276. Photography in Japan

  Essay by Maryko Takeuchi guest curator of "Spotlight on Japan" for Paris Photo 2008   Part 1 Part 2     Introduction   In Japanese, the word for “photograph” is “shashin”. It is made up of two ideograms, “sha” meaning “to reproduce” or “reflect” and “shin” which means “truth.” The Greek etymology of the word “photograph” is to write (graphein) with light (photos). Therefore, in the Japanese mind, the process itself consists in capturing the truth, or the essence of the matter and “making a copy” of it on a surface. Consequently, the result will always contain a certain element of truth. Since the advent of photography, this way of seeing things has become commonplace throughout the world, but in very few languages is the concept expressed with such clarity. If we take as a premise the idea that Japanese photography is the fruit of a multitude of reactions, ranging from empathy to mistrust, to this process of “reproducing the truth,” it becomes easier to gain a better understanding of its astonishing diversity.   Consider Japanese photography as a whole and it becomes evident that a large number of artists tend to express feelings of incomprehension and ambiguity towards reality and the world rather than attempt to decrypt it and objectively analyze it. In his “Empire of Signs,” Roland Barthes remarked that Japanese culture gained its liberty by freeing itself from the meaning of the signs it contains. Up to a point, this can be said about photography. Photography is not a conclusion but a perpetual questioning. In that sense, Barthes got it right when he later compared photography to the art of Haiku in “La Chambre Claire.”     With such diversity in their approach, Japanese photographers demonstrate that there is no such thing as the Truth, with a capital T. And all the while they continue to pose the fundamental question which is to know what photography is capable of reproducing and what eludes attempts at reproduction. For example, since the 1970s, Nobuyoshi Araki, one of Japan’s most eminent photographers, far from focussing on the antagonism between truth and fiction, has continuously tried to demonstrate, in every way possible, that photography is both truth and fiction. Similarly, Daido Moriyama, while subscribing to Warhol’s idea that a photograph is nothing more than a copy, also captures with delicate sensitivity the element of remembrance that inhabits photography. In the 1980s a number of photographers appeared, such as Naoya Hatakeyama, who saw their work as an attempt to analyze and understand the world. At the same time, the trend for “intimist” photography, such as that of Rinko Kawauchi who manages to capture beauty in daily life at its most ordinary, continues to endure in endless formal variations.     One of the characteristics of Japanese photography is the role, increasingly important as time goes by, of printed matter. Whether generalist (magazines) or specialized (photography books), publications have been a vital vehicle for photographers and their work. In fact, no other country in the world boasts such a wealth of publications. This phenomenon is partly explained by the absence, to this day, of a network of galleries or a well-established market for photography. But it can also be attributed to the very particular history of reproduction processes in our country and the culture surrounding it. Specifically, the source can be traced back to the Edo era (1603 - 1867) with the development of unrivalled wood-block techniques, the beauty of the ukiyo-e prints and their immense popularity among the Japanese public.   In recent years, the work of a growing number of individual Japanese photographers has become known in the United States and Europe. But opportunities of presenting a panoramic vision of the history of Japanese photography in Europe are extremely rare. In this respect, the exhibition “New Japanese Photography,” held in New York in 1974 was a real precursor. It was the turn of the 21st Century that brought a more holistic approach to photography, and in this context the major retrospective entitled “The History of Japanese Photography” in 2003 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, was a significant milestone. Ever since, there have been an increasing number of exhibitions and publications in the West. The 2008 edition of Paris Photo with Japan as country of honour therefore comes as the fruit of a long process of maturing.     “Japanism” which subjugated Europe during the second half of the 19th Century was not a matter of passing fashion. Its influence is not only evident in Western art, in particular the impressionist school, but also in terms of lifestyle. The trend was set with the presence of a Japanese pavilion at the 1867 universal exhibition. Here we are in Paris, 141 years later, to present a comprehensive overview of Japanese photography on a scale unprecedented in France. It is my dearest wish that today more than ever, at a time of transition owing to the advent of digital technology, this event will not simply be perceived as “exotic.” It is my hope that it will be a stimulant to help us rediscover all the possibilities offered by the photographic medium and that it will serve as a boost to its creative energy.   General Presentation   Photography arrived in Japan in 1848, exactly nine years after its birth in France and the invention of the daguerreotype. Like many other non-Western countries, Japan became the “object” of images infused with exoticism. But there was a very rapid turn-around as the Japanese transformed themselves from “objects” into “subjects” capable of taking photographs. By 1862, Japanese photographers had established portrait studios in the port cities of Nagasaki and Yokohama, and the second half of the 19th Century saw the gradual development of the Japanese camera-making industry. The turn of the 20th Century brought increasing numbers of amateur photographers throughout the country. Though inspired by traditional Japanese aesthetics, “art photography” (including pictoralism) was still feeling its way.   The 1930s marked the beginning of a clear evolution towards modern photography. The change was brought about by a symbolic event: the creation, in 1932, of “Kôga” a publication whose title is made up of two ideograms meaning “light” (Ko) and “drawing” (ga). Abandoning the term “shashin” (and the implied search for truth in the photographic act) the main figures behind the publication, notably Yasuzô Nojima, Iwata Nakayama and in particular Ihei Kimura, proclaimed their will to embrace modernity through their work on light. Kimura, a master of the Leica, and often referred to as Japan’s Cartier-Bresson, played an unstinting role during the post-war period as the leader in the country’s photography circles. But even before the war, amateur photographers such as Nakaji Yasui or Osamu Shiihara had appeared, not only in Tokyo but also around Osaka, and were tremendously active in exploring the avant-garde.     With the desolation and chaos that followed Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, photoreportage, witness to the population’s desperate situation, dominated the scene for a number of years. But nevertheless, there were concurrent and completely independent efforts to seek out new forms of photographic expression. In this regard, the creation in 1959 in Tokyo by Shomei Tomatsu, Eikoh Hosoe, Ikko Narahara and Kikuji Kawada of the agency “VIVO” marked the birth of a new generation of photographers whose intent was to go beyond mere experimentation to establish a real practice. With a sharp, critical eye on reality, clear concepts, a real sense of composition and framing, coupled with heavy emphasis on the symbolic, this group exerted a tremendous influence on the generation that followed.   In the run-up to the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan was undergoing a period of tremendous economic growth, which provided fertile ground for the flourishing of Japanese photographers in the fields of photo-journalism and advertising. However, in the second half of the 1960s our country, along with many others, was gripped by the turmoil of opposition to the prevailing politics, economics and culture which took the form of student activism and violent protest against the Japanese-American Security Treaty. In 1968, the emblematic year of struggle, the first issue of “PROVOKE”, the publication whose evocative sub-title was “Incendiary Documentation for New Thinking,” sent shock waves through Japanese photographic circles. Members including Takuma Nakahira and Koji Taki, along with Daido Moriyama, who joined the publication for its second issue, embarked on a process of radical deconstruction of the rules and aesthetics of classical photography, whose styles were often called “Are, Bure, Boke,” (Rough, Blurred, Out of Focus).   In that same year, 1968, a group of young photographers began to be called “Konpora,” a Japanese-style contraction of the word “contemporary.” It was grounded in a trend defined by the 1966 exhibition at George Eastman House entitled “Contemporary Photographers:Towards a Social Landscape.” At first glance, the images produced by the “Konpora” group, marked by their neutrality, composition and focus on the insignificance of daily life, appear as the antithesis of those of the “PROVOKE” group. However, and despite the disparity in terms of inspiration, these works were all a reaction against the photographic methodologies that still dominated, as well as being a reflection of the prevailing ambiguity of the period. One of those known as “Konpora”, Yutaka Takanashi, was in fact simultaneously an active contributor to “ PROVOKE.”   In order to present their work to the public, photographers at the time had few options other than to go to specialized publications such as “Asahi Camera”, or “Camera Mainichi,” or else to galleries attached to Canon, Nikon or other leading manufacturers of photographic equipment. In a bid to overcome this, a number of young photographers decided in the 1970s to open galleries of their own. Starting in Tokyo, this initiative soon took root throughout the country. One venue, the “Image Shop Camp,” has remained legendary ever since owing to the activity of photographers such as Daido Moriyama and Keizo Kitajima.     The first gallery specializing in the sale of photographic prints, “Zeit Foto Salon,” opened in 1978. But this was far from being a sufficient impetus to mobilize the domestic market, and to this day, the number of photographers under contract with galleries that are in a position to commercialize their work is singularly limited: most still exhibit with independent galleries or in spaces rented at their own expense. This remains one of the peculiar features of the Japanese photography scene.   Nevertheless, the “economic bubble” of the 1980s provided a favourable environment for Japanese photography, which underwent a period of deep transformation. In particular, a number of technological innovations (notably the AF lens and compact cameras) meant that photography became popular with the Japanese public as never before. Then in the 1990s, the young generation developed a real passion for photography, and in particular photography of a very personal nature. Around the year 1990 saw the opening of several photography museums throughout the country as well as the establishment of a system aimed at measuring the artistic and historic value of the medium. This is how, in spite of a frail market, Japanese photography has developed a physiognomy of its own, and has become institutionalized, while at the same time imposing itself as a mass phenomenon.   