Beanshoot

This is a photography blog keeping track of freelance projects by Anne Bourgeois-Vignon. The rest of her time is spent being the creative content director of NOWNESS where she commissions films and photography as well as develops creative content strategies for brands. Anne talks and writes about photography, directs and produces still and moving image for web and print, and would like to spend more time curating photography. Contact: anne[at]beanshoot.co.uk var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-18619270-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

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Long Read: American Journeys

The concept of travel permeates American culture, from the original pioneers heading West through the prairie, as immortalised in early photography and revisited in spaghetti Westerns, to the photographers of the Farm Security Administration (Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans) travelling through Depression-era America. The iconography of the Wild West, the concept of journey and the road trip, has soaked through photographic history, and some of the greatest, most revered names of photography have developed that trope through their work, from Ansel Adams in a straight line to Stephen Shore. The romance of the journey and the mystery of the unknown, the grandeur of the American landscape and the vernacular language of the diners and motels encountered along the way, have all contributed to a growing mystique that envelops the American heartland with the glamour of that which is unknown yet strangely familiar.

Promises of adventure and (self-)discovery, tales of debauchery and wisdom: the legends and the Americana live on today through the generations of photographers preoccupied with the American road trip. This essay charts a simplified line through photographic history, from the early 19th century to Ansel Adams and Robert Frank, to the work of the likes of Wim Wenders and Christian Patterson, by way, naturally, of an homage to the great American pioneers of colour of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

This is a long read documenting the impact of the iconography of the road on the American psyche through the lens of photography, originally published in FutureSpace magazine. 

You can download a PDF of the article here. 

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Hello! And... Nominations for the British Journal of Photography, January 2014 issue

Ok, yes, it has been a heck of a long time since I last posted here. I admit it. So, hello!

I've mainly been busy making films with NOWNESS, writing, eating, and all sorts of other capers, but not moving, some of you may be relieved to hear. Yep, still in London! (For now).

Below a couple of artists whose work I've been watching and who I nominated to be part of the "Ones to Watch" January issue of the British Journal of Photography.

Over the next week or so I'll endeavour to post a few of the photography related projects I've been working on here. Watch this space!

Mathieu Cesar

Referencing past great masters of the fashion image in the simplicity of his contrasted black and white composition, Mathieu César subverts the classical genre by capturing a contemporary generation of beautiful and damned subjects in sometimes surreal stagings that somehow manage to feel uncontrived. Mathieu's photographs of models, musicians, and assorted cool kids flirt with emotion and raw beauty, and his subjects blend arrogance and vulnerability. 

Thomas Brown

Thomas Brown's considered still life work blends abstraction and playfulness. Complex lighting, delicately ethereal composition and a subtle but vibrant colour palette come together apparently effortlessly.  In his images he literally creates spaces inhabited by a delicate balance of objects and materials - moments suspended in time and space, points of departure for a surreal flight of fancy.

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CIRCULATION(S)

Only in its second year, CIRCULATION(S) is a festival dedicated to emerging European photography, held in the rather idyllic setting of the Jardins de Bagatelle in Paris. On opening day, a throng of photography professionals and amateurs alike milled around the two lovely buildings, taking notes and munching Haribo sweets, which was all very jolly. However, what remains from this festival is not just a celebration of contemporary photography (and more on this later), but a true investment in the photo community, with a programme of events spanning the duration of the event, from 25 February until 25 March: free portfolio reviews for young photographers (held on 10 and 11 March), a sale of the works in the exhibition, a game sponsored by Tamron to win some kit, and many other fun and interactive set-ups… In short, even though this festival is a recent addition to the ever-growing festival scene, it’s a dynamic and thoroughly professional one, with some particularly accomplished work on show, selected by various photography organisations such as Fetart (the non-profit set up by Marion Hislen, initiator of the festival itself), SFR Jeunes Talents, curators and special guests.

So, with all this background information securely in place, back to the highlights of my Parisian Haribo-sweetened flânerie… I discovered the work of Alexandra Serrano with great pleasure – a Franco-Mexican artist whose series “Between Finger and Thumb” is a photographic reconstruction of the artist’s most vivid memories. Delicately poised between autobiography and dream-work, the images staged in the artist’s growing-up home are both intimate and immediate, cleanly finished, with fragmented detailed shots of eggshells and bite marks somewhat reminiscent of the work of Rinko Kawauchi interspersed with anodyne home scenes seen through a child-like prism.

