life (thankfully).
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: The Painting and Sculpture Collection
I found this book on an evening visit to Adobe Books last summer, beer in hand (what a relaxing way to shop for books and avoid crowded bars). I've been using it a lot as a reference for watercolors (a recent hobby). It also comes in handy now that the SF MoMA is closed for 3 years!
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown & Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (MIT Press)
I have been wanting to get my hands on this book since I encountered it in someone's house last summer at a 4th of July party. I loved the premise of it and it's been super interesting so far.
Darin Mickey, Stuff I Gotta Remember not to Forget (J&L's books)
Darin Mickey caught my attention after Carlos Lowenstein mentioned his blog broken telepathy in his interview, and Darin also seemed interested in the intersection of photography and archaeology. In this book, he follows his father who sells storage space in mines and caves throughout Kansas.
Gordon Matta-Clark postcard, Editions Lutanie
Gordon Matta-Clark is one of my favorite artists, and I love having him around on the wall.
The Plant, Issue 6 - Spider Plant
I've been a big fan of The Plant from the beginning, and I was really excited to see that Camille Henrot was featured in this issue. I've been obsessed with her work lately, especially her video 'Grosse Fatigue'. I also really enjoyed the articles about Mexico City and cosmic farming in South London.
Riso Poster by Colpa Press
I randomly came across this print by San Francisco friends Colpa Press at McNally Jackson's Reading Room while in New York City in July. I discovered this series of scanned broken sculptures when I took pictures of Luca and his studio for Future Positive last Fall, so I was really happy to get my hands on a copy.
Apartamento Issue #13
My mom and I started a new tradition in which she buys Apartamento and mails it to me (it's much cheaper in France!), accompanied by a few other trinkets, every time it comes out, so this was the first instance of it.
Peter Shire scrap
Ooga Booga has been selling little scraps of Peter Shire ceramics pieces, and this one was a gift from my friend Alex.
I have been reading a lot about contemporary photography lately, mostly interviews because I'm interested in the way that artists discuss their own work and in the questions that they ask themselves and others. Here are some of the readings that I've found particularly fruitful. Enjoy! :)
A glossary of quotes about representation by Barbara Kruger and Sarah Charlesworth.
Discussions in BOMB Magazine between Amanda Ross-Ho and Elad Lassry, James Welling and Devon Golden, Walead Beshty and Eileen Quinlan and Shannon Ebner and Zoe Leonard.
An article about Robert Heineken in Mousse Magazine.
Frankie Carino is an LA-based artist and photographer who I met through my friend Alex last winter while trying to channel some Kate Bush dance moves. His work is at once spontaneous and really thorough, combining his love for adventure and exploration and a deep investment in photographic processes. Always pushing further and reinventing his practice, he's a real inspiration, with a passion for both art and life that's highly contagious.
Frankie graduated from the School of Visual Arts in NYC in 2012 and is originally from Tucson, Arizona. He now lives in LA with his dog Mollie and a great assortment of rocks, art books and photo papers among others.
How and when did you start taking photographs?
The first photo I remember taking was when I was 8 on a trip to Egypt. I was lying on my back at the base of this Obelisk. This was the first time I ever thought about photography. I was lying there thinking to myself “I am allowed to lay here because I am taking a picture, and this is my picture.”
What is the role of photography in your life?
Photography plays a large role in my life. It is not only my education, job, and, love, but it’s become me to a large extent. Most of my friends have come from photography, either through my education or from a shared interest. I have love affairs, envy, lust, joy and hate because of photography. The whole thing is completely consuming, I’ve made the biggest decisions of my life based on photography. To a large extent I completely despise photography, probably because of the importance it holds in my life, it's really just paper.
Do you think more about your pictures before or after taking them?
I think more about my pictures after making them. I am not sure if there can really be this before and after separation for me; I find the two processes of thinking to be drastically different. Every photograph is made with a certain thought process, and those decisions then make up that photograph; the subject of the photograph, the way the photograph is composed, technical decisions, aesthetic, etc. These decisions are intrinsic to the photograph, but for me this is just one step. Once I have that photo I have to decide if the picture is good or not, what that picture is doing, how it could be used, and how that picture will physically live. For me a photograph is just raw material. I go and buy a lot of different bricks based on their different qualities, and my building needs a bunch of different type of bricks.
