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| Les extravagantes. By Leendert Blok. Editions Xavier Barral, 2015.  |
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Until Death Do Us Part. By Thomas Sauvin.
Jiazazhi Press, 2015.
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Until Death Do Us Part
Reviewed by Colin Pantall
By Thomas Sauvin
Jiazazhi Press, China, 2015. 108 pp., 2x3¼".
I still have a certain nostalgia for the days when I smoked. In England, it was the ritual of rolling up Golden Virginia in English pubs with ceilings glowing yellow with the accumulated deposits of nicotine and tar. It was beautiful, atmospheric and, strangely enough, did not smell smoky. In Indonesia, the attraction was the sweet clouds of clove-flavored kreteks. Gudang Garams were my favorite, best taken with dark coffee and a volcano in the background. And if there wasn’t a volcano, well the traffic jams of downtown Jakarta were a pretty good substitute. Head to the States and smoking made you feel like a man. Cowboys smoked and so did the characters in Robert Frank’s The Americans or William Klein’s New York. And if you weren’t a man, cigarettes were torches of freedom. You’ve come a long way baby, who could say no.
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| Review Santa Fe Closing Reception at photo-eye Gallery, Sunday June 14th |
On Sunday June 14th, photo-eye Gallery was honored to host the closing reception for CENTER's renowned Review Santa Fe – a four day event featuring lectures on photography and portfolio reviews. In addition to the reception, we were thrilled that CENTER alumnus and 2014 Curator's Choice award winner Thomas Jackson generously flew in from California to deliver a pre-celebration gallery talk on his exhibition Emergent Behavior, currently on view at photo-eye Gallery. In the lecture, Jackson addresses the genesis behind Emergent Behavior as well the project's progression over time and its symbiotic relationship with both sculpture and installation. As the room is packed with fellow artists and engaged community members, the Q&A developed naturally and is particularly engaging as Jackson speaks to future directions within his practice.
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Reviewed by Karen Jenkins
Playground
Photographs by James Mollison. Text by Jon Ronson.
Aperture, New York, 2015. 136 pp., 59 color illustrations, 6x8¼x¾".
A “space of excitement, games, bullying, laughing, tears, teasing, fun and fear” is how photographer James Mollison remembers the school playground of his childhood. This is a loaded summary, and the photographs he made there and at other playgrounds the world over are similarly packed full of the complexities of these arenas of recreation and recess. During 2009-2014, Mollison photographed in Argentina, Bhutan, Bolivia, China, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, Norway, Russia, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom, the United States and the West Bank. He visited schools for the privileged and the poor, private and public, and like his earlier project Where Children Sleep, the photographs collected in Playground are striking in their depiction of cultural and economic disparities amplified in their variation on the theme. The many photographs Mollison made during each school visit were source material for the composite photographs he made to represent each experience of play and the playground. He describes his technique as a type of time lapse, by which each photograph’s figures and groupings become summary of all he observed, rather than the emblematic representatives of a singular chosen moment.
Exhibition Dates: Friday July 10th through August 22nd, 2015
Opening and Artist Reception: Saturday July 11th 3:00–5:00 pm
photo-eye Gallery, 541 S. Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM
photo-eye Gallery is excited to announce concurrent exhibitions by renowned photographers Kate Breakey and Keith Carter with an opening and artist reception on Saturday July 11th from 3–5 PM. Titled Shadows & Light and Ghostland, respectively, these exhibitions will feature new work by Breakey and Carter as well as selections from established projects.
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| The Prophet. By Geert Goiris. Roma Publications, 2015. |
"Prophet begins with what appears to me as an ode to Sisyphus. A boulder, dark and discarded, a symbol of futility and toil, wrapped up in a posthumous reckoning. Our characters are for the most part solitary, embarked on their own micro journeys through the mountains and the snow. The sun appears once at the behest of two lovers, a moment of redemption in the midst of an eternal night.