Steeped in a more documentary tradition, the work of German photographer Lia Darjes bears a similar attention to detail and lighting. In her project “Converting”, she investigates Muslim converts in Germany: why do German people convert to Islam? How is Islam represented in the West? The series is composed of portraits, still lives, and location scenes, all infused with a painterly light that, strangely, harks back to the Great Masters’ use of holy light in sacred paintings. Calmly, gently, the images draw us in to invite us to ponder the role of religion in Western society.

Equally beguiling, Kurt Tong‘s project, “In Case it Rains in Heaven” is a photographic index of the paper objects burnt by the Chinese at the tombs of their deceased relatives, in order to “send” them the objects they will need in the afterlife: from an umbrella to a pair of servants, from a McDonald’s meal to a scuba-diving kit, everything that can be found in real life is replicated in paper for the afterlife. Tong’s work, as always, manages to bridge the real and the poetic with conceptual elegance.

Finally, young British photographer Matt Wilson showed a series of small images from his travels in the US. Received wisdom might have inclined the artist to display these images as large as possible, but the small format used here gave these desolate yet enchanting vistas a personal and intimate feel rarely seen in this kind of landscape work. In fact it’s both difficult and brave to make American landscape work these days, with artists from Ansel Adams to Joel Sternfeld, and from Edward Weston to Stephen Shore, casting a strong shadow that informs our reading of the images. A horse standing by a broken-down barn, a cigarette lit in twilight flare, overexposed canyons: the scenes are unmistakably American, playing with the trope of the Far West’s deserted melancholy. Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy comes to mind, violence and tenderness, a premature wisdom and truthfulness, erupting to the surface of these images as they do in McCarthy’s words: “The truth is what happened. It aint what come out of somebody’s mouth.”

And upon these wise words, so my visit concludes, with only too little time and space to mention some of the other great work on show, notably, by: David De Beyter, Michel Bousquet, Tony Kristensson, Augustin Rebetez, and Gilles Roudiere. I leave you to discover them in your own time!

Details of the festival are here: http://www.festival-circulations.com/

This article was originally published in Notes from the Undergroud.

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Akiko Takizawa - Over the Parched Field

Hidden behind the anonymous stucco facade of a Regents Park Inner Circle villa, Akiko Takizawa's first solo show, held at the Daiwa Foundation in London, is anything but anonymous. In fact, Takizawa's images are highly personal compositions, emotionally charged yet containing within them a strange distance and a darkness, which may not be altogether surprising given that their main subject, and the inspiration for her work, is death.

Indeed, Takizawa suffered a near-death experience aged 12, and she takes a documentarian's inspiration in a series of tragic fait divers that all relate to death. Her latest series, made especially for the show, all double exposures and fragmented scenes, is shot at Osorezan in the North Japanese region of Aomori: with a name that translates as “fear mountain”, it is a place where relatives go to speak to their lost family members via a medium. It is shown next to “Headland” (2007), an earlier series that is perhaps the most readily understood of the show, with dark-edged landscapes that reveal Takizawa's formal compositional talent and give the viewer an entry-point into her carefully balanced, more complex compositions.

Back in 2005, hearing in the news of parents abandoning their children in a snowy mountaintop, Takizawa made a pilgrimage of sorts to the place. Re-enacting a particularly tragic detail of the story, that the parents had watched their children die in the car headlights, “Where We Belong” is a filmic posthumous homage to these dead children, capturing scared adults lit by a sodium halo of light, small and lonely at the bottom edge of the frame, the rest of which is taken up by a flurry of swirling snowflakes, whitely lit against the black background. It's an ominous yet compelling piece, managing to walk a thin line between tenderness and violence. It guides the viewing for the rest of the room, where, on the opposite wall, the large format abstract composition of multiple exposures, “Senbazyru-Sakuran” (2004), is redolent of shattered glass and explosive emotions. It is displayed in between two colour double exposures, “Magnolia” (2004) and “Father – Sakura no.1” (2006), calmer pieces, steeped in the colour blue, where the dominance of the sky somehow seems to remind us to be mindful, and to care for our elders.

But in this exhibition, it is the elders who continue to care for their children: in the series “Wedding up in Heaven” (2011), Takizawa photographs the ghostly arranged weddings bereaved parents organise for their dead children. Framing shrines and fragmented portraits of young adults dead before their time, Takizawa seems to identify with lost children and inconsolable parents alike, hovering around the edges of this deeply intimate space between life and death with her camera. Indeed, Takizawa's work circles death like a moth circles light, dancing close to it yet distancing herself from it -the camera is both shield and medium, a sheltered means of engagement with the world. She deals in large abstractions, but also in figurative scenes that beckon to us, such as in “Tereso”, an early series from 2003, where the small dancing naked figures of the double exposure are somehow reminiscent of the Cottingley fairies, and the country landscape reminds us of some long-lost magical land. These are playful images, yet mournful, also.

