Image from the classic photobook Cafe Lehmitz © Anders Petersen.
Emerging black-and-white photographers are invited to submit their work to Gomma Magazine, for the chance to be published in a hardback photobook called Mono next year.
Read more at the British Journal of Photography online here
– Rory
Chinese cemetry - San Francisco (c) Robert Frank
Wow, and blown over Chinese cemetry flowers in a San Francisco hill being hammered by potatopodge fog on a March night I’d say nobody there but the rubber cat-
Anybody doesnt like these pitchers don’t like potry, see? Anybody dont like potry go home see Television shots of big hatted cowboys being tolerated by kind horses.
Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.
– Jack Kerouac, introduction to The Americans
by Ralph Gibson
“… Digital is a great way of transferring information, but digital imaging systems are not photography, because photography has to do with the alchemy of light on film. Photography creates a new informationthat wasn’t there before, whereas digital transfers information that is in front of you. Like the telephone can transfer my words to your ear …” – Ralph Gibson
I’m loving “Photo – wisdom” by Lewis Blackwell. Purchased in Dublin last week (I was supposed to buy shoes), it contains work by fifty photographers, and an interview with each of them. The book is big, and while there’s just three or four pieces from each photographer, they are beautifully produced and large. Oh, and each photographer chose the work to be shown.
I’ve had the book just a few days, so am not not nearly familiar enough with it to do a full review, but already I’d put it on any photography lovers wish list!
– Rory
(c) Robert Frank
Stella Kramer at Stellazine went to see the Robert Frank show at the Metropolin Museum of Art and was impressed by what she saw –
“… The thought that went into culling thousands upon thousands of images into 83 and putting them into a book is something few photographers seem to think deeply about. Too often I think a book becomes just a place to showcase a number of images that may or may not be related, but are frequently related only by subject. The time Frank took to edit and sequence his work, to THINK about his work, his intent, and his audience needs to be studied and celebrated. …”
Read more on her blog by clicking here
– Rory
Posted in book, exhibition, famous
I first came across Alexey Titarenko a few years ago when he was exhibited in the Sirius Arts Center in Cobh. His photographs, many of which exhibited at that time also appear in the book “Alexey Titarenko Photographs”, stuck me immediately because of the conveyed feeling of life, movement, and the organic filling of the stark city backdrop with humanity. More than most photographers, Titarenko is able to make the city seem alive because of the people living in it. The photographs were taken in St. Petersburg (or Leningrad as it was then) from 1986 onwards – back in the Iron Curtain days. The symbols of communism are stark – giant statues of Lenin, signs depicting messages from The Party, and the overall drab greyness of the city.
And yet it is the movement of the people, the life, that stands out so much in so many of the photographs. The one above, from “The City of Shadows” series is one such photograph. Normally a photograph shows the briefest moment in time – a snapshot. The buildings in the background are such – sharp, motionless, caught in a snap. But on the steps are the blurred motions of people climbing. A greath faceless swath of people swarming upwards, only the odd hand paused on the rail indicating that this is a crowd of people at all. Titarenko has not so much stopped time, but grabbed a chunk of time and paused it, stretched in a blur of movement and mystery. Titarenko says, “In my work, I try to introduce a third dimension, that of time, which adds an element of continuity and narration… I attempt to transpose time into a purely visual language” **
What really draws me to Titarenko’s work however is the sheer beauty of it. The framing, the composition, the printing. Many of the photographs have a painterly dimension, with great swaths of movement. I would love an Alexey Titarenko print hanging on my wall
– Rory
**Artistis Credo, 9 April, 2001
Posted in b+w, book, famous, Review, wordy (lotsa words)
cork analogue photographers 