This book serves as a visual metaphor for a constant hum of low level anxiety with a shriek of nervous laughter, a muffled moan, a gasp, a sigh. There are moments of such tension in certain photographs, strategically and rhythmically placed throughout the book; I felt my heart leap periodically as if timed to a metronome. The double gauge shotgun of a man dousing himself in the smoke of three cigarettes and a swathe of scorched earth, a crumpled arthropod awash in magenta and an icy green hued snowdrift pushed hard up against a darkened road. Geert's book is an aria of estrangement, linked through a wintery nightscape and startlingly confronting portraits. I approach the Prophet in wonder and discomfort in equal measure.
Recommended soundtrack:
Gnossienes 1 - 2 (1890): No. 1 by Erik Satie"—Ying Ang
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| The Prophet. By Geert Goiris. Roma Publications, 2015. |
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| The Prophet. By Geert Goiris. Roma Publications, 2015. |
Ying has lived and worked extensively in Asia, Africa, Australia and North America, having pursued post-graduate studies in Political Science with a background in Biotechnology and Communications. She most recently published her first major monograph, Gold Coast, which has since won the New York Photo Festival and Encontros Da Imagem book prize for 2014 and was a finalist for Australian Photobook of the Year. Gold Coast was also listed by Flak Photo, Lensculture, Voices of Photography, Mark Power / Magnum Photos, Asia Pacific Photobook Archive and Self Publish Be Happy in their top photobooks of 2014. Ying is currently a part of the teaching faculty at The International Centre of Photography in New York and the Photography Studies College in Melbourne, Australia.
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Skin
Reviewed by George Slade
Photographs by June Yong Lee. Essay by Tina Takemoto.
The Arts at California Institute of Integral Studies, 2015. Unpaged, 30 color illustrations.
We should all be thankful for the interior structure our body gives us. That is, the cubic volume we occupy courtesy of bones, muscles, tendons, and cartilage keeping it all together, more and less, over time. I express this gratitude as I consider June Yong Lee’s photographs of unwrapped torsos; skin, seen in planar fashion, as though a rug on your floor, a tapestry on your wall, or a blanket on your bed, loses whatever seductive qualities it had when it was still enwrapping a body. I say this about human epidermis, of course. Other animals, skinned, yield pelts and hides of great value, enhanced through the rendering.
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| Adrift by Ben Alper. Flat Spaces Books, 2015. |
Reviewed by Sarah Bay Gachot
Adrift
By Ben Alper.
Flat Space Books, Carrboro NC / Brooklyn, NY, 2015. 68 pp., 38 four-color illustrations, 10x8".
In late August of 1991, the Regal Princess sailed from Fort Lauderdale bound for the Caribbean a few weeks after being named by her “godmother,” Margaret Thatcher, in Brooklyn, New York. On board this new floating resort, with its dolphin-inspired silhouette designed by Renzo Piano, were over 2000 passengers, 600 crew, an art collection that included works by Robert Motherwell, Richard Diebenkorn, David Hockney, and Helen Frankenthaler, suites with private balconies and marble bathrooms, eight different musical acts, Gavin MacLeod (the actor who played Captain Stubing on the original Love Boat), and, very likely, thousands and thousands of rolls of 35mm film, each ready to be loaded into a camera where it might capture a few facets of the spectacle.
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Reviewed by Melanie McWhorter
T: A Typology of T-Shirts
Photographs by Susan A Barnett.
Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2014. 160 pp., illustrated, 6¾x9¼".
Markings are a very personal thing for me. I have no tattoos and I have no bumper stickers. Sounds quite boring, but it is really a commitment issue and I hope not a sign of my lackluster personality. What do I want to say that is important enough for me to use my body or vehicle as an advertisement of my beliefs? Clothing, now that would be easier; it is not permanent. The T-shirt is a handy a piece of clothing used for this personal declaration. Despite the short-lived nature of their manifesto (provided that the wearer changes into a fresh clothing the next day), the T-shirt’s markings can express much about the wearer. I often wonder, who are these people who want to bear their soul, open themselves up to ridicule or hostility and openly declare what they feel and think on a piece of clothing? Susan Barnett is also intrigued. In 2009 she started to collect these shirts, not the object themselves, but photographs of the backs of the shirts on the wearer in closely cropped environmental portraits. She has hundreds of images from the United States and Europe in this collection and her new book, T: A Typology of T-Shirts published by Dewi Lewis, shows people of varying ages, races and backgrounds in the United States and Europe broadcasting their right to free speech and expression by donning the comfortable and pervasive fashion accessory.