Takizawa writes, “I feel that my camera acts as an antenna –to receive signals carrying urgent messages from the lost lives and objects that fill the air around us. I believe that it is this frantic whispering of death that pushes me to take photographs, and enables me to continue living.” Light and dark, ghostly bodies at the edges of frames, shadowy fragments dancing across the frame, burnt out lights, the exposures are almost always multiple in Takizawa's work. It's a belief in reincarnation that sends lightness though her work, and as she takes us on a journey through death, dancing on the edges of life, it's difficult not to love this graceful show, full of meaning and poetry, tucked away behind its anonymous facade.

Akiko Takizawa, “Over the Parched Field”, ran at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation until March 1, 2011.

This article was first published in La Lettre de la Photographie on 1 March 2012.

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The Beanshoot Awards

So, friends, it's been a while, hasn't it? A whirlwind of activity, lots of transatlantic crossings, some amazing shows, lots of brilliant people, and, oh! the food! But this isn't a food blog (though who knows what 2012 will bring) so, to belatedly borrow from the genre of the "Best of 2011", here are the wildly subjective 2011 Beanshoot Awards, presented in no particular order:

Favourite Show Seen in the USA: Richard Mosse's INFRA at Jack Shainman

Favourite Show Seen in the UK: Burke + Norfolk at the Tate Modern

(a tie with Taryn Simon's A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, at the same institution)

Favourite Show Seen in France: The Stein Family at the Grand Palais* 

Favourite Screening: An Evening With Diane Arbus and Marvin Israel** 

Show Most Regretfully Missed: Daido Moriyama's Printing Show at Aperture

Best Book: I'm not even going there, or there, or there.***

Favourite Talk: "Family Matters" moderated by Susan Bright at Aperture

Favourite Portfolio Review Discovery: Jana Romanova's "Waiting" project**** 

Favourite Book Launch: Bill Hunt's The Unseen Eye at SVA Theatre

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* Lesson: don't mess with Gertrude Stein. Seriously, though, Favourite PHOTO Show Seen in France: it's a tie between Kathy Ryan's and Graciela Iturbide's shows at the Rencontres d'Arles.

** Also a contender for best dog-naming strategy.

*** Thank you Marc Feustel.

**** Seen at nofound_phototalks's portfolio reviews.

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The Beanshoot questionnaire – Robert Clark

Robert Clark is a Brooklyn-based photographer who works with National Geographic very regularly. He is fascinated by the story of evolution, and this is felt in his work, the grand scale of which depicts the minutiae of life on earth.

What initiated your interest in photography?

I first started shooting photos when I was 15 years old. My dream was to work at Sports Illustrated. After University I worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer for several years.

An older photographer gave me Irving Penn’s book Passage and from that moment on photography was different for me.

How would you describe your practice and how has it changed over time?

Slower, more deliberate, more driven by an idea or a concept.

Who or what inspires you?

The elegance and simplicity of nature.

What keeps you motivated to keep on making pictures? 

The possibility that I might make an important/smart/beautiful picture tomorrow.

How does your practice relate to your every day life?

I’m busy work at the Geographic work but I need to move on to other areas of interest, so I’m busy working at being busy in other areas.

What is your latest project?

I want to do studio and location pictures of Lady GaGa’s fans. They have all been encouraged by her to let out the inner monsters. I think it could be a very interesting set of pictures.

How important is working collaboratively?

I love to work with some art directors, a great assistant who can read my mind is very important. And on a large project, the team is important, the chemistry is vital to the success of the work. 

What is your favourite...

…piece of kit? 50mm lens very shallow dept of field

…picture or photographer? Avedon, Penn, Albert Watson, Nadav Kander

…time of day? dusk

…website? Nadav Kander's website

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The Beanshoot Questionnaire: David Chancellor

To celebrate my first (official) day at INSTITUTE, I am launching a series of Beanshoot Questionnaires featuring INSTITUTE artists, beginning with David Chancellor, a British artist who fell in love with the land and the light of South Africa. He makes long-term documentary projects that have majesty and depth, and his photographs are subtle whilst striking. His 'Huntress with Buck' (below) won the Taylor-Wessing Prize.

