The five titles from B-B-B-Books

Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt (or KK+TF as they are often referred to collectively) are photographers based in Stockholm who work individually and in collaboration. Though distinctive in their photographic practices, both photographer's work features the use of flash, creating an other-worldly feel to what are often mundane subject matter, and causing their images to work together seamlessly. In 2008, the photographers took their collaboration into the publishing world, working with design company 1:2:3 and Marika Vaccino Andersson to produce a book of Källström's work, Gingerbread Monument. In August of 2011, the photographers and designers created B-B-B-Books and since then have produced 581c, a volume of Fäldt's work with a peculiar endless design, Wikiland, a KK+TF collaboration looking into the high-profile trial of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Blackdrop Island, a follow up to Källström's Gingerbread Monument, and Europe, Greece, Athens, Acropolis, another KK+TF collaboration focusing on the general strikes in Greece in October of 2011. In total, these have been some of the most innovative and impressively designed photobooks I've seen at photo-eye this year. For B-B-B-Books, the collaboration between photographers and designers is as vital dialogue, the books themselves becoming a mode of communication beyond the voice of the photographs. Unusual and engaging, they are photography books that encourage examination.

KK+TF took some time to answer some questions for us after returning from their first exhibition in the United States at The Popular Workshop in San Francisco. The show runs through September 7th.

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Sarah Bradley:     Both of you have independent photography practices, but also work collaboratively. When did your joint practice start and how did it come about?

Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt:     We started working together in 2005. We temporarily lived in a small town in Sweden. There was a neighborhood not too far from us, a typical Swedish villa area. It had a beautiful name that led the thoughts to more southern latitudes, it was called Peru. We borrowed a friend's car and went to Peru a lot during the winter of 04/05. We listened to music in the car and dreamt of traveling. Since that winter, we have done projects together.

Europe, Greece, Athens, Acropolis and 581c

SB:     What led you to work with 1:2:3 and start B-B-B-Books?

KK+TF:     One of the members of B-B-B-Books, Marika Vaccino Andersson, made a project about perception and photography in 2007 and invited Thobias to be in it. Through that project, we came in contact with 1:2:3. When Klara did her first book Gingerbread Monument in 2008, the five of us collaborated for the first time and that group is what later became B-B-B-Books.

Wikiland

SB:     I'd love to hear what goes into making a project and book like Wikiland. From collaboration between photographers as the project is being shot to your collaboration with 1:2:3 as designers when the book is being produced, how does the process work?

KK+TF:     The idea of doing a number of images of a certain place, a state of mind or whatever catches the interest is a rather intuitive thing. The design gets intertwined with this intuition and from this meeting, something new comes. It's a call and response kind of situation. It's a continuous dialogue between us and the designers. The methods we use for saying the similar thing are different, but one gets to learn how to put words on conveying these things to creating an object.

SB:     There is a clear narrative element to your work. I recently read something said by Thobias, that the stories are made up after the images are taken. How does this relate to your book projects? Do you consider the book design to be part of storytelling?

KK+TF:     Yes of course, the design of the book is what brings out the story. The design elements for telling a story differ in many ways from a visual language like photography. But to be able to make a photographic story physical, like when you do a book, you need to rephrase the story for this specific purpose.

Blackdrop Island on press

SB:     Both of Klara's books, Blackdrop Island and Gingerbread Monument, feature written contributions from Viktor Johansson.  I'm interested in the importance of incorporating these written pieces into a photographic book. How do you perceive of the relationship between Johansson's text and your photographs?
 

KK+TF:     The relationship between the photographs and Viktor's poems was already there before they even started collaborating. Klara found a paper with an extract from Viktor's first book Kapslar (Capsules). Klara felt strongly connected to the way the writer formulated his gaze at the world. It was really that simple. So, it was a very natural thing for Klara to contact him and ask if he would be interested in looking at her work and maybe write to it.

 Gingerbread Monument and Blackdrop Island

SB:     Has the process of designing and producing your own books affected how you make photographs?

KK+TF:     Not all projects we make fit as book projects. So we don't think the book process affects how we make photographs.

SB:     B-B-B-Books is celebrating its one-year anniversary this month with five books published so far. Do you plan to keep publishing at the same pace? Do you intend to keep B-B-B-Books focused on published the work of KK+TF or will you expand to include other artists?

KK+TF:     Yes, it's soon B-B-B-Birthday!  It has been good first year to us. We have projects we want to make and we will continue the production in the pace of the projects. That is the reason why we started this. Whenever there is a project ready, we can publish it. We have two or three new titles for this coming fall/winter.  B-B-B-Books could maybe include other collaborations, the future will tell.

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Find more information on all of B-B-B-Books publications here

Read Sarah Bradley's post on Gingerbread Monument, Blackdrop Island, Wikiland and 581C here

Mrs. Merryman's Collection. By Sophie Anne Merryman.
Published by MACK, 2012.