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| T: A Typology of T-Shirts. By Susan A Barnett. Dewi Lewis, 2014. |
T: A Typology of T-Shirts is, as the title says, a typology. Barnett shows one after the other, individuals proudly showing their style and often their words, slogan or mantra. The word pride reveals itself prominently in her work. Each subject stands tall in posture, likely straighter than their normal stance. They profess through her work, tantalizing us with not just what we see, but also what is left out. It is the ‘what’ that Barnett gives us, but we want to know the who, why, and occasionally the where. Yet, where she excels is her portraiture. Despite the curiosity that the unseen evokes, she presents more about these individuals from the back than conceivably the front and, more poignantly, the eyes, could reveal.
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| T: A Typology of T-Shirts. By Susan A Barnett. Dewi Lewis, 2014. |
Barnett has done her job as a typologist, recording one after another. What the project says as a whole references contemporary society more than the individual. There is strength in her numbers. While her photographs have the power to sit solitarily on the page or hang on the wall and inspire reflections, thoughts, or giggles, the groupings highlight contemporary fashion, politics and popular culture in the United States and Europe since the first decade of the 21st century. The book is where Barnett and publisher Dewi Lewis get to play with her work. In the opening image a young man stands in a concrete-filled urban setting clad in black shorts with a multi-key lanyard clipped to his pants and visible portions of a black snake winding around his arm, wearing a black sleeveless T that reads “Life’s Too Short To Wear Boring Clothes”. This image is followed by a man in a park wearing a white sleeveless shirt reading, “FASHION IS SO OUT.” The final in the triptych shows a young woman whose shirt states “Maybe Not”. That sets the mood for this book.
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| T: A Typology of T-Shirts. By Susan A Barnett. Dewi Lewis, 2014. |
That sequence opens to the next twenty spreads of T-shirt imagery with religious icons, Magritte inspired surrealist designs and animal patterns. With the final of these graphic plates the tone starts to change as we see angel wings with two .45 caliber handguns conspicuously pointing downward in the design. Themes that follow deal with killing, redemption, misogyny, oppression, anti-violence, money. Warhol, Picasso and Haring’s work all make an appearance along with Elvis, King Kong and Mickey Mouse. There is sex and more sex, drugs and more drugs, death metal, and energy alternatives. Jesus and Virgin Mary mix with Ganesh and Krishna. In one spread Jesus looks skyward on the black T-shirt of a man spending a day at the beach, contrasting with Marilyn Manson seeming to model the same gesture on the shirt of a young woman, maybe on holiday at the very same beach. The sequencing is easy, but brilliant. The opening spreads set the stage for lightness, fun, humor and fashion, but the meat of the book prompts serious conversations about difficult topics through exploring ourselves and our neighbors. In the end, the tone shifts again to optimism with the “Yes We Can” motto that symbolized change for a nation just before the beginning of this project. Filled with thematic groupings and diptychs playing with color, design and ideas, T: A Typology of T-Shirts is cleverly designed to provoke emotion, thought and possibly discussion and curiosity.
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| T: A Typology of T-Shirts. By Susan A Barnett. Dewi Lewis, 2014. |
Neither typologies nor portraiture are new, but Barnett uses both of these photographic approaches to create a visual language of her own. The book finishes with words from the three shirts: “No Pictures Please,” Leave Me Alone,” and “Do Not Copy My Style.” Indeed, Susan Barnett.—MELANIE MCWHORTER
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Melanie McWhorter has managed photo-eye's Book Division for 16 years and is a regular contributor to the photo-eye Blog. She has been interviewed about photography in numerous print and online publications including PDN, The Picture Show and LayFlat, has judged the prestigious photography competitions Daylight Photo Awards and Fotografia: Fotofestival di Roma’s Book Prize, has reviewed portfolios at Fotografia, Photolucida, Review Santa Fe and PhotoNOLA, and taught and lectured at numerous venues.