What do you look for in a good photograph?
Maybe a good photograph is a photograph that does its job. I think of Richard Prince’s Marlboro men or most Wolfgang Tillmans photographs or even a Shore or Eggleston, taken out of context they are not particularly outstanding universally “good” photographs. In my work I am constantly struggling with the issues of “good” pictures. I honestly think I spent the last two years trying to make bad or ugly pictures in order to avoid the baggage that comes with a pretty picture.
In what ways has your practice evolved over time?
Hahaha, my practice has become more abstract and doucheier. I started out just trying to take good-looking pictures, that had some sort of maybe transcendental qualities. Then I went to art school and started making pictures about, I don’t know growing up, shhhh lets not talk about those; then it was all this “fuck you photography” stuff, where I would make things just to be challenging and somewhat of a photo asshole. Now it’s somewhere in combination of all that I suppose, damn that’s cool I just kind of figured that out writing this.
What impact did your studies have on your work?
I got educated in the reality of this whole thing, and I got somewhat jaded about photography and its whole function and reality. It was all so necessary though, I think art school isn’t really a place that teaches a person all that much, it’s more of a facilitator for a person to develop a whole set of their own tools to take out in the world. At least that’s how it functioned for me.
Do you ever use research or writing in your work?
I don’t normally include research or writing directly in my work, but it’s a huge part of my practice. In art you have to be able to explain to people what you’re doing, more or less, so I am always trying to explain aspects of my work through writing. I also take a lot of notes, about my work, ideas, mini manifestos; you know the normal notebook type stuff. I do a lot of research; most of the research is into different photo stuff, paper, chemicals, printing processes, that type of stuff. I am also really interested in the different communities of photography, so I spend time on YouTube getting lost in different instructional how-to type videos, different gear reviews, you know the really nerdy side of photography. I am really akin to the gear heads. I do a lot of peripheral research into different places or ideas or blah blah, I’ll become obsessed with something for a period of time and really go deep, and that always ends up playing a role in my work.
Can you describe a productive day in your life?
An ideal day for me is: wake up cook a decent breakfast, read for an hour or two, go in my studio and kind of prep, answer some emails or do some computer based stuff, have some lunch and go see a show or check out the museum, come home and work a little bit in the studio, make some dinner, then go see something either music or maybe some art and drink some beers with friends, then come home let’s say it’s around 11pm, then I will really get into the studio and work until 3-4, then I put on some garbage TV like “Extreme Cheapskates” or “the Real Indiana Jones” and go to sleep.
Is it important for you to learn about past photographers?
Yes obviously. How can we move forward if we don’t know where we came from? And there is a lot of incredible past work.
What/who are the things/people/artists that inspire you most these days?
Music is really important to me, I am listening to music 80-95% of my waking hours; right now I am Drakeing really hard. Most of my close friends are musicians, I think it’s a much more effective medium for conveying emotion than visual art. I’m inspired by construction sites and different unintentional decorations or sculpture.
3 bands: The Gris Gris, Four Visions, and Cough Cool.
3 artists: Sam Moyer, Liz Deschenes, Jean-Baptiste Bernadet.
Where do you look for inspiration?
I try and see a lot of art, go to lectures, and read as much as I can. If I am having trouble getting going I’ll flip through a few art books and just get the juices flowing. I also paint in a very hobby's way, I think that making something with less expectation helps free up new ideas. I find that most of my inspiration comes when I am walking or jogging with my dog. I was at this Tacita Dean lecture a few months ago, and she was talking about this idea of non-work or something along those lines; basically you’ll be in the studio all day and get nowhere and then you’ll lay down on your bed and boom inspired… I find this is really an important aspect of inspiration, the walk away. Also http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com, I get super lost in this site.
Do you have any current photo/art project?
Right now I am trying to focus on putting together some different stuff for a store that’s opening in New York called “Objectify”. I am doing some framed pieces, a small portfolio, postcards, and some hand dyed shirts. I am also in the very beta stages of working with a graphic designer friend of mine on a book project. This being said, I am always working on making new things and have a lot of stuff in process. I find that I don’t really work in projects but more in medium phases, then they all get mixed together.