Mrs. Merryman's Collection

Reviewed by Adam Bell

Mrs. Merryman's Collection
Photographs from the collection of Anne Sophie Merryman
MACK, 2012. Hardbound. 112 pp., 86 color illustrations, 9-3/4x10-1/2".

Postcards occupy a unique space within the history of photography. Firmly rooted in photography's vernacular and populist nature, they show us distant lands, tourist traps, beautiful vistas and landmarks. Although largely a novelty of the past, and replaced by status updates, tweets and emails, postcards still hold power as missives from far-flung places – haptic affirmations of existence, travel and remembrance. I was here. I thought of you. Look at this. Like found photographs, given enough time, and with the right context, old-postcards and their imagery of a world and people long gone can give birth to new meanings that shift, expand or shrink with each generation. Unmoored from their original context, they offer us a glimpse into the often strange and suggestive possibilities of photography.

Mrs. Merryman's Collection, by Anne Sophie Merryman. Published by MACK, 2012.

Anne Sophie Merryman's book Mrs. Merryman's Collection purports to be a collection of postcards inherited from her grandmother, who passed away before she was born and shares her name, but all is not as it seems. Collected from the late-30s until the 80s, the postcards were never sent or received by Merryman's grandmother, but collected over the years for their striking imagery. Bearing stamps and postmarks from Spain, France and Africa, the postcards come from all over the world. Each postcard is shown full-size with the front on one page and the back presented on the reverse page. This simple design replicates the act of paging through a pile of postcards, but also allows you to read the messages and savor the physicality of each postcard. Although not all have messages, when they do, the correspondences are usually cryptic or cursory and reveal little about the images. Written in French, Spanish or English, the flowing script is often hard to read or indecipherable.

Mrs. Merryman's Collection, by Anne Sophie Merryman. Published by MACK, 2012.

The pictures themselves are incredibly strange and don't resemble any postcards you're likely to encounter in even the most well-hidden or remote flea market or antique shop. After all, who makes a postcard of someone delicately laying out a piece of paper, a stuffed monkey head, a hand gently touching a mirror, or a ventriloquist dummy? Small, precious and unnerving, they more often resemble the poetic work of Masao Yamamoto than the kinds of vernacular postcards that shuttled back and forth across the globe in the mid-20th century. Unlike postcards you might find, the images and their subject in the book are rarely identified. Rather than offering exotic or prosaic views of distant lands, the images are a series of surreal puzzles and non-sequiturs.

Mrs. Merryman's Collection, by Anne Sophie Merryman. Published by MACK, 2012.

Mrs. Merryman's Collection, by Anne Sophie Merryman. Published by MACK, 2012.

Reshuffled and given a new context, the meanings of vernacular or found images are easily transformed. The mystery of the collection relies in part on this simple maneuver. With most old photographs, and compelling stories, we want to believe, but still question. Who are Anne Sophie Merryman and her grandmother? Are these real postcards? Where did she get them? Do the two women even exist? Or is it all the creation of another artist – a matryoshka doll of artistic conceits, layered and perplexing to untangle? Merryman exploits our desire to believe these images and her story to hook us, to convince us that each side of the postcard have always been joined and are not a transmutation, a collaborative half-truth of the past and present. Across generations, these postcards are a daydream of real and imagined places – journeys taken or fantasized, objects and moments encountered.

Mrs. Merryman's Collection, by Anne Sophie Merryman. Published by MACK, 2012.

Real or fake, a curious sleigh-of-hand occurs in this unassuming collection that blurs the lines between Merryman and her grandmother. The back of the book contains a telling detail – a tiny red square in the middle of the page. Two pages are sewn together with red thread. At first glance, there is only the dedication to Merryman’s grandmother on the backside, but sealed in-between the pages are the title and Merryman’s own name – suggesting a fused and inseparable identity. Hidden below the surface, woven together across generations, dreaming parallel dreams, both seduced by the mystery of photography. The two act as one. In the end, the creator and collector are never far apart. You only need flip the page.—ADAM BELL

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ADAM BELL is a photographer and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. He received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts, and his work has been exhibited and published internationally. He is the co-editor and co-author, with Charles H. Traub and Steve Heller, of The Education of a Photographer (Allworth Press, 2006). His writing has appeared in Foam Magazine, Lay Flat and Ahorn Magazine. He is currently on staff and faculty at the School of Visual Arts' MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department. His website and blog are adambbell.com and adambellphoto.blogspot.com.

Work In Progress by Maxwell Anderson

A stack of completed books

Maxwell Anderson is an emerging photographer and book publisher from London, but you may already be acquainted with his work. Selected as one of the Magenta Foundation's 2012 Flash Forward winners, his experience in photobook publishing began with an internship with Chris Boot LTD, which Anderson has managed since Boot's was made director of the Aperture Foundation. His work in publishing lead him to start his own imprint, Bemojake, releasing his first book See You Soon in 2010. Now out of print, See You Soon was released to a great reception, included as one of Sean O'Hagan's best photography books of the year for The Guardian in addition to being on three of photo-eye's Best Books lists in 2010. In his review for photo-eye, George Slade called it "an ideal application of self-publishing."

