Book Review Saul Leiter: In Stillness Photographs by Yumiko Izu Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein “I met Saul Leiter for the first time in the kitchen at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York,” writes photographer Yumiko Izu in her most recent monograph, Saul Leiter: In Stillness. She continues, “he invited me to his home, and as a great admirer of his work, I gladly accepted. I didn’t know yet that I would visit his enchanting and creative space many times over.” Three weeks after Leiter’s death in 2013, Izu received permission to photograph his home in the East Village; she completed the project in late 2019...

Saul Leiter: In Stillness. By Yumiko Izu.

Saul Leiter: In Stillness
Photographs by Yumiko Izu

Libro Arte, 2020. In English, Japanese. 120 pp., 10¼x11½".

“I met Saul Leiter for the first time in the kitchen at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York,” writes photographer Yumiko Izu in her most recent monograph, Saul Leiter: In Stillness. She continues, “he invited me to his home, and as a great admirer of his work, I gladly accepted. I didn’t know yet that I would visit his enchanting and creative space many times over.” Three weeks after Leiter’s death in 2013, Izu received permission to photograph his home in the East Village; she completed the project in late 2019.

Izu is perhaps best known for her meticulous platinum/palladium prints and adept use of large format cameras. Her previous bodies of work explore a variety of subject matter, all fundamentally coping with the conceptual concerns of the passage of time and life’s ephemerality. With Saul Leiter: In Stillness, she uses a 35mm camera and color film, a fitting change of approach given Leiter’s use of the same process and materials.

The home is undeniably alluring — an enchanting coalescence of sublime light, picturesque chipping paint on the walls, and innumerable objects, books, artworks, and mementos, the accumulation of which alludes to the kind of life he once led. Through Izu’s pictures, I built a rough picture of the man, whose photographs I can usually identify with ease, but whose life I knew virtually nothing about. I expected to see an abundance of prints, contact sheets, cameras, and undeveloped rolls of film, the likes of which are often found in the studios of other photographers of his generation. Less expected was the repeated appearance of Judaica (Leiter started training to become a rabbi, like his father), innumerable paintings (he trained as a painter and continued to paint as regularly as he photographed), and evidence of a wonderfully elegant woman through the years (his longtime muse and partner, Soames Bantry).

To say Izu “documents” the contents of Leiter’s living and working spaces is misleading. Her aesthetic — marked by considered framing and a shallow depth of field — creates a particular view of this world, one marked by dreamy, soft nostalgia; Izu’s pictures feel more like poetic vignettes than objective records. She imbues Leiter’s possessions and space with a beautiful, albeit wistful and melancholic, quality. Using full-bleed and nearly full-bleed spreads, Izu creates an immersive environment of intimate glimpses; it’s as if you too are looking down upon Leiter’s pocket watch, up at his perfectly cluttered mantle, or through his stunning picture windows. Her rambling sequence mimics the way one might explore an unfamiliar space, eyes darting from one object to another, pausing to take a closer look here and there.

The book opens with two exterior views of Leiter’s apartment building, one where the façade is romantically covered in ivy vines, the other where bright green leaves appear sporadically on the trees in the building’s backyard. In the last three photographs, we see the garden once again, this time powdered in snow. The final picture is a memorial to Leiter, topped with a snow-covered, green wreath. By bookending the monograph with these pictures, Izu poetically reminds the viewer, once again, of life’s inexorably marching cycle.

In perusing Saul Leiter: In Stillness, I was reminded of how I felt awaiting entry to Casa Azul in Mexico City, Frida Kahlo’s home and studio. Accessing these otherwise private spaces feels like a privileged opportunity to become more connected to the creative processes that shaped the careers and lives of beloved artists. For an artist like Leiter, who lived at his East 10th Avenue home for over sixty years and made much of his photographic work within a two-block radius of his building, his home is all the more central to how he thought about art, the world, and himself. He once famously said, “I think that mysterious things happen in familiar places. We don't always need to run to the other end of the world.” Izu’s photographs captured a bit of magic, perhaps touching upon some of what sustained Leiter’s interest for all those years.

