326. Photographers at ZoneZero selected by Siggraph 2007

    At ZoneZero we are pleased to announce the selection of 12 of our galleries by the Siggraph 2007 curating committee to be part of the ZoneZero gallery at this year's Siggraph Annual Conference in San Diego. The work of the selected ZoneZero artists will be projected as part of this important gathering of digital innovators. The exhibition was held at the San Diego Convention Center from August 5th- August 9th. The exhibition will then tour with the ACM SIGGRAPH Traveling Art Show. We invite you to take a look at the website of the organizers: siggraph.org   We would also like to take advantage of this occasion to remind you just how important your contributions are to us. ZoneZero offers a unique opportunity to make your work known to the world, so take advantage of it! Send us your images to be considered both for the gallery and portfolio sections. Also, don't forget to take a peak at the selected galleries if you haven't done so before.   Our congratulations to all participating photographers.   Shahidul Alam Brahmaputra A journey to one of Asia's greatest rivers http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/shahidul/index.html       Jean Marc Caimi Kids http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/caimi/index.html           Shadi Ghadirian 'Qajar' and 'Like Every Day' (Gallery 1 and Gallery 2) http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/ghadirian/index.html           Oscar Guzmán The City of Galvez http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/guzman/index.html             Pok Chi Lau China 1979-2005 Asian-Americans http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/chilau/index.html           Daniel Machado The Rodelu Family http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/machado/index.html             Pedro Meyer I Photograph to Remember http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/fotografio/index.html             Uri Nesterov Ukraine http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/nesterov/index.html               Francisco Mata Rosas Mexico Tenochtitlan http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/matafco/index.html             Inés Ulanovsky Photos of you http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/ulanovsky/inicialeng.html                 Wyatt Gallery Katrina-Tsunami, remnants after the storm http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/wyatt/index.html             Li Zhensheng Red Color News Soldier http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/zhensheng/index.html               August 2007         http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/siggraph/index.html    

Sunday, 19 August 2007

328. Picture New York

      Dear friends, please take the time to read the petition of fellow photographers and filmmakers whose right to photograph in public space is threatened by a new set of rules currently under consideration in New York City. The petition calls for the city to dismiss the regulations and hold a new public hearing so that the community has a saying in the shaping of the new policies. We invite you to sign the petition and show your support on this very important issue. We invite everyone to participate, no matter where you live, since it is an issue that affects us all, even as tourists.   www.pictureny.org/petition/index.php    

Monday, 13 August 2007

330. Time for some changes

    After more than a decade of writing our monthly editorial for ZoneZero, I have decided to take a rest giving myself a sabbatical for the next twelve months. Nonetheless, you will be getting some very exciting editorials as I have invited some of the best people from all parts of the world, who can write about photography to replace me. It will, I am sure, be a very interesting exercise to get this diversity of minds and ideas and read what they have to say, as usual you will be able to interact with them in our forums.   I will not be that far from you even though I will not be writing the editorials. I will remain committed from the side-lines, to make sure we maintain the quality that you have come to expect from ZoneZero. Hopefully we will come up with new ideas that will give ZoneZero the continuous update that is required in a medium -the internet- that never stops changing.   During this time, I will be engaged in a variety of new activities, all running concurrently. I am going to move to a new home very close by, as I am leaving the place I have lived in for the past 25 years, so it can become the new home for the Pedro Meyer Foundation, which will be involved with the advancement of photography in a variety of fields, but mainly in the area where digital technologies intersect with content. The program of activities to be announced in the near future will be made available to you through ZoneZero.   We are also in the process of organizing the largest exhibition that has ever been presented of Mexican Photography in China. It will contain the work of 45 photographers. If you want to see what the the work we are going to show looks like, you are welcome to take a look at www.fundacionpedromeyer.com this is the first exhibition sponsored by the Pedro Meyer Foundation.   And lastly, I'm in the process of presenting next year a retrospective of my own work entitled HERESIES; it is going to open in sixty museums around the world, simultaneously, in October 2008. And for this, of course, we are also in the midst of editing and designing a book/catalogue to go along with the exhibition.   One of the more important aspects of this project on which we have been working now for four years, is the data base of all my work. Over 300,000 images and an untold number of documents, all accessible over the internet. What this database allows, is to begin a dialogue on how to change a "dead archive" into a "live" one, and thus changing the entire dynamic of what has been historically done with archives be that of photographers or for that matter any artist. The database is completely homemade, for we have programmed, designed and captured the data here in our Mexico City studio. The access to the database has at this time allowed 20 curators to work on diverse aspects of the Heresies retrospective, and all working simultaneously from different parts of the world. In due time we shall also be announcing how you can access all this material, stay tuned.   Pedro Meyer August, 2007 Coyoacan, Mexico   As always please joins us with your comments in our forums.         http://zonezero.com/editorial/agosto07/august07.html  

Thursday, 02 August 2007

332. Warning of Data Ticking Time Bomb

    The growing problem of accessing old digital file formats is a "ticking time bomb", the chief executive of the UK National Archives has warned.   Natalie Ceeney said society faced the possibility of "losing years of critical knowledge" because modern PCs could not always open old file formats.   She was speaking at the launch of a partnership with Microsoft to ensure the Archives could read old formats.   Microsoft's UK head Gordon Frazer warned of a looming "digital dark age".   Costly deal   He added: "Unless more work is done to ensure legacy file formats can be read and edited in the future, we face a digital dark hole."   Research by the British Library suggests Europe loses 3bn euros each year in business value because of issues around digital preservation.   The National Archives, which holds 900 years of written material, has more than 580 terabytes of data - the equivalent of 580,000 encyclopaedias - in older file formats that are no longer commercially available.   Ms Ceeney said: "If you put paper on shelves, it's pretty certain it is going to be there in a hundred years.   "If you stored something on a floppy disc just three or four years ago, you'd have a hard time finding a modern computer capable of opening it."   "Digital information is in fact inherently far more ephemeral than paper," warned Ms Ceeney.   She added: "The pace of software and hardware developments means we are living in the world of a ticking time bomb when it comes to digital preservation.   Historically within the IT industry the prevailing trend was for proprietary file formats. Gordon Frazer, Microsoft   "We cannot afford to let digital assets being created today disappear. We need to make information created in the digital age to be as resilient as paper."   But Ms Ceeney said some digital documents held by the National Archives had already been lost forever because the programs which could read them no longer existed.   "We are starting to find an awful lot of cases of what has been lost. What we have got to make sure is that it doesn't get any worse."   The root cause of the problem is the range of proprietorial file formats which proliferated during the early digital revolution.   Technology companies, such as Microsoft, used file formats which were not only incompatible with pieces of software from rival firms, but also between different iterations of the same program.   Mr Frazer said Microsoft had shifted its position on file formats.   "Historically within the IT industry, the prevailing trend was for proprietary file formats. We have worked very hard to embrace open standards, specifically in the area of file formats."   Microsoft has developed a new document file format, called Open XML, which is used to save files from programs such Word, Excel and Powerpoint.   Mr Frazer said: "It's an open international standard under independent control. These are no longer under control of Microsoft and are free for access by all."   But some critics question Microsoft's approach and ask why the firm has created its own new standard, rather than adopting a rival system, called the Open Document Format.   Instead, Microsoft has released a tool which can translate between the two formats.   Ben Laurie, director of the Open Rights Group, said: "This is a well-known, standard Microsoft move.   "Microsoft likes lock-ins. Typically what happens is that you end up with two or three standards."   The agreement between the National Archives and Microsoft centres on the use of virtualisation.   The archive will be able to read older file formats in the format they were originally saved by running emulated versions of the older Windows operating systems on modern PCs.   For example, if a Word document was saved using Office 97 under Windows 95, then the National Archives will be able to open that document by emulating the older operating system and software on a modern machine.   Ms Ceeney said the issue of older file formats was a bigger problem than reading outdated forms of media, such as floppy discs of various sizes and punch cards.   "The media it is stored in is not relevant. Back-up is important, but back-up is not preservation."   Adam Farquhar, head of e-architecture at the British Library, praised Microsoft for its adoption of more open standards.   He said: "Microsoft has taken tremendous strides forward in addressing this problem. There has been a sea change in attitude."   He warned that the issue of digital preservation did not just affect National Archives and libraries.   "It's everybody - from small businesses to university research groups and authors and scientists.   "It's a huge challenge for anyone who keeps digital information for more than 15 years because you are talking about five different technology generations."   The British Library and National Archives are members of the Planets project which brings together European National Libraries and Archives and technology companies to address the issue of digital preservation.   He said that open file formats were an important step but there was still work to be done.   "Automation is a key area to work on. We need to be able to convert hundreds and even thousands of documents at a time," he said.     © BBC News           http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/timebomb/index.html      