The newest offer from Anderson is Work In Progress, a photographic sketchbook created for the 2012 C/O Berlin Book Days event, a showcase and discussion on visual dialogues with an emphasis on self-publishing. Anderson was kind enough to share a bit about the making of the Work In Progress and his intentions behind it, as well as a video documenting the actual book being produced by Anderson himself, along with some butt shaking.

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Work In Progress came about when I was kindly invited to participate at the C/O Berlin Book Days event in May 2012. The invitation came at a time when I was considering my work in general, spending hours flipping through negative files and going slightly insane talking to the wall about what I want and enjoy in photography. This process also embarrassingly involved looking at my own website on different computers, just in case a different screen would give me a new revelation. The only thing that really gave me was sore eyes and sleep deprivation.

from Work In Progress by Maxwell Anderson

Another contributing factor in the decision to produce a sketchbook of work is my online work, Absolute Present, which has been going for 6 years or so now. It’s a monthly online publication of photographs taken from everyday seeing and experiencing, with no particular pre-conceptions about what I’m looking for. From it may come a specific piece of work, but for the most part it’s a wandering digression. I made the blog initially because I was taking so many photographs I enjoyed looking at, but were just being processed, contact sheeted and stored, only browsable by me or my friends. The monthly blog seemed more accessible idea… Moving on from that, my website has come to feel almost as futile as my negative files, and my desire for the physical object nibbles at my brain when I look at my computer screen. I’m not the most HTML savvy individual around, so I’m not always inspired to sit for hours updating my website. I would much rather spend that time fingering paper stocks and perving over book cover designs. I imagine all my work as a potential book or exhibition, but to be honest I don’t really have enough money to materialise them.

from Work In Progress by Maxwell Anderson

And so, Work In Progress seemed a fun and satisfying way to offer people something interesting to look at. And that’s really what I want, for this book, and I guess to an extent, in general. Enjoy looking at images. Enjoy the beauty of print media. It was actually rather exciting for me to make WIP, because it was my first time to experiment with full colour Xerox printing. I went down to my local print shop in Deptford, south east London and spent a day printing test sheets out. I’m never sure whether they enjoy working with me or whether I piss them off. They're not used to someone ordering in their own stock of multi-coloured sugar paper, and asking them not to saddle stitch so one can hand bind it with pieces of multi-coloured string!

Original cover of Work In Progress

Originally I drew a portrait of myself for the front cover. But then I found it much more fun to make little sketches of parts of images in the collection.

I then spent a day cutting the corners off all the printed sheets, stringing them together, and finally signed and numbered them all. It got pretty boring, so half way through I made a little video of myself carrying out the laborious task, and then having a bit a of dance. Ordered some plastic sleeves then carted them off to Berlin for Book Days. I’m a believer in pricing as close to the cost price as feasibly possible, because I used to hate being a student, seeing books I really wanted but were extortionately over priced… I am, therefore, a terrible businessman. -- Maxwell Anderson

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Fertile Geometry. Photographs by David Pollock.
Published by Punto Marte, 2011.

Fertile Geometry

Reviewed by Judy Natal

Fertile Geometry
Photographs by David Pollock. Edited and designed by Urbanautica. Introductions by David Pollock, Andrea Filippin and David R. Montgomery.

Punto Marte, 2011. Hardbound. 64 pp., 30 color illustrations, 11x10-3/4".

David Pollock, by his own admission, has been staring down at dirt for quite some time. In his recent photographic book Fertile Geometry, he is an expert at it while making quiet, contemplative, large format, color landscape photographs that invite the viewer to join him up to ankles in mud, while considering the state of the earth, our imprint on it, and our lack of generosity toward it.

For two years, Pollock photographed in the farmlands of Sasnich Peninsula on Vancouver Island, positioning the subject of farming as both a romantic relationship between man and nature, and as an inescapable interaction with the natural world. The photographs speak of our use of the land, and the title is a play on the idea that nature is non-linear and human beings are decidedly geometric, measureable, and straight edged. The photographs depict the many ways we draw lines in the earth, creating demarcations that separate us from nature. Plow lines and plantings, gates and manmade canals, the ever present rows of telephone poles and wires, and plots of land cordoned off limits by tape and fences, define the insistent hand of man that is everywhere upon the earth.

Fertile Geometry, by David Pollock. Published by Punto Marte, 2011.

Fertile Geometry, by David Pollock. Published by Punto Marte, 2011.

In Pollock's quiet, well composed, color photographs, however, nature always seems to have the last word, with ameba-shaped puddles and unruly shrubs and trees, plants that escape the boundaries defined by our machines. Nature defies us at every turn, though with a quiet stealth that is omnipresent, overriding the ordered world we like to think we live in.