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Allie Haeusslein is the Associate Director of Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco.

Book Store Interview Night Calls Photographs by Rebecca Norris Webb Interview by Allie Haeusslein Drawing inspiration from W. Eugene Smith’s iconic photo essay Country Doctor (1948), Brooklyn-based photographer Rebecca Norris Webb spent six years regularly returning to Rush County, Indiana. This is the rural community where both she and her father were born, and where he subsequently worked as the community’s country doctor. Night Calls intimately chronicles her experience within this community, among its current residents, and her past recollections of Rush County.

Night Calls. By Rebecca Norris Webb.

Night Calls
Photographs by Rebecca Norris Webb

Radius Books, Santa Fe, USA, 2020. 128 pp., 61 illustrations, 8½x9¾".

Drawing inspiration from W. Eugene Smith’s iconic photo essay Country Doctor (1948), Brooklyn-based photographer Rebecca Norris Webb spent six years regularly returning to Rush County, Indiana. This is the rural community where both she and her father were born, and where he subsequently worked as the community’s country doctor. Night Calls intimately chronicles her experience within this community, among its current residents, and her past recollections of Rush County.

Retracing her father’s professional routine, Norris Webb worked primarily at night and in the early morning hours, creating ethereal photographs of Rush County’s landscape. She juxtaposes these dreamlike scenes with tender portraits of her father’s former patients and, in some instances, their families, evoking the tight-knit, multigenerational nature of this community. Originally a poet, she deftly interweaves poignant texts rooted in her experiences and memories amidst her photographs. Night Calls is a multilayered portrait of this place and an extension of Norris Webb’s abiding interest in the relationships between people, memory, and the natural world.

Norris Webb took the time to speak with Allie Haeusslein about this most recent monograph, delving into greater detail about the underlying motivations and processes behind the making, editing, and completion of this deeply personal endeavor.

Allie Haeusslein (AH): In Night Calls, you lyrically address your perceptions and childhood memories of your father, his role in your rural county as a doctor, and your relationship to the landscape where you were raised. Do you remember the initial impetus for this project?

Rebecca Norris Webb (RNW): Night Calls is a project that I’d been thinking about since I was a young photographer at the ICP. That’s when I first came across Eugene Smith’s iconic Life photo-essay, Country Doctor. I remember thinking: How would a woman tell this story, especially if she happened to be the doctor’s daughter?

After finishing my second monograph, My Dakota, I finally had the creative space to begin this project. I work intuitively, so my first trips to Rush County were exploratory. I began to retrace the routes of some of my father’s house calls through this rural county where we both were born.

AH: In addition to relying on his handwritten patient logs, did you and your father talk about his recollections of working in Rush County?

RNW: My father was very much a collaborator, freely sharing his memories with me. Since he no longer travels, I was his eyes and ears in Rush County, bringing him back news of his former patients, which often sparked more memories.

AH: Over the six years you worked on it, how did the form and content of Night Calls evolve?

RNW: During my third trip, everything shifted. That’s when I decided to echo his doctor’s work rhythms, photographing largely at night and in the early morning, when many of us come into the world — Dad delivered some thousand babies — and many of us leave it. All of a sudden, the project broke open for me, both emotionally and visually.

AH: In addition to retracing his work rhythms, you talk about trying to evoke his “gentle bedside manner” when photographing his former patients and, in some cases, their families or descendants. What steps did you take to realize that demeanor in your process?

RNW: I’m rather shy, so I left many of the portraits until the last year of the project. That’s when I stumbled across my inspiration. I read how August Sander made portraits of German farmers “working much like a country doctor making house calls.” It dawned on me to try to channel Dad’s gentle bedside manner. As a doctor, he’s a man of few words, someone who listens closely and sees deeply. So, listening intently to his former patients’ stories — many involving a birth or near death — I worked with them to choose where in their home to make the collaborative portrait. More often than not, it was a doorway or window, which, like many of their experiences, were kinds of thresholds.