Monday, 16 July 2007

334. Why complaining will not help

  I have heard time and time again, how the market for photo documentary work is shrinking and there is no work to be found, and the little there is pays very poorly.   The question to be asked is if this statement is true, and if so what can be done about it.   In general terms I think there is indeed a big change in the size and scope of the market for photographic work available to freelance photographers. Today there are numerous solutions for those in need of photography to illustrate whatever is needed, other than hiring photographers to do such jobs. With online stock photography being just one of the many options to those in need of photographs, to the fact that with digital cameras many people have taken to make their own pictures rather than hiring someone for that purpose. Check the following article on corbis images.   So let us agree on the fact that the market has changed enormously. I would ask further, why are so many photographers so surprised? Unless they have been living a cave over the past decade, they would have probably noticed how everybody else's job has also been radically transformed. Why would it be any different for photographers? Just ask any musician how their jobs have been in a process of total turmoil.   When I was a kid there was a man who operated the elevator in the building where my father had his office in downtown Mexico City, He would also repair watches as he brought people up and down all day long. He would sit on a little stool and have a nice tidy little desk beside him, which would hold all the parts of the watch he was repairing as well as his work tools. He had found a way to service the continuous flow of people in and out of his elevator, while also being able to concentrate on his watches. He was always looking up with one of those special eye pieces that work as an enlarging glass, in his right eye, and then looking back at the watch. I never ceased to be amazed at his ability to cope with two such different jobs.   As you can well imagine today that elevator is automatic and does not require someone sitting there all day long to operate it. The watches he used to repair have been replaced by cheap watches that are better replaced with new ones, rather than spending on a repair. I don't know what became of this man, but I do know that both jobs he had no longer exist.   So rather than feeling sorry for oneself, it is best to move on, and ask, now what? How will a photographer survive in todays world?   The answers of course depend on where one is living, but in general it is reasonable to imagine that the variables are not that huge. The first basic question is, who actually needs your service? Stop thinking in terms of what you need, but rather in who you can provide a service to. If you can start making a list of who it is that might need the type of photography you like doing, then it is just a matter of finding who those potential clients are and start contacting them. Check the article on Times Magazine.     You then compete with other photographers on the basis of price, or on the basis of the uniqueness of your photography, or on both. But be prepared to consider that this is a process that is constantly in flux, in other words, you can't think anymore in terms of just sitting back to relax once you found the answers to your question. The market is changing all the time, and what might be a good solution today will no longer be so in a year or two.   I googled "photo agencies" and came up with over 19 million pages. That should tell you something about what is going on. The largest photo agencies are finding that they have a hard time competing against newer smaller agencies that charge a fraction of the price that the bigger agencies are charging, and this process will keep on changing as people figure out how to deliver a service for the best price possible while still making a profit. Something, which by the way, the larger agencies have not been having.   Complaining will not help in finding any solution to the changing market place. Searching for ways to offer a service, is what will be a much more promising route.     Let's look at some ideas:   A- Read all your local newspapers for interesting stories, or go out to local community centers, and hear what the locals have to say about their lives. Surely something will come up that will catch your attention. Be careful to choose ideas that are VISUAL, as you are going to produce a a photographic story. Try to imagine, as well, how the local can be of interest to the universal. In other words, doing a story that only touches upon the interests of the local people makes it less appealing on a world wide scale, and indeed we are in a world wide market place.   B- Add value to the images you are taking. For instance, in addition to the pictures you took, you could deliver a color selection that you can take to print. Place the images into a PDF presentation. In short, help the client make the best use of your images. You can even make printed books, to give to your clients. Increasingly wedding photographers are using such techniques, even going to the extent of making video presentations to go with the pictures, that will allow the newly wedded couple have a one stop shopping experience for all their visual needs.   C- Think of yourself in terms of a story teller, rather than simply a photographer. That will open up all sorts of creative ideas, consider who needs stories that have not been told before, or told as well. You now have all kinds of new delivery methods, which can go from an online over Internet presentation to CD ROM/DVD; PDF; formats. There are many more publications of every sort now, than at any time before.   D- If you were a very good printer in the lab, you might use the expert eye that you developed over the years, in order to solve new problems. Printing with a digital printer, still requires that expert eye trained to see what a good print looks like. Or you could scan images for a living, this is not such an easy job and is highly valued.   E- Add sound to your still images. That is another way of enhancing values and finding new clients. There are a number of web sites (New York Times, Washington Post) who have been publishing stories were use multimedia.   F- The sole market for educational and training programs is larger that it ever was in the past. Contribute more than just attempting to deliver the pictures, try to contribute ideas that are related to educational programs which might need video feeds or texts.   G- If you like food, then you have a world of ideas to explore just taking pictures of food preparation in places that are new, other than the traditional kitchen and well lit studio. These are fun stories, and offer an array of possibilities for documentary photographers.   H- I don't know why documentary photographers always have to think in terms of making pictures of the down trodden, the poor, or the exploited, in short, stories of injustice. I always find it very suspect when the photographer thinks that his or her ax to grind can only be by addressing histories that are hugely dramatic, such as wars, famine, drought, plague, invasion or destruction. What about the other side of life? I am thinking of the very wonderful story by Lauren Greenfield, Girl Culture Or her recent story she did on the super rich in China.   I- I don't think there is a woman, man or child, that has not gotten some sort of spam mail, offering penis enlargement products, or fake Rolex watches. Yet I have never seen anywhere a story related to all of these, so called "industries". I am sure there must be someplace in the world, a warehouse from which all this stuff gets sent out. I could also imagine, that someone must produce all these items, but where? how? who makes all these watches? in China? what do those factories look like? How many fake Rolex watches get made each hour? And all those women students who offer their bodies over the internet, in every variety of peep show possible, in order to supplement their income as "students". That is a culture unto itself, where are all those stories?   J- the excuse that there are no major magazines interested in publishing interesting stories is probably untrue. What I think has happened is that the major magazines are the ones that are in a process of publishing remission, but that does not mean that there aren't hundreds and hundreds of new publications, all over the world, which use a lot of photographic essays. Every time I travel by plane, I find the pocket in front of my seat, all sorts of publications, that use lots and lots of photography. Just go to a new stand, and count the number of magazines that you can find there.   K- If you look at what happened with commercial television, and apply the same sort of analysis to photography you will see what I mean. Sure, the large television networks have lost audience, but does that mean that people are watching less television? I don't think so. They are just watching it through different channels, such as cable for instance, or Youtube over the internet, or DVDs. Yes the markets have changed, but not so the consumption of video images and stories. Story telling is alive and well.   I am sure that you can contribute any number of even better ideas to this roster of possibilities, the whole point is to bring out the notion that we have a lot more to gain, by thinking constructively rather than complaining. And just as in any other endeavor at this time, we as photographers have to also find ways to adjust our work to the prevailing change of winds. Remember, "it is not the gale but the set of the sails".   Pedro Meyer July, 2007 Coyoacan, Mexico   As always please joins us with your comments in our forums.     http://zonezero.com/editorial/julio07/july07.html    