During this period, a number of photographers came to the fore with series that stand at the crossroads between art and photography, resting on very precise concepts. They can be roughly divided into two groups: one uses photography as a preferred means of approaching the world from an intellectual stand-point; the other works with this medium to access the imaginary and transcend time and space.   In the first group is Naoya Hatakeyama, who works using a wide variety of angles to comment on the evolution of the urban landscape; Toshio Shibata reveals the sculptural beauty of dams and other anonymous public works; Ryuji Miyamoto captures the remnants of civilization in decomposing objects and structures and Taiji Matsue uses aerial photography to highlight the topography of specific locations.   In the second group, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work can be seen as a critical comment on history and temporality while Yuki Onodera, who has published very diverse series of images, can be said to have freed the imagination and rendered it weightless. Identity, the body and sexuality – all fundamental human questions – are among the themes that dominate Japanese photography. This is certainly true of Miyako Ishiuchi, a pioneer among Japan’s female photographers. For the past thirty years, she has consistently worked on the effects of the passage of time on both clothing and human skin. Ryudai Takano delves into ordinary daily existence to bring to light hidden manifestations of sexual ambiguity or eroticism. By superimposing multiple portraits of members of a given group of people, Ken Kitano attempts to identify the parameters of what constitutes individuality, what makes me “me.” Meanwhile, Tomoko Sawada dresses up and transforms herself into a multitude of different personae in order to question the plurality of our identity. Finally, Asako Narahashi immerses herself in the waters of oceans and lakes to blur the image of stability we bestow upon the world, and in so doing, reveals its ephemeral and fragile qualities.     It is difficult to assign a single stylistic label to the work of all these photographers. However,above and beyond their visual and intellectual contributions, most have the capacity to shake and put into question our convictions and prejudices on a wide variety of issues. At a time when the notions of “limits” and “values” are the subject of never-ending debate in our world, it is not surprising that these works command a great deal of interest. This is no doubt what gives particular substance to Japan’s invitation as country of honour at Paris Photo this year.   The “Statement” section for Paris Photo 2008   In 1989, the world celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of photography. It was a time of unequalled prosperity in Japan and it was around this year that a number of cultural institutions opened in the country, dedicated for a certain part to photography: first came the Kawasaki City Museum, then the Yokohama Museum of Art which opened a photography “department”, and finally the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. At the same time, the immense popularity of the compact camera with the general public led to a real “boom” among the country’s youth. Several events aimed at young people were created, in particular two large competitions: “New Cosmos of Photography” and “Hitotsuboten.” Until then, the driving force behind photography had been specialized magazines and corporate galleries,and these new events gave young people the opportunity to show their work. Another factor was the increasing number of galleries dedicated to photography which allowed experimental talent to blossom and free itself from classic constraints and conventions.       It is in this context, and over the past decade that young photographers emerged whose work is presented by not only the galleries in the Statement section, but also by others throughout the fair. Far from being confined to the criteria of what constitutes “great art,” these works explore all the possibilities offered by the photographic medium, which is seen as one among many other vehicles of creative expression.   For example, Mika Ninagawa, whose work is extremely popular among Japanese youth, does not rest on an established sense of aesthetic. The values she draws upon belong to a “sub-culture”, and it is from there that she creates her own very personal world, characterized by a palette of very bright colours. The theatrical quality of her work has been further reinforced in her most recent creations – films that are inspired by the Manga. Midori Komatsubara also finds inspiration in Manga comics, and specifically the sub-genre that deals with love between young boys: she captures the ambiguity inhabiting the bodies of young women as they hover between fascination and fantasy. Addressing the abjection of her own desires, Yumiko Utsu uses carefully arranged objects in kitsch images in which she manages to reveal elements specific to Japanese youth culture - cruelty and infantilism. Meanwhile, Masayuki Shioda moves effortlessly from one activity to another, collaborating with the music industry as well as with youth culture magazines.   By the second half of the 1990s, this young generation had gradually established itself with work that stood at the crossroads between pure photography and other forms of artistic expression. A lot of work appeared in colour at this time and was chiefly concerned with expressing the feeling of instability that came with the bursting of the economic bubble and a prevailing sense that normal daily existence was somehow under threat.   This vision of the world, which looks as though it is seen through spectacles for the short-sighted, is particularly acute in the images of Rinko Kawauchi. Infused with soft subtle light, they seem heartwarming at first glance. But they also exude an underlying sense of threat. She and Mika Ninagawa both strive to capture what is universal in people and things with a very close observation of the finest details of the immediate environment. Meanwhile, Nobuo Asada goes into the ocean to take his photographs with the intention of positioning himself as the live example of the inevitable interaction between the “photographer subject” and the “photographed object.”   Top         While these artists took a very close up view of the world, other works started to appear starting in the year 2000 in which perspectives are “flattened,” and even the notions of “close” and “distant” are put into question because they are given equal importance. This is a reflection of one of the characteristics of our time, dominated as it is by digital technology which processes information with no regard for the hierarchy of the data. For example, Gentaro Ishizuka chose the Alaska pipeline as a theme. It is the second longest pipeline in the world. He does not dwell on the difficulties of such an undertaking or the gigantic size of the project. His images are so neutral, it is almost discouraging. This very contemporary approach is not unlike the work of Wolfgang Tillmans in his “Concorde series,” in which the photographer views all things without a trace of value judgment.   That said, without obviously subscribing to a specific contemporary “trend,” numerous photographers continue to pose a question that remains fundamental to their chosen mode of expression: What is “photographable?” and What isn’t? Keisuke Shirota pastes small photographs onto canvas and using acrylic paint, prolongs the image beyond its original frame, highlighting the interval between the visible and the invisible, the imaginary and the real. Akiko Ikeda uses pictures of people, extracting cut-out fragments. With a humorous twist not unlike back-lighting, she transforms the two dimensional photograph into a three-dimensional object. While these two artists probe the limits of the frame from the outside, others like Takashi Suzuki, Naruki Oshima, Nobuhiro Oshima and Mamoru Tsukada work from within to seek out the tiny chinks in the boundary between the visible and the invisible.   Others address this issue specifically in relation to memory, which the eye cannot see. Working with memories and historical events linked to Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan, Nao Tsuda spins a delicate narrative made up of landscapes and stories. Tomoko Yoneda is the artist with the longest career among all those presented in the Statement section. She takes highly detailed photographs of landscapes at the scene of historic events or accidents. In this way she explores the limits of visual representation from both an ethical and aesthetic point of view. In our digital age, the image has become a product of “high speed consumption,” and these photographers are in immediate touch with world events as never before. The seriousness and consistency with which they continue their search and their aesthetic choices are such that the viewer feels the need to mark a pause and the desire to reflect.   Japanese Publishers   It is impossible to over-estimate the role of publishing or the printed page in the evolution of Japanese photography. Even before the start of World War II, there were a large number of publications dedicated to photography in Japan. But it was the post-war period and the huge popularity of locally-made cameras that brought a profusion of specialized magazines, notably “Camera,” “Photo Art” and “Asahi Camera,” amongst others, giving even greater impetus to photographic activity. Most of these magazines not only published feature articles and technical advice to amateurs,they also provided information on Western photography and the work of foreign artists. Very soon, they became springboards for Japanese professionals. In the early days, photographic books were published in collaboration with these specialized magazines.   By the second half of the 1950s, though small in number, books became an independent means of expression. The 1960s and 1970s saw the birth of a series of masterpieces: Eikoh Hosoe’s “Barakei” (Ordeal by Roses) in 1963, Kikuji Kawada’s “Chizu” (The Map) in 1965 or Nobuyoshi Araki’s “Senchimentaru na tabi” (Sentimental Journey) in 1971.   In the 1980s, some of the publications that had played a predominant role in photography circles gradually ran out of steam. The magazine “Camera Mainichi” closed in 1985. Photographers increasingly turned to books as a way of disseminating their work. They were supported by very few editors such as Michitaka Ota of Sokyusha. He oversaw the publication of works by many photographers, some well-established, others yet unknown, including the legendary “Karasu” (Ravens) by Masahisa Fukase in 1986. Towards the end of the 1980s, the photographer Osamu Wataya was hired as artistic director of the fashion label “Hysteric Glamour.” In the first half of the 1990s, he oversaw the publication of the “Hysteric” series which brought Daido Moriyama back to the forefront of the photography scene. To this day, Wataya continues to bring out photography books that stand out for their inventive design.       The five publishers presented in the Central Exhibition at Paris Photo began in the afore-mentioned context. They are today the most active partners for photographers in terms of helping them conceive and publish personal material. Far from being considered as mere copies of this or that piece of work or simply information channels, in their eyes, these books are a crucial vehicle for photography, bearing in mind of course that photography is, originally, a technique of reproduction. There are a large number of remarkable photographers in Japan today but still too few galleries willing to commercialize their work. This is why the activity of these publishers is crucial, not only in terms of supporting their work, but also for Japanese photography as a whole.   