Fertile Geometry, by David Pollock. Published by Punto Marte, 2011.

Fertile Geometry, by David Pollock. Published by Punto Marte, 2011.

Farms and houses line the edges of the photographs, becoming yet another kind of containment for the dirt, soil, grass, crops, water, clouds, sky. The cover photograph is repeated as the last image of the book and perhaps sums up the message of Pollack's photographs best. The image depicts deep gouges of huge tire tracks that abruptly begin in the foreground and proceed toward the deep space of the horizon that is obscured in fog. The photograph becomes the metaphor by which to read the rest of the images, asking the viewer to consider our land use, where are we going, what is the destination, and most importantly, what is the hurry. No inch of land is left untouched.—JUDY NATAL

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JUDY NATAL is a Chicago artist and author of EarthWords, and Neon Boneyard Las Vegas A-Z. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally and are in the permanent public collections of the the Museum of Contemporary Art, California Museum of Photography, Center for Creative Photography, among others. She has received numerous grants and fellowships including a Fulbright Travel Grant, Illinois Arts Council Photography Fellowships, Polaroid Grants and New York Foundation for the Arts Photography Fellowships. Natal has also been awarded numerous artist residencies nationally and internationally, most recently in Iceland and the Biosphere 2 for her current work Future Perfect. Her work can be seen at her website http://www.judynatal.com.

Night and Day by David Armstrong

The passing of time imparts a certain magic on photography, which is especially true of the new book from David Armstrong published by Morel. Taken in New York in 1979, the images depict vibrant, creative youth, Armstrong and his friends at the short-lived but influential Mudd Club and on frequent trips to Cape Cod. He had taken images as an experiment more than anything else; continuing to pursue his portraiture, his long-time friend Nan Goldin encouraged him to carry around a 35mm camera, which he did for about nine months. It was the first time he'd ever shot in color. At the time Armstrong decided not to show the work because of the obvious similarities to Goldin, and while there are plenty of similarities to be seen, it's also clear that these images were made with a very different eye. Despite the highly saturated Kodachrome slide film and snapshot style, there is a visible through-line to the portraiture Armstrong has become known for; these photographs seem principally concerned with beauty.

from Night and Day by David Armstrong

from Night and Day by David Armstrong

In the many write ups and blurbs on this book and its corresponding show, certain terms repeat. Timeless is a big one; indeed, the images somehow look solidly from 1979, but also no time at all -- partially because of the '50s and '60s clothes that so many were wearing, partially because even today these styles read as cool. Coolness is a big factor here. Armstrong's circle included a number of people who would go on to big things -- another frequently mentioned item. I have to admit, on my first page through, a few faces were familiar, but I didn't recognize a single one of them. I was too busy admiring the beauty of what Armstrong captured, how oddly perfect everything seemed to be, young, frenzied, free.  Time has also made these images more remarkable by letting us see into the future, recognizing the faces that will become famous, knowing the tragedy of drug addiction and AIDS that is right around the corner -- images from the edge of a paradigm shift, from an iconic time in New York.

from Night and Day by David Armstrong

from Night and Day by David Armstrong

The book has the intimate feel of a photo album, or perhaps a slide show. It is wonderfully designed, the boards covered in a shiny dark blue cloth that looks like it may have been apparel fabric in a former life -- stretch pants, a light jacket -- definitely something from the seventies. Poet (and photographic subject) Rene Ricard lends his handwriting to the cover, as well as a poem written during the year the images were taken that is strikingly self-aware of the fragility of this kind of youthful existence, which for me, encapsulates both the joy and pathos of the photographs. The book ends with a conversation between Armstrong and fellow photographer Jack Pierson that reminisces about the days and people in the photographs, but moves on to engage Armstrong as an artist who has been working for thirty years. Several online publications have published interviews with Armstrong and many more have write ups. I've linked to the best of them here, but don't let the name-dropping spoil you -- enjoy this book without looking out for the famous faces. -- Sarah Bradley

Interview Magazine
W Magazine
Vice
The Wild

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Hourglass, Painting on Door, 2012 -- John Chervinsky

In his Studio Physics series, photographer and scientist John Chervinsky captures the passage of time in his carefully composed still lifes. After assembling his scene, Chervinsky makes a photograph that he then crops and sends to a painting factory in China where it is reproduced with an artist's brush. During the time it takes for the painting to be made and shipped, the initial still life sits and ages, allowing for the display of the passage of time when the painting is incorporated into the still life and rephotographed. The resulting images are a spellbinding combination of photography and painting, the past and the present, the seen and the unseen.

Our exhibition featuring work by Julie Blackmon and John Chervinsky closes on September 15th, but before it does we are happy to be able to share with you another statement from Chervinsky on the creation of one of his photographs. 

