Another careful and devoted production by Willem van Zoetendaal with the legacy of Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001). Such a gentle work. - See more at: http://blog.photoeye.com/2014/12/best-books-2014-roger-willems.html#sthash.HChJttPi.dpuf
Johan Van Der Keuken - Mise Au Jour
Publisher Van Zoetendaal Publishers
ISBN 9789072532275
Published by Van Zoetendaal, this special collection of photographs by Dutch documentary filmmaker, author, and photographer Johan van der Keuken offers a fascinating window into the everyday lives of people through portraits, personal moments and many street scenes. With a career that spanned four decades, Van der Keuken was a prolific producer of images of his time, traveling to Greece, Italy, Spain and France, and visiting and documenting iconic cities like New York, Paris and his native Amsterdam. With full-page reproductions, of his black-and-white images this volume illuminates timeless narratives of people and the city.
During a cold winter in the year 1900 two horses ran away. The horses were named Tex and Jerry and lived in the wilderness. After a month the horses returned dying of hunger. From this day they called this small town Hungry Horse.
In the 1940’s and 1950’s a large dam was being built just on the outskirt of the town. People from all over the state moved to Hungry Horse in order to work on the dam’s construction. Ground and houses were cheap, the small town grew fast.
When the dam was completed many moved out but some stayed. Jobs had disappeared and Hungry Horse became a place for criminals to hide since the police wouldn’t venture into the valley.
Hungry Horse is located just a few miles away from Glacier National Park, one of Montana’s greatest tourist attraction. The town today is a place where people pass by on their way to the National Park.
About 70% of the people of Hungry Horse live in trailer parks. The prices for ground and houses in the valley are extremely high. Meaning people are moving away with their trailers in search of cheaper places. Many end up in the Indian reservations on the other side of the park.
One of the main problem in Hungry Horse and in many remote parts of Montana is the use and abuse of Crystal Meth. This drug, mostly made of household products, is smoked or injected. It is considered by many as one of the most destructive drug ever.
During summer some tourists come to the village to buy huckleberry on their way to the National Park.
A project Micamera started in 2012. A very simple question, not so obvious answers. In December 2012, if Bruno Ceschel had been sent to a desert island, he would have chosen these books:
The Male Nude David Leddick TASCHEN, 1998
Vanilla Partner Torbjørn Rødland Mack Books, 2012
His own family album
Bruno Ceschel is a writer, curator, and publisher whose works focuses principally on contemporary photography. His research specifically aims to explore issues relating to identities, with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, and racial formation. He is also the founder of Self Publish, Be Happy, an organisation which aims to collect and study contemporary artists’ books and has an ever-travelling mobile library project. Ceschel writes regularly for various international publications. He has published and edited numerous photography books, and participated in events at numerous institutions including the ICA (London), the Whitechapel Gallery (London), TATE Modern (London), C/O (Berlin) and PS1 (New York), amongst others. video: Gaia Giani mounting: Maresa Lippolis Videos are made in the bookstore in Milan micamera.com
Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf Armand Schulthess. Rekonstruktion eines Universums Patrick Frey
Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set Abrams
Willem van Zoetendaal is a graphic designer who has been producing photography books since the early nineties. In 1994 he started publishing his own books, first under the name of Basalt (in collaboration with Frido Troost) and then under the name of Van Zoetendaal Publishers. vanzoetendaal.com
This is an extract from a (short) interview that Giulia Zorzi made to Machiel Botman on the day of the opening of One Tree at micamera (September 20, 2012). The question was: If you would have to choose three books to bring on a desert island, which ones would you pick? The answer is very interesting, and this is the reason we decided to publish the video - though the audio is not so good... Thank you Piero Pezzoni for the video
'The Quantified Self' is the process of self knowledge through self tracking.
Once the preserve of researchers and technology junkies, self tracking is rapidly evolving into a mainstream trend as people are able to use smartphones and wearable sensors to record an expanding range of data and make use of its analysis.
Many of the commonly tracked metrics relate to health and self improvement, but almost anything can be tracked; sleep, exercise, mood, weight, the list is almost endless as are the individual motivations for tracking. This project looks at the stories of the people who self track, the data they collect and their motivations for doing so.
DU-Heft; Davidson, Bruce:Die Jokers - ein 'gang' Jugendlicher in New York Themenheft . Du, September 1960, Nummer 235.12 (teils doppelseitige) Aufnahmen umfassende Photoserie über eine New Yorker Jugendgang von Bruce Davidson/Magnum. - Inhalt ausserdem: Erich Lessing/Magnum: Wotruba. Ein Bildbericht Peter Mieg: Louis Moilliet (mit zahlreichen, teils farbigen Abbildungen); Kurt Marti: Karl Barth; Frösche, Kröten, Unken . Aufnahmen und Text von Jakob Forster und Walter Goetz. See also
After the successful reopening of the Rijksmuseum in April of 2013, the museum’s Philips Wing will reopen in November with 'Modern Times', a major survey of twentieth-century photography compiled from the Rijksmuseum’s collection. This collection has grown spectacularly, particularly during the last decade, and now includes many masterpieces by world-famous photographers including André Kertész, Brassaï, Robert Capa, László Moholy-Nagy, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Weegee, William Klein, Cas Oorthuys, and Eva Besnyö.
With more than 350 photographs, the book 'Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century' forms an impressive overview of the developments that took place during the twentieth century in photography, which grew by leaps and bounds into the ubiquitous and influential medium that we know today.
In 1959, the 25-year-old photographer embedded himself with a gang of teenage New Yorkers to create a moving portrait of postwar inner-city youth culture
In 1959, there were about 1,000 gang members in New York City, mainly teenage males from ethnically-defined neighbourhoods in the outer boroughs. In the spring of that year, Bruce Davidson read a newspaper article about outbreaks of street fighting in Prospect Park and travelled across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan in search of a gang to photograph.
"I met a group of teenagers called the Jokers," he wrote in the afterword to his seminal book of insider reportage, Brooklyn Gang. "I was 25 and they were about 16. I could easily have been taken for one of them."
The previous year, Davidson had become a member of Magnum, having shown his work to his hero, the agency's co-founder, Henri Cartier-Bresson. In 1958, he had similarly immersed himself in the world of a travelling circus for a series called The Dwarf, in which he photographed a performer with whom he formed a close friendship. "My way of working," he later said, "is to enter an unknown world, explore it over a period of time, and learn from it."
With the Jokers, the boundary between detached observation and immersion in the subject matter became even more blurred. "In time they allowed me to witness their fear, depression and anger," he wrote. "I soon realised that I, too, was feeling their pain. In staying close to them, I uncovered my own feelings of failure, frustration and rage."
Alongside Ed van der Elsken's 1956 work Love On the Left Bank, an altogether more staged kind of social document, Brooklyn Gang stands as one of the first in-depth photographic records of rebellious postwar youth culture. The book is now hard to find and prohibitively expensive to all but the serious collector (about £800 for a first edition, £300 for a second), but the Brooklyn Gang series is included in the first book of the epic three-volume Davidson retrospective,Outside Inside, just published by Steidl.
For several months Davidson followed the Jokers on their endless wanderings around their Brooklyn turf and beyond. He captured them hanging out in Prospect Park, where outdoor dances were held on weekend summer nights, and lounging on the beach at Coney Island. He snapped the young men as they killed time in a neighbourhood diner called Helen's Candy Store. In his photographs, the Jokers look both tough and innocent, uncertain adolescent kids caught in that hinterland between childhood and – this being New York – premature adulthood.