Established in 1984, Toseisha is the oldest of the five publishing houses. From the beginning, it has consistently published the work of Japanese photographers, both professional and amateur. Its President, Kunihiro Takahashi,who is also chief editor is so dedicated to his work that he personally follows, as far as humanly possible, every single step of the process, from the survey of the contact sheets to mixing the inks himself for the printing. For example, it took him ten years to perfect the refined and expanded edition of the almost mythical work by Hiromi Tsuchida, “Zokushin, Gods of the Earth”, originally published in 1976.   The catalogues of Little More, a publishing house established in 1989, offer a wide variety of books on all aspects of culture. Following the publication in the mid 1990s of work by Takashi Homma and Yurie Nagashima, this publisher started to bring out more books of work by photographers of the young generation. One of these artists,Kayo Ume was able to publish her book “Umeme” which won the Ihei Kimura Prize in 2006 and became an incredible success with over 100,000 copies sold. In her own style and design, Ume captures moments of what is apparently normal daily life, creating images rather like sidelong glances that are at times witty or slightly perfidious. Given its success, her work in many ways embodies the most “popular” aspect of Japan’s photographic culture. Ume’s case is far from unique. Many photographers have earned respect from amateurs and won public acclaim not through exhibiting original prints but through the publication of books.         The first volume of Masafumi Sanai’s work “Ikite iru” (Alive) had a decisive impact on the course of Japanese photographic expression in the past ten years. It was published in 1997, by Seigensha, which was barely two years old at the time and was concerned with the visual arts as a whole. Hideki Yasuda, the director, experienced a real shock when he saw Sanai’s work and the incredible rigour that belies its apparent roughness. After discovering this artist, he went on to publish other photographers, including Jin Ohashi, in particular “Me no mae no Tsuzuki” a particularly strong piece of work in which the artist shows, in an almost carnal manner, the discontinuity between the traumatic event of his father’s failed suicide attempt and the banality of every day life.   The most powerful publisher in the field of photographic books in Japan today is Akaaka Art Publishing. It was founded in 2006 by Kimi Himeno who came from Seigensha where she worked as editor of photography from the beginning. As a consequence of her meeting both Sanai and Ohashi, Himeno realised the immense power of their work as it explores the depths of life and death. She oversaw the publication of a large number of books on the work of mostly young generation photographers. In 2007, the Ihei Kimura Prize was awarded jointly to Leiko Shiga for “Canary,” and Atsushi Okada for “I am,” both published by Akaaka. This publishing house now commands enormous respect for its influence which is at least equal to, if not greater, than that of the photography galleries.   Along with a small group of specialized critics, until the 1980s, the most important players on the Japanese photography scene were the editors of the photography magazines. In the 1990s, they were overtaken by the museum curators. With the 21st Century came the turn of art directors who are passionate about photography, such as Hideki Nakajima or Jun’ichi Tsunoda.With their capacity to spot new talent and unencumbered by institutional burdens, they have been able to rally round them the young generation of photographers.   One figure stands out among this group of discoverers of new talent: Satoshi Machiguchi who was behind the “Ikite iru” project and has since conceived and designed a whole series of art and photography books. In order to be able to work freely and make some of his dreams come true, he set up a light-weight structure in 2005 called “M Label.” The works he has published under this new label can be seen in all their diversity in “Book shop M.” Every one of these books has been very carefully thought out, down to the minutest detail, and is evidence of the close relationship between individual photographers and his or her artistic director. Machiguchi’s flexibility allows him to conduct his activities without becoming caught up in existing publishing circuits. The dynamism of the five publishers presented here and the books themselves that are the product of their efforts offer an understanding of the substance of contemporary Japanese photography and its ongoing evolution.       The Project Room at Paris Photo 2008   Since the early 1990s a growing number of Japanese photographers have started to make films, a trend that can be partly explained by the fact that traditional distinctions between different modes of artistic expression have become increasingly meaningless. This phenomenon clearly rests to a large extent on the development of digital technology, which has greatly facilitated the manipulation of images. That being said, if we go back to the etymology of the word, a photographer is someone who “writes with light.” It naturally follows that he or she can also create “moving images.”   We have put together the programme of the Project Room in such a way as to offer the spectator an insight into the vision and approach emanating from the photographic work of each of the artists, developed here in greater depth or in a more experimental manner. The oldest piece being shown is “Shinjuku, 1973, 25 pm”, the only film ever made by Daido Moriyama. It was shot a year after the publication of his legendary book “Sashin yo sayonara” (Bye bye Photography, 1972). What is there to say about this work, shot in 8mm and commissioned by the municipality of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, apart from the total lack of focus and the fact that from beginning to end, it reads like an aimless roaming through the streets at night, like the wandering of a stray dog? There are no points of reference, neither in space nor time, no boundaries between the figurative and the abstract. The film was turned down by the authorities and languished on the shelf for 30 years. Nevertheless, it stands as a reflection of Daido Moriyama’s radical approach: flying in the face of all the rules, he deconstructs existing images, in the same way as he did in his photographic work. Moriyama never shot another film after “Shinjuku, 1973, 25 pm.”   Among the Japanese photographers who have truly embraced film-making,Yasumasa Morimura stands out as a pioneer. His first work in this field was “Cometman” (1991), in which he himself features with a shaven head wandering around haphazardly in the streets of Kyoto and admiring a painting by Marcel Duchamp, to whom he dedicated this video. He pays tribute to another artist, the founder of the Factory, in “Me holding a Gun: for Andy Warhol.” Morimura is known for presenting himself in the guise of chosen figures in great masterpieces of the history of art. He pursues this methodology here, albeit in a more theatrical manner.   Tomoko Sawada takes a similar approach: although she deals with more intimate issues than Morimura, she too transforms herself and is known for her highly colourful renderings of hundreds if not thousands of different characters. In “Mask” she plays on the confusion between the mask and her own face, taking the viewer clearly into the very essence of her body of work.     Another star of the young generation of Japanese photographers that came to the fore at the turn of the 21st Century, Rinko Kawauchi, started out by studying film at university. “Semear” is her first film since she rose to prominence as a photographer. The video was commissioned by the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art and is shot in locations throughout Brazil, but in particular in areas inhabited by communities of Japanese origin. The subtle combination of colour, sound and light confers to this work the fragile quality of a soap bubble containing the whole world.   Meanwhile, in “They’re still stuck on your wall – Gifu version” Akiko Ikeda uses an apparently very simple device – diminutive earthenware aeroplanes stuck on the windows of a train – to create a humorous sensation of a “little journey” and explore the imagination as it occurs in everyday life.   By its very nature, photography as a medium is not limited to being a way of producing prints from negative film on photographic paper. Far from it. It can take a wide variety of forms: it can be printed on a page or projected onto a screen. A number of photographers have capitalized on some of the characteristics of their chosen medium and have produced films that are not “moving images”, but are made up of a combination of still images. Lieko Shiga is one of Japan’s most acclaimed young artists of today. Using notably images she did not include in her book “Canary,” (Winner of the Ihei Kimura Prize in 2007) she has created an extremely powerful slide-show which plays on an intense alternation between dark and light. Meanwhile, Taisuke Koyama uses a digital camera to produce city scenes of tremendous graphic precision. He has put them together in “Boundary X”, a slide-show made up of thousands of images projected at the head-spinning rate of one image per tenth of a second. Above and beyond the visual pleasure they procure, both works have the capacity to provide the spectator with a very intense overall sensory experience.   Other photographers reject the very principle of editing and take the risk of tackling another issue: continuity versus discontinuity of the images. Osamu Kanemura uses a video camera to take snapshots in the chaos of the city or along suburban streets. Rather like a contact sheet, in “Earth Bop Bound,” he strings fragments of them together randomly in an infinite loop. This video is indicative of this artist’s particular approach which looks for the “cracks” by which he can reveal the discrepancies between the world, the image and man.   Finally, in “Tokyo Bay Ban-Ban”, Ryudai Takano who is known to seek out of the erotic that is at work in daily life at its most humdrum, working from fixed angles that appear to have been chosen indiscriminately, shoots a seemingly endless journey through Tokyo’s streets and buildings at night. The spectator eventually realises that the din emanating from the dark recesses is in fact the sound of fireworks going off in the distance. Whether we like it or not, these explosions are reminders of the canons of war that are being fired in some part of the world. In that sense, the work of Kanemura and Takano are silent warnings to us all in our tendency to consider the images simply as a novel, easy spectacle.     Mariko Takeuchi Text and photos courtesy of Paris Photo 2008. Translated from the French by Philippa Neave.   Mariko Takeuchi, photography critic and independent curator: Born in 1972, Tokyo, Mariko Takeuchi has curated exhibitions including “Charles FrZ¹ger: Rikishi” (Art Gallery of Yokohama Museum; A.R.T. Tokyo, 2005). She has written numerous texts for catalogues and photography books including “Ryudai Takano: 1936-1996” (Sokyu-sha, 2006) and “Ryuichiro Suzuki: Odyssey” (Heibonsha, 2007). She is a regular contributor and photography critic for various magazines such as Asahi Camera and Studio Voice. She is also in charge of the Japanese photography section and writing for “The Oxford Companion to the Photograph” (Oxford Univ. Press, 2005). She is a part-time lecturer of Waseda University, and a guest researcher of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. © 2008 Lens Culture and individual contributors. All rights reserved.     Top         http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/takeuchi/index.php    