What are your favorite things to do on your free time?
Since a lot of your work is made or completed in the studio, how is the time spent in your studio different from the one spent in the outside world? Is one easier to take on or more rewarding than the other?
Outside is definitely easier to take on. I start a lot of my work outside either out in the desert or up in the mountains, this aspect of my work is still very much about play and experiment, and the stakes aren’t as high. I am normally out romping around, blasting music, the wind in my hair and the dog by my side; this in itself is such a good way to spend time that it almost doesn’t matter if the stuff I am making is any good.
The studio, because it’s a specific place designated for work, I feel like I am supposed to be actually working. I really enjoy this mind shift, when I am in the studio I am focused on making art, it isn’t always the most serious stuff, sometimes I am just playing around trying new things and sometimes I am in deep work mode. Working outside lacks certain consequences that the studio holds. It gets tough, I have to go in and really confront the work, I can’t hide the reality of it; it’s up there on the wall looking back at me. It’s also the place where things get finished and resolved, really finishing something and feeling like it’s ready to go out is the hardest part of the whole process for me.
Printing for you has become as important as photographing. This is something that I can identify with and that most photographers experience at varying degrees, but you have been taking it pretty far. How did that shift come about in your practice?
My fascination with printing came from my time working at My Own Color Lab, this photo lab in New York. The people who print there are incredible and the guys who work there are some of the best people ever, I owe those guys so much. It was working there that I really learned how to print. I was exposed, hehe, to a whole side of the photographic process that is behind the scenes, but is so important to the final product. At first I was aggravated by the obsession with the perfect print, we would spend hours making an absolutely beautiful print of a really really shitty picture, and make that shitty picture seem more important because of how nice the print was. After a while though I realized that I could take the skills I was learning and apply them in whatever way I wanted. This opened up a whole new world, I started to go into the darkroom as another step in my process; printing for me is not materializing an existing image it’s actually creating a new one. It is a really draining process, I work in a very manic fashion, I set up 4 or 5 different enlargers with different negatives all different sizes and types of paper. It is a physically and emotionally draining process, but in working like this I find that I do not fixate on a certain picture and I make mistakes, it is normally in these mistakes that I find a new path, a crack to the other side.
You've made really good documentation of your work in situ, your large inkjet and C-prints for example. They end up almost looking like virtually produced images, which I think opens a really interesting conversation, especially since hands-on craft is still very present in your practice. What is the place of that documentation for you, versus the actual works?
The documentation has really transformed for me; it was something that I had to start doing in order to keep track of the pieces: archive, web, digital world etc., but it has become its own thing within the work. I quickly realized that the documentation really didn’t function at all like the real pieces, and that they were pretty boring. I just started to try and treat them as their own thing, a web specific way of handling the piece. You reading them as almost virtually produced is kind of what I am going for, because the works are so physical in their creation and display, and I am in no way able to depict that aspect on the web, I decided to go with a drastically different display and really tried to highlight the fact that you’re looking at a reproduction of an object in a space, but that your experience is not of that space, but of a digital space. Does this make any sense? [Yes!]
What would be an ideal way for your to exhibit your work, and why?
Definitely an exhibition in some sort of a gallery space, preferably with interesting architecture and loose rules. My work is really dependant on the installation and physically seeing it. I try and engage the architecture of the gallery space, through different hanging gestures. I feel that most photography is very limited by its installation. I’ll mount a photograph draped onto the floor or making a 90* turn, and it’s still a photograph. I am interested in the limitations that photography has acquired and its tight definitions; through installation I find I am able to exploit the expectations of photography. A lot of my works are unique pieces that really don’t work as reproductions, either because of scale, texture, or some shit.
What does an ocean in the city mean to you?
A place that balances modern culture with beach life?
I just started a tumblr archive where I post the photos that don't make it onto my website, portraits I take, outtakes from shoots, etc. I've been wanting to share those for a while so I hope you enjoy! And this way I won't have to post updates on here anymore.
Carlos Lowenstein is a self-taught photographer with a palpable eagerness to go out and make pictures. His approach is focused and methodical while open-minded and receptive, giving way to an array of observations that capture both the ordinary and the drama in his surroundings.