    What initiated your interest in photography? 

 My earliest memory is that of my father marching us around the island of Guernsey, camera in hand, a row of little leather pouches on the camera strap around his neck holding all manner of meters, flashes, and associated photographic gadgets. We spent many hours standing completely still whilst he executed the most beautiful portraits of us all on Kodachrome. There was always great excitement when they arrived in the post, which inevitably resulted in a slide show. I always remember the cursing and swearing as the carousel clunked and ground its way through the selected images. The projector screen would sit in the corner of the living room until we travelled again.

 As soon as I was able I picked up the camera and starting taking pictures of all and everything around me. To me it seemed like I’d had the approval, the ‘nod’ to do this and so off I went. I wasn’t that successful, he seemed to work well with all the pouches, I didn’t. I remember he bought a Praktika MTL3, far more technical than what he was used to, and I happily and frequently fell heir to it. This camera just seemed to work for me. My first project was documenting the butchers and traders in the Bull Ring Market in Birmingham City centre. I’d travel there every weekend taking portraits on the Saturday, process the film and return the next week to sell the pictures to the sitters. I was shy and it seemed to me that this was a good place to become more confident. I became quite well known around the market and as a result began to pick up commissions and occasionally sold images to the local newspaper, for almost nothing of course, but that wasn’t the point, I had an audience, people liked my work, and all I was doing was enjoying myself, how much better could it get... Suddenly I was in heaven, everything made sense, all I had to do each and everyday was take pictures…

  How would you describe your practice and how has it changed over time?

I don’t think it has changed, I still just wander around taking pictures of stuff.

  Who or what inspires you?

So many different things and people inspire me. The real privilege we have as photographers is that we get to meet some of these people, and spend time with them, like a 4th emergency service, fire, police, ambulance... and err… photographers. We should have a ‘pink flashy light’ that allows us to part the traffic and rush to scenes of interest... I say this simply because I constantly question why ‘someone’ is prepared to let me totally into their life, just because I’m a photographer? ‘It’s OK he can witness my most intimate moment because he’s a photographer’ Really? But they do, and may that always be the case...

Who inspires me…?? Madiba inspires me for one, and it’s a huge ONE. How can someone who’s life has been screwed around by others bear no apparent malice...?? And my wife inspires me, she always smiles first.

   How does your practice relate to your every day life? 

 It’s my life, it’s a bit like asking me what motivates me to take a breath... The two are interwoven…

   What is your latest project?

‘Hunters’ is a project documenting the tourist trophy hunting industry in Africa today, exploring the complex relationship that exists between man, and animal, the hunter, and the hunted as we both struggle to adapt to our changing environments. I’m a great admirer of Peter Beards work and passionate about wildlife and everything about natural history. Wildlife in Africa is a commodity, a resource; I wanted to look at its commercial value and the hunting industry seemed a logical starting place to do this. I’ve been working on it for nearly 3 years now, I’m beginning to feel it’s taking me down another path, so may be it’s time to travel down that path...

The new work will be a very different way of looking at Africa’s wildlife. I have no desire to stand back on long lenses and observe what going on, so it will also be up close and personal, may be a ‘green flashy’ light this time…

How important is working collaboratively? 

 It’s not important to me, I’m a bit of a loner…

  Where do photographers go when they die? What happens / should happen to their work? 

 I saw a coffee mug in a lab in London many years ago and on the front it read: ‘old photographers don’t die, they just slowly go out of focus’…

 The work we produce is a wonderful document of our time here, even if we aren’t very good, it’s still our particular vision of that moment and credible in my eyes. My father’s documentation of our time together is an example of that. Rather, what shouldn’t happen is that future generations are restricted or denied access to material because of the trends and market pressures applied by manufacturers. Can we honestly say for sure that we’ll be able to ‘drag’ those wonderful images off hard drives in 50 years time... shame if we can’t because on our behalf the manufacturers think they are not of interest.

  What is your favourite... 

 …piece of kit? Mamiya 7II, and Minolta light meter (can’t separate the two)

 …picture or photographer? Many pictures, many photographers, but right now it’s a photograph by Alixandra Fazzina of NOOR Agency, taken in Shahr-I-Buzorg, Afghanistan, in August 2008: Siamoy breast feeds her month old baby boy Hokim as she goes to visit her sisters at their home in Khourdakon village.

 …time of day? 30 minutes after sunset, preferably in the bush.

