Matakana Pictures 2012: Images

From Rodney Arts Notes: A group photography exhibition featuring both local and national photographers is taking place in Matakana, at Art Matakana, for Auckland's 2012 Festival of Photography.

The exhibition will run from June 2nd to 24th, with the opening taking place on Friday June 1st, at 5:30pm.

The photographers exhibiting are: Mark Adams, Richard Collins, Barbara Cope, Di Halstead, Sue Hill, Paul Konings, Maria Krajcirovic, Andrew Martin, Davina Monds, Richard Smallfield, Murray Savidan, Jenny Tomlin and Karen Williamson. [Read more...]

Nadav Kander: Yangtze, The Long River

Kander's 2010 book Yangtze, The Long River traces development along China's Yangtze River as a potent case-study of our unprecedented and irreversible transformation of the environment.

Yangtze, The Long River is one of the most timely books – photographic or not – in this age of industrial escalation (most notably in Asia). Along with Edward Burtynsky, Kander's work is among the most sobering accounts of humanity's reshaping of the environment and the consequences of our addiction to material consumption. Consequently, it will appeal to broad current affairs and environmentally-interested audiences, in addition to the smaller photo-book market.

There is a disquieting beauty in these photos, however, shot with the clarity of large-format film. Here is the work of a master who knows not only aesthetics and technique but which, when coupled with his timely message, creates a photographic masterpiece. This window on a changing world will resonate decades from now, when future generations will look back on our era and soberly reflect upon the ravages of overpopulation and our hunger for material advancement on a finite planet.

One aspect of the book which interested me was the accommodations locals have had to make with these new developments, in order to carry on lives as normally as possible, while being overshadowed by huge engineering projects (and often being displaced by them).

From The Guardian: Kander won the 2009 prix Pictet for these photographs. The award focuses on sustainability and climate change, and last year's theme was the Earth itself. The Yangtze "is a metaphor for constant change", as Kander puts it, and also a literal indicator of the destruction and devastation China is visiting on its land and its people as it ruthlessly pursues economic development on an unprecedented scale. It is the world's third-largest river and its banks are home to more people than live in the USA. Or, to put it another way, one in every 18 people on Earth lives along the Yangtze. [Read more...]

[Kander's Website]  Buy at: Fishpond / The Book Depository / Amazon



The slide show below, with commentary from the photographer, provides an insightful overview of the project.

Don McCullin: Darkness in Me

This is a very personal and revealing interview with Don McCullin, probably the world's best-known war photographer. He delves into the trauma and personal conflict involved in immersing himself in the world's most tragic locations, while making a living from this suffering; yet trying to balance it with humane and altruistic motivations - and not shirking  opportunities to help people when possible.

Francesca Woodman

A new retrospective book of Woodman's work was published in 2011¹, to accompany an exhibition at SFMOMA; I recommend this as one of my life-changing photographic books. (Check out the interview with Corey Keller, the book's editor, at American Photo, which named it one of the four best photo books of the year.) Coupled with this book and exhibition, an internationally touring exhibition has brought about much media comment on her work of late. 

Tragically, In 1981, after a period of depression, she committed suicide, aged 22. That this influential work was created during her educational years, is astounding. 

House #3, 1976

From The New York Review of Books: Given that her complete catalogue is composed almost entirely of work she produced as a student, the posthumous critical esteem for American photographer Francesca Woodman is astonishing. Unlike music or math, where precocious displays of talent are not uncommon, photography tends not to have prodigies. Woodman, who committed suicide in 1981 at age 22, is considered a rare exception. That she has achieved such status is all the more remarkable considering only a quarter of the approximately 800 images she produced - many of them self-portraits - have ever been seen by the public. [Read more...]

From The Economist: With their spectral figures dissolving into Gothic ruins, the black-and-white photographs of Francesca Woodman look so antiquated as to be thoroughly modern in our nostalgia-riddled digital age. She shrouded herself in sheets of plastic, smeared Vaseline on mirrors, and tucked herself into vitrines. In some of her pictures her nude body appears as a solid form, all contours and negative space, like a prop in a Man Ray photograph. In others the only evidence of her body is a pair of legs underneath a diaphanous blur. [Read more...]

On being an angel #1, 1977

From The Guardian: Francesca Woodman has been called a modernist, a surrealist and, even, a gothic artist. Her work carries echoes of all three traditions, but it evades categorisation. As a young woman, she photographed herself obsessively but often she appears as a blur of movement or a half-hidden figure, someone constantly trying to escape or hide. The end result is not self-portraiture, but a series of stills from a continuous performance in which she plays with the notion of the self, disguising, transforming and defacing her own body. [Read more...]

