Diamond Matters, Kadir van Lohuizen

Mirroring the progress of the diamond from the mines of Africa to the world of fashion, Diamond Matters records the lifespan of the world’s most precious stone. Starting with the mineworkers—many just children—celebrated photographer Kadir van Lohuizen tracks the sparkling ice on its socially upward journey. With interviews from those digging it from hillsides with bare hands to participants in conflicts in Zaire, Sierra Leone, and Angola; to dealers and to wearers, it is a beautiful yet deeply disturbing and thought-provoking book.

The book charts the rising awareness of the blood diamond issue, as pressure and the threat to its image grew in the diamond industry to create a certification system guaranteeing that only conflict-free diamonds came on the market. While new pacts have reduced smuggling and added more transparency, still little of the world’s enormous mineral profits flow back to the people. A fair-trade agreement with profits shared by all is the next step.
Bound in luxurious suede, with a small diamond on the front cover, and elegantly printed in tritone on five different papers, Diamond Matters is an explosive idea in a small package.

Dutch-born Kadir van Lohuizen is the recipient of numerous international awards and grants, including prizes from World Press Photo in 1997 and Foundation Vluchteling; the Dick Scherpenzeel Prize in 2000; a 2001 grant from the Foundation for Visual Arts, Design, and Architecture; and more. He is the author of five books and numerous exhibitions.

Keith Carter: Hocus Focus Master Class

November 12-14 2010

This shooting/discussion master class is designed to help you discover or renew your creative spirit, and broaden the way you think about photography. Its purpose is to help serious amateur or professional photographers reconcile practical and creative lives, to re-examine your own creative process exploring the narrative, aesthetic, and emotional aspects of image making, and find new paths to creative growth. Our goals are to help each participant develop or refine a sense of personal style and to make serious amateur, fine-art, and commercial work more passionate and fulfilling.

Emphasizing simplicity, use of natural light, practical demonstrations, field-trips, individual portfolio reviews, and discussions centering on the work of both historically significant and little known photographers, we try to refine our views on producing work and balancing the various aspects of a busy life. In addition to various techniques and expressive digital printmaking, we discuss how to develop projects, exhibitions, and the publishing world.

Participants may work in black and white or color, film or digital. All camera formats welcome. Everyone is encouraged to bring a sense of humor and a sense of purpose. Wise-asses, hotdogs, and burn-outs are welcome.

Tuition & fees: $850

A Beginner's Workshop on Photobook Publishing, with Melanie McWhorter

December 6 & 7, 2010

This two-day workshop covers the evolution of a photography book from its inception as an idea to a finished product.

Intended for photographers with little or no experience in publishing, A Beginner's Workshop on Photobook Publishing is an interactive, dynamic workshop that enables participants to fine tune their ideas and become familiar with design, layout and essential publishing processes. When completed, participants will be able to make decisions about publishing their work and envision all of the steps involved in producing their project from start to finish.

Placed between two weekends of PhotoNOLA, the timing of this workshop is ideal for photographers interested in attending the many events and exhibitions that take place during New Orleans' annual celebration of photography.

Topics covered include researching and developing the concept for a book and the important decisions that must be made at each step along the way. For instance, how does one determine a target audience? What publisher is right for you and how do you approach them? Is it better to work with an established publisher, or is it better to self-publish in the bold new world of the digital book?

Melanie covers the basic components of financing, as well as the essentials of distribution ranging from such easily overlooked matters as storage, to the finer points of what is required to get the book on to the dealers' shelves. This workshop is the perfect publishing overview for photographers of all levels.