Davidson's black-and-white images are cool and evocative, imbued with a sense of time and place that is palpable. The gang shared a working-class, Italian-Catholic background, but look like they have walked straight off the set of West Side Story. The girls are timelessly hip in tight pants and white tops, with pinned-up piles of jet black or peroxide blonde hair. The male dress style is Italian hipster meets American rockabilly – Sinatra meets Elvis. The threads are sharp, the hairstyles tall and quiffed, and the attitude, as caught by Davidson's camera, is either defiant or aloof to the point of disinterested.
Behind the cool facade, though, lay a world of trouble that began to engulf the Jokers as Davidson trailed them. When Brooklyn Gang was finally reprinted by Twin Palms Press in 1999, it included an extended afterword by a 55-year-old man known as only as Bengie. At 15, Bengie had been one of the youngest members of the Jokers. He recalled his chaotic childhood as the son of alcoholic parents, and the beatings he received at school from priests and nuns. He remembered that the younger Jokers were into "drinking beer, smoking pot, maybe popping a pill here and there", and how the heroin came later, via older gang members. He reminisces over Lefty, "the first of the gang to die", a line later lifted by Morrissey, the great magpie of youth culture, for his song of the same name.
"If you see Jimmie, he's like the Fonz, like James Dean–handsome," Bengie says of Davidson's photographs of one of the older members of the Jokers. "Later, though, the whole family, all six of them – Charlie, Aggie, Katie, Jimmie, the mother and the father – died; wiped out, mostly from drugs."
The saddest story belongs to Cathy, the blonde and beautiful young girl whom Davidson photographed several times and whose reflection he caught unforgettably in a cigarette machine as she fixed her hair while waiting for the Staten Island ferry. "Cathy was beautiful like Brigitte Bardot," Bengie remembers. "Cathy always was there, but outside … Then, some years ago, she put a shotgun in her mouth and blew her head off."
Brooklyn Gang, then, is a document of inner-city youth culture at a time before the term was even coined. It is also a requiem for a bunch of Italian-American kids who bonded and, for a time, found a kind of community that had been denied them elsewhere – at home, in the church, at school. One of Davidson's photographs, a couple entwined in the back seat of a car, has attained a late iconic status after being used by Bob Dylan on his 2008 album, Together Through Life. The blonde-haired girl may even be Cathy.
"Beautiful Cathy was there, always with her honey, Junior," writes Bengie. "It was very sad to see her die. It was very sad to see her because she was so sad. She was always sad, always fixing her hair." You can see her that way in Davidson's great photograph of her standing in front of the cigarette machine, forever young, forever alive.
Elias Cannetti’s narrative set in Marrakech during the mid 1950s describes a city still under the shadow of French colonial presence. The dates of publication of the original German edition (1967) and English translation (1978, 1982) may give the impression that the text deals with a post-colonial moment. However, a close reading of the text reveals the continuing presence of French colonial structure dominating the vast desolate landscape of houses which the French called native quarters. Canetti’s narrator presents vivid images of poverty, desperation, and loss akin to those portrayed by George Orwell in his 1939 essay, “Marrakech”. Moving through the narrow alleys of the city, the seat of bygone powerful imperial dynasties, once the center of prosperous trans-Saharan trade and home of the best craftsmen, Canetti’s narrator observes a world both shocking and fascinating by its contrasts.
There are markets for camels and donkeys just outside the Bab-el-Kemis. The fact that the camels are brought from the southern provinces of the country to sell to the butchers in Marrakech seems hard to accept, and creates a strong feeling of disillusionment for the narrator who it appears has never seen camels in real life. Being based at a luxurious hotel in the French part of the city, the narrator’s exploration of the native quarters follows the same pattern of shock and repulsion. The objects of his gaze vary from one day to another. There are, for instance, blind men chanting the name of Allah in an unchanging rhythmical pattern, there is also a blind beggar who will put a coin in his mouth and chew it for a long while. This is his way for identifying the value of the coin and also for bestowing his blessing on the benefactor. There is also the woman at the grill suffering from a mental problem whom the narrator takes for a captive and stands to observe under the disapproving eyes of passers-by. Not far from the ruined house where the insane woman lives lies the Koubba visited by scores of pilgrims. The wooden door of the Koubba has a knob in the shape of a ring from which dangle rags. These “were supposed to be shreds of the saint’s own robe and for the faithful there was something of his holiness in them.” (38)
The core of Canetti’s narrative, however, revolves around the Mellah, a bustling place densely populated by Jewish families. The narrator’s initial foray inside the Mellah makes him aware of the rampant poverty which envelops the whole quarter. Jewish shops are ‘little low booths” and the wares sold are extremely picturesque. What strikes the narrator most is the discreet attitude of Jewish traders:
They had a way of swiftly glancing up and forming an opinion of the person going past. Not once did I pass unnoticed. When I stopped they would scent a purchaser and examine me accordingly. But mostly I caught the swift, intelligent look before I stopped. (40)
Moving deeper into the Jewish quarter past the bazaars, the narrator comes into a square whose charm and ambiance seem to charm and compel him to return on several occasions:
I had the feeling that I was really somewhere else now,that I had reached the goal of my journey I did not want to leave, I had been here hundred s of years ago but I had forgotten and now it was all coming back to me. I found exhibited the same density and warmth of life as i had in myself. I was the square as I stood in it. I believe I am it always. (45)
This initial visit is a sort of homecoming. Being a Jew himself, the narrator feels deep attachment to the Mellah. While his promenade in the Jewish cemetery is marred by the persistent and clamorous pursuit of beggars, his life in the Jewish quarter and its dwellers drives him to return the next day and make the accidental acquaintance of the Dahane family. The narrator’s decision to enter the Dahans’ house, however, brings more nuisance that indeed appease his curiosity. Over the remaining period of his stay in Marrakesh, the narrator is pestered with the incessant requests of Elie Dahane, a young unemployed member of the family, tofind him a job. When his requests have been politely turned down, Elie Dahane insists that a letter of reference should be written on his behalf recommending his skills and character to the Commandant of the American camp in Ben Guerir. Nothing but full compliance with his demand could make an end to Elie Dahane’s unadvertised visits to the hotel. The power he seems to attach to the letter is at once incontestable and incomprehensible.
The last sections of the narrative focus on French colonial presence in the city and present strange tales of sexual fantasies told the narrator by the owners of a French restaurant and A French bar which he frequents.
'Op reis', schrijft Elias Canetti in Stemmen van Marrakesch, 'neemt men alles zoals het valt, de verontwaardiging blijft thuis. Je kijkt, je luistert, je bent verrukt over de meest afschuwelijke dingen omdat ze nieuw voor je zijn. Goede reizigers hebben geen gevoel.'Canetti, die in 1954 voor een maand of wat in Zuid-Marokko neerstrijkt, is inderdaad dikwijls verrukt wanneer hij door de soeks en de medina en de geurige straten van Marrakesch zwerft. En alleen al deze toestand botst met zijn opmerking over de gevoelloosheid van de ware reiziger. Als er ìemand emotioneel is, dan is hij het, de heer uit Europa die expres geen Arabisch of Berbers heeft geleerd, omdat hij door de puurheid van de klanken geraakt wil worden. Ja, deze vreemdeling zet zijn gemoed wagenwijd open. Ontvankelijk toont hij zich niet alleen voor de hem omringende schoonheid, maar ook voor de energie die het leven in Marrakesch uitstraalt.