Since memories of my father were on their minds — and hinted at in their daydreamy gazes — I see these photographs, taken together, as a kind of slantwise portrait of Dad.

AH: “Slantwise” also describes the quality of the handwritten texts interspersed throughout Night Call. As with many of your other projects, text plays an important role here. Can you share more about the relationship between your writing and photographs in this body of work?

RNW: I think in images, whether I have a camera in my hand — or a pencil. That means that the photographs tend to come first, the words later on. Working in Rush County — where the landscape seemed to call to me — the beginning of the project was as much about listening as it was about looking. On foggy mornings while walking along Blue River Road — where Dad grew up and where our Quaker family lived for a hundred years — I found sometimes that the first lines of text pieces came to me. It was as if I could hear what I saw.

Only near the project’s end, did I settle on image and text pairings. Ideally, I hoped these photos/texts would expand our view of this landscape, sometimes by suggesting the more elusive metaphysical geography that lies outside the frame — including memory, history, reverie, as well as birth and death, suffering and compassion. “I have always aspired to a more spacious form,” to quote the poet Czeslaw Milosz. This has long been one of my photographic obsessions.

AH: What ideas most strongly guided your editing and sequencing process when you were conceiving the project in book form?

RNW: I try to edit intuitively, to let the rhythm and palette of a project guide me — slowly and organically — to the final sequence and shape of the book.

With Night Calls, the palette was varying shades of blues — from the ethereal blues of fog to the midnight blue of moonlit skies to the violet-blue clouds of thunderstorms, the color of a bruise. In Rush County, where the air is often heavy with humidity, you can feel the weight in your body. These Rush County blues — which sometimes feel part of you — are emotional hues as well. They are ever-shifting as water, the blues of transformation.

As I worked more deeply into the project, I began to see the shape of the book as meandering: passing through different kinds of weather, going back and forth in time — from the present to the near past to the distant past — while meditating on the relationship between memory and one’s first landscape, fathers and daughters, and the history that divides us as much as heals us. It seems fitting that the book’s sequence is as winding as Big Blue River, and perhaps as memory itself.

AH: Now that you have this beautiful book in hand, I have to ask: what does your father think of the finished monograph?

RNW: Not surprisingly, my father’s response when I’d asked him what he thought about Night Calls was another memory—one I’d never heard before. It was about a family who lived on a remote farm. Although one of the children had an alarmingly high fever, they were wary of this unfamiliar, young doctor on their doorstep. After helping bring down the toddler’s fever, however, Dad won the entire family over. They remained his patients for twenty years—and his personal friends, decades longer.

At the end of our phone call, his most heartening words, though, weren’t about Night Calls. He said that, thankfully, their family doctor saved her last two COVID-19 vaccines for Dad, who is now 100, and Mom, who is 93. Hearing the lightness in his voice, I smiled with relief. Their family doctor has definitely won me over.

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Allie Haeusslein is the Associate Director of Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco.

Book Review YU Photographs by Dragana Jurišić Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein Dragana Jurišić­ was only sixteen years old when her family’s apartment burned down, a casualty of the devastating war that led to the dissolution of her birthplace: Yugoslavia.

YU: The Lost Country. By Dragana Jurišić. 
Oonagh Young Gallery, 2015.

 

YU: The Lost Country

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

YU: The Lost Country
Photographs by Dragana Jurišić.
Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin, Ireland, 2015. In English. 112 pp., 48 four-color illustrations, 5x8¼".

Dragana Jurišić­ was only sixteen years old when her family’s apartment burned down, a casualty of the devastating war that led to the dissolution of her birthplace: Yugoslavia. This event proved formative for Jurišić. Her­ father — who had been a passionate amateur photographer — lost thousands of negatives and prints and never photographed again. She explains, “[w]here he stopped, I started. The act of photographing, of looking at the world through the camera lens, helped provide a semblance of control over an otherwise unpredictable world.”