__________________________________

Until recently, I’ve attempted to express visually, a fairly impersonal trajectory of the passage of time. Even as much as I’ve included motifs commonly used in Vanitas paintings, I don’t necessarily expect the viewer to get an emotional charge as they contemplate the state of decay of my subjects. In fact, much of the symbolism that I typically include comes from a worldview based on reason. For example, I have very strong associations with objects like keys, locks, doors and so forth. Scientific research is just that: solving a puzzle, unlocking a mystery, opening the door to knowledge.

Earlier this year, and as I was working on the beginning stages of Hourglass, Painting on Door, 2012, my mother became very ill. She actually passed away as the right side of the hourglass was being painted, across the globe in China. After several weeks, I finally felt like working again, and began with the final assembly. I didn’t set out to create the image because I happened to be going through a personal crisis, but its final realization was certainly affected by it.

I decided to add an anonymous vintage photograph. I thought that it might be an interesting idea to get a viewer to not only to think about time and its physical manifestation (as expressed by the lock, the key and the physical act of the falling sand), but also place an emphasis in human terms. Does the symbolic aspect of the hourglass, combined with the mysterious photograph and even my own reflection in the doorknob, locked in time by the strobe, move you to think about the sadness of time slipping away? It did for me, when I tripped the shutter.

detail from Hourglass, Painting on Door, 2012 -- John Chervinsky

I believe that there is fertile ground to sow by running a humanistic narrative, in counterpoint to an indifferent, yet seemingly infinite universe. I don’t yet know how this may manifest itself in future work, but I’m excited to try.

Two summers ago I had the pleasure of reading How it Ends by astrophysicist Chris Impey. In it, he gives us an excellent, if not terrifying, yet mathematically precise sketch of the entire history of our 13.7 billion years of time, and us in it:

“To get a grip on this vast track of time, let’s shrink or accelerate the history of the universe by a factor of 13.7 billion. Imagine it’s now the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve and the big bang took place at the same time last year. Planet Earth forms in Mid September, cells with nuclei first appear in Mid November, animals began colonizing the land on December 21. The first humans evolve just an hour and a half before midnight on December 31. The glory of the Renaissance, the Agricultural and Industrial revolutions, the space Age, and the rise of computer technology all fit inside the last second of this cosmic year. A human life in this scale model is a little more than a tenth of a second. If the universe has existed for a year, all our personal hopes, dreams and ambitions are squashed into the blink of an eye”

There is a parlance of the term the sublime - which is sometimes called "pleasurable terror" and one that I feel when I read the Impey passage. I follow our scientific advancements with great enthusiasm. I love seeing the great imagery now being beamed back to earth from Mars, from the Curiosity rover. As the pieces of the puzzle slowly assemble toward completion of our scientific understanding, it can also be an unsettling experience - especially if we try to place it in human terms. I cannot think of a deeper well of artistic inspiration, I hope I can do it justice. -- John Chervinsky

Read Chervinsky's statement on Tomatoes, Painting Against Wall, 2012

Read the interview with John Chervinsky

See Chervinsky's work on the Photographer's Showcase

For more information on John Chervinsky's photographs, please contact Anne Kelly at photo-eye Gallery by email or by calling (505) 988-5152 x202.

We are excited to introduce a new selection of images from longtime Photographer's Showcase artist Cig Harvey.

White Witch Moth -- Cig Harvey

This new collection of images is made up of photographs featured in her first book from Schilt Publishing, You Look At Me Like An Emergency that topped photo-eye's bestseller's list twice and has been on the list for a total of six weeks. The Photographer's Showcase portfolio collects images from nearly 10 years of Harvey's photographic career, spanning her well-known self-portraits and recent work photographed in and around her home in Maine. Whether photographing herself or another, Harvey's vibrant and visually stunning images connect to a world that isn't foreign enough to feel unreal, but is different enough from the every day to feel slightly magical.

Devin and The Fireflies, 2010 and The Cherries, 2007 -- Cig Harvey

"I’ve always been drawn to personal work in art, music and literature as a device to tap into the universal. My work reflects, either indirectly or directly, what I am concerned with at that time but it’s always the human spirit that fascinates me. I initially used myself as the subject when I was creating work about the past, but the pictures were never really specifically about me, rather the universal emotion I was trying to explore. A shift happened in 2005 when I started to make work about the present. I no longer needed to be in the images, I just needed to have my camera in hand and look at the world around me. I gravitate towards magical realism in photography. Trying to seek out an image that causes a visual jolt, it’s a form of escapism and creates a balance or edited mirror on reality. I search for locations, light, and weather that will isolate and provide a stage for the gaze or gesture of the subject. I’ve always been interested by what is timeless in a portrait. I photograph the people I am surrounded by, so that I can recognize the moment when I don’t know them; in that frame, our relationship is somehow compromised and the familiar becomes foreign." -- Cig Harvey from the photo-eye Blog interview on You Look At Me Like An Emergency