Tuesday, 04 November 2008

278. Vice Magazine

            VICE Magazine has collaborated with user generated youth initiative Ctrl.Alt.Shift, to launch a unique photographic project that explores the global issues of Gender, Power and Poverty. The creative collaboration takes the form of an international competition, educating young people around the world on this major global development issue and inviting them to create photography inspired by this theme.   Competition winners will have their work featured in VICE and Ctrl.Alt.Shift magazines, displayed on CtrlAltShit.co.uk and exhibited in a London gallery– alongside work from campaign ambassador, legendary New York photo artist Nan Goldin – famous for her photographic collection The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – and a group of all-star project mentors.   www.ctrlaltshift.co.uk/vice           http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/vice/index.html    

Sunday, 02 November 2008

280. Heresies

Monday, 13 October 2008 | Read more

282. Brief History of a Heretic

      Now I remember my first photo: a little black lamb that had been born from a white sheep. In 1947, I was walking in the valley in La Marquesa with my first camera, a Brownie. I set about watching a sheep that was in labor; and I could not believe my eyes as I saw how it delivered a little black creature. I got my camera ready and I shot that little black lamb that was stumbling before me.   With Heresies, Pedro Meyer ceases to be a photographer known for merely 400 images. Even though these few hundred photos have provided the solid foundation of his prestige, there has been a significant disparity between his production and his published work. He has even become accustomed not to ask his admirers how many of his images they remember. The entire corpus of his work today comprises over 300,000 photos. The discrepancy between 400 and 300,000 is not only immense, it is enigmatic. Pedro himself is pressed by the question: “So why did I take so many photographs, if I didn't even exhibit them?”   “I am a camera-man,” Pedro concludes. From an early age, photography has been a permanent presence in his life. As he says: “At certain moments of intense personal grief, capturing images was for me the only way to try to comprehend later what was happening.” Photography has been the most important organ in Pedro Meyer’s imaginary body, his very skin: it has given structure to his persona, it has sheltered him, it has made his perceptions possible, it has encouraged his contact with others, and it has sustained his powers of articulation. In turn, this intimate epidermis has been shielded, regenerated, strengthened, extended and enhanced by a most potent prosthesis: digital imaging.   Meyer was the buyer of the first Apple computer sold in Mexico. When he switched it on, his life changed forever; he found the implications of information technology immediately obvious and desirable. We know of the many years Pedro has spent advocating digital photography and pitting himself against others who were against it; yet the virulence of the struggle only becomes clear when we take into account its religious undertow. For the digital mode is much more than a new technology: the transition from analog to digital is correlative to the radical rupture of a certain theistic order. The displacement of hierarchy by network, the substitution of unidirectional transmission with interactivity, and the shift from unity to multiplicity all presuppose leaving behind a certain theo-logic according to which a central force, in itself absolute, gives rise to a series of derivate terms (“copies”, for instance), ever more unfaithful to their source.   In the developmente of his Heresies retrospective, the digital interface allowed Pedro to go beyond the traditional opposition between the private and the public, the feasible and the unfeasible, allowing for the display of that formidable skin fostered by his person for so many decades and mobilized by an inner impulse (whose ultimate capacity is deicide) even more than by a simple desire to “communicate”. Through Heresies the photographic apparatus, continuously present in his earlier family and personal life, mutated into a complex device capable of addressing an indeterminate number of persons with no common spatial or temporal coordinates.   That is why Heresies is no definitive ordering of a rich creative career. Its temporality does not correspond to a history (that would reveal a past truth), but rather to the promise of a realization always yet to come. To observe Meyer’s images is to invoke the retroactivity of a future understanding of which we lack in the present. Thus, Heresies operates with the genre of the retrospective what has already happened in our critical age to the self-portrait and the autobiography, forms which can be seen to destroy precisely what they claim to represent. And just as the subject of the unconscious is really the residue left behind by the the representation and writing of self, so too the substance of Heresies is the remainder of the traditional rhetoric of the retrospective—the prospective of a work and a life always to come...   Of all the tales I’ve heard from Pedro, none seems to condense so plainly and precisely the drive common to his life and work than the recollection of his first photo (the epigraph to the present text), a print that has gone missing and therefore has not been filed in the Heresies data base. This first portrait by Pedro, in whose later work so many portraits and self-portraits can be found, can also be considered as his first self-portrait.   For Pedro says that he has always felt like an outsider. When he attended a Marist Catholic school, he was only one of five Jewish children among seven hundred pupils; required to attend catechism, he took along his own readings: the first book he chose, The Three Musketeers, was prohibited. Later, he was sent to a military academy in the United States, where he refused to march carrying a rifle, for it seemed “utterly stupid” to him; when all of his fellow cadets graduated as officials, he graduated as a private. And when he was thirteen or fourteen years old, Gerhard Herzog, a dear friend of his father’s, gave Pedro a camera with which he produced his first contact strips; later, when at thirty-eight he announced that he had decided to dedicate himself professionally to photography, his father objected and suffered a severe attack of vertigo; he wished for his son to make his living doing something more “serious” that would guarantee a proper standard of living for his family—yet it was precisely Gerhard who persuaded his old friend that prospects were not so gloomy after all…   Yet Pedro does not simply remain at odds: at once he identifies with the black sheep and realizes the photogram... As in each of those hundreds of thousands of later occasions, on this first opportunity his glance behind the lens (situated on the exterior perimeter of the scene of that bucolic maternity) is set at the very location at which his father was always to be found —now an exile, now a traveller. Rhizome of that luminous dermal film that from then on would outfit the persona of Pedro (in the presence and absence of his father, as well as beyond), whose personal and professional breadth would become ever greater, to the point of reaching the remarkable scale of endeavors such as ZoneZero and Heresies, and capable of corroding the very foundations of the photographic status quo of his time.   Diaphanous skin that Pedro will have always insisted on sharing with others through his support of photography, photographers, and photographing, not merely as a technical, artistic, social, economic or political activity, but rather as an existential gamble. Thanks to lens and screen, that old black sheep has transmuted into the wizard of Coyoacán that today presides that open horizon which is www.pedromeyer.com.     NOTE: The present text condenses some of the ideas contained in my text “Black. Sheep. Wizard.”, the introductory essay of the Heresies volume (Lunwerg, Barcelona, 2008), which forms part of the wider Heresies project.   Benjamin Mayer-Foulkes bmayer@17.edu.mx September, 2008   **     Benjamín Mayer-Foulkes is a psychoanalyst, researcher and cultural promoter. He is the founder of 17, Institute of Critical Studies (www.17.edu.mx). His writings on Psychoanalyisis, Philosophy, History and Art that have been translated from Spanish into English, Italian, French and Portuguese. In the field of photography he is internationally known for his contributions to the debate on blind photographers.     As always please joins us with your comments in our forums.       http://zonezero.com/editorial/septiembre08/september08.html      

