Lost in Publications

www.lostinpublications.com

[oneyearofbooks]

Carly Steinbrunn, The Voyage of Discovery

Mack Books, 2015

[theinnocentcuriosity]

Kenneth Graves: The Home Front (review)

The Home Front is an inconspicuous notebook-size book. There is a black-and-white picture pasted on the carton cover which shows two men standing in strange, old-fashioned poses. In order to see the content of the book you need to turn it horizontal. The ‘full bleed’ pictures (both horizontally and vertically oriented) make up an extremely funny and unpretentious set.

A young, fashionably-dressed girl looking enviously at a nun, a defenseless baby lying lonely on a billiard table, or a priest praying among of a group of baseball players are just some of the snapshot scenes photographed by Kenneth Graves, which depict fleeting moments from the lives of suburban populations.  

The Home Front is a book invoking the tradition of humanist photography, and at the same time, it is thoroughly modern in nature. The sequencing and layout of the pictures create an impression of dynamics and freshness. My experience with Kenneth Graves’ publication was similar to what I had previously felt when paging through the excellent Mark Cohen’s book Dark Knees. Both books have an excellent rhythm and a hypnotic charm.

I had not known Kenneth Graves before. I learnt that the photographs had been taken in the 1960s and 1970s in the US from the text by Sandra S. Phillips at the end of the book. Of course, I should have figured this out once I saw the pictures, but that was not the most important thing for me. What is enchanting about the book is its unpretentious charm. The modest publication released by Mack succeeds in bringing out what is surreal and timeless in the pictures.

Amidst the flood of Instagram images, ripe with humor as it is, The Home Front is a true gem, showing us what photography can be like when you treat it with due attention and respect.

Rating: Very Good (5/6)

Video presentation

Kenneth Graves: The Home Front, swiss bound paperback, 23 x 17 cm, 80 pages, 45 tritone plates, Mack 2015

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„The Home Front” to niepozorna książka zeszytowego formatu. Na kartonowej okładce naklejone jest czarno-białe zdjęcie przedstawiające dwóch mężczyzn stojących w dziwnych, staromodnych pozach. Żeby zapoznać się z zawartością książki trzeba obrócić ją do poziomu. Zamieszczone „na spad” zdjęcia (zarówno pionowe jak i poziome) układają się w szalenie zabawny i bezpretensjonalny zestaw.

Młoda, modnie ubrana dziewczyna spoglądająca zazdrośnie na zakonnicę, bezbronne niemowlę leżące samotnie na stole bilardowym czy ksiądz modlący się pośrodku grupy baseballistów to tylko niektóre z migawkowych scen uwiecznionych przez Kennetha Gravesa. Graves chwyta ulotne chwile z życia społeczeństwa żyjącego na przedmieściach.  

„The Home Front” to książka osadzona głęboko w tradycji klasycznej fotografii humanistycznej, a jednocześnie na wskroś współczesna. Sekwencja oraz sposób ułożenia zdjęć na stronach wywołują wrażenie dynamiki oraz świeżości. Doświadczenie przeglądania książki Kennetha Gravesa przywołało we mnie to, co poczułem kartkując pierwszy raz znakomitą książkę „Dark Knees” Marka Cohena. Obie książki mają doskonały rytm oraz hipnotyczny czar.

Nie znałem wcześniej Kennetha Gravesa. O tym, że jego prace powstały w latach 60. i 70. w Stanach Zjednoczonych dowiedziałem się z tekstu Sandry S. Phillips zamieszczonego pod koniec książki. Mogłem się tego domyślić oczywiście z samych zdjęć, jednak nie to było dla mnie najważniejsze. To co urzeka w tych fotografiach to ich bezpretensjonalny czar. Skromnej publikacji przygotowanej przez wydawnictwo Mack udało się wydobyć z nich surrealizm i ponadczasowy charakter.

W zalewie obrazów płynących do nas wartkim strumieniem Instagrama, skrząca się humorem książka „The Home Front” to prawdziwa perełka, pokazująca czym może być fotografia, jeśli potraktujemy ją z należytą uwagą i szacunkiem.

Ocena: Bardzo Dobra (5/6)

Prezentacja wideo

Kenneth Graves: The Home Front, miękka oprawa, 23 x 17 cm, 80 stron, 45 zdjęć, Mack 2015

[shihlun]

John Berger and Susan Sontag exchange ideas on the ‘lost art’ of storytelling, 1983.