 …website? http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/

 ...lab? That’s easy, without a doubt... Artful Dodgers, Hatton Garden, London. http://www.artfuldodgersimaging.com/ They are totally brilliant.

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Personal mythologies: war, balloons, poetry.

©Simon Norfolk/nbpictures

Simon Norfolk is a recurrent personality on this blog, as some of you will know. I remember the first time I saw his Afghanistan work: in a hot-off-the-press issue of the sadly now defunct, but still legendary, Portfolio magazine. I remember where I was standing, as I leafed through the magazine, eager to devour it as quickly as I could before returning to savour individual images at a later stage. I remember the immediacy of the visual language used by Norfolk: the elegiac beauty of the images, the sense of destruction, mourning and loss, the other-worldliness of the landscapes, all hitting me hard, and making me want to talk about this work, to make work, to become engaged.

From the same series, “Balloon Vendor in Kabul” is the stickiest, the one image from the series that won’t come unstuck from my brain. Of course it’s a famous, well-praised, image, of almost mythical importance in the cannon of Norfolk’s work. The grandeur of the architecture emerging through a golden light created by Afghanistan’s sandy mist contrasts with the balloons’ transparent layers of artificial colour; the absurdity created by the juxtaposition of grandiose but broken architecture and anodine but incongruous street vendor throws up an internal dialogue full of questions, and not many answers – who is this balloon seller, who looks like a sad clown? Do the Afghani children growing up in a devastated country at war still muster up the joyfulness required to want a balloon in the first place? Of course they do, but in a war-torn country where poverty is rife, who can pay for the ephemeral fun of a balloon? The added layer of meaning comes from Norfolk’s caption: “balloons were illegal under the Taliban, but now balloon-sellers are common on the streets of Kabul, providing cheap treats for children.”

For me, this image conjures up something appalling and grindlingly cruel at the same time as it invites me to continue to look – and caught in this dialectic, the longer I look, the more questions I ask, the more I think, the more I feel. In 1942, Paul Eluard, the French Resistance poet, wrote a collection of poems entitled Poésie et Vérité – a collection of beautifully constructed, heart-breakingly awe-inspiring, Resistance poems, which invited the reader to engage in the fight to liberate France. Indeed, the poem “Liberté” was parachuted into the Maquis, inspiring the collective fight against oppression. This is engaged art. Sometimes, I am not sure that art should have any other function but to be engaged. And that’s why “Balloon Vendor” sticks.

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The Beanshoot Questionnaire: Zed Nelson

Zed Nelson is well-known for his immersion into his projects, and using his commitment to photography to explore political issues in depth. His project Gun Nation explored the huge, white, middle-class, suburban American society that buys and sells weapons. In the latest installment of the Beanshoot Questionnaire, he talks about his recent book Love Me, an incredible project that documents the pursuit of particular ideals of beauty in our society.

What initiated your interest in photography?

I found myself in the countryside, aged 10, with access to an old Pentax camera. I started taking pictures of the local inhabitants - people, cows and stray dogs. I enjoyed the reason it gave me to go on an adventure. Later, as a teenager, I remember seeing shocking political images from the civil rights movement in the United States, and photographs of the ‘Kent State Massacre’ – the shooting of unarmed American college students by members of the Ohio National Guard (taken in May 4, 1970.) Even though it had happened fifteen years previously, I was shocked and gripped by the visual evidence of injustice shown in these photographs. The students had been peacefully protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam war when the soldiers fired 67 rounds, killing four students and wounding nine others. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was politicized by those images.

How would you describe your practice and how has it changed over time?

My recent work has developed over time and strives to be more complex, thought-provoking and challenging to accepted thinking. If there is a conflict, rather than depicting men with guns and acts of violence, I want to question why there is such a conflict, who created it, and who profits from it. The notion of being a ‘documentary photographer’ is increasingly problematic to me. The implicit suggestion is that to document is to provide a reliable, truthful account of a situation. This is a tall order, and often in this genre we may simply reinforce stereotypes and miss the important underlying issues. So my work has become more ‘conceptual’. Funnily enough, this to me has become an absurd word – sometimes mis-used in ‘art photography’ to suggest ambiguity, work with no clear point... detached images of things that may or may not really mean anything. For me - for something to be conceptual - there must be a concept. Something that drives the work, a point, a message, or at least a structure or presentation that is thought-provoking. I am increasingly interested in the point where documentary and art photography merge. Where the work is really about something, but is also reflective and thought-provoking. In Love Me (my latest book project) I employ a wide variety of photographic strategies and techniques – stylized portraiture, landscapes, studio still-life and documentary. But the documentary element has been pared down substantially, and the work has become more composed and considered. I also included text: statistics, traditional proverbs, historical notes, philosophical statements, quotes, excerpts from novels, image captions and even a poem.