Tuesday, 02 September 2008

284. The Digital Century

    Fifty years ago, when I was born, the world of the late 20th and early 21st centuries was unconceivable, even in the most far-fetched sci-fi movies. It is not the comfy fun world of The Jetsons nor the catastrophe depicted in Planet of the Apes, but a more complex and engaging one, closer to the one foreseen in Blade Runner in 2019 Los Angeles or, unfortunately the one portrayed in a desperate New York City in Soylent Green.           Nowadays, the overwhelming technological and scientific advancements taking place in every aspect of our lives are a commonplace for the younger generations, who for evident reasons have a better access to these advancements. Millions of children and teenagers can’t conceive a world without iPods, cell phones with cameras and GPS, chat rooms, social networks and on line games that grow in sophistication by the day. Certainly, they would not enjoy as much a film that does not feature all those spectacular digital special effects. Needless to say, the transformations of education, art, journalism and research that have been brought on by the worldwide endless virtual hyper-library, would amaze Borges himself, even though he somehow foretold it in his Aleph. Man’s arrival to the moon in 1969 and the recent discovery of the human genome –just to mention a couple of major scientific breakthroughs- would have been impossible to achieve without digital technology.   There was no TV -not even a black and white model- in my parent’s house until the mid-60’s and a telephone (oh wonder of wonders!) until a few years later. The yellowish family pictures were kept in thick black cardboard albums; my first school assignments were typed in a modern Olivetti machine. Time and time again, I had to consult historical dates and names in my dad’s library.   Now that I’ve mentioned my father, he worked as a linotype machine operator, copywriter and editor. So what in the world is a linotype? The linotype is kind of a huge typing machine with a bucket filled with melted lead that was used in the printing process of books, magazines and newspapers. Nowadays it belongs in a museum, such as the one exhibited in Mexico City’s publishing house Fondo de Cultura Economica. In this day and age, printing is made with silent offset machines that are the size of an 18-wheeler, using a computer. A laptop with editing software is all you need to design a publication.   Long gone are the huge worktables, all the cutting and pasting made by hand, and so are the cumbersome photo-editing machines resembling the contraptions created by the mad scientists of the campy Santo movies of yesteryear. Nowadays, we don’t have to take mechanical originals to the printers, we can send the text via e-mail, no matter if the publishing house is in Hong Kong or Shanghai.     Over 20 years ago, Pedro Meyer made a digital portrait of myself. The quality was not the best, since it was a huge image made out of big black dots that only bore any resemblance to my face by being seen from afar.   There is a huge gap between that picture and the ones now made by Pedro with a digital technique that has reached utter perfection. Anyone that has seen a digital image made by Pedro is aware of the conceptual revolution implied in the ability to make seamless digital compositions made of two or more takes that were shot in different places and moments.   Anything that happened before the digital era is ancient history for the children and teens that have grown up and been educated in the digital technology environment. The use of digital technology such as computers and the Internet is a natural thing for them. Links and hypertext reflect the way in which the human brain and non-linear thinking work, simultaneously processing images, concepts and jumping from one subject to the other, going back or forward in time and space, either intentionally or by free association, very much like surfing the web.   Digital technology is also used for espionage, war and destruction. In this sense the world is no better than before. In some countries, the loathing towards democracy has led some governments to ban the use of the Internet to the population, and even watch and harass them using this medium, as the Chinese government did to the blogs of dissident writers Tsering Woeser and Wang Lixiong for speaking in favor of Tibet’s independence. “The couple has been under house arrest since the beginning of the riots last March” -reported mexican writer Eve Gil- and continues:   The censorship in the Internet has spread to SMS messaging with the collaboration (or complicity?) of companies such as Yahoo and Google. China has the best filtering and censorship system in the world, and has used it to incarcerate at least 50 people. (from the article “China Reinvented”, published in Replicante magazine, issue 16.   Another example of a blatant disregard to freedom of speech takes place in Cuba, where a very small part of the population owns a computer and has Internet access. A report of the organization Journalists without Borders states that:   Although it is true that there are problems to go on line in Cuba, it is hard to believe that www.desdecuba.com has had to deal with technical difficulties for ten years. These kinds of restrictions go against the recent government measures to facilitate the access of Cubans to mass media, including the Internet. One cannot exist without the other. The signs of openness given by Raul Castro’s government should include more respect for freedom of speech. Since March 20th 2008, the website www.desdecuba.com cannot be accessed from public places such as cyber-cafes or hotels. The very few private connections used for professional reasons or clandestinely, take at least 20 minutes to load the home page. Making comments is practically impossible.1   The internet is fiercely controlled by the state, there is a single network that can be accessed to send e-mails abroad, but it does not allow to surf the web, according to the report of Journalists without Borders: “Access to the internet is three times more expensive and it allows to visit foreign news websites, such as the BBC, Le Monde or the Nuevo Herald (a Miami-based newspaper written in Spanish), but if an address such as “google.fr” is typed, one is redirected to the web page of Cuba’s official newspaper Granma or the Prensa Latina news agency.”   Not surprisingly, Cuba is on the list of “Enemies of the Internet” published by Journalists without Borders, on March 12, 2008. One of Cuba’s –and now of the world- most popular websites, which has received the 2008 Ortega y Gasset Award of Digital journalism is Generacion Y. Written by young author Yoani Sanchez, it comments on the everyday life of Castro’s island, featuring sad pictures of run down buildings, policemen arresting homosexuals, broken down electricity meters and the temporary joys of the carnival. Ironically, Yoani does not have a computer in her own home.     Digital technology and its advantages are not for everyone, in spite of its rapid growth. In this sense, it is deplorable that millions of Chinese and Cubans do not have unrestricted access to the most important information, education and entertainment network in human history, but also that millions of people in Africa and Latin America that live in democratic countries –or on their way to democracy-, do not have access either, due to poverty, unemployment and the lack of policies of education and scientific and technological development. Digital technology can make a positive change in the world, but it can only flourish in an environment of freedom, respect and prosperity. We have been through enough wars. If the media are extensions of man -as McLuhan put it-, the new technologies should be at the service of the growth and peaceful development of every man and woman in the planet. __ 1. www.cubanet.org/CNews/y08/abril08/01inter6.html (back)   Rogelio Villarreal rogelio56@gmail.com August, 2008 **       Rogelio Villarreal is the author of El dilema de Bukowski (Bukowski's Dilemma, Ediciones Sin Nombre, 2004) and El periodismo cultural en los tiempos de la globalifobia (Cultural journalism in the times of Global phobia, Conaculta-Ediciones Sin Nombre, 2006). He is editor-in-chief of Replicante magazine.       As always please joins us with your comments in our forums.           http://www.zonezero.com/editorial/agosto08/august08.html      

Saturday, 02 August 2008

286. Going Visual: Using images to Enhance Productivity, by Alexis Gerard & Bob Goldstein

  We are glad to review this book, which, in a practical and simple way, presents how to use images and their power of visual communication in both your company and everyday life. Going Visual is a timely publication in which you can find information about technology, photography and communication regarding the needs of either a small, medium or large company to increase productivity and benefits, and the speeding up of decision making.   The main idea -quoting Philippe Kahn and revisited by the authors- is that an image has the value of ten thousand words, and if you add sound to it, it is worth a million words. Digital Photography has accelerated the process of creation of an image, the time of the creative process is a lot shorter and the amount of knowledge necessary to create an image has been reduced. Digital Cameras, cam-phones and the Internet can deliver an image anywhere in the world to a very broad audience.   Going Visual extensively explains which are the requirements for the introduction of any person or company to the world of digital photography and its practical application; it also provides us with a five-step strategy to plan and implement the new digital technology.   This is a very good book indeed. Several excercises are suggested, such as going shopping and taking pictures of the desired items, like clothing or furniture, and showing them to your famliy, partner or friends so you can speed up a decision to buy or not.   It also lays down several examples. Sally Carrcino, an independent salesperson of home appliances and gardening items, shares her experiences. She has put together on-line catalogs of her products, such as lamps, plants etc, so people can see them through the internet and order them if the want to do so. Another example is a real estate company that has reduced the space taken up by the hard copy inventories and achieving a better description of the houses through photos. They can be seen though the Web before actually visiting them, saving time for both the company and the clients. Photography has also reduced the time spent to solve maintenance problems of machines or factories, because several experts can be consulted without the need of their physical presence, the pictures enable them to analyse defects that could cause problems in the future.   It is quite important to create files to classify images. Going Visual proposes several ways to do so, such as catalogs, inventories, by themes, etc. eanbling us to share the information with the people that are required.   The last part of the book deals with new technologic approaches, such as long distance meetings. In a circumstance in which people are located in faraway places, such as a university, a corporation or a special family situation, people can meet up in a virtual space by using a computer screen reducing that feeling of distance. People from different parts of the world can make decisions regardless of time zone or location since they no longer need to be at the same physical space.   Alexis Gerard, founderof Future Image, a research company of convergence of images, technology information and business and Bob Goldstein, founder of ZZYZX Visual Syatems,which handles great volumes of visual technology for corporations, and President of the Altamira Group, which produces digital imaging software and is also a visual communications advisor for corporations, present us with all of their experinces regarding all the latest in visual communication.   Since visual communication has rapidly become an essential part of business, we can assure that Going Visual is a great help to solve organization and communication problems of companies, or anyone wanting to be updated in the uses and operation of the new visual technology.       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/dcorner/goingvisual/going.html      