Zelfs in de nederigste wezens ontwaart hij een onverzettelijke kracht. Een golf van blijdschap stroomt door hem heen bij het zien van een magere ezel met een enorme erectie: die is 'sterker dan de stok waar men hem de nacht daarvoor mee had gedreigd.' En trots is de schrijver op een armzalig bundeltje mens aan zijn voeten: 'Misschien had het geen armen om naar de muntstukken te tasten. Misschien had het geen tong om de 'l' van Allah te vormen en werd de naam van God bij hem ingekort tot 'a-a-a-a-a-'. Maar het leefde en met een weergaloze ijver en volharding stootte het zijn enige klank uit, uren en uren achtereen, totdat het op het hele wijdse plein de enige klank geworden was, de klank die alle andere klanken overleefde.'In de mellah, de oude jodenwijk, heerst nog meer armoe dan elders, maar ook daar registreert Canetti vooral de rijkdom: het montere geklop en gehamer van de ambachtslieden, het genot waarmee een sloeber een karbonaadje verorbert, de met flair gevoerde discussie tussen een stel oude mannen. Opeens weet Canetti: dit pleintje in het hart van de mellah is het doel van zijn reis. 'Ik wilde hier niet meer vandaan; honderden jaren eerder was ik hier al geweest, maar ik was het vergeten en nu herinnerde ik het me allemaal weer.'
Roept de mellah van Marrakesch zijn vroege kindertijd in hem wakker? Ruschuk, of Roese, aan de benedenloop van de Donau in Bulgarije moet begin deze eeuw een kleurrijk stadje geweest zijn, wild, bijna oriëntaals. In zijn autobiografie Die gerettete Zunge beschrijft Canetti (1905-1994) hoe hij als kleine jongen uit de jodenwijk van Ruschuk gefascineerd en angstig door al het vreemde aangetrokken werd: door de vele talen die hij op straat hoorde spreken, door de hem onbekende gewoontes, van de Turken bijvoorbeeld in de aangrenzende wijk, door de woeste schoonheid van de langsreizende zigeuners van wie gezegd werd dat ze joodse kindertjes stalen.
Het jodenkind Elias leerde al snel om altijd op z'n hoede te zijn, en die oplettendheid herkent hij in de mellahbewoners. 'Geen enkele keer bleef ik onopgemerkt wanneer ik langsliep; (...) meestal trof hun snelle en intelligente blik mij lang voordat ik stil was blijven staan.' Maar het is meer dan de intelligentie, de kracht en de alertheid van de joodse overlevers, van àlle overlevers, die hem in Marrakesch zo frappeert. 'Ik vond er', formuleert hij ietwat plechtig in de toch al omzichtige vertaling van Theo Duquesnoy, 'die dichtheid en warmte van het leven uitgestald die ik in mijzelf voel.'
En zo is het precies: Stemmen van Marrakesch is, gelukkig, een uiterst persoonlijke reeks observaties, scherp, poëtisch en even warm als de Marokkaanse zon waarover Canetti nooit klaagt.
Daido Moriyama, Marrakech SUPER LABO / Kamakura, Japan, 2014 / Designed by Koichi Hara / superlabo.com
Marrakech injects a shot of energy into a body of work Daido Moriyama made decades ago when he visited Morocco. This long, narrow book comes enclosed in a slipcase and opens to reveal two book blocks stacked on top of each other. The reader is invited to mix-and-match the full-bleed, high-contrast, black-and-white images according to his or her whims—an experiment in what Todd Hido calls “exquisite-corpse-style” sequencing. Lesley Martin points out, “This approach is very much in keeping with Moriyama’s own practice of revisiting and ‘remixing’ his own work, with less emphasis on the single image than on the visceral experience of viewing a series or combination of images. The inclusion of the viewer in this is another recent strategy of Moriyama’s, so all the more appropriate as a way of organizing the book.”
OORTHUYS, CAS., THYS VAN DEN AUDENAERDE, D. F. E. (DIRK F. E.), CREEMERS-PALMERS, M. - Mensen aan de stroom, Gens du fleuve.
Museum-Tervuren,, 1992. samengesteld door D. Thys van den Audenaerde & M. Creemers-Palmers = Gens du fleuve: impressions de voyage de Cas Oorthuys au Congo Belge, 1959: album de photos / composé par D. Thys van den Audenaerde & M. Creemers-Palmers. vii, 205p;
Cas Oorthuys' photo archive numbers some 500,000 negatives, including about 7,000 negatives of the Belgian Congo. Oorthuys took these photographs in 1959, commissioned by the Belgian Government Information Service. Most of them are of people, but there are also landscapes, rivers, cities, villages and jungles.As well as pictures of inhabitants of the Belgian Congo, you will see fabric designs worn during that period.
Exposities van Cas Oorthuys' Kongo-foto's bij Brussel; De laatste resten tropisch België Tentoonstelling: Kongo-foto's Cas Oorthuys. T/m 31 augustus in het Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika, Leuvense Steenweg 13 in Tervuren (bij Brussel). Di t/m zo 9-17.30 uur. Publikaties: Guaranteed Real Dutch, Congo door Cas Oorthuys. 166 blz., Uitgeverij Duo/Duo 1992, ƒ 100 ISBN 90 72971 11 6 en Mensen aan de Stroom, Reisimpressies van Cas Oorthuys in Belgisch-Kongo, 1959, 220 blz., Museum-Tervuren 1992, 500 BF Door ARJEN RIBBENS 8 JULI 1992 In 1959 ging Cas Oorthuys in Leopoldstad aan boord van de "Commissaire Van den Bogaerde' op weg naar Elizabethstad om de laatste resten van tropisch België vast te leggen. De Nederlandse fotograaf reisde door Kongo, het huidige Zare, op verzoek van de Belgische Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst. Zijn opdracht was "het leven en werken van de mensen in de steden en dorpen, in oerwouden en savannes in beeld te brengen'. Kongo zou spoedig onafhankelijk worden en er bestond behoefte aan een sfeerbeeld van een kolonie die op het punt stond afscheid te nemen van het moederland. Na een moeizame reis van drie maanden kwam Oorthuys met meer dan zesduizend opnamen terug. Maar de voorgenomen publikatie werd om onduidelijke redenen niet meer opportuun geacht en de negatieven verdwenen in een kast.
Twee jaar geleden verhuisde het archief van Cas Oorthuys naar het Nederlands Fotoarchief (NFA) in Rotterdam. In een oogopslag kan de bezoeker zich daar overtuigen van de produktiviteit van de in 1975 overleden fotograaf. Twee enorme kasten met 444 archiefboeken domineren de ontvangstruimte van het NFA. De albums bevatten meer dan een half miljoen op onderwerp gerangschikte contactafdrukken en vormen de sleutel tot het grootste éénmansfotoarchief van Nederland.
Wie door Oorthuys' archiefboeken bladert, ziet de wereld aan zich voorbijtrekken. Alleen al voor uitgeverij Contact maakte hij meer dan zeventig reisboeken. De titels van deze soms in oplagen van 150.000 exemplaren gedrukte gidsen - Dit is Amersfoort, Joegoslavië vakantieland - mogen nu gedateerd aandoen, de fotografie is dat allerminst. Het oeuvre van Oorthuys is zo rijk en geschakeerd, bevat nog zoveel nauwelijks bekende en ongepubliceerde foto's, dat het zonder overdrijven een schatkamer voor uitgevers en tentoonstellingsmakers kan worden genoemd. En dank zij zijn veelzijdigheid kan iedere samensteller zijn eigen beeld van Oorthuys geven.