Monday, 02 July 2007

336. Nemanja Brankovic

  Date: June 25, 2007 9:14:14 PM   Well, actually I have been visiting you site for a long time. In first I was learning how to become a photographer and I discovered what I want to do for the rest of my life. Observing the portfolios that the people have on your site inspired me to experiment and learn new things. I would like very much to receive your bulletin and also to participate with my portfolio.   Thank you very much, Nemanja Brankovic  

Monday, 25 June 2007

338. Photoshop. Masking & Compositing by Katrin Eismann

  Perhaps you are of the likes of Katrin Eissman, who realized that she could not get all she wanted to express with a single camera shot and decided to make image composites. She started out cutting photos with her scissors, put them together with tape or did photo-montages in the darkroom, until one day she found that a computer offered the possibility of putting her ideas to practice in a much faster, easier and simple way.   This new book by Katrin is the kind you want to keep right next to the coffee mug because it will often get you out of trouble. This book is for anyone using Photoshop who wants to get acquainted with or would like to improve his or her selection techniques.   The book has four sections:   * Tools and selection techniques * Working with layers * Masks * Selecting and working with very detailed images.   Katrin explains that, before starting to manipulate an image, we must be very clear about what we want to accomplish, this will enable us to decide which is the most appropriate selection method. We tend to use recipes and each image requires something different due to its color, texture or the way it will be combined.   We must take into account that the original digital photos (the ones coming from the camera or scanner, the background layer) are like the negatives, so they should not be altered. She advises to make a copy of the background layer file before starting. Even though this takes up space of your hard drive, you cannot afford the risk of losing an image if you have second thoughts.   She recommends to always have a camera with you, so you can shoot your own image bank, this will ensure that you have the material you need, according to your needs and personal style.   The book opens up the door to use tools that are forgotten because they are so intimidating, like the pen tool. She tells us effective ways to use it, and makes us understand that mastering this tool requires patience.   “Masks are your friends” is the title of a chapter that seeks that the reader will lose the fear of using this technique. The function of a mask is to control, which part of the image will be modified and which will not. Katrin suggests a variety of efficient solutions, with tools I thought were meant to do other things, such as filters, channels, layers and color contrast, which render impeccable selections without having to spend long hours painting with the brush tool or clicking the mouse hundreds of times.     Anybody using Photoshop must understand that layers are crucial. They allow us to work without destroying or altering previous steps. Layer masks are the program’s soul, they provide the ability to combine images without destroying them. They allow you to move, hide, mix, experiment or combine different shapes- all of it without losing a single pixel.   The comprehension of the examples and techniques used in the book demands, in my opinion that you work only with the shown examples, this means that you must follow recipes that are appropriate for those images. That is why you have to try them out with your own pictures and be sure that you’ve learned something that can be applied to your own work.   Katrin tries to keep the spirits high in her book, since many times we think that making a selection takes less time than it actually does, we tend to loose our patience, but she is able to come up with funny remarks that helps us to relax. It takes time to process everything that is taught in this book, and be able to master the tools, so we will not overwork our photographs and they look the wrong way for abusing the tools. The important thing is to have an idea of what we want to accomplish with our image, and to look for the best way to do it, not to be an expert in techniques that we don’t know how to use.   I give the book two thumbs up. I enjoyed doing every exercise and discovering the many things that can be done with the program. It is not easy to understand, you need to have previous knowledge of Photoshop and be familiar with digital image manipulation. But you must keep it near you, because it will get you off the hook Reading it once is not enough, you will keep coming back to it over and over. The selection process requires patience, lots of practice and creativity.   Mariana Gruener       Katrin Eismann Internationally recognized artist, author, and educator who has been working with digital imaging tools since 1989. Katrin's extensive teaching and speaking engagements address the latest tools and techniques of digital imaging and the impact they are having upon professional photographers, artists, and educators. She has taught and presented in Europe, Asia, South America, and throughout North America. Katrin studied photography and electronic still imaging at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She was the first intern at the Kodak Center of Creative Imaging in Camden, Maine. Three years later she was the Director of Education and had implemented a rigorous curriculum that focused on imaging, design, and multimedia. In 1998: Katrin co-authored; Web Design Studio Secrets and Adobe Photoshop Studio Secrets, 2nd edition for IDG Books; chaired two Thunder Lizard Productions Focus on Photoshop conferences. In 1999: Silicon Graphics Computer Corporation selected Katrin to participate in the Vanguards of Visual Computing Program. In 2000 she taught at numerous workshops and at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. In 2002: Katrin received her MFA degree in Design from the School of Visual Arts in NYC.       Photoshop. Masking & Compositing by Katrin Eismann Máscaras y montajes con PHOTOSHOP. por Katrin Eismann Spanish Edition Edited By Editorial Anaya   This wonderful book by Katrin Eismann which is a must for every photographer, is now also available in Spanish language.       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/dcorner/gruener02/mask.html    