Monday, 02 June 2008

288. Story of a little girl with a big mouth

    The first time I saw Geraldo de Barros’s Menina do Sapato was in the catalog of the exhibition of the first Latin American Colloquium of Photography: Hecho en Latinoamérica (Mexico, 1978). Had I been Brazilian perhaps I would have recognized the author’s name as that of a renowned artist. But alas, I was a naïve young man and I innocently assumed that the author was another enthusiastic youngster experimenting with the medium. In said catalog there is no date for the work, so I got the impression that it was a recent work. At the time I did not really think about art, I just liked it or disliked it, and occasionally was able to voice a few opinions about it. What I liked about Menina do Sapato was the cleverness with which the opening of the shoe had been made to double as a gaping mouth on the cartoon-like face of a little girl vaguely resembling Mafalda, Periquita, or La Pequeña Lulú.   Although de Barros could have staged the old shoe for building the image, more than likely it was an object he found half-buried in the sand. The shoe part of the image agreed with the way I had learned to engage the medium of photography; namely by looking, finding and capturing. So it was easy to imagine myself finding the old shoe and photographing it. However, de Barros’s work was teaching me then that I could also draw on my found images by scratching the negative and painting over it. However, ten years went by before I dared to permanently alter my negatives the way he had because in my mind that alteration was tantamount to damaging something almost as precious as reality itself. Instead, I modestly began experimenting by cutting my prints to make photo-collages. I never exhibited these collages but a few friends who liked them ended up owning them.   I also saw a social commentary and political dimension in Menina do Sapato that–not knowing the artist– I understood could have been just my own interpretation. There is something very destitute about a single old discarded shoe acting as the girl’s open mouth. It is as if the abandonment and poverty of the shoe nuanced the drawing of the girl so that she was no longer the middle-class Mafalda, Periquita, or Lulú. Her disheveled hair, roughly drawn on the negative with a sharp tool, made her look like one of those indigenous homeless girls that roam the streets of Lima, Mexico City or São Paulo, clinging to their mother’s skirts and extending their small hands to the passersby pleading, “Señor, una ayuda por favor.” That open mouth that in Edvard Munch’s Scream (1893) expressed a sort of existential howl of despair, in Geraldo de Barros’s Menina was something as basic and passive as hunger, or as critical and active as asking, “why?” The hollow of that shoe is so very dark, deep and loud.   In 1992 I started writing the essay Crossover Dreams for the book Image and Memory: Photography from Latin American 1866-1994 (University of Texas Press: Austin, 1998). It was then that I perused the Hecho en Latinoamérica catalog once again and took a second look at Menina do Sapato. I wanted the image to accompany my text, but how would I find it? Fortunately, somebody had the great idea to include in the back of said catalog a list of the participants and their address. Still thinking that Geraldo de Barros was a young man I wrote to him speculating that perhaps by then he had become a lawyer, a taxi driver, or both, and might not even be doing photography anymore. To my surprise, a month later I got a letter from his daughter Fabiana de Barros in which she thanked me for the interest in her father’s work and cordially agreed to send me the picture for use in my essay. It was only when I received the print that I found out that Menina do Sapato was made in 1949! Who was Geraldo de Barros? At the time, it was not possible to quickly google and find out who’s who, so answering the question became a very slow process.   Although I did not know it then, the reason Geraldo had not answered my letter himself is that by that time, he had suffered a couple of traumatic strokes that impaired his speech and motor skills. My letter had arrived at a turning point in the dissemination of his work. Fabiana, who is also an artist in her own right, had taken it upon herself to have her father’s oeuvre receive the recognition it deserved. She was instrumental in arranging Geraldo de Barros, Peintre et Photographe, a major retrospective at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1993. In 1994, she helped organize another exhibit at the Museum da Imagem e do Som de São Paulo: Geraldo de Barros, Fotógrafo. It was thanks to this last exhibit that I came upon the only book about him: Fotoformas, Geraldo de Barros (Raízes: São Paulo, 1994). Both shows were based on the seminal 1950 Fotoformas exhibit at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo her father himself had put together when he was only twenty-seven years old.       The book that bore the same name as the exhibit, Fotoformas, Geraldo de Barros, contained some installation photographs of the 1950 exhibit and among the works that appeared in them was Menina do Sapato. He showed it almost as a sculptural object: the print cut along the edge of the image and mounted on a solid support to stand by itself. The presentation vaguely resembled the foto-esculturas that I understand can still be made to order somewhere in Mexico City. In addition, the book revealed a plethora of other kinds of photographic techniques with which de Barros had experimented: multiple-exposures, cut-negatives, pinhole photography, etc. Some works were labeled “superposição da imagens no fotograma” –a phrase in which the term fotograma turned out to be a false cognate for “photogram.” Geraldo himself never used this terminology to describe these works. Although in the French translation the aforementioned book used a better phrase --“superposition a la prise de vue”-- my confusion had begun.   The confusion originated in the fact that a Portuguese dictionary defines “fotograma” as “Cada uma das imagens registradas en filme fotográfico ou cinematográfico.” Needless to say, the English meaning of the word is much narrower: namely, “a photographic image produced without a camera, usually by placing an object on or near a piece of film or light-sensitive paper and exposing it to light.” (From built-in dictionary in my Microsoft Office software). To add to the confusion was the fact that many fotogramas were very abstract and geometric and really looked like photograms. I believe I was not the only writer who took some of Geraldo’s works to be photograms, but I did not pay too much attention to the issue because the ones that most captivated me were the ones described as “desenho sobre negativo com ponta-seca e nanquim.” These last works resembled Menina do Sapato in that Geraldo made them by scratching and painting the negatives: Homenagem a Picasso (1949), Homenagem a Stravinsky (1949), O anjo (1948), and Cemitério do Tatuapé (1949).               Five years went by from the time I finished writing Crossover Dreams to the time Image and Memory was finally published in the fall of 1998. In the interim I had begun curating photographic exhibitions for Sicardi-Sanders, a small Houston gallery that specialized in Latin American art. In 1997, when the gallery started making plans for FotoFest 1998, I suggested to Maria Ines Sicardi to show the work of Geraldo de Barros. Once again, I got in touch with Fabiana de Barros who was delighted at the attention her father’s work was finally getting. In fact, she told me her father had started doing photography again in spite of his precarious health. It was only then that I found out Geraldo had suffered several strokes that had diminished his motor skills and speech. In spite of his physical impairments, with the help of an assistant he worked on a new series of photographic works titled Sobras --because they were made from the negatives that were leftover in his family and travel albums. However, the 1998 exhibit at Sicardi-Sanders titled Geraldo de Barros: Traces on the Glass, mostly included the work from his 1950 Fotoformas exhibit at the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo.   One of the many illustrious guests that Fotofest brought to Sicardi-Sanders Gallery that year was A.D. Coleman, a critic who is not easily enthused. After seeing the de Barros exhibit he told me that it was the best show he had seen at Fotofest that year. Unable to travel on account of his poor health, de Barros did not see his first solo exhibit in the United States. Shortly after the exhibit at Sicardi-Sanders in 1998, Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998) passed away.   Although I never met Geraldo de Barros, his death caused me great sadness and left me with unanswered questions. Why had he stopped practicing photography for forty-four years? If we go back a few decades we may find an answer. After the 1950 Fotoformas exhibit and as a result of it, de Barros spent a year in Europe that changed his artistic vision. He met Concrete artists Max Bill and Otl Aicher and the meeting reaffirmed convictions he had already been entertaining in São Paulo. On his return to Brazil in 1952 he joined other artists as a signatory of the Ruptura Manifesto of Concrete Art. A section of this document states the program of what Concrete artists were to avoid and what they were to practice:   THE OLD IS all varieties and hybrids of naturalism; the mere denial of naturalism, that is, the "wrong" naturalism of children, the insane, the "primitive," the expressionists, the surrealists etc. . . ; the hedonistic non-figurativism spawned by gratuitous taste, that seeks the mere excitement of pleasure or displeasure THE NEW IS all expressions based on the new art principles; all experiences that tend to renovation of the quintessential values of visual art (space-time, movement and material); the art intuition endowed with clear and intelligent principles as well as with great possibilities of practical development; to bestow on art a definite place within the scope of contemporary spiritual work, while considering art as a means of knowledge deducible from concepts, situating it above opinion and demanding, for its review, a previous knowledge.   Photography is implicit in the manifesto as the kind of visual realistic representation that was developed since the Renaissance and described as “naturalism” (Elsewhere, Joel Snyder has described the evolution of the “photographic look” along the paradigm of visual perspective developed in the Renaissance). Another section of the Ruptura Manifesto reads, “because the scientific naturalism of the renaissance– the old process of rendering the (three-dimensional) external world on a (two-dimensional) plane-has exhausted its historical task.” To put it mildly, Concrete artists were to avoid all kinds of mimetic art. Instead, they were to produce art that referred only to itself. As a result of its chemistry and optics photography not only points beyond itself (it is indexical), it is mimetic as well.   Of the works de Barros produced for his 1950 exhibit only his most abstract works seemed to be congruent with the premises of Concretismo. Some of these works were precisely the ones described in the Fotoformas, Geraldo de Barros 1994 book as “superposição da imagens no fotograma.” Judging by the abundant comparisons of Geraldo’s work to that of Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in the literature, the mismatch of meanings had led not only myself, but also a few others, to believe that Geraldo de Barros had produced photograms. But the error also makes one draw the wrong conclusions about the connection of these works to Concretismo.   Although a photogram is still indexical, the optical portion of the photographic process that gives the medium its mimetic power is absent in it. Indeed, a photogram is a mere silhouette –closer to a shadow than to a mimetic depiction. Two very different objects (say, a coin and a tennis ball) can project the same shadow –a fact well-know by those who amuse us by making figures with the shadows of their hands. For that reason, if the silhouette is a rectangular geometric form, the photogram tends to refer to the shape that gave rise to it rather than to the rectangular object that produced it (since many objects could have produced the same form). So photograms are ideally suited to have that disconnection with visual reality that Concrete artists found so appealing because they wished their art to express only the “quintessential values of visual art (space-time, movement and material).” The problem is that Geraldo did not produce photograms. Whatever he did in photography during the 1946-1950 may have been influenced by Concrete art, but did not follow its dictates.   De Barros did profess the Concrete ideology in the decade of the fifties and practiced its social convictions of making art accessible to most. In fact, he established Unilabor, a cooperative factory that produced inexpensive furniture with Bauhaus type designs. However, like many other Brazilian artists who bought into Concretismo de Barros evolved out of it. His own evolution went through Pop Art. After his strokes, however, he was once again sketching abstract works that his assistant would execute to his specifications.   A month ago in what is now simply Sicardi Gallery I had the opportunity to curate a second exhibit of Geraldo de Barros’s work ten years after the first one. Since 1998, at least three books, several catalogs, and one biographical documentary have contributed information and reflections about his life and work. I reviewed the numerous essays and documents now available, and looked at the images once again paying more attention to the technical details. In my curatorial essay I decided to follow the logic imposed by a taxonomical account of the different techniques de Barros used to produce his photographic work. When I came upon those described as “superposição da imagens no fotograma,” I was bewildered by the fact that in the gallery documents there were editions of those works. How could that be if photograms are unique? There are indeed artists who produce editions of photograms with works that are sufficiently similar albeit not identical. In Geraldo’s case, the prints in each edition are identical (as much as prints from the same negative can be). I sought clarification from Fabiana de Barros and after a few emails this much was clear: there are negatives of many images that were formerly labeled “superposição da imagens no fotograma.” Upon closer inspection, it became clear that many of those are really multiple-exposures and not photograms. One can recognize the objects from which de Barros so cleverly abstracted geometric shapes. Yet there are a few that really look like photograms although Fabiana says there are negatives of them. I asked her if perhaps her father made photograms that he later photographed to get a negative, but she firmly states her father never did this sort of thing. This much has become clear: it was misleading to label these works “fotogramas” (in spite of the fact that it was correct in Portuguese to do so) as was done in that very first book that came upon my hands: Fotoformas, Geraldo de Barros (Raízes: São Paulo, 1994).   The face of Menina do Sapato now comes to have a different expression: one of mischief. Her open mouth can also be one of surprise. After wearing our shoes down by walking along many paths we come to a surprising point of our lives. If what I believed to be photograms are actually double exposures, in spite of their abstract geometric look, they have a semantic component based on mimesis of something other that itself that lies on the other side of the camera lens. In that sense they only differ from the shoe of Menina do Sapato in that the shapes in one may be more or less geometric than in the other. Even in photograms the indexical nature of the medium are an inconvenience to the Concrete program –after all, shadows are of something. Was this inconvenience the reason de Barros gave up photography as a venue to produce art for forty-four years? The routes art and photography have traveled since the 1952 Ruptura Manifesto are proof enough that “naturalistic” art forms have not “exhausted their historical task.” As to how Geraldo de Barros made by means of double exposures some of the works that most resemble photograms, I mischievously pose that as a question to the readers of this essay.   Fernando Castro R.         http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/castro2/    