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By Gerry Johansson
Libraryman
"After visiting Japan during the 70’s and 80’s, and after the disappointment to see that even regional cities had been developed to the point where they all resembled a mini-Tokyo, Gerry Johansson (b. 1945, Swedish) decided to focus his creative energy on capturing the environment surrounding the Japanese people, as opposed to the people themselves. He chose not to merely record the bustling modern development of Ehime Prefecture, the core of Shikoku, but to also capture the exceptional natural beauty of the region. He took his camera to the rocks and mountain streams of the Nametoko Valley, deep inside forests teeming with the energy of life, and to the waters of the Seto Inland Sea."—the publisher
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Archipelago
Reviewed by Adam Bell
Photographs by Matthew Porter
Mack, 2015.
We begin with a boat. Aboard the Arcadia II, we’re led down a river, into the ocean, and along the rocky coast of a tropical island. Led by an unseen captain, our actual trip is far from clear, but we never seem to stray too far. Matthew Porter’s Archipelago takes its name from the island of Kaua'i, part of the Hawaiian archipelago, which features prominently in the images, but is never clearly described. Instead, the island, as well as the implied islands that surround it, serve as a metaphoric framework that allow Porter to weave together multiple strands of his work. Employing a variety of different styles and evoking numerous pictorial genres, Porter’s disparate images touch on numerous topics and playfully explore the illusionistic possibilities of photographs. Frustrating expectations of a simple journey, Archipelago is a collection of associative links, overlapping narratives, and tangential threads that constantly push us away and pull us back, ultimately leaving us to circle in the eddies of the images’ magnetic pull.
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| Archipelago. Photographs by Matthew Porter. Mack, 2015. |
Best known for his sun-drenched images of 70s era muscle cars suspended mid-jump, Porter is a protean photographer whose work has long sought to dissect photography’s mythic and history laden possibilities. Much like Porter’s exhibited work, Archipelago employs an intentionally varied style that merges multiple narrative threads from Jane Fonda’s activities protesting the Vietnam War to the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i to the American Southwest to a coastal lighthouse in Maryland. Ambitiously conflated, the multiple bodies of work are joined and overlapped into a perplexing and fascinating whole.
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| Archipelago. Photographs by Matthew Porter. Mack, 2015. |
Historically dense, the contextual support of Porter’s image is not always immediately apparent, but become clearer upon close inspection and through the occasional snippets of text that appear in the book. In the case of Fonda, who appears via a restaged photograph of her at a rally from the late 60s or early 70s, we are reminded via the text not only of her controversial political stance and actions during the Vietnam War, but also how her actions and the images taken of her during the time haunted her for years to come. Although less apparent, the tropical island of Kaua’i has significance as the location for numerous Hollywood movies depicting Southeast Asia and the Pacific — the tattered foliage and forlorn iguanas are lingering reminders of the former backdrop for reimagined wars on the screen. For Porter, photography is not only a means of making both the past and present visible, but also a tool to dissect the fantasy and reality of a place.
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| Archipelago. Photographs by Matthew Porter. Mack, 2015. |
Archipelago ties these varied bodies of work together through the careful use of repetition and the subtle variation of reoccurring themes. Images, like those of iguanas, repeat with slight variations. Earlier work, like that of the cars or wasp’s nests, are recycled, or referenced through Polaroids or behind the scenes shots of studio set-ups. Jagged lava coated coastlines and tropical foliage, as well as still-lifes of rusted nautical equipment appear throughout the book. Along side these images are restaged iconic photographs, like that of Jane Fonda, as well as seemingly iconic photographs, like the two images of musicians who appear in the beginning and end of the book. Although seemingly disparate, each image becomes a crucial part of the journey, an implied link, visible thread, or tangent that temporarily leads us astray before pulling us back. Owing equal amounts to Roe Etheridge and Christopher Williams, Porter’s work deftly conjures photographic illusions while simultaneously poking holes in its curtain.