Book Review Mark Ruwedel Photographs by Mark Ruwedel Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein As the winner of the 2014 Scotiabank Photography Award — a prestigious honor celebrating achievement in contemporary Canadian photography — Mark Ruwedel received a $50,000 cash prize, an exhibition at the Ryerson Image Center in Toronto and a publication produced by Steidl.

Mark Ruwedel. By Mark Ruwedel. 
Steidl, 2015.

 

Mark Ruwedel
Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

Mark Ruwedel
Photographs by Mark Ruwedel. Text by Grant Arnold. Contribution by Gaëlle Morel and Paul Roth.
Steidl, Gottingen, Germany, 2015. 228 pp., 12x10".  

As the winner of the 2014 Scotiabank Photography Award — a prestigious honor celebrating achievement in contemporary Canadian photography* — Mark Ruwedel received a $50,000 cash prize, an exhibition at the Ryerson Image Center in Toronto and a publication produced by Steidl. The first book to assess the photographer’s entire career, Mark Ruwedel includes sixteen bodies of work and a section dedicated to selected bookworks, spanning the 1980s through 2010s. Steidl beautifully translates the lush tonality and tactile quality of his black-and-white (and occasional color) photographs to the printed page, employing a straightforward layout that echoes the work’s minimal aesthetic. Presented individually and in chronological order, Ruwedel’s projects become more resonant when viewed within the context of his vast and tightly coherent oeuvre, marked by consistent formal, aesthetic and conceptual interests.

Book Review Kin Photographs by Pieter Hugo Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein Life in present day South Africa is inextricably linked to the history of Apartheid and centuries of institutionalized segregation and inequality born from colonial rule. Six years ago, when his wife became pregnant with their first child, photographer Pieter Hugo was prompted to seriously consider the nature of his relationship to his birthplace.

Kin. Photographs by Pieter Hugo.

Aperture, 2015.

 

Kin

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

Kin
Photographs by Pieter Hugo. Text by Ben Okri.
Aperture, New York, 2015. 164 pp., 80 color illustrations, 9½x12¼x¾".

Life in present day South Africa is inextricably linked to the history of Apartheid and centuries of institutionalized segregation and inequality born from colonial rule. Six years ago, when his wife became pregnant with their first child, photographer Pieter Hugo was prompted to seriously consider the nature of his relationship to his birthplace. “How,” Hugo asks, “does one live in this society? How does one take responsibility for history, and to what extent should one try? How do you raise a family in such a conflicted society?” After years of making work throughout Africa, these questions motivated Hugo to photograph the people and landscape of his own community. Kin reflects his meditation on the notion of “home” and “family,” concepts that when viewed through the artist’s lens, prove to be as nuanced, contradictory and fractured as the nation itself.

Book Review Assignment No. 2: San Quentin Prison Photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto & Richard Misrach, essay by Michael Nelson Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein Reading through Michael Nelson’s essay in Assignment No. 2 testifies to the compelling power of looking, and the inseparable link between observation and personal experience. At age fifteen, Nelson was charged with first-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Assignment No. 2: San Quentin Prison.
Photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto & Richard Misrach.

Essay by Michael Nelson. TBW Books, 2014.

 

Assignment No. 2: San Quentin Prison

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

Assignment No. 2: San Quentin Prison
Photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto and Richard Misrach. Text by Michael Nelson.
TBW Books, 2014. 20 pp., 2 full-color plates, 9½x12".

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” – Anaïs Nin

Reading through Michael Nelson’s essay in Assignment No. 2 testifies to the compelling power of looking, and the inseparable link between observation and personal experience. At age fifteen, Nelson was charged with first-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He pled guilty in 1998; he has been in San Quentin Prison for his entire adult life. Nelson wrote the essay in Assignment No. 2 for “Visual Concerns in Photography,” a course taken through the Prison University Project, the state’s only on-site, degree granting college program.