Zoals blijkt in het Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika in het Belgische Tervuren, waar tegelijkertijd twee exposities (begeleid door afzonderlijke publicaties) van de Kongo-foto's van Cas Oorthuys worden gehouden. Ondanks een aantal gemeenschappelijke foto's verschillen de twee tentoonstellingen en bijbehorende uitgaven hemelsbreed van elkaar.
In de monumentale hal van dit met recht koninklijke museum is een door de Amsterdamse vormgever Willem van Zoetendaal samengestelde tentoonstelling getiteld Guaranteed Real Dutch, Congo. Van Zoetendaal koos uitsluitend foto's van bewoners van Belgisch Kongo en combineerde ze met de dessins van de op veel foto's voorkomende katoenen stoffen van de Helmondse textielonderneming Vlisco. Deze in Afrika zeer gewilde stoffen worden al decennia lang geëxporteerd onder de handelsnaam 'Guaranteed Dutch Wax Vlisco'. De veelkleurige dessins, getooid met motieven als apenootjes, runderogen en vingers hebben een belangrijke symbolische betekenis voor de Afrikanen. In de tentoonstelling hangen de katoendrukken boven de in messing standaards bevestigde foto's. In het boek zijn enkele patronen (in kleur) afgedrukt naast de zwart-wit foto's.
Guaranteed Real Dutch, Congo bevat uitsluitend mooie, intrigerende foto's van bijzondere, trotse mensen. Het is een uitgesproken esthetische expositie - de elegante presentatie versterkt die indruk nog. Tentoonstelling en boek geven een ander beeld van Oorthuys dan gebruikelijk.
Fotografie was voor Oorthuys in de eerste plaats een ambacht. Een foto moest een functie hebben, een nuttige rol vervullen in de massamedia. "Mooie plaatjes' wees Oorthuys af; hij noemde zichzelf "bewust onesthetisch'. Zijn nuttige rol in de media staat niet ter discussie. Maar voor de verleiding 'mooie plaatjes' te schieten is Oorthuys in Kongo vaak bezweken. De samensteller van Guaranteed Real Dutch, Congo is er ogenschijnlijk moeiteloos in geslaagd een selectie van honderd mooie foto's te kiezen. De fotograaf komt er uit naar voren als een belangrijk kunstenaar. Deze keuze maakt nieuwsgierig naar nieuwe selecties uit zijn overige werk.
De opzet van de andere Oorthuys-expositie doet meer recht aan zijn ambachtelijke kwaliteiten. In een zijvleugel van het Museum voor Midden-Afrika hangt een door twee conservatoren gemaakte selectie uit de Kongo-reportage onder de titel Mensen aan de stroom.
Naast portretten worden ook opnamen van landschappen, rivieren, dorpen, steden en oerwouden getoond. Hier hebben inhoudelijke aspecten de voorrang gekregen, wat nog eens onderstreept wordt door de veel soberder presentatie van boek en tentoonstelling.
Opmerkelijk en hoopgevend is dat de kleine Rotterdamse uitgeverij Duo/Duo, verantwoordelijk voor de prachtuitgave Guaranteed Real Dutch, Congo, er al een paar jaar in slaagt inhoudelijk interessante en voorbeeldig uitgevoerde fotoboeken op de markt te brengen. Getuige het ramsj-aanbod is het uitgeven van foto- en kunstboeken een hachelijke onderneming. Enige tijd geleden maakte de Staatsuitgeverij bekend dat zij met de uitgave van kunstboeken (waaronder veel fotoboeken) onverantwoorde risico's heeft genomen en noodgedwongen moet saneren.
Duo/Duo debuteerde twee jaar geleden als uitgever van fotoboeken met een andere grote Oorthuys-uitgave: het inmiddels uitverkochte Rotterdam, Dynamische Stad. Een gedurfd uitgeefbeleid hoeft commercieel succes dus niet per se in de weg te staan. ◆
Een versie van dit artikel verscheen op woensdag 8 juli 1992 in NRC Handelsblad.
Op dit artikel rust auteursrecht van NRC Media BV, respectievelijk van de oorspronkelijke auteur.
This issue of Foam Magazine is different from the norm in that it is entirely devoted to the work of a single artist. His career has already spanned more than sixty years and during that time he has worked as a painter, photographer, filmmaker and designer. In all these fields he has been hugely innovative and had an unparalleled influence on countless other artists. This issue is given over to a man who is undoubtedly a pioneer, even a visionary: William Klein.
Never before has Foam Magazine focused an entire issue on just one artist, but we are happy to make an exception for William Klein. In the course of his long career he has built up an oeuvre so rich, so diverse, so powerful and influential that nothing else compares to it. We are exceptionally proud to be able to give the work of this exceptional artist the space it deserves, not just in this magazine but in a large retrospective exhibition that will be held in our museum in Amsterdam from mid-December until mid-March.
Klein laid down several milestones in postwar art history. The work he created in 1956 in his native city of New York is still seen as an unrivalled highpoint in the history of photography. Life is Good and Good for You in New York: Trance witness revels, the book about the city that he published that year, is regarded as a watershed in the history of the photobook: there is a period before it and another after it. No other photobook has had such an impact, and its unparalleled influence on photographers and book designers continues to this day. In a time when the photobook is flourishing and countless artists are experimenting with the medium, paying so much attention to Klein is more than justified; his books about Moscow, Rome and Tokyo are regarded as further highpoints of the medium.
The ‘Big Apple’, despite its reputation in Europe, is not the great and flawless city that its nickname might suggest. At William Klein’s retrospective at Foam in Amsterdam, the blurred image of two children dancing in Brooklyn, Danse à Brooklyn (1955), provides a fitting parody of the unattainable Broadway that sparkles in magazines. Visitors are greeted in the first room by some black-and-white clichés of New York hailing from the 1950s. Street photography represents a particular encounter between visual art and real life and generates a fundamental contradiction between movement and stasis, reality and artifact. What photography does, indeed, is to condense the dynamic of living into an image, a static fragment of form. Klein’s pictures are artistic crystallizations of life’s becoming and photography is the medium through which this interpenetration is made possible.
Klein represents a world icon for the contemporary photography scene. Since the 1990s the artist has worked on Contacts, a series that consists of manipulated and enlarged photographs derived from the contact sheets he produced over the years. At the end of the exhibition, these photographs—in large format and colorized—represent an interesting but perhaps overly self-referential piece of work that betrays the artist’s awareness of his artistic and social status. Some of Klein’s most famous clichés have been reprinted, large-scale, revamped and over-painted. His artistic background as abstract painter originates from his apprenticeship in Paris with Fernand Léger. The artist's propensity for abstraction persists throughout his career and is clearly demonstrated by some of his photographs of billboards and urban illuminations. Broadway by Light (1958), Klein’s first film, which is presented at the beginning of the exhibition, bears witness to this particular abstract and typographical aesthetic. Klein was strongly drawn to colored signs and lights. It was precisely this attraction that guided him during his Milanese experience, as affirmed by the series of black-and-white abstract paintings commissioned by the Italian architect Angelo Mangiarotti in 1952—to be used as pivoting room dividers in modern apartments—as well as by the photographic services that Klein realized throughout the 1960s for the architecture magazine Domus, under the direction of Gio Ponti.