Tuition: $395

Susan Meiselas, Nicaragua June 1978 - July 1979

Originally published in 1981, Susan Meiselas' Nicaragua is a modern classic--a seminal contribution to the literature of concerned photojournalism. John Berger praised the work for its ability to, "take us right inside a revolutionary moment... Yet unlike most photographs of such material, these refuse all the rhetoric normally associated with such pictures: The rhetoric of violence, revolutionary heroism and the glorification of misery." Nicaragua forms an extraordinary narrative of a nation in turmoil. Starting with a powerful and chilling evocation of the Somoza regime during its decline in the late 1970s, the images trace the evolution of the popular resistance that led to the insurrection, culminating with the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in 1979. The 2008 edition includes Pictures from a Revolution, a DVD (NTSC, Region 1: U.S. and Canada) in which Meiselas returns to the scenes she originally photographed, tirelessly tracking down the subjects and interviewing them about the reality of post-revolution Nicaragua.

Debbie Fleming Caffery | Visual Storytelling | October 21-25, 2010

This workshop invites photographers to explore a unique and challenging intersection, one that is fundamental to the nature of photography- images that document the world from a personal perspective.

Through daily morning discussions and reviews of works in progress followed by afternoon shooting sessions, participants hone their skills, capture emotional content, and create memorable images in a legendary New Orleans neighborhood. Famous for its friendly, eccentric and colorful characters, the French Quarter over its nearly 300-year history has inspired artists and writers from Edgar Degas and Walker Evans to William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and any number of others whose creativity was sparked by its diverse and individualistic inhabitants. Mime artists and street performers, exotic dancers and drag queens, blues singers and fortunetellers all contribute to the heady mix of a neighborhood known for round the clock street life.

SnapSHOT: The bathers, by Jennette Williams

Budapest, 2002 is copyright Jennete Williams

The Center for Documentary Studies ant Duke University awarded Jennette Williams with its first ever Book Prize in Photography. Mary Ellen Mark selected this years prize and it couldn't have happened to a kinder person.

View some of the work here.

More info about Jennette and the book can be found here: CDS Books

Scratching at the Surface

Went to visit the Met a few weeks ago to see Surface Tension, a small, concise show that put photos as objects front and center. The show is an even mix of images OF textures and depictions of terrain and photo objects that are physically manipulated.

The surface images include Miles Coolridges's Accident Investigation Site (2005), a life size (22' x 7 1/2') photograph or a strip of Los Angeles highway. Coolridge, known for his suburban landscapes and immense textural studies, brings a bit of high-tech whiz bang to the mostly lo-fi creations in the show. Digitally assembled from many images, Accident... accentuates every speck of gravel and garbage from the Highway and is all about the surface represented: cold, harsh and ignored.

At the other end of the spectrum, whith as much scale, is Christian Marclay's Memento (Soul II Soul). A lovely cyanotype made from the remnants of and old Soul II Soul Cassette tape. By far, my favorite piece in the show... but I've always been a huge admirer of Marclay's work. As a sound artist, sculptor, photographer and all around cool guy, Marclay has been instrumental in the world of music, visual arts and performance. Memento is from a large body of cyanotypes that repurpose the lowly analog cassette. It is exquisite in its delicacy and grand in its scale. Not to be missed.

There is an early photogram from Adam Fuss which was created by allowing several snakes to writhe about on a large sheet of photo paper that was dusted with talcum powder. The resultant "photo" is the most "drawn" in the exhibition and along with Marco Bruer's Spin (C-823) and Chris McCaw's Sunburned, GSP #166, Mohave/Winter Solstice truly play upon the physicality of a photograph and become less about image and more about object.

In all there are 30 works in the show which include the likes of: Eileen Quinlan, Ann Hamilton, Andrew Bush, Lee Friedlander, Tom Friedman, Pertti Kekarainen, Anselm Kiefer, Jungjin Lee, Daido Moriyama, Vik Muniz, Giuseppe Penone, Miguel Rio Branco, Lucas Samaras, Frederick Sommer, Tim davis, Wolgang Tillmans, Gerhard Richter, Anna Atkins, Robert Demachy, Walker Evans, Roger Fenton and Aaron Siskind.