Book Review L.A., 1971 By Anthony Hernandez Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein Opening Anthony Hernandez’s recent book, L.A., 1971, feels akin to pushing open the imposing, space-aged door depicted across the publication’s aluminum cover. The only information about the location appears cryptically on the left-hand door, “OPEN 8-12 NO SUNDAYS.”

L.A., 1971. By Anthony Hernandez.

Silas Finch, 2014.

 

L.A., 1971

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

L.A., 1971
By Anthony Hernandez
Silas Finch, 2014. Unpaged, 12 tritone Illustrations, 12½x8".

Opening Anthony Hernandez’s recent book, L.A., 1971, feels akin to pushing open the imposing, space-aged door depicted across the publication’s aluminum cover. The only information about the location appears cryptically on the left-hand door, “OPEN 8-12 NO SUNDAYS.” Hernandez’s photograph provides no further context — no building façade, no neighboring shops, no sidewalks. The door stands alone.

Book Review A Field Guide to Snow and Ice By Paula McCartney Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein In 1928, Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley wrote in the New York Times “[t]he snow and the ice and the boar frost furnish brilliants that are incomparably more beautiful than the gems of the Summer dew or those wrought elsewhere in nature’s laboratory.” Entranced by the natural world, he made the first photograph of a snowflake in 1885 at the age of twenty.

A Field Guide to Snow and Ice. By Paula McCartney.

Silas Finch, 2014.

 

A Field Guide to Snow and Ice

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

A Field Guide to Snow and Ice
By Paula McCartney
Silas Finch, 2014. 48 pp., color illustrations, 8x10".

In 1928, Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley wrote in the New York Times “[t]he snow and the ice and the boar frost furnish brilliants that are incomparably more beautiful than the gems of the Summer dew or those wrought elsewhere in nature’s laboratory.”* Entranced by the natural world, he made the first photograph of a snowflake in 1885 at the age of twenty. Paula McCartney’s A Field Guide to Snow and Ice reflects a fascination and passion akin to Bentley’s for the unique and wide-ranging manifestations of frozen water vapor.

Book Review Long Branch By Michael Ashkin Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein Since the late 1800s, the United States federal government has possessed the power of eminent domain — the ability to seize private property for approved public uses. This governmental authority first materialized to facilitate transportation, supply water, construct public buildings and aid in defense readiness — all necessary for a developing nation’s infrastructure.

Long Branch By Michael Ashkin.
A-Jump Books, 2014.

 

Long Branch

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

Long Branch
By Michael Ashkin
A-Jump Books, 2014. 144 pp., 89 duotone illustrations, 8½x6¾".

Since the late 1800s, the United States federal government has possessed the power of eminent domain — the ability to seize private property for approved public uses. This governmental authority first materialized to facilitate transportation, supply water, construct public buildings and aid in defense readiness — all necessary for a developing nation’s infrastructure. The use of eminent domain has, however, become highly contentious over the years. With the help of corrupt local governments, corporate interests have exploited the vague definition of eminent domain, exploiting terms like “the public good” and “blighted land” to take neighborhoods and even entire cities for private gain. As Sandra Day O’Connor articulated in her dissenting opinion for a now infamous property rights case, “[t]he specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”

Book Review Does Yellow Run Forever? By Paul Graham Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein It is a rare breed of photographer who consistently and effectively negotiates both the exhibition and book form — producing coherent, well-sequenced exhibitions and publications — each with unique attributes and distinctive logic. Time and time again, Paul Graham has proven his skill in creating work that translates into dynamic exhibitions and mesmerizing publications.

Does Yellow Run Forever? By Paul Graham.

MACK, 2014.

 

Does Yellow Run Forever?

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

Does Yellow Run Forever?
By Paul Graham
MACK, 2014. 96 pp., 31 color illustrations, 5¼x7½".