Who or what inspires you?

My inspiration comes from a variety of sources... from Muhammed Ali (who refused to be conscripted to fight in the Vietnam war and was stripped of his world champion boxing title) to a mountaineer who paid $60,000 dollars and spent 6 months in training to climb Mount Everest and turned back near the summit (while the others continued against their better instincts and perished in a freezing storm). These were acts of courage, even though neither involved seeking glory. I’m inspired by people who follow their instincts.

What keeps you motivated to keep on making pictures?

A sense of enquiry, adventure, knowledge and a need to understand the world. A desire to have a voice in the world, to express thoughts and ideas.

How does your practice relate to your every day life?

 It IS my everyday life. I photograph things that interest me, I photograph in places that interest me, and I photograph people that interest me. And I choose subjects I want to know more about or understand, or things that I feel should be discussed. And then there’s some paid work, just to make a living. And that pretty much takes up my waking hours.

What is your latest project? 

 ‘Love Me’ is my most recently completed long-term project – a new book and exhibition. The project reflects on the cultural and commercial forces that drive a global obsession with youth and beauty.

I had a growing sense of our culture reaching a fever-pitch of self-consciousness, driven by an industry that breeds insecurity in order to sell us a ‘cure’. Our basic human need for acceptance and the ultimate need to be noticed and loved has been exploited, and we have created a world in which there are enormous social, psychological and economic rewards and penalties attached to the way we look. The book explores these ideas. [Ed.'s note: Zed's 2009 book project Love Me can be viewed here and the book can be ordered on Amazon here.]  

How important is working collaboratively?

I always feel I would like to work in a more collaborative situation...but I’m still trying to work out how to make it happen.

Where do photographers go when they die? What about their work?

They go a a special place where cameras are no longer necessary, and instead you can record a moments vision with a blink of your eye. Oh, actually, we have that already, its called memory. OK, it’s a place where there is no email, no downloading, no scanning. And ‘facebook’ means stopping reading a book for a minute, to look up at someone’s actual face, when they ask you a real question.

Regarding work, that can live on - that’s what’s special about photography...  an image’s potency increases over time. I love the historical aspect of photography.

What is your favourite... …piece of kit?  Mamiya RZ-67. …picture or photographer?  I’m a fan of Joel Sternfeld. His ‘Renegade Elephant’ is a very moving image. …time of day?  I like late afternoon, in warm sunlight. …website?  http://www.brainpickings.org/ It's interesting and off-beat, and has unexpected surprises.

...lab? Labyrinth Photographic, they still know how to process and print film.

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On a research trip at the Centre for Creative Photography, I came across a collection of typewriters... Beautiful objects, all of them, and all the more special for belonging to Ansel Adams. An avid letter-writer, Adams would type up several letters every day, and all his notes were typewritten, too - he wrote at least one letter a day to Beaumont and Nancy Newhall. He loved his typewriters, and spent considerable amounts purchasing the most recent models. This cute blue one is his field typewriter, which he took with him on all his shoots. Tucked into the folder of the portable cover was a sheet of Ansel Adams letterhead paper, on which he had typed "I love this typewriter". 

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Firecracker

Despite having received the invitation and put a note in my diary, I completely forgot it was the Deutsche Boerse Prize tonight, and instead attended the first Firecracker event, hosted by its founder Fiona Rogers (of Magnum) at the Apple Store - and it was a joyful, if completely unplanned, decision. Firecracker is a new organisation which aims to promote European women photographers, and the evening included three slideshows of work by Tessa Bunney, Laura Hynd, and Leonie Hampton, with each photographer speaking about their images.

Tessa Bunney showed her series Home Work, a documentary perspective on Vietnamese villages that specialise in making one product. Laura Hynd's work, The Letting Go, marks a departure away from working to editorial briefs and relinquishing control, a deeply personal and intimate piece that borders on the confessional. Finally, Léonie Hampton discussed her beautiful series, In the Shadow of Things, a book project which spans over several years and documents the process of clearing her mother's house, cluttered by mountains of possessions that represent years of suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Ending the evening, the debate veered, perhaps inevitably, towards the difference between men and women in photography. There is an incredible amount of women who study photography (in fact at universities in the UK, women studying photography outnumber men two to one), yet there seems to be very few women who actually end up as photographers. Is it merely biology - the desire to start a family and to have a stable lifestyle, or perhaps the sheer physicality of photography - which keeps women out of the field? Or is there something more specific about women's nurturing personalities which sees them turn to editing, mentoring, art buying and curating rather than photography?  The jury's out, but Firecracker, although a young organisation, provides interesting breeding ground for debate. 