The Hope Chest, 2007 and Doug and Harriet, 2010 -- Cig Harvey

Capturing that moment between the familiar and the foreign is what allows Harvey's images to coexist as universal and personal. Even the photographs in which she appears are never entirely self-portraits -- her form is there to fill a role, but the identity of her character is unimportant. Harvey's photographs extend further outward, the introspective and emotive scenes seem quietly allegorical, and ultimately, relatable. In book form, the work becomes more personal:

"Through words and pictures Harvey has recorded an imaginative epic of unknowing, discovery, and deepening; she reveals herself, in all her complications and anecdotal delight, as a person coming to grips with that significant other who does, now and then, regard her as amiably odd, perhaps even needful of loving care. Readers of the book may feel the same way." -- George Slade from his review of You Look At Me Like An Emergency

View Harvey's work on the Photographer's Showcase

Purchase a signed copy of Harvey's book You Look At Me Like An Emergency

Read the photo-eye Blog interview with Cig Harvey

Read George Slade's review of You Look At Me Like An Emergency

For more information on Cig Harvey's work, please contact Anne Kelly at photo-eye Gallery by email or by calling the gallery at (505) 988-5152 x202

Interrogations by Donald Weber

We begin this week with two titles from Melanie McWhorter's Best Books list for 2011. Her blog post about the books earlier this year focused on the books as important examples of violence as depicted in photography. "Two recent books that exemplify this point are Javier Arcenillas’ Sicarios: Latin American Assassins and Donald Weber’s Interrogations. Both are lushly printed, thoughtfully edited, and provide visual and textual insight to the photographer’s motivation and intent."

"Donald Weber’s Interrogations is a masterpiece of design by Amsterdam’s Heijdens Karwei and printed by Wachter GMBH & Co in Bönnigheim, Germany. The book is stitched with one thread in the center and wrapped in a textured printed paper that mimics one of the wallpapers of the interrogation rooms. The uncut text block allows a play on design; the 'creep' extends way beyond the cover. This element is cleverly designed, but feels as though it may also be commentary on the character of those unseen in the second section. It is finished with a cardboard slipcase. It is presented in three chapters: Prologue, which shows some images of daily life; interrogations, portraits of confused, distressed and scared citizens being questioned by the authorities; and finishes with Epilogue by Larry Frolick and Weber, a text which further illustrates Frolick and Weber's love for the Russian citizens and their role in this project: 'letting the denied tell their stories through you.' Interrogations illustrates Weber's love for his temporary home of the ex-Soviet Union and the bureaucracies and inequalities that still exist and often impede 'progress.'" From Melanie McWhorter's blog post on Sicarios and Interrogations

purchase/view images from Interrogations

Sicarios by Javier Arcenillas

"In Sicarios, the conditions of the lives of assassins and those living in Guatemala make up more of the story than just the killings. Many images are violent and disturbing, partially because often the victims have committed a minor injustice, if any at all, and the assassins are often young men who see no future for themselves, men for whom killing becomes a job motivated by simply a need to make a living, and often a meager one at that. Sicarios is a vehicle for Javier Arcenillas, with the help of his friends at El Periodico de Guatemala, to tell a very real story. Included is an introduction by the director of El Periodico, Juan Luis Font, and an interview with Arcenillas, and complete plate listing with detailed captions. Each plate is equally as engaging as the next showing fleeting moments of movement in intense situations or scenes in crisp sharp fine details. The printing, at Ofset Yapimevi in Istanbul, resulting in crisp whites and lush blacks, are quite seductive, leading me to want to look and discover what is in each frame." From Melanie McWhorter's blog post on Sicarios and Interrogations

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More Cooning with Cooners from Archive of Modern Conflict

More Cooning with Cooners is right up there with my favorites from the Archive of Modern Conflict. Exceptionally well designed from the black soft-edged stripe along the covers to the red end pages with beautiful pen and ink drawings, to the opening essay and reproduction of the cover of the 1924 book Cooning with Cooners. It is a deceptively complicated little book, strangely haunting and unresolved.

"As a British citizen, I have to confess I didn't know much about 'coon hunting before I opened this book. Now having closed it, I'm not sure how much better informed I am. This is simultaneously the most confusing and the most beguiling thing about this book. It is not an obscure, difficult or even unfocussed publication – More Cooning With Cooners is as much about raccoons, and the hunting thereof, as a sixty-page photobook can be. Even the cover is designed to resemble a raccoon pelt, with the bloody red endpapers inside evoking the inevitable conclusion of the chase. It's just that, alongside this thematic coherence, this blatancy about its theme, there is an ambiguity about the photographs within, and the book project itself, that far exceeds one's initial expectations." From Faye Robson's review of More Cooning with Cooners

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Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s

Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s is a delightful book of portrait work that likely slipped under most people's radar. Meadows' straightforward and earnest approach to his subjects yielded impressive results, and the book is a wonderful snap shot of Great Brittan during these decades -- full of tender awkwardness, funny clothes and sweet moments, and lots of smiles.