It is a rare breed of photographer who consistently and effectively negotiates both the exhibition and book form — producing coherent, well-sequenced exhibitions and publications — each with unique attributes and distinctive logic. Time and time again, Paul Graham has proven his skill in creating work that translates into dynamic exhibitions and mesmerizing publications. While I cannot speak to this newest body of work on the gallery wall, I can say that Does Yellow Run Forever? is another exquisite and compelling monograph by this acclaimed photographer.

Book Review Mono No Aware By Anton Kusters Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein A quick Google search of Belgian photographer Anton Kusters produces hundreds of results on his project about the Yakuza, a Japanese crime family that controls the streets of Tokyo’s red light district. This was the artist’s first large body of work and book project, which received international praise. Three years later, he has taken a decidedly different approach with his second publication, Mono No Aware.

Mono No Aware. By Anton Kusters.

ZABROZAS, 2014.

 

Mono No Aware

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

Mono No Aware
Photographs by Anton Kusters
ZABROZAS, 2014. 64 pp., 32 color and black & white illustrations, 8x10¼". 

A quick Google search of Belgian photographer Anton Kusters produces hundreds of results on his project about the Yakuza, a Japanese crime family that controls the streets of Tokyo’s red light district. This was the artist’s first large body of work and book project, which received international praise. Three years later, he has taken a decidedly different approach with his second publication, Mono No Aware. While Odo Yakuza Tokyo is a documentary project, Mono No Aware is conceptually driven, focusing on an idea rather than portraying an unfolding narrative. The Japanese phrase Mono no aware alludes to the conflicting emotions experienced when considering the transience of all things; it is not simply about sorrow or wistfulness, but also the joy and intense appreciation that comes from acknowledging the beauty intrinsic to this evanescence.

Book Review Gomorrah Girl By Valerio Spada Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein On March 27, 2004, fourteen-year-old Annalisa Durante was fatally shot in the back of her head outside her family home, caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting; the intended target, nineteen-year-old Camorra boss Salvatore Giulano, was accused of using the young girl as a shield.

Gomorrah Girl. By Valerio Spada.

Twin Palms, 2014.

 

Gomorrah Girl

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

Gomorrah Girl
By Valerio Spada
Twin Palms Publishers, Santa Fe, 2014. 78 pp., 57 color illustrations, 9x13".

"Many of these girls will soon marry Camorristi... Many will bear children who will be killed... But for now they are just little girls in black. They weep for a friend... Annalisa is guilty of having been born in Naples. Nothing more, nothing less.”* —Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah

On March 27, 2004, fourteen-year-old Annalisa Durante was fatally shot in the back of her head outside her family home, caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting; the intended target, nineteen-year-old Camorra boss Salvatore Giulano, was accused of using the young girl as a shield. Though Italian journalist Roberto Saviano had spent some time infiltrating the Camorra — the centuries old mafia-like organization that controls Naples — it was ultimately Annalisa's tragic death that encouraged him to write his impassioned exposé, Gomorrah. Annalisa’s death is also the backbone of Valerio Spada’s Gomorrah Girl, an examination of the fraught relationship between female adolescence and the culture of violence defining present-day Naples.

Gomorrah Girl. By Valerio Spada. Twin Palms, 2014.

Gomorrah Girl combines Neapolitan landscapes and portraits by Spada with rephotographed pages from the police investigation of Annalisa’s death and exists as two intermingled books. The worn pages of the police report — printed on something akin to newsprint — are interspersed with Spada’s own smaller, glossy photographs. You cannot view one without seeing the other. As a result, the lives of these young women and the landscape they occupy can only be viewed within the somber context of Annalisa’s death, producing a disquieting overtone regarding the future of the young women depicted.