Friday, 01 June 2007

340. Vilma Espin (1930-2007)

Vilma Espin, the wife of Cuba's acting leader Raul Castro and for years one of the most important women in Cuba, died last Monday, June 18 in Havana. She was 77. Espin fought alongside Fidel Castro during the Cuban revolution and married his brother Raul shortly after the revolution. Espin's power base was the Federation of Cuban Women, which she founded in 1960 and fashioned into an important pillar of support for the communist government. She served as its president for four decades, with virtually every woman and adolescent girl on the island listed as members.       She was credited with improving the status of women in a society known for its history of machismo by articulating the need for a more equal environment between the sexes. She gave prominent voice to improvements in maternal and child health-care policies as well as the need for women to educate themselves. She successfully lobbied for passage of the Cuban Family Code of 1975, which codified the duties of men to participate in household responsibilities, such as child raising. "From the feminist perspective, she empowered women in a home to say to a husband, 'It's my national, patriotic duty to work, to volunteer in the community," said Ileana Fuentes, executive director of the Cuban Feminist Network, a Miami-based social-needs organization that tries to help women in Cuba. "Whether you are for or against Castro, that's an empowering tool for women." June 2007       http://zonezero.com/magazine/obituaries/espin/index.html    

Thursday, 31 May 2007

342. Through the Magnifying Glass: Painters or Photographers?

  I     THE PROJECTED OPTICAL IMAGE   In December 2001, an eventful conference was held in New York, crowning two years of intense research during which the painter David Hockney collected evidence to prove the thesis that the nature of painting was radically altered when it adopted the projected image as a tracing pattern. According to Hockney, this change took place in the city of Bruges as early as 1430, that is, at the beginning of the Renaissance.   The book Secret Knowledge: rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters is the outcome of this research and presents the paintings themselves as "scientific evidence". A comparative analysis that places hundreds of images next to each other ordered chronologically from 1300 to 1870 illustrates an irreversible change in the way the Flemish, and later on the Italians, painted from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards. A study by Charles Falco, an optical scientist at the University of Arizona, demonstrates the use of optical devices (concave mirrors and magnifying glasses) and suggests the possible methods used to take advantage of the projected image to trace drawings or produce the necessary marks for the creation of lens-based paintings. Such a technique would have given an unmistakable optical look to the paintings that would soon be found all over Europe.     In this way, the use of the projected image as a tracing pattern would have become the basic means of registering visual reality in the Renaissance and during the next four centuries. This optical-graphical tradition would continue until 1839 when it was replaced by the optical-chemical system—better known as photography—, freeing painting at last from what Hockney has called the "tyranny of optics".   If we take an ordinary magnifying glass and place it some 20 cm from a wall opposite a window, we will be able to see the projection of a small inverted image, analogous to what we can see with our eyes. This principle—which was also used in "magical" shows since ancient times—is based on a natural phenomenon that can be observed even without the use of a lens (by means of a pinhole in a wall of a darkened room). This phenomenon had already been described by Mo Ti in China in the 5th century BC, by Aristotle in the 4th century BC and by the Arab Alhazen of Basra in the 10th century AD. Giambattista Della Porta, for example, in his book Magiae Naturalis of 1558, recommended the use of the camera obscura to help painters achieve correct perspectives. All subsequent versions of the optical camera, including present-day digital cameras, are based on the same principle: a lens produces an inverted image of reality that is then recorded.   Hockney recreates one of the possible techniques employed to paint with the assistance of a concave mirror. From Hockney's Secret Knowledge, p. 76.   Hockney's thesis now reinforces the fact that optics has played a major role in the visual arts. From tracing the projected image by hand, to the chemical fixing of the image on a photographic plate and the current means of recording it using a CCD chip, it can be said that what has changed is just the recording system, not the underlying principle. Whether or not optical instruments are used to produce an image could even form the basis for a typology of the visual arts, in contrast to the one based on the medium.     II   PHOTOPTICS   Some four years ago, in my classes for film students at Arcis University in Santiago de Chile, and in several workshops, I began questioning the term photography, which comes from photos = light and graphos= writing or drawing. I was bothered by the fact that the term photography was used to name a chemical system invented precisely to replace the graphical system.   The error originated, in my opinion, not only with the name itself, but also with its definition. Any book on photography defines a photograph as an "image obtained through the action of light on a photosensitive material." If we took this as our starting point, then a bikini line on tanned skin would fit our definition perfectly, as would the mark left by any object on a newspaper exposed to the sun, or the marks on metals such as silver, bronze or copper. Clearly, we would never have come up with photography as we know it by paying heed to such a definition; even though in this field no one seems to care about definitions. However, an accurate definition that can encompass not only photography, but also analogous disciplines such as Renaissance painting, cinema and video, is possible. An example of this definition could be: "Manual, chemical or electronic recording of an optically projected image", or more concisely: "The recording of a projected image". Unknown. The Miraculous Mirror, 18th century. Engraving. International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.   On the other hand, if we wanted to give a name to this definition, we would clearly need to include the term optic because if light is not organized optically, as occurs in our eyes, it loses all meaning by not providing an image and becoming just a radiant chaos. If, for example, we defined writing as the action of ink on paper, without mentioning the pen as the organizing element, we would have to accept that an inkblot on paper is writing. In recent years I have proposed the term Photoptics, which could stand for optically organized light.   Optics, as a system that organizes light, gives birth to a kind of syntax that is analogous to the distinctive features of the human eye and can be understood by our interpretative system. This optical syntax allows us to make sense of notions such as focusing, framing, choosing a vantage point, varying the perspective, etc. This role of optics goes far beyond the recording system, which can vary (it can be a pencil, a photographic plate, a CCD chip) without altering the continuity and conceptual unity of the visual syntax and can be decoded by any person with an optical education. On the other hand, images that are not generated through an optical process are the expression of associative mental images, rather than visual representations, and they have played a different role in the history of the visual arts. A classic example is children's painting, which is very similar in most parts of the world, and omits entire portions of the visual reality in order to obtain a mental representation. These images represent the child's understanding more than what he or she actually sees. Lens-based images are point-by-point mappings from an analogous source, such as the projected image. For them to work, they need to create a matrix first, and this is precisely what Renaissance painting did by submitting itself to the optical pattern, unconsciously transforming itself into a kind of photography.   Hans Holbein. The Ambassadors, 1533. In the foreground, a skull that has been deformed through optical means can be observed. From David Hockney's book, p. 56.   The title of Hockney's book "Secret knowledge…" reminds us that the use of projected images was kept secret for centuries. I would claim that it was not a secret as such, otherwise Hockney would not have been able to find sufficient evidence to prove his thesis on so short notice. It could rather be the result of a deliberate attempt at providing painting with a sacred and supernatural aura. This can easily be understood if we recall that for centuries painting served a religious function, that the Inquisition prohibited the use of optical instruments and that in general no painter would have cast doubts on his own reputation by giving technical explanations to the public and his competitors. The truth is that before the advent of optical devices nobody, no civilization or culture, had managed to produce "realist" paintings, and suddenly, after this date, most painters showed an almost incomprehensible talent for them. It goes without saying that various generations of painters had to pass through a long period of apprenticeship, surrendering rigorously to the “tyranny” of optical instruments, before this concept was finally accepted as "natural".     The "secret" fell into oblivion and the quasi-religious desire for the existence of demigods in the pantheon of arts could count on the accomplice negligence of most collectors, admirers and museum curators. After all, why look for explanations if time itself would take care of erasing all traces? As Hockney explains, the use of computers would change all of this by making it possible to discover by simulation the type of optics and techniques that could have been used. After all, paintings cannot be hidden and they are themselves the evidence that a projected image was used as pattern.   Carel Fabritius. 1625. View of Delft with a Musical Instrument Seller's Stall. The optical deformity was probably created by the use of a camera oscura with a wide angle lens.   