Sunday, 25 May 2008

290. Cornel Capa (1918 - 2008)

  Photographer who founded a group to preserve brother's legacy, dies at 90   Cornell Capa, a globetrotting photojournalist who founded the International Center of Photography in New York and dedicated himself to preserving the legacy of his older brother, war photographer Robert Capa, died of Parkinson's disease May 23, at his home in New York. He was 90.     Early in his career, Capa stepped away from the battlefield focus of his brother, whose photographs of the Spanish Civil War and World War II are some of the most stark and memorable images of warfare. Saying that "two war photographers in the family was too much," the younger brother concentrated on "opening the door to worlds that people would not have seen otherwise," with a portfolio that ranged from scenes of political oppression to candid shots of Marilyn Monroe.   He coined the term "concerned photography" to describe an emotional engagement with his subjects that often blurred the border of journalistic objectivity. Working as a staff and contract photographer for Life magazine for more than 20 years, Capa infused his pictures with a quiet, revealing drama that made him almost as renowned as his dashing brother. One of Capa's stylistic traits was to show telling details by narrowing his camera's view. In photographing the 1949 funeral of tap dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Capa focused not on the faces of the mourners who were lined up along a street, but on their shoes. While covering John F. Kennedy's race for the White House in 1960, he showed Kennedy's hands reaching into a crowd. In the 1950s, he photographed life in the Soviet Union and the world of mentally ill children, sensitively revealing a subject that had been all but ignored. He created one of his most memorable photos while following Adlai Stevenson on the presidential campaign trail in 1952. As Stevenson spoke from the back of a train, Capa photographed the candidate from behind, with the crowd spreading out before him. In 1960, he took time out from the presidential campaign to visit the Nevada movie set of "The Misfits," the final completed movie of Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Sensing that Kennedy represented a change in political style, Capa and seven other photographers chronicled the president's first 100 days in office. The resulting book, "Let Us Begin," appeared 10 days after the final photograph was taken and became known as "instant history." As time passed, Capa developed a sense of mission about preserving the history and conscience of his craft. Some of his most lasting contributions to photography came after he put his camera down in 1974 and organized the International Center of Photography.     In 20 years as executive director, he built the center into one the world's foremost museums of photography. He made it the world's largest repository of his brother's work and regularly presented exhibitions of his photography. Robert Capa, who once said, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough," was killed at age 40 when he stepped on a land mine in Vietnam in 1954 while on assignment for Life. "From that day," Cornell Capa told Newsweek magazine in 1994, "I was haunted by the question of what happens to the work a photographer leaves behind, by how to make the work stay alive." Kornel Friedmann was born in April 1918, in Budapest. His brother, who was five years older, fled Hungary for political reasons in 1931 and settled in Paris, where he changed his name from Andrei Friedmann to Robert Capa. When the younger brother joined him there in 1936, he was called "the little Capa." Cornell Capa came to New York in 1937 and worked in a photo agency darkroom before joining Life as a printer in 1938. He served in an Army Air Forces photo-intelligence unit during World War II and became a U.S. citizen in 1944. He officially changed his name the same year. Capa was a Life staff photographer from 1946 to 1954 and contributed to the magazine through 1967, when he went to the Middle East to cover his only major conflict, the Six-Day War. From 1956 to 1960, he was president of the Magnum Photos agency, which had been co-founded by his brother. In 1967, he presented an exhibition of renowned 20th-century photographers, "The Concerned Photographer," and collected their works in a book. To ensure that their example would not be forgotten, Capa conceived the idea for the international center, which opened its doors in 1974. One of its early benefactors was former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whom Capa befriended while photographing the early days of the Kennedy White House. His wife of 61 years, Edith Schwartz Capa, died in 2001. He has no immediate survivors. "I have always thought of myself not as a reporter, but as a commentator," Capa wrote in the introduction to his 1992 book "Cornell Capa Photographs." "I have aimed to be a credible witness, one who cares about the world he inhabits." By Matt Schudel, Washington Post May 24, 2008         http://zonezero.com/magazine/obituaries/capacornell/index.html    