The crime scene photographs from Annalisa’s death are analytical, unsentimental and sterile — ballistics images, streets covered in evidence markers, approximations of bullet trajectories. They attempt to document and explain. And while they are necessary, there is a dark irony — no matter how much this crime is picked apart and the evidence is analyzed, it is ultimately an unsatisfactory explanation for a senseless event.

Gomorrah Girl. By Valerio Spada. Twin Palms, 2014.

Spada’s images of young women are highly charged; there is a tension at play, a sense that something is amiss. Allusions to childhood — Hello Kitty, Daisy Duck, oversized headbands and plastic jewelry – appear duplicitous in the company of his subjects. They do not feel like children; they appear sexualized and desensitized to the violence that surrounds and subsumes them. The faces of these teenagers are viscerally hardened, projecting austere personas developed for survival.

Gomorrah Girl. By Valerio Spada. Twin Palms, 2014.

A jarring picture that presents a telling metaphor for both the loss of innocence and the marginalization of women depicts a lone woman shooting up, completely ignored by the three men to her left. The photograph was taken in one of the most dangerous places in Italy known as “La Scuola” or “I Puffi” (The School or Smurfs House), a name that refers to the locale’s former life as a kindergarten. A place intended to educate and nurture youth falls victim to a culture with little room to experience childhood.

Gomorrah Girl. By Valerio Spada. Twin Palms, 2014.

Italy is often associated with the Coliseum, Pompeii, Tuscan hillsides and quaint cobbled roads. It is a struggle to conceive of the inhumane underbelly of a place we so blissfully romanticize. Hollywood portrayals of mafia-like organizations such as The Godfather or The Sopranos conceal the reality of these groups and their implications on society. Spada pulls the rose-colored glasses from our eyes, forcing us to consider how the intimidation, violence and machismo perpetuated by the Camorra reverberates through the fabric of a major city — the third largest municipality in Italy. The final photograph in Gomorrah Girl leaves us uneasy. The thirty-one year old “killer of Scampia” is positioned on a motorcycle in front of a series of apartment buildings, staring straight into the camera’s lens. His girlfriend, who did not want her portrait taken, is almost entirely obscured; all that is visible is a small sliver of her face and downcast gaze. Leaving us to wonder — what will become of these Gomorrah Girls?—ALLIE HAEUSSLEIN

*Roberto Saviano quoted by Ed Vulliamy, “In the grip of Italy’s bloodiest mafia clan,” The Guardian, 4 October 2008.

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ALLIE HAEUSSLEIN is the Associate Director at Pier 24 Photography, an exhibition space dedicated to the presentation of photography. Her writing has appeared in publications including American Suburb X, Art Practical, and DailyServing.

Book Review Pikin Slee By Viviane Sassen Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein Stephen Shore has often said, “[w]hen I see that I'm repeating myself, or acting habitually, I ask new questions.” This seems to be what Viviane Sassen has done with her most recent publication, Pikin Slee. Often lauded for her distinctive approach to the human form and dynamic use of color, Pikin Slee signifies a bold venture into largely untried territory.

Pikin Slee. By Viviane Sassen.

Prestel, 2014.

 

Pikin Slee

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

Pikin Slee
By Viviane Sassen
Prestel, Lakewood, 2014. 120 pp., 110 illustrations, 60 in color, 9½x11".

Stephen Shore has often said, “[w]hen I see that I'm repeating myself, or acting habitually, I ask new questions.”* This seems to be what Viviane Sassen has done with her most recent publication, Pikin Slee. Often lauded for her distinctive approach to the human form and dynamic use of color, Pikin Slee signifies a bold venture into largely untried territory. Sassen acknowledges this transition, explaining how she “longed for a simpler kind of photography” that would “re-set the eye: back to basics.” The result: a book largely comprised of black and white photographs of the everyday — vignettes of the landscape and commonplace objects – with an occasional portrait and flash of color.