The silence regarding the explanation of the supernatural character of “naturalistic” painting would also have different consequences, particularly for the invention of photography. III   150 YEARS OF SOLITUDE, PHOTOGRAPHY'S LONELINESS   As we have seen, the natural principle behind the projected image was known since Antiquity. Projection systems, based on a small hole drilled through the wall (pinhole) of a darkened room (camara obscura) and acting as a lens (by diffraction), have existed at least since the 14th century. Projection using concave mirrors was already possible in the 15th century. The replacement of the holes by lenses in the camera took place in the 16th century. Portable optic cameras would be used in the 17th century, and the camera lucida would finally be invented in the 18th century. There is then a whole history of cameras without film, which demonstrates two fundamental ideas: first, cameras were actively being used to the point that they were constantly being improved and second, film was not (nor is) essential. Four centuries of cameras without film versus one and a half of film-based cameras prove this point.     In 1839, during a period filled with inventions, finding mechanical methods that could replace manual activities was a common occurrence. The search for a chemical procedure that could record the images generated in optical cameras was not an exception. As Albertus Magnus had already described the photosensitive properties of silver salts in the 12th century and the German chemist J.H. Schulze had experimented with them in 1727, only one question remained unanswered: How could the image formed on a photosensitive surface be preserved in broad daylight? In other words: How to fix the image? Several painters and photographers would soon answer this question: Herschel (1818) and Talbot (1835) in England, Hercule Florence (1833) in Brazil and Nicephore Niepce (1827), Hippolyte Bayard (1839), and Louis J. Mandé Daguerre (1839) in France. Therefore, when the official date of the birth of photography was resolved, what was actually discovered was the fixer. In relation to the centenary presence of optic images, the daguerreotype was probably not understood as a revolution but as an improvement on painting. Hence Delaroche's famous pronouncement before the invention of Daguerre: "From today, painting is dead!"   Unknow photographer. Jabez Hogg making a portrait in Richard Beard's studio, 1843. Daguerreotype. Bokelberg Collection, Hamburg.   The daguerreotype was invented by the painter Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, who would be known to history not as a painter but as a photographer. In his case, as in the case of many other painters who transformed their ateliers into photography studios, the legacy of painting would be brushed over. In an age filled with inventions such as the telegraph and later on the gramophone, the pictorial inheritance would be silenced by the photographers themselves, who wished to portray their activity as a novelty and also by painters who were still tied to the secret of their optic past. We know that a few years later, faced with the impossibility of continuing to paint in accordance to the canons of optics, painters would chose to return to the tradition of associative mental images, abjuring from any notion of optics and at the same time challenging it through what has been called "Modernism".   Paul Cézanne. Five Bathers, 1885-7. From David Hockne's book. Pág. 194.   Nevertheless, this omission would have important consequences for the newly born discipline. Through the term graphos, its name would continue to be associated to the art of drawing and it would persistently be considered part of the graphic arts. For example, the first photography book, issued by Henri Fox Talbot, would be titled The Pencil of Nature (1844-46). This means that there existed a tradition that chemical procedures could not erase. While presented as a novelty, in the practice—and with good reason—it did not manage to think of itself as such, imagining pencils where they were not present anymore. This dichotomy would split photography in two apparently irreconcilable tendencies. The first one, which called itself pictorialist, continued the ancient tradition of the optical-graphical system, preserving its style, its genres (portrait, landscape, still life, nude, etc.), its painted backgrounds, its poses, and devoting itself with great success to coloring daguerreotypes, retouching negatives, creating compositions with various negatives (a technique derived from the Flemish painters) and other types of painterly effects. The other tendency, which was more up to date and did not carry the weight of painting on its back, will see photography as a neutral means of recording visual reality, in the same way as a microphone, which will be used with greater freedom but probably with a more limited or improvised sense of aesthetics.   Oscar G. Rejlander: The Two Paths of Life, 1857. Photograph composed with the use of more than thirty different negatives.   Having gained only the recognition of the scientific community and having been rejected by painters who had not converted to photography, the question “Is photography an art?” could only cast doubts, leading ultimately to the rupture between both tendencies. The incomprehension of its true nature—a recording system for optically projected images—, the disconnection with its hundred-year-old inheritance, the incongruence of its name and the absence of a true definition will create a sort of schizophrenia in the practice of this discipline, generating important delays in the acknowledgement of its true worth. The sense of abandonment shared by photographers will be without parallel and will endure for all of the 19th and 20th centuries.   Illustration by Nadar. The ingratitude of painting refusing the smallest place in its exhibition to photography to whom it owes so much. Engraving from the Journal Amusant, 1857.   With the arrival of the 21st century, the widespread change from chemical to electronic recording devices and the adoption of the digital system are starting to erase the divisions that will permit this discipline to recover its century-old inheritance and start to take advantage of the best of both worlds: precise neutral recording and infinite (mathematical) manipulation.   Since the invention of film and the chemical process in 1839 were celebrated as the beginning of photography, today, when film and the chemical process have their days counted, we can say with all certainty: Photography is dying!     IV   THE CONCEPTUAL UNITY OF A HUNDRED-YEAR OLD DISCIPLINE   If painters had acknowledged the use of lenses and camera obscuras as soon as they started using them towards the beginning of the Renaissance, the Church might have expelled them from the painter's guild and the discipline would have received a different name. Perhaps something having to do with light, with optics and with drawing, maybe "light draftsmen", or simply "photographers". The history of photography would have made its official appearance in due time and the invention of film would have been interpreted as a modernization made possible by the Industrial Revolution, in the same way the telephone replaced the telegraph without losing sight of the concept of communication at a distance.   Nowadays, the abundance of declassified documents, the information that is shared on the net and the advances in computerized tools allow us to review historical interpretations more rigorously. With greater frequency we see that history has been colored by myths, omissions and constructed truths. One of these weak links is art, with its attachment to less than adequate scientific standards and the concentration of myths of a religious nature in which "beliefs" often replace understanding. Even though trying to examine facts rationally might not always be welcome—and might even be considered "heretical" or "insane"—it is worthwhile to side with those who have fought in the past for a clearer and less prejudiced view of things, a perspective that has allowed human beings to evolve and assume their own capabilities.   Today, as always, our appraisal of reality is mediated through our sense organs, which transform perception into data. More than ever before, the eyes have become our privileged sense organ and optical organization has become a universal language. Images created with the assistance of optical instruments populate the day-to-day life of big cities and exercise a decisive attraction on distant towns. The real key to the production of images—be they painted, printed or projected, still or moving—is found in the phenomenon of optical projection. An accurate understanding of this fact should lead us to create a branch specific to the arts uniting all the disciplines that fit the definition of "a recording of an optically projected image".   Erwin Blumenfeld. What Looks New,1947.   The only way we can move beyond the conceptual fragmentation surrounding the varied production of optically based images is to consider the phenomenon in its historical totality. This implies assimilating four centuries of "naturalist" painting, starting with Renaissance painters, as a direct precursor of photography and cinema. Only this global understanding can lead us to comprehend the mechanics of the evolution of the image and understand, for example, the implications of the adoption of the digital system of notation.   The fact that the optical image shares today the same coding system as graphic art, text and sound, poses several questions with regards to its future. Answers to these queries can only be advanced provided that we have a global vision of the historical dimension, the cycles and the general trend of the phenomenon. In a certain sense, the adoption of the digital system is placing the counters back to zero; we therefore need to understand what we mean by zero. Clarifying these questions would clearly be beyond the scope of this article and could well be the subject of another article. Let's leave these questions open, on the foundations we have just described and let's judge the fairness of this reasoning, trying to think differently for one moment. Perhaps the answer lies in what we had always intuited.   The horizon is wide open; let's move ahead.   Doifel Videla   William-Adolphe Bourguerau, La Vague, 1886. From David Hockney's book, p. 195.     http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/doifel/doifel.html        