Born in 1928 in New York City, William Klein graduated early from high school and enrolled at the City College of New York at the age of fourteen. After joining the army, he was stationed in Germany and later in France, where he lives to this day. This young Jewish New Yorker, possessing a strong passion for the MoMA, arrived in Paris on 13 July 1949 and began his training as a painter at the Sorbonne. Inspired by artists such as László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes, he began to experiment with juxtaposing abstract painting and photography. This was later to become his main form of expression. Six years of French life enabled him to observe his hometown as an ethnographer when returning for a visit to New York in 1954. The result of this brief trip is a kind of photographic diary, which portrays the city from a highly personal perspective. Life is Good and Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels (1956), the photo book that resulted from this experience, was strongly criticized precisely for this blurred and unconventional aesthetic. Nevertheless, it was awarded the Prix Nadar in 1957, thereby fulfilling Klein’s career and ultimately signaling his consecration. From this moment until 1964, he began travelling around the world to record life’s multiplicity. These trips gave rise to three other photobooks: Rome (1960), Moscow (1964) and Tokyo (1964). The exhibition at Foam presents Klein’s travels, chronologically displayed through his very personal, blurred black-and-white memories.
Contradicting Henri Cartier-Bresson’s narrative of the invisible witness, Klein’s innovative approach is far less modest. It shows us unequivocally that it is his presence in itself that shapes the image. Although he never physically appears in the photo, frequently there is someone staring at the camera, as if the protagonists were talking with the photographer just prior to the click of the shutter. Somehow, the artist is always present via this dialogue. Gun 1 (1955) is the most famous example of this kind of dynamic: the challenging gaze of the child holding the firearm reveals his relationship to the photographer, and more generally, through this playful attack, every viewer is invited to take part in their ‘game’. Klein’s images do not inform us about the identity and subjectivity of people, but reveal something about the process of their realization, based upon the interrelationship of the subject and photographer. This is expressed most strongly in pictures such as Black Kid + Harmonica (1955), Office Girls + Snowman (1955), as well as a Little Girl + Lenin (1959), featuring the portrait of a little girl standing in front of a statue of Lenin in Moscow, as if posing before a family member. Not every photograph is permeated with the same degree of humanity. However, all appear as ‘spaces in between’: hence, the image's final result contains its own process of creation.
Fashion arrives on the crossroads between real life and art.
The artistic skills of Klein work to combine reality and fiction, street photography and artifact settings. One example is the photograph entitled Antonia Simone Barbershop, New York (1961) for Vogue magazine, for which he asked a random guy working in a bar to take a seat in the chair. Commissioned by Vogue’s art director Alexander Liberman from 1955 to 1965, the artist had the freedom to play with the fashion world from the inside. There is something grotesque and ironic in these images, to which Foam has dedicated an entire floor. Klein’s veiled mockery is created because he operates in that world—being both an insider and an outsider at the same time. Twisting stereotypical canons and toying with subversions through the use of backstage imagery, he proceeded in the direction of a real deconstruction of this iconic system. The backstage clichés Katsumo (1992), Gaultier (1986), Saint Laurent (1992), and Issey Miyake (1987), which are displayed at the beginning of this section, describe the processes that lie behind the creation of fashion’s flawlessness, describing the ‘real’ process of making. The preparation of a fashion show is shown in Klein’s satirical movie Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1965), which is presented at the end of the exhibition, along with the rest of his cinematographic production. Klein’s fashion photographs are the product of a game: the artist plays in the space between fiction and reality, using stereotypes to deemphasise its fictive and glossy appearance. Roberto Cappuci's fashion campaign in Piazza di Spagna in Rome is a clear example of this dynamic. Two beautiful top models are walking into a famous square of Rome; they appear totally out of context, as if stolen from the cover of a fashion magazine. It is precisely this clash between reality and fictional elements that creates such an original synthesis. Klein ‘transforms’ common people into actors on a photographic set, removing the zebra crossing from the banality of daily life and upgrading it into optic art. The clash between urban elements and elegant top models, along with the frequent use of mirrors, as in Evelyn, Isabella, Nena + Mirrors (1962) or Sandra + Mirror on Broadway (1962), is meant to emphasize the ‘fictive reality’ of fashion in order to create a surrealistic atmosphere that enables the artist to complete his ironic mockery. Irony permits the author to create this spatial limbo between reality and fiction, which is also used in the movies Mr Freedom (1967-68) and The Model Couple (1977), where the artist deals with power relations. Such irony has endured right up to the present day as well as his most recent work, with the photographs Hungry Aristocrats, taken at the 2001 Prix de Diane, and Golden Tits, taken at the Gay Pride in Paris in 2000, revealing that he still maintains his piercing satire.
With regards to Klein’s recent production, Foam presents ten of his latest photographs featuring Brooklyn, which represent a renewed, second view of his hometown, after the originals from the 1950s. While the blurred and unconventional gaze of the artist is still the same, when one compares the two photo series, it becomes clear that Klein’s approach and choices are deeply influenced by the visual context. Mr. Coney Island, Brooklyn (2013) demonstrates how time has changed the city. Even if some aspects, such as urban billboards, remain attractive subjects for the artist, his decision to abandon the black-and-white aesthetic greatly changes the results, which are far removed from that classical and poetic scenography of the 1960s: the new images waver between the grotesque and pop-art.
On the walls of Foam, the photographs appear to be arranged randomly, an approach that is encountered throughout the exhibition, in rejection of chronological or thematic canons of exhibition. The light setting in the rooms is a display in itself, creating a kind of visual puzzle, thereby reducing the symbolic distance between images and visitors. These choices allow the creation of a comfortable space in which to walk and interact with the photographs, and enabling one’s gaze to wander at will. This ‘cinematic posters shop’ kind of setting seems to be created without the intention to distract; instead, it seems to be connected with Klein’s unconventional approach to photography. The arrangement of the images resonates strongly with the ambivalent and ironic view of the artist, as well as the book layouts, in which he made extensive use of wide-angle and telephoto lenses, natural lighting and motion blur, such as Life is Good and Good for You in New York. And yet, the casual dispersion of pictures on the walls of Foam ends up disorienting the spectator’s gaze. With the look of a Tetris game, this unusual setup fails to define the aura of the individual artworks. In an era of figurative overproduction, this lack of spatial isolation can be quite risky. The complete absence of space between the prints blunts their visual strength and uniqueness. The choice for leaving out descriptions below individual pieces is also debatable. Titles are mentioned in uncomfortable, small maps to the left of the partitions. While the visitor is struggling to identify the correct work/title combination, the interesting dialogue that could potentially arise between images and words is inevitably lost. Nonetheless, visiting a retrospective like this is enriching, because it gives the visitor a sense of getting to know the artist in person via his oeuvre. This feeling can also be conjured up by reading the issue of the Foam Magazine #37, which has been devoted solely to William Klein to mark the occasion of this exhibition. Apart from portfolios featuring several of his photo series, it also includes an interview conducted by David Campany, in which the photographer talks about his life and work.
CV
Valentina Polinori graduated in Art History at the University of La Sapienza in Rome. She obtained her BA and MA in Contemporary Art History at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. She spent a semester at the Gender Studies Department of Utrecht University.