Carlos is originally from Caracas, Venezuela. He studied filmmaking at New York University and currently lives and works in Chicago. He self-published a beautiful book of photographs called Sometimes when we leave the office, which, I gather, speaks to his own path as a self-taught photographer.
How and when did you start taking photographs?
I work as a commercial editor (as in editing TV commercials) and in 2007 I switched to a post-production company that encourages their editors go out and do other things when they're in-between projects; it makes sense because editing TV spots is a business that goes in cycles of heavy activity, followed by inevitable downtime. I'd spent my 20's building my editing career and suddenly at 32, I found myself with these bursts of free time! In film school I secretly envied the photo people, since to do anything with filmmaking, it takes a crew, actors, permits, etc. The photo kids would go out with a camera and headphones and it seemed so calm and simple by comparison! So I started taking pictures whenever I wasn't cutting.
What is the role of photography in your life?
Once I started shooting, it quickly turned into something very important to me. It's the only thing I do in my life that is fully, selfishly for me. I am the only one who has to like it. Of course if others like it too, that's great! But that's not its main purpose.
Do you think more about your pictures before or after taking them?
Both. Obviously editing is inherently deliberate. But maybe because of my film background, I can't help but plan a bit before shooting. I make lists, I look for certain kinds of light, scout locations and then it inevitably becomes spontaneous because that's how life is. I suppose I try to create the conditions for happy accidents.
What do you look for in a good photograph?
My favorite quality in a photograph is when it works and it almost seems like it shouldn't. I remember seeing Wolfgang Tillmans' still life photos from the early 2000's for the first time and they had a big impact on me for that reason. They seemed so flat and almost ugly, yet I couldn't stop going back to them. Why did these pictures work? In a very different way, Winogrand's airport pictures have that same quality to me. These are pictures that don't spell out their intent, but if you do some work and really look at them they reward you with their subtle formal clarity and thematic openness. You have to crack their unique code. I suspect part of what makes looking at this sort of work so satisfying to me is that it mirrors the act of photographing, which is largely about learning to really see and discovering form in the world.
In what ways has your practice evolved over time?
My actual method of making pictures has become more narrow, in that I only shoot black and white 35mm with only one camera and one lens. By narrowing the tools I use to what feels like the photographic equivalent of a pencil and sheet of paper, it's given me something constant to anchor my varied interests in subject matter. So I'm finding ways to place a street photograph I made in New York next to a formal study of a found object I made in Santa Monica a year later, and seeing how the two images can work together to create new meanings. I'm becoming very interested in creating a kind of archive of these monochrome images, though I'm not totally sure what I'll do with them. Strangely, I'm not that worried about it. I just like making them, so I'll keep doing it until I run out of steam. These pictures are organized under the working title The Latest Models and it feels like I might work on them for many years.
What impact did your studies have on your work?
I studied film, not photography, and I suspect I'll never shake the impact of French new wave cinematographer Raoul Coutard on my general sense of photographic aesthetic.
Do your ever use research or writing in your work?
Sometimes certain novels can spark things for me. The most recent pictures I've been making really started to materialize while I was reading an old Renata Adler book that was recently re-issued titled Speedboat. It's a crazy 70's experimental novel with a very odd rhythm and something about it seems to have seeped into the way I'm editing my current work.
Is it important for you to learn about past photographers?
Yes. Very. If for no other reason than the pleasure of looking at masterful work.
What/who are the things/people/artists that inspire you most these days?
I love Darin Mickey's Broken Telepathy project that he's been posting to Tumblr. I love how beautifully he is working with a digital camera. It has a very particular aesthetic, capturing images of the world as it is right now, today, in 2014. Another recent favorite is Michael Schmelling's Land Line. Mark Steinmetz' Paris In My Time has been a revelation in that it shows that there is no subject that is ever expired.
What would be an ideal way for your to exhibit your work, and why?
I have never exhibited anything in a gallery since I don't really know anything about or anyone in that world. It seems like it would be a very interesting challenge. I have self-published two small books in very limited editions and though that's been a fun experience, I have mainly embraced Tumblr's ability to actually expose my work to an audience.