Tuesday, 29 May 2007

344. Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail by Ruben Martinez

Crossing Over, the recently published book by Ruben Martinez, from Metropolitan Books (Henry Holt and Company New York), is perhaps now a more relevant read than ever as the events of September 11th have spawned a new fervour of U.S. Jingoism. Its fall out can be seen everywhere, as Mexican trucks in California and beyond switch home country flags and their "I love" stickers for the stars and stripes, in a desire to blend in. America's new security only heightens the plight of Mexican and Latin American immigrants who continue to cross into the United States, but their position as undocumented workers is today all the more perilous with the present border controls and INS crack down.   Martinez's book reflects a warmth and humanity, to those he depicts without putting them on a pedestal of alternative heroism, on the contrary their humanity is precisely imbedded in their contradictions. Ruben follows the exodus of one extended family, the Chavez clan from Cherán, Michoacan to California and Missouri and Wisconsin. The family are Purépecha, the very word meaning people who travelled. While many American's still remain wedded to the fantasy notion of the melting pot, Martinez argues a very different position, that these migrants far from fitting in, are engaged in changing two worlds, that of Mexico and the United States simultaneously, creating new complex highbred cultures which affect all aspects of life both north and south of the border.   This book is a must for those interested in border culture, immigration and beyond that great reportage writing!       Extracts from this project were made in conjunction with ZoneZero, as Martinez and Joseph Rodriguez documented together for ZoneZero the migration trail see: The New Americans     http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/ziff/ruben.html    

Monday, 28 May 2007

346. A Daily report 1999: by Frank Horvat

  There is something about Daily Report, which draws me to return to it. A book as the title indicates of images taken each day during the last year of the millennium by French photographer Frank Horvat; a visual diary. It is not as though every image presented is memorable, or that the narrative flows with a determined conviction. This book has a quieter power. Perhaps what intrigues the viewer is precisely its considered mundane qualities, yet, it lacks banality. Horvat does not attempt to be monumental, there are no gimmicks or shocks. These are not epic images, yet they do reveal a great deal of information about certain specific worlds.   A modest book in many ways and yet Horvat’s visual diary is simultaneously a valuable undertaking. Beautifully printed, on high quality, heavy duty paper its form reflects a similar sensibility of precision and caring as the content. A simple idea, which could easily have been repetitive and uninteresting, but Horvat manages to maintain an energy, interest and rhythm that is sustained throughout the year. The book itself is compact, brick-like; it reminds me of one of those block calendars where you peel off each day which, as the year progresses becomes thinner and more manageable. Or a flip-book, which tells a narrative, but in this case there is no narrative, just a series of non-sequitur which when run together produce a sense of pleasant chaos. Like a Codex there is no necessity for a linear reading; there is ultimately no structure or revealing narrative that demands the calendar be observed. It is a book that can be returned to; images that can viewed one day at a time or the year in one sitting.   Horvat’s record of 1999 is a personal testimony without the pretensions of being any more than that. However, how reflective is this of his normal year? Funded in part by Kodak France and other corporations, the reader is left unclear about issues, which are significant to a reading of the overall content of the book. One cannot but speculate, how much did the funding of this project influence and change the structure of Horvat’s days during 1999? Did this funding “free-up” his time from other jobs in order that he concentrate on A Daily Report, or provide him with the financial support to travel for this book? Or would his year have been the same with or without the grants? The author does not indicate any of these details, so the reader is consequently left wondering to what extent does the book in the end reflect an “authentic” year in Horvat’s life or did he create a “specific” year, designed around the requirements of this book? Which came first for the image of each day? Important issues which remain unanswered.   Horvat writes, in his introduction, “I took no photographs of war, of misery, of suffering or of madness; not because I am indifferent to these calamities but because I have never felt that I had either the moral justification or (in the case of war) the physical courage, to confront such situations through my lens.” His response reflects his own privilege and choices. Another photographer in a different geographical context or time, might not have such choices. Horvat, born in 1928 spent World-War II in Switzerland. We have no indication what those years were for him as a young man, who knows what makes a photographer chose to photograph or to turn away from images of conflict or calamity and who is to judge? Is there a hierarchy of value in image making?   This is a book full of the other moments that are the staple of our lives. The scenes that are often missed and left unrecorded. Each moment held, a pause, a trace as it passes consciously till the next. Moods that change – and change again. The majority of these moments, images in this book, appear to have been discovered not created, not those crucial decisive moments which many photographers patiently stake out, nothing here appears overly considered. The living appears to have come first and the photographs then knitted into that year of living. Carefully observed but never forced.   I speculate, how as the months passed Horvat’s relaxed eye may have become more concerned with the issue of repetition, or even boredom with the discipline of the daily need to make and record one image. No days off from behind the camera. Where was Horvat’s camera on the morning of January 1 2000, or ten days later? Finally was there time off? Or did the process continue? A new habit hard to break, or perhaps an earlier one just reinforced?   The world Horvat offers the viewer is a combination of internal and external spaces, just personal enough to give us a sense of the man behind the camera, but never crossing defined boundaries. “I did not try to reveal my sexuality or that of others, because I have never done it in the past and at my age it would be unseemly to start.” Yet it is an intimate record. A testimony that one can reveal an essence of ones’ being, without exposure. Horvat appears a solid man, comfortable in his own shoes and with his years. A man with a keen eye for detail and an apparent need for order and restraint.   Daily Report is a book, which oozes with the concerns of European street photography, of the flaneur, and is bound up with the specificity of that gaze. Horvat’s eye reflects concerns which dominate twentieth century French photography, images of the street, documenting daily life. In the 1950’s he met Robert Capa and Cartier Bresson and later moved to London where he worked for both Life Magazine and Picture Post. A man whose eye has been steeped within a humanist tradition, a populist, consumed with the concerns of visual narrative. Horvat sites himself as a participant within a community of both ‘documentary’ and fashion photography. He photographs those he encounters in his report, his friends; Joseph Koudelka in his kitchen (also Spartan); Véronique Leyrit, visited over a trip to Paris; a portrait of Helmut Newton, the bridge of his glasses reflecting the identical intonation of his eye brows. Marc Riboud still photographing in Italy, Cartier Bresson, with his biographer. Photographers whose work and concerns are unique yet all who as individuals are important contributors to twentieth century European photography.   On May the fourth, Horvat visits his friend, Edouard Boubat, a photographer whose own body of work reflects similar concerns to those of Horvat. He makes a portrait of Boubat, his eyes still keen and smiling. Within weeks Boubat is dead. Horvat photographs the funeral and the coffin of his friend. The only day in the year represented by more than one image. A quiet homage in itself, as if the rhythm of his year paused and something more needed to be said. A day that stands distinct from all the others. The photograph of Boubat’s coffin in the ground so similar in form to the first image in his book of the new bath. These two photographs become inseparable, January 1st and July 2nd; cleansing and death. Looking into the grave of Boubat is a strangely intimate image, not sentimental. No different to looking into an empty bath and speculating about the bather.   The following days images reflect a sense of time pass and of loss. A sad photograph of Jean Michel Horvat, the photographers son with his son, Grégoire, followed by a lonely street scene. Nothing is said, just whispered images which connote reflection. Horvat’s book is filled with images of his family, his partner Véronique Aubry, his children and grandchildren and their friends, warm and alive. His family fill a large place in his world. These are tender and sensitive images of people used to his camera and gaze, yet they are open uncluttered images. Despite the intimacy of the relationship to him, he photographs each one of his family members with a visual separation and independence.   Another theme, which ripples through his diary are images of animals. There is something uniquely European in the legitimacy of the male gaze on a kitten, or to be more precise uniquely French. In other visual cultures these images I speculate might be seen but left unrecorded.   Many of Horvat’s days are represented by visual ‘one liners’, seen and recorded. These are not monumental images but quietly noticed instances of the absurd. As they year progresses we encounter fragmented parts of Horvat’s body with the fantasy that by the end of the year perhaps we might have glimpsed the whole. On March 13th a hand; on April 18th a foot; a self-portrait in a hotel bathroom on June 1s reveals a torso with the face obscured by the camera; both hands, August 2nd. and then, finally in December as the year is ending, Horvat pictures himself, sick with a cold, it is as if illness has precluded all other possibilities and reluctantly Horvat has no other choice than to turn the camera on himself.   The year ends as it began back in his home in Cotignac, France, with his partner Véronique Aubry who worked with Horvat editing this book and the millennium ends with the symbolic cleansing ritual of leaf burning.       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/ziff/dialyreport.html      