Friday, 23 May 2008

292. Oliver Debroise (1952-2008)

    Art critic and historian Olivier Debroise passed away on May 6th, in his home in Mexico City's San Rafael Quarter. The announcement was made by friend and colleague Cuauhtémoc Medina. The cause of death was a sudden massive heart attack. The researcher did not suffer any illness. "He was a very intense, very active fellow and there were no signs that this could have happened. It has really taken us all by surprise ", Medina said.   Olivier Debroise was born in Jerusalem in 1952. He was a French citizen, but he worked and lived in Mexico since he was 17. He was a novelist, historian, art critic and curator of numerous exhibitions. Worthy of mention are Modernidad y modernización en el arte mexicano (Modernity and Modernization in Mexican Art) in Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico, 1991; El Corazón Sangrante (The Bleeding Heart), in the ICA, Boston, 1991; David Alfaro Siqueiros: Retrato de una década. (David Alfaro Siqueiros: Portrait of a Decade) in Museo Nacional de Arte, México City Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California and the Whitechapel Gallery in London, 1997.       Some of his books are Diego de Montparnasse (1979); Figuras en el trópico, plástica mexicana: 1920-1940 (1983); Fuga Mexicana, un recorrido por la fotografía México (1991); Alfonso Michel, el desconocido (1991), Sobre la superficie bruñida de un espejo, in collaboration with Rosa Casanova (1989); and Diego Rivera, pintura de caballete (1985). Debroise was the founder and first director of CURARE the Mexican Critic's Association. He had recently curated, along with Cuauhtemoc Medina and Alvaro Vazquez , the exhibition The Age of Discrepancy, Visual art and Culture in Mexico from 1968 to 1994, exhibited last year in UNAM's Museum of Sciences and Arts. In 2004 he was in charge of Contemporary Art collections of the Visual Arts Department of UNAM and Mexican adviser for of the program "Recovering the Critical Sources of Latin America and Latin Art" of the International Center the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), a project of the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston. During the last four years of his life he had devoted himself to the collection of UNAM's Contemporary Art Museum, which will be inaugurated shortly.   Miguel Angel Ceballos El Universal, Mexico City May 7th 2008           http://zonezero.com/magazine/obituaries/debroise/index.html  

Tuesday, 06 May 2008

294. Film cameras officially dead in Japan

    So few film cameras were sold in Japan in the last two months that the trade body CIPA (Camera & Imaging Products Association) has stopped compiling sales figures. According to Amateur Photographer, only 529 35mm film cameras were made in Japan in February. We're not sure how that figure was reached, but if we compare it to CIPA's own figures, it looks like there really were only 529 actual cameras sold, an incredibly low number.   CIFA's figures are only compiled for member companies, and the last update for film was in January (subsequent reports list figures for lenses only). But here's how they break down for January. New digital still cameras sold: 5,417,563, up 128% from the previous year. New film cameras sold: 1580, a tiny 2.8% of those sold in January 2007.   So, in Japan at least, film is now a niche product. We still don't think it will die, though, anymore than CDs killed vinyl. Film will just be one more boutique process for the curious. We predict that there will be a resurgence in 2018, and all the cool kids will be carrying Instamatics.     by Charlie Sorrel © Wired May, 2008     http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/sorrel_1/  

Friday, 02 May 2008

296. An Image Is a Mystery for Photo Detectives

  The phone call was routine, the kind often made before big auctions. Sotheby’s was preparing to sell a striking rust-brown image of a leaf on paper, long thought to have been made by William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the inventors of photography. So the auction house contacted a Baltimore historian considered to be the world’s leading Talbot expert and asked if he could grace the sale’s catalog with any interesting scholarly details about the print — known as a photogenic drawing, a crude precursor to the photograph.   “I got back to them and said, ‘Well, the first thing I would say is that this was not made by Talbot,’ ” the historian, Larry J. Schaaf, recalled in a recent interview.   “That was not what they were expecting to hear, to say the least.”     In the weeks since Dr. Schaaf’s surprising pronouncement was made public, “The Leaf”, originally thought to have been made around 1839 or later, has become the talk of the photo-historical world. The speculation about its origins became so intense that Sotheby’s and the print’s owners decided earlier this month to postpone its auction, so that researchers could begin delving into whether the image may be, in fact, one of the oldest photographic images in existence, dating to the 1790s.   This week the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which own similar photogenic drawings that once belonged to the same album as “The Leaf”, said that they planned to perform scientific analysis and further research on their images as well.   With these decisions, suddenly, a group of antique images known to the academic and auction worlds at least since 1984 — when Sotheby’s first sold them, fetching only $776 for the leaf print — have become the subjects of a high-profile detective story that could lead back to the earliest, murky years of the birth of photo technology and that could help to fill in crucial historical blanks.   Dr. Schaaf, who said he was not paid by Sotheby’s or by the owner of “The Leaf” print, said that he had been aware of the images — also known as photograms, cameraless prints made by placing objects on photosensitive paper exposed to light — for many years. He had seen five of the six prints that were once compiled in an album by Henry Bright, a Briton whose family was part of a group of scientists and tinkerers active around Bristol in the late 18th century.   But as with so many other early photographic images, Dr. Schaaf said, there was so little information about these that he never gave much thought to their origins. “In most cases we just don’t have any place even to get started”, he said.   It was when Sotheby’s inquiry reminded him that the images came from the Henry Bright family that he began to think about them again and to connect the dots with research that he had been doing for years into a group of photographic experimenters who had long predated Talbot and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, the other acknowledged inventor of photography.   Probably in the 1790s, according to accounts written shortly afterward, Thomas Wedgwood, a son of the Wedgwood china family, began experimenting with what he called solar pictures, making images on paper coated with a silver nitrate solution. A friend of his, James Watt, wrote in a 1799 letter that he intended to try similar experiments and in 1802 another friend, Humphry Davy, wrote an account of Wedgwood’s experiments in an article for a scientific-society journal, titling it “An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light Upon Nitrate of Silver.”   Like the lost plays of Aeschylus that were written about but did not survive themselves, no known examples of the work of Wedgwood and his circle have ever been found. But Dr. Schaaf, in looking deeper into the leaf image, realized that these legendary lost images had something else in common: their creators were all part of the close social circle of the family of Henry Bright.   “The reason that I got so excited about this was that it was the most solid, indicative collection I’ve seen,” he said. “I’m fully prepared for ‘The Leaf’ to have been made by Henry Bright, or by his father, after the 1790s. But I’ve never seen a story that fits together so neatly.”   He added, with the resolve that comes from more than 30 years of research into early photography and Talbot, “Someone could obviously come along and say that these images are all in fact Talbots, but they would be wrong.”   Jill Quasha is the photo dealer and expert who bought “The Leaf” in 1989 as she was building the Quillan Collection, a group of world-renowned photographs that Sotheby’s sold (without the leaf print) for almost $9 million on April 7. She said that it was still too early to say exactly what type of research would be conducted on the image. Tests could include those to determine the age of the paper and to identify the chemical makeup of any substances on the paper.   “I think it has to be done quickly and efficiently and with the least amount of damage to the photograph,” said Ms. Quasha, who added that she hoped the research could be completed within six months so that the print could be put up for auction again with a more iron-clad, and perhaps stunning, provenance. (As a Talbot, it was estimated to sell for $100,000 to $150,000; if it is determined to be older, it could bring substantially more.)   But Dr. Schaaf cautioned that even when the all scientific evidence is in — along with what might be found by deep sleuthing in the archives of the families of Bright, Wedgwood, Watt and Davy — the best that experts might be able to say about it being among the oldest photographic images is “maybe.”   “Somewhere in the course of the work we might find a smoking gun,” he said. “But then again, we very well might not.”   by Randy Kennedy ©The New York Times Abril, 2008       http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/kennedy/    

Wednesday, 02 April 2008

298. Pablo Antoli

  Date: February 29, 2008 4:37:11 PM   To all the ZoneZero team,   Thank you for all the effort you put into building such a fantastic project. I found in ZoneZero incredibly inspiring content that has deeply influenced my views on photography and multimedia. Your work is stimulating and gives new hope to the documentary tradition. Keep up with the good work.   Kind regards,   Pablo Antolí Photographer  

Friday, 29 February 2008

300. More grief for Canon

  Canon is investigating fresh claims of camera faults, this time affecting the top-of-the-range EOS 1Ds Mark III camera.   Photographers have been documenting instances where a scene appearing straight in the viewfinder leans up to one degree clockwise in the final image. The fault is said to be due to a misalignment of the camera's sensor with the viewfinder.   'We are aware of some issues relating to the viewfinder alignment,' a Canon spokeswoman tells BJP.   'The issues are currently under investigation. If any customers are experiencing such issues we are asking them to take their camera to their local service department for checking.'   Canon says it will release more information about the problem at a later stage.   The alignment issues come after Canon is said to be working on another new fix for its EOS 1D Mark III camera's autofocus problems.   In November, Canon began offering repairs on faulty EOS 1D Mark III cameras after it confirmed that a problem with the camera's sub-mirror - which deflects light on to its AF sensor - was the cause of reported autofocus tracking inconsistencies when used in AI (Artificial Intelligent) servo continuous shooting mode (BJP, 7 November 2007).   Now, engineers seem to have determined the root cause of the problems, and are preparing a new fix, which could involve both hardware and software upgrades.         © The British Journal of Photography February, 2008       http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/griefforcanon/  

Monday, 04 February 2008