Untitled, from Eel Series, 1977-78

From American Photo: Some three decades after her untimely suicide at the age of 22, Francesca Woodman remains a powerful presence in photography. As a young artist exploring themes of the female body and its perceived impermanence, her work immediately became a focus for feminist theorists and art historians around the world. But as is often the case with an artist's work viewed posthumously through the lens of tragedy, that's only a part of the story. 

A new exhibition at SFMOMA, curated by Corey Keller, hopes to tell the full story. It is the first major U.S. retrospective of Woodman's photographs, on view through February 20 in San Francisco and appearing at New York's Guggenheim museum next spring.  Its accompanying monograph, Francesca Woodman (D.A.P./SFMOMA), is one of our books of the year. We spoke with Corey Keller on the challenges of curating the work of a young artist taken by tragedy, and the unexpected themes that emerge from Woodman's photographs when viewed in a less tragic context. [Read more...] 

From The Tate Modern Artist Rooms YouTube Channell: American photographer Francesca Woodman has eighteen rare vintage black and white photographs in the ARTIST ROOMS display, from a collection once owned by the artist's boyfriend. Woodmans photographs exhibit many influences, from symbolism and surrealism to fashion photography and Baroque painting. They have a timeless quality that is ethereal and unique. [Read more ...]

¹ Francesca Woodman, Corey Teller (ed), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Distributed Art Publishers, New York, 2011. Buy at: Fishpond / The Book Depository / Amazon

Josef Koudelka

This 1990 video with commentary looks at some of Koudelka's contact sheets and discusses his photographic philosophy.

Black and White with Ultrachrome K3 Inks: Fade Tests for Three Workflows

I have conducted six month fade tests for three black and white workflows using Epson K3 Ultrachrome inks. Scans of the results,which give a rough idea of how the workflows compared, are below. 

The full report is on my website, including Lab values for all results. [Read more...]

Please email me with any questions, comments or suggestions.

DUFFY: The Man Who Shot the Sixties

Brian Duffy was one of the greatest British fashion photographers from the late fifties to the late seventies, when he grew disenchanted with it, burned most of his negatives and gave up photography altogether, turning instead to shooting commercials. He died in 2010. 

In 2009, a retrospective exhibition was held at Chris Beetles Gallery in London (a few photos from the exhibition are on The Guardian website).

The Duffy Photographer website is devoted to his work and an excellent BBC documentary was made about his career, called DUFFY: the Man Who Shot the Sixties, which is well worth watching.

Burke & Norfolk: Photographs from the War in Afghanistan

From Tate Modern YouTube Channel: On October 2010, Simon Norfolk began a series of new photographs in Afghanistan, which takes its cue from the work of nineteenth-century British photographer John Burke. [Read more...]

From Lens Culture: Simon Norfolk's 2002 book Afghanistan: chronotopia is now recognized as a classic of photography. It established Norfolk's reputation as one of the leading photographers in the world and has been exhibited at more than thirty venues worldwide.

Simon Norfolk: Jaw Aka Faizal Nahman and his daughter Nono 

In 2010 Simon Norfolk returned to Afghanistan. This time he followed in the footsteps of the nineteenth century Irish photographer John Burke, a superb, yet virtually unknown, war photographer. [Read more...] 

[View lens culture slideshow]
[View Burke+Norfolk Website]
[View Simon Norfolk Website]

Blog Changes

Having discovered that hardly any of this blog's readership is local (Russia interestingly accounting for more than ten times the New Zealand audience), I have started another blog called Rodney Arts Notes and transferred all local (non-photographic) arts news from The Developing Tank blog to the new one.

Anne-Celine Jaeger: 'Image Makers, Image Takers'

I've just read this revealing book of interviews with a number of prominent photographers and related professionals, which probes their motivations, practices, values and experiences. Jaeger has the ability to ask relevant and interesting questions, seeking insights into the philosophies and approaches of the interviewees.

The cast list ranges from well-known photographers such as Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Sebastiao Salgado, Mary-Ellen Mark, Alec Soth and David LaChapelle, to others who were new to me, but interesting nonetheless. Genres range from documentary, to portraiture, fashion and beyond.

In addition to photographer interviews are encounters with curators, an agency director (Diane Dafour, Magnum's European Bureau Chief), publishers (including Gerhard Steidl) and Joerg Colberg, who runs the influential Conscientious photography blog.

If there was one book I'd recommend to an aspiring photographer, it would be this one: it's compulsive, easy reading and a valuable resource.
Paperback: 312 pages
Publisher: Thames & Hudson (2nd Edition; Release Date 13 Sept 2010)
NZ RRP: $57.99
Available at Fishpond: $28.97