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| Archipelago. Photographs by Matthew Porter. Mack, 2015. |
The book’s elegant design underscores this central theme. Each page is arranged in a grid of four potential images. Never entirely full, each spread has gaps. Like the titular islands, the clustered images orbit the book’s spine — spinning outward in repeating and overlapping visual narratives. If there is a subject of Porter’s book, it is this illusionistic dance and playful subversion of expectations. Each spread with its carefully placed images, circumambulates the work’s true subject, which all along has been the dance itself. For the reader, the gaps are invitations to fill the fragmented narratives and puzzle over the omissions. Like gaps in a photo album, the absence of the images draws us in more closely. Interspersed throughout the book are several short texts that frame the work either directly, as is the case for Jane Fonda or the Knoll lighthouse, or reference the work’s larger themes like place and time, like Brian Sholis’ text. Fortunately, none of these texts attempt to explain the work, but help guide us in various ways.
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| Archipelago. Photographs by Matthew Porter. Mack, 2015. |
Ending just as abruptly as it begins, the book leaves us on the boat. Looking off the deck at a small island, past a silhouetted bird on the coast, down a river, and onward into the dense jungle ahead, into parts unknown, we’re left adrift, surrounded by land and sea.—Adam Bell
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ADAM BELL is a photographer and writer. His work has been widely exhibited, and his writing and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including Afterimage, The Art Book Review, The Brooklyn Rail, fototazo, Foam Magazine, Lay Flat, photo-eye and Paper-Journal. His books include The Education of a Photographer and the forthcoming Vision Anew: The Lens and Screen Arts. He is currently on staff and faculty at the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Art. (www.adambbell.com and blog.adambbell.com)
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| Carta I, T – Bob Cornelis |
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Regarding Intersections
Reviewed by George Slade
By David Goldblatt
Steidl, 2014. 200 pp., 124 illustrations, 13x10½".
I will preface this review by admitting that I consider David Goldblatt to be among the greatest masters of photography, current or passed (as in on, to the great camera in the sky). My predilection would be to see genius in everything he does and follow that bias in any writing I do about his work. Can you live with that? Okay. I’ll do my best to avoid hagiography in what follows, but don’t blame me if you sense an abundance of encomium.
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By Viviane Sassen
Libraryman Co., Ltd., 2012
Selected as one of the Best Books of 2012 by Shane Lavalette
"Viviane Sassen (b. 1972, Dutch) photographed the series Die Son Sien Alles in the townships of Cape Town during several visits between 2002 and 2004, looking at the interior decoration of people's homes, shops and bars."—the publisher
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| Private by Mona Kuhn. Steidl, 2014. |
Kuhn’s latest series, Private, takes her known themes and applies another layer; the body as landscape, the landscape as a body, and the color palate of a particular landscape, the desert. Her work has never been so lyrical, so thematic and, yet, defiant of any narrative bent. Private is a field guide to the harshest environments: sand, rock, direct sunlight and our organic vessels.
On a sunny afternoon I called Kuhn to ask her about Private and the photograph included in the limited edition of the book.—Christopher J. Johnson
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| Figure 32, 2014 – Zoë Zimmeramn |
Zoë Zimmerman – Of Men: Strength and Vulnerability, Part III Care
June 1st – July 11th, 2015
photo-eye Bookstore + Project Space, 376 Garcia St. Suite A, Santa Fe
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| The Bungalow. By Anouk Kruithof. Onomatopee, 2015. |
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An Island in the Moon. By Jordan Sullivan.
Ampersand Editions, 2015.
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Reviewed by Christopher J. Johnson
An Island in the Moon
Photographs by Jordan Sullivan
Ampersand Editions, 2015. 196 pp., 279 plates, 6x9".
An Island in the Moon by Jordan Sullivan is an ambitious work and one that seems to reach beyond the concept of photography as a series, giving us instead as a set of images to convey a constructed message, in this case a poetic one.
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