Saturday, 26 May 2007

348. Boystown: La Zona de Tolerancia

  I slept well last night, cozy and warm in the silence and pure darkness. For breakfast I had hot coffee and sweet bread, sitting in the sun. But I feel hungover, tired, used and abused.   I feel like my body has been handled by fat, clammy male hands, my throat stings from stale cigarette smoke, and I smell flat, warm beer. I have just read through Boystown.   Cheap bodies, cheap clothes, cheap beer, cheap smokes, cheap sex, cheap love. None of it questioned, all of it accepted at its falsified face value. The men and women (and occasional children) in these 1970s anonymous brothel-town souvenir snapshots never considered that their image might end up in an art-photo book in post-modern, post-feminist times.   “Perhaps the power of these photographs lies in the fundamental fact that no myths are being created or sustained,” writes photographer Keith Carter in his essay at the back of the book. There is nowhere to hide anything and no one cares to anyway; they’ve come here to La Zona de Tolerancia (The Zone of Indulgence) to do the very opposite. This tempts poetic conclusions about these photographs’ expression of basic human needs and desires, and the ways and places we’ve created to fulfill them; conclusions about the universality of lust and its satisfaction among all men and among all women (though functioning very differently between the genders); about the fact that prostitution in its many forms has never been absent from the human experience; about how beauty transcends, can be found in anywhere; and the specific aesthetic and fantastic allure of a risky, underground lifestyle.   For me, this book is about the women. While it is the men who are making the moves (kissing, grabbing, fondling, and most often holding on possessively), the men who have come here from many desert miles away, the men who are looking for and paying for a service, in these photographs they are one-dimensional characters. They are obvious and pitiful. The women, conversely, are extremely present, both for the camera and apparently to themselves as well. My experience of this was similar to that of Carter: “On first viewing, I thought the women looked understandably detached. After a longer look it seems to me that they are detached, but only from their male companions; they are fully present to the photographer.” The men look pitiable because they are so glaringly unaware that the inhabitant of the body they cling to is in another world; not far away, not dreamy nor in denial, but not partaking in their fantasy--just playing the game as far as the little change purse that lies on most of the beer bottle-laden tables which foreground a majority of the images. Many of the women’s gazes could be a wink to the photographer, and to us, “can you believe this guy?”   Their facial expressions and body language have shockingly little to do with the physical moment. Even when they do strike a “sexy” pose, it is often with such lack of enthusiasm that it hardly seems it would satisfy the customer. None of the photos in Boystown are sexy, really. There is no pleasure, no sensuality—a hand holds a breast but there is no visible sensation, and no interaction. Although sex itself is absent from these photographs, you would never mistake one of these couples to be sitting in a roadside diner—revealed is a complex farce of romance and companionship, and exploitation and need.   One of the early spreads in the book is a series of portraits of prostitutes in a photographer’s studio (that is, posed in front of a ratty curtain or bare wall, alone and straight on).   Here the women are far from interchangeable (although Cristina Pacheco writes in her essay that they serve as, if not feel themselves to be, “all the women and none”). Some are heartbreakingly worn down, a few are coy or expressive of their sensuality, one laughs openly, another smiles with the most kind and honest face you could find anywhere. There is a middle-aged woman in a blond wig that only serves to make her look awkward. Some women look like battered wives, used rags, abused girls. Some wear so much eye make-up that the rest of their face becomes invisible. Some look masculine, some are fat, some are having fun, some are beautiful.   You can’t help but wonder where they live, what they think about. You can’t help but wonder how integral our physical experiences are to our spirit. Is it possible to overcome this hard physical life or, although you maintain your distance and your memories, does it define you? Do so many of the women in these photographs look uncomfortable for the impossible expectation of a glamorous pose in the farthest place on Earth from Hollywood? Is it the itchy plastic get-up they have squeezed themselves into? Is it the camera, hired by the client, capturing them in a “two-dollar universe”? Or is it perhaps their very life that makes them uneasy in their own skin?   The photographers who circulated in these whorehouses and the women who worked there probably saw each other night after night; there is no artifice between them, even in this setting that begs it. In some of the images there seems to be a tenderness or a familiarity between the client and the prostitute, and I let myself imagine that they have a deeper relationship. But despite these aspects that let those depicted exist as individuals, after pages and pages of drunk-man-grappling-half-naked-woman shots, they start to look the same. On the very page where I felt I couldn’t take it anymore, having reached some level of tedium or surfeit, the nature of the photographs changed. A woman with a bandaged head lies in her bed, alone. In another children overflow the laps of what could be a young mother and her own mom. Interestingly, here the women’s gazes are shrouded; not cold, but not inviting. This is their private world and they have no reason to let us in.   Bill Wittliff, the collector of these anonymous images, comments that there are more: “along with the standard party pictures there were portraits of the prostitutes, snaps of street urchins, busboys, musicians—indeed a cross-section of that whole cloistered world....” As a historical or sociological study this book would be more complete if the rest of the “town,” and more of the private lives of the sex workers, were revealed. We are now so used to the tell-all, show-all manner of investigating the “other side” that the book in fact seems strangely trapped within the walls of the brothels. This collection of photographs thereby becomes a challenge to the reader. If you are willing to take on what they show, and still try to understand what they don’t, this is a powerful book. The essays allude to the rest of the place, and to the stories of the characters, but the photographs force us to understand the defining factor: the night. And yet, in that context, “... the humanity we see in these faces seems to compel us to look squarely at whatever uncomfortable truth lies beyond” (Carter).   If I had read Keith Carter’s description of Boystown the place before looking at the photographs, the business and the lives depicted would have been clearer cut, and more horrible. Before I really understood what kind of place this was, and only knew that it was a cluster of brothels on the Mexico side of the Texas-Mexico border, I could imagine life stories for the women, ponder US-Mexico cultural dynamics, even enjoy the beautiful reproduction of these salvaged photographs. Carter’s description, though, is chilling. “It was surrounded by high adobe and cinderblock walls topped with razor-wire and broken glass.... At the lower end of the scale were the cells—along walls of repeated doors and windows—and sitting outside of every one a prostitute, each one older, uglier than the one before her.” Heavier on the bitter than the sweet, even as these photographs are of a world that revolved around what is love and sacrifice, they are witness to the harm we do in our desperate search to dull the pain of being.   Buy this book at Amazon.com and support ZoneZero.   Boystown: La Zona de Tolerancia: With esssays by Cristina Pacheco, Dave Hickey, and Keith Carter Afterword by Bill Wittliff Aperture, in association with the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern and Mexican Photography at Southwest Texas State University, 2000       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/nell/boys.html      