Another careful and devoted production by Willem van Zoetendaal with the legacy of Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001). Such a gentle work. - See more at: http://blog.photoeye.com/2014/12/best-books-2014-roger-willems.html#sthash.HChJttPi.dpuf
Johan Van Der Keuken - Mise Au Jour
Publisher Van Zoetendaal Publishers
ISBN 9789072532275
Published by Van Zoetendaal, this special collection of photographs by Dutch documentary filmmaker, author, and photographer Johan van der Keuken offers a fascinating window into the everyday lives of people through portraits, personal moments and many street scenes. With a career that spanned four decades, Van der Keuken was a prolific producer of images of his time, traveling to Greece, Italy, Spain and France, and visiting and documenting iconic cities like New York, Paris and his native Amsterdam. With full-page reproductions, of his black-and-white images this volume illuminates timeless narratives of people and the city.
During a cold winter in the year 1900 two horses ran away. The horses were named Tex and Jerry and lived in the wilderness. After a month the horses returned dying of hunger. From this day they called this small town Hungry Horse.
In the 1940’s and 1950’s a large dam was being built just on the outskirt of the town. People from all over the state moved to Hungry Horse in order to work on the dam’s construction. Ground and houses were cheap, the small town grew fast.
When the dam was completed many moved out but some stayed. Jobs had disappeared and Hungry Horse became a place for criminals to hide since the police wouldn’t venture into the valley.
Hungry Horse is located just a few miles away from Glacier National Park, one of Montana’s greatest tourist attraction. The town today is a place where people pass by on their way to the National Park.
About 70% of the people of Hungry Horse live in trailer parks. The prices for ground and houses in the valley are extremely high. Meaning people are moving away with their trailers in search of cheaper places. Many end up in the Indian reservations on the other side of the park.
One of the main problem in Hungry Horse and in many remote parts of Montana is the use and abuse of Crystal Meth. This drug, mostly made of household products, is smoked or injected. It is considered by many as one of the most destructive drug ever.
During summer some tourists come to the village to buy huckleberry on their way to the National Park.
A project Micamera started in 2012. A very simple question, not so obvious answers. In December 2012, if Bruno Ceschel had been sent to a desert island, he would have chosen these books:
The Male Nude David Leddick TASCHEN, 1998
Vanilla Partner Torbjørn Rødland Mack Books, 2012
His own family album
Bruno Ceschel is a writer, curator, and publisher whose works focuses principally on contemporary photography. His research specifically aims to explore issues relating to identities, with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, and racial formation. He is also the founder of Self Publish, Be Happy, an organisation which aims to collect and study contemporary artists’ books and has an ever-travelling mobile library project. Ceschel writes regularly for various international publications. He has published and edited numerous photography books, and participated in events at numerous institutions including the ICA (London), the Whitechapel Gallery (London), TATE Modern (London), C/O (Berlin) and PS1 (New York), amongst others. video: Gaia Giani mounting: Maresa Lippolis Videos are made in the bookstore in Milan micamera.com
Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf Armand Schulthess. Rekonstruktion eines Universums Patrick Frey
Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set Abrams
Willem van Zoetendaal is a graphic designer who has been producing photography books since the early nineties. In 1994 he started publishing his own books, first under the name of Basalt (in collaboration with Frido Troost) and then under the name of Van Zoetendaal Publishers. vanzoetendaal.com
This is an extract from a (short) interview that Giulia Zorzi made to Machiel Botman on the day of the opening of One Tree at micamera (September 20, 2012). The question was: If you would have to choose three books to bring on a desert island, which ones would you pick? The answer is very interesting, and this is the reason we decided to publish the video - though the audio is not so good... Thank you Piero Pezzoni for the video
'The Quantified Self' is the process of self knowledge through self tracking.
Once the preserve of researchers and technology junkies, self tracking is rapidly evolving into a mainstream trend as people are able to use smartphones and wearable sensors to record an expanding range of data and make use of its analysis.
Many of the commonly tracked metrics relate to health and self improvement, but almost anything can be tracked; sleep, exercise, mood, weight, the list is almost endless as are the individual motivations for tracking. This project looks at the stories of the people who self track, the data they collect and their motivations for doing so.
DU-Heft; Davidson, Bruce:Die Jokers - ein 'gang' Jugendlicher in New York Themenheft . Du, September 1960, Nummer 235.12 (teils doppelseitige) Aufnahmen umfassende Photoserie über eine New Yorker Jugendgang von Bruce Davidson/Magnum. - Inhalt ausserdem: Erich Lessing/Magnum: Wotruba. Ein Bildbericht Peter Mieg: Louis Moilliet (mit zahlreichen, teils farbigen Abbildungen); Kurt Marti: Karl Barth; Frösche, Kröten, Unken . Aufnahmen und Text von Jakob Forster und Walter Goetz. See also
After the successful reopening of the Rijksmuseum in April of 2013, the museum’s Philips Wing will reopen in November with 'Modern Times', a major survey of twentieth-century photography compiled from the Rijksmuseum’s collection. This collection has grown spectacularly, particularly during the last decade, and now includes many masterpieces by world-famous photographers including André Kertész, Brassaï, Robert Capa, László Moholy-Nagy, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Weegee, William Klein, Cas Oorthuys, and Eva Besnyö.
With more than 350 photographs, the book 'Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century' forms an impressive overview of the developments that took place during the twentieth century in photography, which grew by leaps and bounds into the ubiquitous and influential medium that we know today.
In 1959, the 25-year-old photographer embedded himself with a gang of teenage New Yorkers to create a moving portrait of postwar inner-city youth culture
In 1959, there were about 1,000 gang members in New York City, mainly teenage males from ethnically-defined neighbourhoods in the outer boroughs. In the spring of that year, Bruce Davidson read a newspaper article about outbreaks of street fighting in Prospect Park and travelled across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan in search of a gang to photograph.
"I met a group of teenagers called the Jokers," he wrote in the afterword to his seminal book of insider reportage, Brooklyn Gang. "I was 25 and they were about 16. I could easily have been taken for one of them."
The previous year, Davidson had become a member of Magnum, having shown his work to his hero, the agency's co-founder, Henri Cartier-Bresson. In 1958, he had similarly immersed himself in the world of a travelling circus for a series called The Dwarf, in which he photographed a performer with whom he formed a close friendship. "My way of working," he later said, "is to enter an unknown world, explore it over a period of time, and learn from it."
With the Jokers, the boundary between detached observation and immersion in the subject matter became even more blurred. "In time they allowed me to witness their fear, depression and anger," he wrote. "I soon realised that I, too, was feeling their pain. In staying close to them, I uncovered my own feelings of failure, frustration and rage."
Alongside Ed van der Elsken's 1956 work Love On the Left Bank, an altogether more staged kind of social document, Brooklyn Gang stands as one of the first in-depth photographic records of rebellious postwar youth culture. The book is now hard to find and prohibitively expensive to all but the serious collector (about £800 for a first edition, £300 for a second), but the Brooklyn Gang series is included in the first book of the epic three-volume Davidson retrospective,Outside Inside, just published by Steidl.
For several months Davidson followed the Jokers on their endless wanderings around their Brooklyn turf and beyond. He captured them hanging out in Prospect Park, where outdoor dances were held on weekend summer nights, and lounging on the beach at Coney Island. He snapped the young men as they killed time in a neighbourhood diner called Helen's Candy Store. In his photographs, the Jokers look both tough and innocent, uncertain adolescent kids caught in that hinterland between childhood and – this being New York – premature adulthood.