[littlebrownmushroom]

Photographer Alec Soth: 'To me the most beautiful thing is vulnerability'

[thisissausage-blog]

Lecture Recap: Ron Jude at Pratt

A couple of nights ago at Pratt, Ron Jude started his lecture by saying “Artist talks are hard.” He then proceeded to make it look like the easiest, most natural thing in the world.

Ron began by talking about his photographic influences, starting with William Eggleston, who was engaged with broader cultural – i.e., filmic, literary – concerns, and Lewis Baltz and the New Topographics. Then he pivoted into some Pictures Generation folks like Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, and Barbara Kruger, throwing Jeff Wall in for good measure. Ron made the point that this latter group seemed to understand photography’s role better than the art photographer’s. I get the gist of that, and I’d like to hear him talk that out a bit more.

The work of Mike Kelley was cited as the single most important thing in defining art and photography for Ron, who learned from Kelley that “quick satisfaction was not the best road.” There could be elements that were troubling, that were poetic, that you didn’t understand.

Seeing books like Michael Schmidt’s Waffenruhe, John Gossage’s The Pond, Joachim Brohm’s Industriezeit, and Volker Heinze’s Ahnung gave Ron a new way of thinking about photographs in context, shaping the experience of form and format. The work in the books, with some exceptions, didn’t look like it would work anywhere else; it was made for a book and the only way to understand it was through the book.

Despite his endorsement of the book form, Ron cautioned against placing too much reliance on the narrative impulse in photography, which is “overused in a storytelling sense.” Photographs are at best “stunted narratives,” dysfunctional at best.” Which brought him to the point that context is utterly important: not only cultural and historical context, but the simple context of placing two or more photographs in physical relation to one another.

This idea led Ron into a discussion of his own work, beginning with Alpine Star (2006), in which he recontextualized photographs from his hometown newspaper. In his 2010 book emmett, he did the same thing to photographs that he himself had made as a teenager, making the lovely observation that one could never make those kinds of pictures – naïve and effortless – after being immersed in more serious art photography.

It’s cool to get an occasional peek under the hood at an artist’s talk, and Ron provided one by showing how the last photograph in emmett was connected to the opening sequence in his 2012 book Lick Creek Line. The work is all of a piece, in ways both specific and general. And that remains true with the recent publication of Lago, in which Ron reimagined his earliest childhood memories in the area around the Salton Sea in southern California.

Thanks to the Pratt Photo League for hosting another fine evening. Be sure to check out the rest of their offerings for this fall. 

[prattphotography]

Thanks TIS! And thanks Ron for a great lecture.

[jotoole]

[lostinpublications-blog]

Blackcelona by Salvi Danés

Published by Dalpine, 2015

[lostinpublications-blog]

The Players by Mark Steinmetz published by Nazraeli Press 

Mark Steinmetz talks about his work at GUP Magazine

[lostinpublications-blog]

Find a Fallen Star by Regine Petersen

„Men with Meteorites“ is part of Regine Petersen‘s series on meteorites, titled „Find a Fallen Star“. It is a configuration of archive press cuttings, eye witness reports, interview transcripts, genealogy and found images, fleshed out with quiet, contemplative photographs taken in the field.

[danielaugschoell]

Mark Cohen, Dark Knees, Éditions Xavier Barral, 2014

There’s something about it being a vertical format book with horizontal images that makes you take it in with more movement. An up-and-down read does something different than a left-to-right, because I think you do take both pictures in at once. We’re so used to reading left-to-right, where we can isolate a page in our head, and thus our vision, pretty easily. But this way it feels like a scroll. I’m still jarred by it—it’s more the way a filmstrip works.

From A conversation about Mark Cohen’s Dark Knees by Jason Fulford and Leanne Shapton.

[booksfromthefuture]

Script of Demolition – Alina Schmuch

[lostinpublications-blog]

Prophet, the new book by Geert Goiris.

Published by Roma Publication, 2015

[lostinpublications-blog]

Lars Tunbjörk - Office 2002

1956-2015

[littlebrownmushroom]

Gunter Grass (1927 – 2015). Photo by Alec Soth, 2004

[lostinpublications-blog]

My Last Day at Seventeen by Doug DuBois.

Support his work at Kickstarter.

[arankin]

I don’t understand design. I know what I like but I just don’t see it. The way I explain this to students and photographers—we understand when there’s shadows missing and details, but like, kerning—we just see it, we don’t understand how it works

Alec Soth talking about ‘Songbook’ with American Photo (via notthatrankin)

[littlebrownmushroom]

It was a pleasure chatting with the king of art podcasts, Tyler Green, on the Modern Art Notes Podcast.