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A Chicago Fairy Tale: Vivian Maier and John Maloof

The fairy tale story of the discovery of the Vivian Maier archive by John Maloof made a lovely end to the Format 2011 conference. A good yarn, the story begins in Chicago, in 2007, with successful estate agent John Maloof discovering a box of work by hitherto-unknown photographer Vivian Maier in an auction whilst looking for documents about the local history of his area.

This box of work sets John on a dual voyage of discovery. The first, that of the life and work of Vivian Maier herself, sees John gradually rescue an entire archive and bring to light the marvellous images of an eccentric but very talented nanny who continuously made work throughout the best part of the twentieth century. The second, parallel, journey, is the one where John discovers photography himself, teaches himself photography through the work of Vivian Maier, and quickly becomes a knowledgeable source as he tracks back through Vivian’s life and work, and the changes and influences which he begins to recognise: for instance, she goes from using an amateurish Brownie to an expensive, professional, Rolleiflex in 1952, and he theorises that, being in New York at the same time as Lisette Model and Berenice Abbott, there could be a correlation, if not a direct influence there, as some of her work bears a marked similarity to Model’s own. A lovely, heart-warming tale indeed, which we all look forward to hearing more about.

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Connected: Nate Larson and Marni Schindelman’s geolocation work, and a Michael Wolf retrospective, at the Format Conference 2011

Photographic duo Larson and Schindelman won the Blurb Award for “Best New Idea / Work in Progress” last night. They make incredibly compelling work based on data streams which they collect, analyse, and use as the basis of their photographic work; the current project sees them take photographs of the geographical locations from which tweets were sent. They see their work as akin to “historical markers on the side of the road”, “taking virtual moments and pulling them back into the physical world” – in a world where we are aware of that everyone is doing without having to ask or make direct contact with them, is the social network becoming a surrogate for actual experience?

Michael Wolf's recent work with Google StreetView images bears testament to the impact of the internet on photography. Although he talked at length about his life as a photographer, discussing perennial favourite series ‘Architecture of Destiny’ at length, his recent work marks a phenomenal departure from his usual (and more traditional) work – and raised much controversy when it earned him an Honourable Mention from the World Press Photo Jury last month. He examined Google StreetView street by street, looking into every corner of an image, in order to find traces of a narrative: shadows, reflections in windows, signs of activity. It’s a huge body of work, an incessant travail, of great importance to the future meanings of photography.

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Photography in Africa: Mark Sealy at Format 2011

Mark Sealy, director of Autograph, on photography in Africa, speaking at Format 2011 Conference.

Questioning the validity of the European perspective on African photography, and rejecting it as a Conservative curatorial view which frames the work within an all-encompassing and distinction-less ‘African’ class, Mark Sealy called for a re-examining of African photography. He advocates paying close attention to the meaning of what is inside the image, and dismisses the term ‘African’ itself as too broad and misrepresentative of the different identities present in Africa.

The anecdote of the fight over ownership of Seydou Keita's work is evidence of the lingering post-colonial feel present in the readings of African imagery: shown in New York in 1991 as an “unknown photographer”, by 2001 he had become one of the most celebrated and sought-after African photographers, but the reading of the work, which documents Bamakois society both inside and outside the studio, remains simplistic, and the focus is on acquisition of the pieces, rather than on decoding the work itself. This, he says, is due to the fact that there is no curatorial field within which the work can be discussed, and instead, simplistic readings are made through the filter of cultural clichés, which in turn means that the only images to emerge are the ones that ‘we’ can readily understand. The images need to be decoded and interpreted indigenously, and this is a field that is only beginning to emerge today.

Referring to the early twentieth century work of DuBois, whose work aimed to show the humanity of the African subject, Sealy asked whether photography was enough to relieve the prejudice implied in our perception of ‘Africa’; indeed, he points at ‘Revue Noire’ continuing to show a “particularly romantic view of the work being produced on the African continent”, which is content to display works without examining or interrogating the images. In fact, when the question of ‘African’ work comes up, the only commonality is the term ‘African’ – an “imagined space” that very few of us understand. This attitude means that “work is being suffocated as it is being produced”. However, Sealy notes a number of emerging artists whose works make an attempt at escaping these constraints.