Davidson's black-and-white images are cool and evocative, imbued with a sense of time and place that is palpable. The gang shared a working-class, Italian-Catholic background, but look like they have walked straight off the set of West Side Story. The girls are timelessly hip in tight pants and white tops, with pinned-up piles of jet black or peroxide blonde hair. The male dress style is Italian hipster meets American rockabilly – Sinatra meets Elvis. The threads are sharp, the hairstyles tall and quiffed, and the attitude, as caught by Davidson's camera, is either defiant or aloof to the point of disinterested.
Behind the cool facade, though, lay a world of trouble that began to engulf the Jokers as Davidson trailed them. When Brooklyn Gang was finally reprinted by Twin Palms Press in 1999, it included an extended afterword by a 55-year-old man known as only as Bengie. At 15, Bengie had been one of the youngest members of the Jokers. He recalled his chaotic childhood as the son of alcoholic parents, and the beatings he received at school from priests and nuns. He remembered that the younger Jokers were into "drinking beer, smoking pot, maybe popping a pill here and there", and how the heroin came later, via older gang members. He reminisces over Lefty, "the first of the gang to die", a line later lifted by Morrissey, the great magpie of youth culture, for his song of the same name.
"If you see Jimmie, he's like the Fonz, like James Dean–handsome," Bengie says of Davidson's photographs of one of the older members of the Jokers. "Later, though, the whole family, all six of them – Charlie, Aggie, Katie, Jimmie, the mother and the father – died; wiped out, mostly from drugs."
The saddest story belongs to Cathy, the blonde and beautiful young girl whom Davidson photographed several times and whose reflection he caught unforgettably in a cigarette machine as she fixed her hair while waiting for the Staten Island ferry. "Cathy was beautiful like Brigitte Bardot," Bengie remembers. "Cathy always was there, but outside … Then, some years ago, she put a shotgun in her mouth and blew her head off."
Brooklyn Gang, then, is a document of inner-city youth culture at a time before the term was even coined. It is also a requiem for a bunch of Italian-American kids who bonded and, for a time, found a kind of community that had been denied them elsewhere – at home, in the church, at school. One of Davidson's photographs, a couple entwined in the back seat of a car, has attained a late iconic status after being used by Bob Dylan on his 2008 album, Together Through Life. The blonde-haired girl may even be Cathy.
"Beautiful Cathy was there, always with her honey, Junior," writes Bengie. "It was very sad to see her die. It was very sad to see her because she was so sad. She was always sad, always fixing her hair." You can see her that way in Davidson's great photograph of her standing in front of the cigarette machine, forever young, forever alive.
Paul Schuitema De Vries Robbé & Co, Gorinchem. N.V. Betondak, Arkel. Antwerp: by Mouton & Co. for Renes, no date but 1941. Quarto (292 x 212mm). 64 full-page colour photomontages. Original colour photo-illustrated paper covers.
Photographer Paul Huf Paul Huff: Highlights (English and Dutch Edition) once commented succinctly on his work as follows: 'They get what they ask for, but I deliver damn good work' - the very thing that makes industrial photography books so attractive. The books show work from a period during which photographers could not make a living as artists/photographers and depended on such prestigious commissions. With this highly professional approach, photographers like Violette Cornelius Violette Cornelius and Ata Kando: Hungarian Refugees 1956, Cas Oorthuys 75 Jaar Bouwen, Vanambacht tot industrie 1889-1964, Ed van der Elsken , Ad Windig Het water - Schoonheid van ons land and Paul Huf established their reputations and influenced our present-day impression of workers and entrepreneurs in the postwar Netherlands. Experimental poets and well-known writers also contributed to these books, fifty of which are on show. 'Het bedrijfsfotoboek 1945-1965. Professionalisering van fotografen in het moderne Nederland' Het Bedrijfsfotoboek 1945-1965 . See also
Photographer Paul Huf Paul Huff: Highlights (English and Dutch Edition) once commented succinctly on his work as follows: 'They get what they ask for, but I deliver damn good work' - the very thing that makes industrial photography books so attractive. The books show work from a period during which photographers could not make a living as artists/photographers and depended on such prestigious commissions. With this highly professional approach, photographers like Violette Cornelius Violette Cornelius and Ata Kando: Hungarian Refugees 1956, Cas Oorthuys 75 Jaar Bouwen, Vanambacht tot industrie 1889-1964, Ed van der Elsken , Ad Windig Het water - Schoonheid van ons land and Paul Huf established their reputations and influenced our present-day impression of workers and entrepreneurs in the postwar Netherlands. Experimental poets and well-known writers also contributed to these books, fifty of which are on show. 'Het bedrijfsfotoboek 1945-1965. Professionalisering van fotografen in het moderne Nederland' Het Bedrijfsfotoboek 1945-1965 . See also
20 weeks. Approximately 20cm. Woolly hair, known as lanugo, covers the entire head
A Child is Born: Photographs of the foetus developing in the womb, by Lennart Nilsson
When Lennart Nilsson's pictures of developing embryos were published in Life magazine in 1965, they caused a sensation. Within days, the entire print run of eight million had sold out. More than 40 years later, the photographs have lost none of their power. See also
After the successful reopening of the Rijksmuseum in April of 2013, the museum’s Philips Wing will reopen in November with 'Modern Times', a major survey of twentieth-century photography compiled from the Rijksmuseum’s collection. This collection has grown spectacularly, particularly during the last decade, and now includes many masterpieces by world-famous photographers including André Kertész, Brassaï, Robert Capa, László Moholy-Nagy, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Weegee, William Klein, Cas Oorthuys, and Eva Besnyö.
With more than 350 photographs, the book 'Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century' forms an impressive overview of the developments that took place during the twentieth century in photography, which grew by leaps and bounds into the ubiquitous and influential medium that we know today.
Staaltest. Vijf en twintig jaar van kijken & kiezen Publisher: Röntgen Technische Dienst nv RTD, Rotterdam Year of publication: 1962 Binding: perfect binding Size: 230x210mm Number of pages: 62 Number of illustrations: 16 black & white photographs Type of illustrations: company profile; documentary photography Printer: Drukkerij Hooiberg, Epe Type of reproduction: letter press printing Photography: Ed Suister Design: Charles Jongejans Text: Jan Elburg (literary contribution) Type: commemoration book (25 year anniversary)
Jan Elburg (1919-1992) was a poet and lecturer at the Institute for Arts and Crafts Education in Amsterdam. His poetry was brisk and locked into the dynamics of post-war optimism as proclaimed in the company photobook. Elburg is the author of two important company photobooks published in 1962: De verbinding [The connection], commissioned by the PTT, and staal test [steel test] (1962), commissioned by the X-ray Technical Service (RTD). The commemoration book contains full bleeding images of twenty-five years of (professional) looking and choosing, tasting and testing, in everyday life. The language is proverbial and the text fragments are reproduced on thin transparent paper. The edition includes an English language academic text on the book topic.
Photographer Paul Huf Paul Huff: Highlights (English and Dutch Edition) once commented succinctly on his work as follows: 'They get what they ask for, but I deliver damn good work' - the very thing that makes industrial photography books so attractive. The books show work from a period during which photographers could not make a living as artists/photographers and depended on such prestigious commissions. With this highly professional approach, photographers like Violette Cornelius Violette Cornelius and Ata Kando: Hungarian Refugees 1956, Cas Oorthuys 75 Jaar Bouwen, Vanambacht tot industrie 1889-1964, Ed van der Elsken , Ad Windig Het water - Schoonheid van ons land and Paul Huf established their reputations and influenced our present-day impression of workers and entrepreneurs in the postwar Netherlands. Experimental poets and well-known writers also contributed to these books, fifty of which are on show. 'Het bedrijfsfotoboek 1945-1965. Professionalisering van fotografen in het moderne Nederland' Het Bedrijfsfotoboek 1945-1965 . See also
Zo reist uw stem per telefoon... [Photography Aart Klein, CarelBlazer. Vormgeving: Ton Raateland].