Book Review The Seventh Dog By Danny Lyon Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein Large-scale, monographic publications can easily overwhelm, losing readers after a few turns of the page when the vastness of what’s in hand registers. This could especially be the case when examining the oeuvre of someone as prolific as Danny Lyon, who has been making pictures for the last fifty years. And yet The Seventh Dog never once feels excessive or unwieldy, despite being over 200 pages.

The Seventh Dog. By Danny Lyon.

Phaidon, 2014.

 

The Seventh Dog

Reviewed by Allie Haeusslein

Danny Lyon Retrospective: The Seventh Dog
By Danny Lyon

$125.00 — Signed copies available
Phaidon, London, 2014. 240 pp., 200 color and black & white illustrations, 10¾x10¾".

Large-scale, monographic publications can easily overwhelm, losing readers after a few turns of the page when the vastness of what’s in hand registers. This could especially be the case when examining the oeuvre of someone as prolific as Danny Lyon, who has been making pictures for the last fifty years. And yet The Seventh Dog never once feels excessive or unwieldy, despite being over 200 pages. I ambivalently use the term “page-turner,” but it does feel appropriate here. There is something intrinsic to this book that keeps me coming back, and what’s more, lingering more slowly each time I do.

Working in reverse chronology, The Seventh Dog traces the trajectory of Lyon’s wide-ranging interests, from the Civil Rights Movement in the South and Indian reservations in the West to the infamous biker club in Chicago, prison system in Texas and recent Occupy movement in New York. Representative vignettes from each of these substantial projects are presented alongside ephemera — letters he received and wrote, drawings, family snapshots, scans of his deeply worn photo paper boxes. Photography is not merely his occupation or livelihood. This medium and his life are inextricably linked, and he reveals this plainly through a seamless weaving of the personal and professional (if that distinction can even be made here). A lovely informality results from this combination of elements, as if we are rummaging unfettered through his studio.

The Seventh Dog. By Danny Lyon. Phaidon, 2014.

Lyon’s work falls within the tradition of photojournalism and embodies a commitment to social justice, conveying nuanced stories through images deliberately edited into narrative sequences. At the same time, though, many pictures demonstrate something decidedly more personal and diaristic — akin to Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency. He is not a voyeur. He never stands on the sidelines. He whole-heartedly enters the fray. He is as an ally and participant, contributing to the cause or moment in his own way. The directness and intimacy of his photographs allude to this personal involvement, a mutual identification palpable between photographer and subject. Through his disparate subject matter, it is this mutual understanding that fundamentally describes Lyon’s sensibility and binds these works together.

The Seventh Dog. By Danny Lyon. Phaidon, 2014.

The Seventh Dog. By Danny Lyon. Phaidon, 2014.

As I writer, I am instinctively attuned to the use of text in photobooks. In speaking with many photographers, there is a shared and repeated desire to limit the use of words — their own or those of others. Texts included often end up more metaphoric — poetry, short stories, allusive references. It does not strike me as unusual that Lyon completely embraces his voice in The Seventh Dog; perhaps a third of the book is devoted to his words. Fortunately for us, Lyon wields a pen in much the same way he employs his camera — with uncensored honesty and his own brand of eloquence. He does not analyze or justify the work; we understand his process, motivations and beliefs through a very colloquial sharing of experience. The Seventh Dog is as much a photobook as it is a memoir, tracing a life lived behind a very active camera through both image and word.

The Seventh Dog. By Danny Lyon. Phaidon, 2014.

Passivity is not in the vocabulary of Mr. Lyon, and it should not be in yours when you take The Seventh Dog home. It is a far cry from the vacuous coffee table art books with which it shares its considerable scale. This tome requires work. But it is the kind of work that any lover of the medium will welcome with great enthusiasm, relishing every moment spent with the work of a great artist.—ALLIE HAEUSSLEIN

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ALLIE HAEUSSLEIN is the Associate Director at Pier 24 Photography, an exhibition space dedicated to the presentation of photography. Her writing has appeared in publications including American Suburb X, Art Practical, and DailyServing.