Friday, 25 May 2007

350. Remediation: Understanding New Media by J. David Bolter and Richard Grusin

A movie based on a novel, a written description of a photograph, a painting reproduced in a gallery in cyberspace. This is remediation. One media grows out of another, creating an entangled vine. None exists or even makes sense without those that came before. The computer game Myst creates a real world for so many people because all their lives they have been watching, and believing in, movies made from a similar point of view. So, reassuringly and somewhat disappointingly, the authors of Remediation convincingly explain how it is that there's nothing new under the sun; though to be sure we are experiencing exciting interpretations, variations, and renovations. This book is therefore accessible to those, like myself, with little experience, but much interest, in "new" technology. Sections on Theory, Media, and Self are connected by hyperlinks; the reader is invited to skip around or to just plain skip. And the graphics chosen explicitly illustrate the theories presented. The authors have formulated what they dub the double logic of remediation: immediacy and hypermediacy. When you forget about your own circumstances and feel for a moment that you are part of the story being told, you are experiencing immediacy. It's being moved to tears at a sad movie, or forgetting your own self while experiencing Virtual Reality. Bolter and Grusin show the search for immediacy to be a passion, a driving force, an obsession in Western culture. We become complicit in our own plot to give ourselves an authentic emotional experience through media. An interesting question results: Are we hiding from a superficiality, a void, in our "real" lives? Or is this desire for first-hand experience through media—immediacy—a valid exploration of one's standing in relation to his or her (mediated) world? When the Pathfinder landed on Mars equipped with what served as Webcams, the Jet Propulsion Lab's site was jammed with millions of hits, although "there was nothing to see but a rocky desert and an undifferentiated sky." The fascination was with the media. (page 58) The authors call this hypermediacy. If relating directly to the story (immediacy) provides the satisfaction of locating one's self in the context of the world (or perhaps at times offering escape?), then primary contact with the medium (hypermediacy), gives one the feeling that he or she is taking direct action. The most interesting moment in all of this is when and where you draw the line between "mediated experience" and "real life." Was Jurassic Park a good movie because you felt suspense and fear? Or was it amazement at the special effects? Well, both. "Hypermedia and transparent media are opposite manifestations of the same desire, the desire to get past the limits of representation and to achieve the real." (page 53) And so a vicious circle begins. Everything is both immediate and hypermediate; all experience is mediated and mediated experiences are real. While reading this book in a café, I overheard two different tables discussing the Internet, later, I dreamed about a book, and now I find myself observing myself watching movies. In its desperation to illustrate immediacy and hypermediacy, this book falls into a self-laid trap. In their survey of different media (ten in all, including digital photography, photorealistic graphics, digital art, and film), the authors deduce each to be either one logic or the other, and then admit that each is both. Additionally, after describing each media there is little room left for definition, proof, and further questioning of related concepts, cited but not developed, like the theory of the gaze as masculine, self-identification through media, or results of communications contents (like pornography or violence). This book did hone my awareness of ways media presents itself and how we may respond, but the logic becomes circular. Media and reality, immediacy and hypermediacy; they eat each other's tails, and in the center but out of the loop, is I. Where is the human being in all of this? For it doesn't only matter how a story's told or what kind of story it is, it's the person who's experiencing it that makes or breaks the success of the media. The authors give the sole visual experience overwhelming power, not taking into account how and why a person may suspend, or not, disbelief. It is disappointing to read that we have not found a completely new form with which to express ourselves, and that with cyberspace we have not created a parallel universe. Perhaps this is a more realistic take. Still, I wonder, if we can experience immediacy and hypermediacy simultaneously, could they become one? What will happen when an artificial experience is so immediate that it cannot be categorized as hypermediacy? With new tools do we not create new forms, languages, and cultures? In addition to provoking questions such as these, this books raises others, known but now remediated, about self and knowledge of the world. It doesn't always answer them, but instead respectfully leaves that for the fast-approaching future. Robert Lowell. Vanishing Point. A work of digital art that vacillates between transparent immediacy and hypermediacy. (c) Robert Lowell. For other reviews of this book and related sites, please see: Webzine book review and response review http://www.altx.com/ebr/reviews/rev9/r9kir.htm Excerpts of the book by chapter http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~bolter/remediation/book.html Paper by the authors on "Remediation and the Cultural Politics of New Media" http://www.ntnu.no/sts/content/Papers/Remediation.html http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/nell/remediation.html

Wednesday, 23 May 2007