Surface Tension draws entirely from the Met's own collection, so some of the work is not as contemporary as I would like, but it is a very cohesive show and is worth seeing just for the sheer variety of work. It is on view at the Metropolitan MUseum of Art in the joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography though May, 16 2010

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Sobering new work from Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan, known for his large scale assemblages of human detritus has some sobering new work from remains found at the Midway Atoll in the Pacific. Not for the faint of heart.

image © 2009 Chris Jordan

Terribly sorry for the long delay

Many apologies to all readers of this blog. I've been away for much too long and have been drowning in work, shows, etc. Thanks to all who have been emailing me with ideas and well wishes. I will be back in full swing soon, but for now go explore some of these things:

Shorpy.com has been doing the vintage photo world great good for a while now. So with Kodachrome officially dead (and no "impossible project" to resurrect it), I thought it'd be aprropriate to share some great 4 x 5 Kodachromes like the one below.

So let's have a moment of silence for Kodachrome and check out Shorpy's great Kodachrome gallery: WWII Kodachrome

The ever intriguing William Lamson had a great show recently at Perogi Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. He's equal parts video, photo, performance and draftsman. Check out more of his stuff here: williamlamson.com

I am what I am and that's all that I am

 

For well over a decade, Nikki S. Lee has been mashing up cultural identity with social cliques. Her two extended series: Projects (1997-2001) and Parts (2002-2005) dealt with Ms. Lee's questioning of identity, class and the power of women over men. Parts placed her in various social scenes (lesbians, gangs, senior citizens) and in Parts, Ms. Lee posed with men who were cropped out of the picture (save for an arm here or a leg there). While some of the images from Projects felt a little too "freshman college sociology classy," the Parts series on the other hand, deftly empowers Lee's "characters" in the images creating a fuller world. Both bodies of work fell deep into the realm of the snapshot aesthetic and helped to bridge the world of completely staged photo productions (Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdosn) with the now ubiquitous world of scripted naturalism.

Lee's most recent work (exhibited at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York) looks to expand Lee's definition of identity and removes any cultural context from the pictures entirely. The Show, Layers, consists of photographs made from layered street portraits of Lee from major cities throughout world. In the work, Lee is investigating her own identity through how others perceive/see her. From the press release:

I am interested in identity as it is affected or changed through social contexts, cultural categories or personal relationships. This interest began through personal experience. I realized that I changed between my surroundings in New York and Seoul, depending on whether I was with my family or friends. So before I was thinking about "who I am" I first started thinking about "where I am".

I agree with Lee's observation that current geographic location can affect our individual identities and that we all probably shift "who we are" depending upon "where we are." I feel it's a survival instinct; we have distinct selves that is in line with where we happen to be: our work-selves, parents-selves, tourist-selves, etc. Unfortunately, Lee's Layers is not giving me enough clues and in the end may be a bit too subtle.

The drawings that Lee commissioned from the dozens of street artists were all made on paper Lee provided (so that she could layer them to form the final image). There is no indication of where the drawing was made (except in the titles) and the photographs hide a bit of the nuances in the line work of the drawings themselves, further removing the portraitist from the equation. In the studio Lee places the drawings on on top of another and backlights them to reveal the different source drawings. Here is where things get a bit grey for me. I wonder how much of Lee's "studio-self" is affecting the order of the layers. Are the layers placed chronologically, aesthetically, by order of likeness or skill? I realize that Lee is not conducting a scientific inquiry into the role of perception and its affects on individualty, but whatever system she employs to arrange the drawings certainly adds another layer to the veil of indentity.

In the end, the works (beautiful large scale black and white prints), reveal more about the skill of the street artist than they do about Lee as an individual. They also display the uncanny influence of western style drawing techniques since there is a sameness to the drawings. You'd be hard pressed to pick out the drawing made in Madrid from the one made in Bangkok based on technique alone. Then again, perhaps Lee is saying more about our global identity than her individual-self. That her transformation through the perception of others thickens her skin and is another Layer that must be shed to find the true self.

Nikki S. Lee
Layers
was on view at Sikemma Jenkins and Co.