"In 1973, Daniel Meadows got a UK Arts Council grant of £750. He bought a double-decker bus, converted the top deck into a bedroom, fitted a toilet, kitchen and darkroom and converted the bottom deck into an exhibition space. With all his equipment in place, Meadows hit the road. His goal; to provide a photographic survey of the people of England.

"Portraits from the series Photographic Omnibus form the heart of Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s. The directness, open curiosity and charismatic anonymity of the pictures make them a UK antithesis to Richard Avedon's star subjects of the American West." From Colin Pantall's review of Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s

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Jennifer Schwartz talks about Crusade for Collecting at photo-eye

Where: photo-eye Gallery, 376 Garcia Street, Suite A, Santa Fe, NM
When: Friday, August 24th, 6-8pm
Contact: Melanie McWhorter
Phone: 505.988.5152 x 112
Email: melanie@photoeye.com

photo-eye Gallery is pleased to host Jennifer Schwartz, owner of Jennifer Schwartz Gallery in Atlanta and the online photography project, The Ten. Last year she launched the ongoing, mission-based project The Crusade for Collecting, born out of her passion for supporting art and artists. The Crusade’s mission is to cultivate a new crop of art lovers, patrons and collectors by encouraging people to engage with art in exciting and innovative ways.

Jennifer will speak about the genesis of her Crusade and the ways individual artists can use the same thought principles to build audiences for their work. From developing unique programming at her gallery to working with photographers to build their own collector base to driving a 1977 VW bus around the country to bring art to the people, Schwartz’s Crusade is one you want to know about.

This event is free and open to the public.
The photo-eye Gallery is located at 376 Garcia Street, Suite A, Santa Fe, NM and is open Monday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm.

Lovesody. Photographs by Motoyuki Daifu.
Published by Little Big Man Books, 2012.

Lovesody

Reviewed by Christopher J. Johnson

Lovesody
Photographs and text by Motoyuki Daifu
Little Big Man Books, 2012. Hardbound. 68 pp., color illustrations, 8-3/4x11-1/4".


Lovesody is Motoyuki Daifu's first photobook. It documents his brief stint as the lover of a young single mother during the time of her second pregnancy. Lovesody juxtaposes images of sexuality with those of motherhood in startling ways; though the work has been considered diaristic the presence of the photographer is nullified. Daifu is, we suppose, the eye of the camera.

The book itself opens with this statement from Daifu, "I met [Asami] when she was only twenty years old. She already had a two-year-old boy and she was already pregnant again. I fell in love with her at first sight. A girl and a mother. She had two characters in herself… This is our six month lovesody." From this point an interesting thing happens; we see Asami the mother, Asami the woman but, no Asami the lover. In that sense the book seems to fail at its promised delivery. Erotic is not an applicable term with these photographs; the sexuality present here always stands side by side with the motherly and becomes subsumed by it. The mature womanly form is always present with the form of the infant.

Lovesody, by Motoyuki Daifu. Published by Little Big Man Books, 2012.

However, these photos are intimate and tasteful. Daifu gives us a complete arc in the lives of his subjects as we follow Asami, the young mother, through the last three or four months of her pregnancy through her birth and, then, for a short while after until the end of the "affair." Though the motherly here defaults on old standards (dinnertime, the child in tantrum, breast feeding) it is unique to see someone so young assume the role and, also, provides us a rare occasion to view the domesticity of a young single mother living in Japan and for that cause alone accrues an achievement.

Lovesody, by Motoyuki Daifu. Published by Little Big Man Books, 2012.

Lovesody, by Motoyuki Daifu. Published by Little Big Man Books, 2012.

Daifu errs on the side of high focus, washed-out (or low color) photographs. Each picture seems saturated with light; the oddity in this is that one feels a sense of sterility built into the very collection itself, something of florescence and hospitals with their pale color schemes and diffused lighting and yet, something pure and almost virginal.

Lovesody, by Motoyuki Daifu. Published by Little Big Man Books, 2012.

Lovesody is a strong start for Motoyuki Daifu and well worth consideration. This collection grows on you. The casual observer feels at first a repulsion caused by the lack of Asami and her children's self awareness that, with repeated viewing, grows into an intimacy both startling and genuine; it is a view into the home that we all experience personally, but rarely encounter through the lens. This quality of honesty is one which I hope Daifu will continue to convey as his career takes shape.—CHRISTOPHER J. JOHNSON

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Christopher J. Johnson is originally from Madison Wisconsin. He came to Santa Fe in 2002 and graduated from the College of Santa Fe majoring in English with an emphasis in poetry. He is an arts writer for the Weekly Alibi in Albuquerque. 

Amc2 Journal Issue 2. Edited by Archive of Modern Conflict.
Published by Archive of Modern Conflict, 2012.

Amc2 Journal. Issue 2.

Reviewed by Sarah Bradley

Amc2 Journal. Issue 2.
Edited by Archive of Modern Conflict
Archive of Modern Conflict, 2012. Softcover. 128 pp., illustrated throughout, 8x11".