Senegalese Saidou Dicko for instance, refuses to focus on the black subject, and uses shadows instead. This emerging strategy allows him to “talk about the African experience without talking about the African body”, in opposition to the homogeneity of our perception of the African subject. South African photographer Zenele Muholi documents people as a political act (for instance gay couples in Johannesburg), and compatriot Nontsikelelo Veleko's images show South African youth as strong, confident young people with an exceptional, hybrid and innovative sense of style, who look to a future away from apartheid.

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Format conference - part 2: Bruce Gilden and Amy Stein

"Sometimes people like to be paid attention to, OK?" exclaims Bruce Gilden at the beginning of his talk, in answer to the question he is often asked: why take pictures of people with "peculiarities? Presenting a retrospective slideshow of his work, from his early Coney Island images, his trips to Haiti and his recent commission to photograph the streets of Derby, in his drawling New York accent, he tells stories about his pictures, the people he met, how they reacted to him taking their picture. He says, "my pictures are symbols for what I see", and indeed, his Haiti work is deeply symbolic and emotive - having made 19 trips there between 1984 and 1995, and returned to photograph it after the earthquake, he's very aware that the island "should be a dream but is a nightmare for most people". From his images of the Irish races to his project on American foreclosures, and continuing on to his Derby work, the intemporal nature of his images - the fact that people, everywhere, are united in their weird oddities - points to the deep universal humanity of his work.

Gilden's verve was followed by the articulate and lovely Amy Stein, who discussed her work "Stranded". A series she began at the same time as "Domesticated", in 2005, she drives the length and breadth of the USA looking for stranded motorists that she then photographs on the side of the road. In the grand tradition of American travel photographers (Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld, Harry Winogrand, Mitch Epstein...), she sees in her work a wider metaphor for the predicament and demise of the modern American life. Isolated and lost in the great American landscape, these "anti-portraits" of a shared experience reflect a vision of American citizens let down by their institutions: social, political, societal. With a wry turn of phrase, she sees her travels as a "regressive road trip going from breakdown to breakdown". Less constructed than the very touching "Domesticities", this series is equally moving, important, and seductive.

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Format conference - part 1: Sophie Howarth & Sara T'Rula, Nick Turpin

Format international photography conference, part 1: Sophie Howarth & Sara T’Rula on Street Photography Now followed by Nick Turpin, then Yumi Goto

Sophie Howarth & Sara T’Rula took us on a case study journey to examine the relationships between social media and street photography, borne out of the Street Photography Now book and the question of how to give life to the project beyond the publication by using it as an incentive for photographers to create new work. Thus the flicker / wordpress hosted “street photography now project” (SPNP) was born, and quickly garnered a huge following, fostering a great sense of community and forging new relationships between artists of all walks of life. Every week a photographer provides an instruction and there are six days in which to respond by uploading a photograph. Kicked off by the inimitable Bruce Gilden, with “if you can smell the street by looking at the photograph, then it’s a street photograph”, the project is slated to span a whole year (and is currently in its 22nd week).

Sophie Howarth sees in this project a very natural relationship between social media and street photography, where relationships are created between photographers the world over through the works being examined and dissected online and the authors laying themselves bare through their work. A brilliant project indeed.

Nick Turpin then went on to give a very personal and inspiring talk about his own practice, his publications and the In-Public forum he founded ten years ago. A hugely successful commercial photographer, he asks himself why not continue to make stacks of money shooting commercial work? “it’s too easy!”, apparently.

Street photography is the hardest thing he has ever done. He says, “we are reduced to this rectangle and shutter … To edit time and space.” To be a successful street photographer one has to be physically and mentally present: because of its simplicity, there is nothing to hide behind in street photography. It shows “sensitivity and a beautiful empathy with the people in the photographs”, and by “showing the details of our lives in modern cities,” is thus an incomparable prism through which “to focus on the human condition in the urban environment.”

Yumi Goto rounded off the morning with a presentation of three photographers, all of whom show work that is incredibly personal and intimate with their subjects: Kosuke Okahara with a project on self-harm and overdosing in Japan, Sohrab Hura with his “Life is Elsewhere” work that connects together all the fragmentary evidence of his life to try and piece together a confessional form of meaning, and Nariman Ansari whose project “Transcending Stereotypes” sees her dress up and photograph herself as various female archetypes of Pakistani society.

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And now the amazing Brian Griffin: "I've been a photographer for 40 years and it's painful!"