I suppose it's possible to approach something without expectations yet still be surprised by it, as I was with Issue 2 of Amc2 Journal from Archive of Modern Conflict. A small amount of investigation reveals that this issue is (nearly) an entirely different animal from the first, not simply in form, but also in tone and content. The fantastic design by Melanie Mues jumps out immediately. Unlike the perfect bound Issue 1, Issue 2 has two stitches down the spine with untrimmed pages extending in a significant creep. The layered page edges echo the cover illustration abstracted from one of Martin Parr's beloved postcards of concrete hotels that are shared with us inside. Illustrations grace glossy paper while smaller pages of text are nestled within; matt paper booklets stitched into each section contain an essay or text accompanying the images, each with its own cover design. About half way through, the pages change color -- the white-bordered glossy pages become brown, black and orange, giving the last three image collections their own color schemes.

Amc2 Journal. Issue 2, by ARCHIVE OF MODERN CONFLICT. Published by Archive of Modern Conflict, 2012.

Where the last issue was exuberant in its show-and-tell of strange and wonderful things, Issue 2 is markedly somber. We begin with elevators and end underground. A booklet from the Marryat & Scott Lifts company informs us of leveling problems, floor plans for architects and their lovely selection of elevator interiors, followed by strange and beautiful images from the 1950s of the pale pristine and unpopulated floors of the KaDeWe department store in Berlin. These photographs are accompanied by the first of several substantial and well-researched essays that provide a wealth of information while rarely analyzing the images, giving context without removing the material from the exploratory nature established here. They give the issue a decidedly journal-like feel. Photographs of sculptures from the collection of the British Museum made by Stephen Thompson, a nearly forgotten photographer working in the late 19th century, are beautifully shot with natural light and joined by the story of Thompson's difficult career and his son's madness. Next comes the delicious collection of postcards from Parr, concrete modernist hotels from the Spanish coast and shockingly blue skies, pools and oceans. With a brief statement Parr, the booklet contains translations of the text on the back of the postcards, predictably general and convivial, yet consistently endearing, as is the 'x' used to mark the precise room of one traveler.

Amc2 Journal. Issue 2, by ARCHIVE OF MODERN CONFLICT. Published by Archive of Modern Conflict, 2012.

Amc2 Journal. Issue 2, by ARCHIVE OF MODERN CONFLICT. Published by Archive of Modern Conflict, 2012.

The survey of work by Mark Neville with essay by Liz Adams is an example of the immediate cultural relevance of this journal. With an inclination towards the archival, this isn't a venue in which one would expect to encounter contemporary work, yet its inclusion doesn't feel out of place. In addition to filling in a gap in my photographic education, Neville's photographs and unusual practice are fascinating and so outside the norm as to be illuminating commentary on the current system. The juxtaposition of this contemporary practitioner works well within context, particularly when followed by the poetic portraits of artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and the mournful tale of his premature death and wife's resulting decent into madness, a story tipped from romanticism by reproductions of Sophie Brzeska's automatic writing and unsettling pen and ink drawings created while hospitalized. The funeral practices of the Fali, a small Central African tribe with the unusual tradition of binding the deceased in a seated position, arms and legs out stretched, burying them upright, are illustrated with remarkable images taken in the late 1930s, while Jonathan Fogel's accompanying text is educational and notably friendly. Nine days of AMC sponsored archeological excavating concludes the book. Digging small trenches and listing what was found, it is a graphic display of the history packed in every square inch of earth in London. Traces of the past and lives lived over centuries emerge from the mud, extracted by self-professed mudlark Mark Chesterman and photographed by longtime AMC collaborator Stephen Gill.

Amc2 Journal. Issue 2, by ARCHIVE OF MODERN CONFLICT. Published by Archive of Modern Conflict, 2012.

I've spent several weeks with this collection and I'm not done digesting it. This issue has the distinct feeling of being about something bigger than its parts; leitmotifs of buildings and earth, burial and discovery, madness and loss appear nestled in these articles and images in various combinations, but connections feel intuitive. Are there conclusions to be made? I couldn't say, but my mind is still working over the material (I still haven't puzzled out the Four Stories subtitle), and I expect it will be for sometime. The Amc2 Journals reward curiosity, and from what I've seen of the first three issues, they are nimble enough to continue to do so in interesting ways. Remaining reliable in the right places -- attention to detail and quality of content from selections to essays to concept -- AMC is clearly giving itself enough freedom to avoid becoming predictable or boring. For some, there is strength in inconsistency.—SARAH BRADLEY

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Amc2 Journal Issue 1 is available here. Read Sarah Bradley's review here.

SARAH BRADLEY is a writer, sculptor, costumer and general maker of things currently living in Santa Fe, NM. Some of her work can be seen on her occasionally updated blog. She has been employed by photo-eye since 2008.