Telefoondistrict Groningen; [ca. 1969]., Den Haag, s. a. [1969], 14 b&w photographs / bedrijfsreportage / mensen werkzaam in district- en telegraafcentrale, telefoonzaal en ponskamer, antenne voor straalverbinding boven een landschap)., NN, Firmenschrift, Photographie - Anthologie - Auftragsphotographie, commissioned photography - Nederland, Niederlande - 20. Jahrh. - Klein, Aart -Blazer, Carel - Raateland, Ton
Photographer Paul Huf Paul Huff: Highlights (English and Dutch Edition) once commented succinctly on his work as follows: 'They get what they ask for, but I deliver damn good work' - the very thing that makes industrial photography books so attractive. The books show work from a period during which photographers could not make a living as artists/photographers and depended on such prestigious commissions. With this highly professional approach, photographers like Violette Cornelius Violette Cornelius and Ata Kando: Hungarian Refugees 1956, Cas Oorthuys 75 Jaar Bouwen, Vanambacht tot industrie 1889-1964, Ed van der Elsken , Ad Windig Het water - Schoonheid van ons land and Paul Huf established their reputations and influenced our present-day impression of workers and entrepreneurs in the postwar Netherlands. Experimental poets and well-known writers also contributed to these books, fifty of which are on show. 'Het bedrijfsfotoboek 1945-1965. Professionalisering van fotografen in het moderne Nederland' Het Bedrijfsfotoboek 1945-1965 .
For their solo exhibition To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light, internationally highly acclaimed artists Adam Broomberg (South Africa, 1970) and Oliver Chanarin (Great Britain, 1971) lead viewers through a meandering and disturbing history lesson on the relationship between photography and race.
In response to a commission to 'document' Gabon, Broomberg & Chanarin made several trips to the West African country to photograph a series of rare initiation rituals, using only Kodak film stock that had expired in the 1960's. In the late 1970's the French-Swiss filmdirector Jean Luc Godard famously claimed that this early colour film was inherently 'racist', because it was better at depicting white rather than black skin. Using outdated chemical processes Broomberg & Chanarin salvaged just a single frame from the many rolls of expired film they exposed during these trips. This piece called Ektachrome 78 serves as a starting point for the exhibition.
Another key work in the exhibition is a billboard-sized photograph of Shirley, a 1950's model for the Kodak Eastman Company. Her portrait was distributed to photography labs all over the world as a visual reference for correct exposure. Shirley became a benchmark for 'normal' Caucasian skin. In the eighties, Kodak eventually developed a colour film that was capable of rendering darker tones. The company director described this film as being able to "photograph the details of a dark horse in low light."
Kodak Ektachrome 78 and Shirley are presented alongside works whose parameters were dictated to Broomberg & Chanarin by archival material of their deceased family friend, amateur photographer and anatomist, Dr. Rosenberg. After their trips to West Africa they inherited his darkroom equipment. Some of his notes were about making photographic test strips to determine the correct exposure time. Broomberg & Chanarin followed these instructions to produce a series of oversized darkroom experiments they call Strip Tests.
The connection between photography and racism is further explored in the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement series. In 1970, Caroline Hunter, a young chemist working for the Polaroid Corporation based in the United States, stumbled upon evidence that her company indirectly supported the apartheid regime in South Africa. Polaroid was able to provide their ID-2 camera system to the South African state, to efficiently produce images for the infamous passbooks, which the black population was required to carry with them. The camera included a boost button designed to increase the flash when photographing subjects with dark skin, and two lenses which allowed for the production of a portrait and profile image on the same sheet of film. Hunter and her partner Ken Williams formed the Polaroid Workers Revolutionary Movement, and successfully campaigned for a boycott of the apartheid government. Broomberg & Chanarin's series of Polaroids, made with a renovated Polaroid ID camera, considers the proposition that prejudice might be inherent in the medium of photography itself.
Duo legt racisme in fotografie bloot
Broomberg & ChanarinFotografen Adam Broomberg en Oliver Chanarin zoeken naar het verhaal achter foto’s. In Foam exposeren ze beladen beelden uit Zuid-Afrika, waar Kodak en Polaroid zich schuldig maakten aan racisme.
Adam Broomberg en Oliver Chanarin werkten al tien jaar samen voordat ze ontdekten dat ze familie van elkaar zijn. Chanarin: „Ik ben in Engeland geboren en Adam in Zuid-Afrika, maar we stammen uit hetzelfde joodse dorp, een sjtetl in Litouwen.” Het is toeval maar ook weer niet. Het werk en leven van Broomberg (44) en Chanarin (43), achttien jaar een kunstenaarsduo, zit altijd met haken aan de geschiedenis vast. Ze maken zelf foto’s maar ze gebruiken andermans foto’s uit archieven om de verbanden tussen fotografie en macht, tussen beeld en conflict te onderzoeken.
Hun werk is vertegenwoordigd in een groot aantal museale en particuliere collecties en is met diverse prijzen bekroond. Tot vorige week waren twee van hun projecten te zien in de grote tentoonstelling Conflict, Time, Photography in Tate Modern in Londen; in Foam in Amsterdam gaat vrijdag To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light open, over het verband tussen fotografie en racisme.
Broomberg en Chanarin: To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light, 20 maart t/m 3 juni in Foam. Inl: foam.org
„Onze vroegste projecten gingen al over de machtsverhouding tussen de fotograaf en degene die gefotografeerd wordt”, zegt Chanarin. „Voor Trust bijvoorbeeld fotografeerden we mensen terwijl ze op de operatietafel insliepen.” De dood in het klein, noemen ze het. Ook tijdens het project Ghetto, waarvoor ze mensen in besloten omgevingen portretteerden – vluchtelingenkampen, psychiatrische ziekenhuizen – werden ze zich bewust van de onuitgesproken maar loze belofte die het maken van een foto inhoudt. „De ander blijft iets verwachten, blijft geloven dat het maken van de foto iets teweeg zal brengen.”
Kodak zag zwarten niet als klanten
Fotograferen en gefotografeerd worden is altijd een transactie, in emotie en in toenemende mate in geld. „Beelden zijn een betaalmiddel, al helemaal in de nieuwsindustrie. Menselijk leed is handelswaar dat kranten en tv inkopen.”
Hoewel ze in de traditionele documentaire fotografie begonnen, is hun werk gegroeid naar het onderzoeken en analyseren van beelden, ook die van anderen. Als ze nu zelf fotograferen, gaat het niet om wat er op de foto te zien is, maar om het verhaal erachter.
Die anderen kunnen zowel beroepsfotografen als amateurs zijn, zoals bij de ruim 14.000 beelden van de Troubles in Noord-Ierland. Die zijn bij elkaar gebracht in het archief Belfast Exposed, dat veel is geraadpleegd: door activisten, advocaten, historici, en de mensen op de foto’s. Op veel foto’s staat een gekleurde stip – om die terug te vinden of om een afdruk te laten maken. Broomberg en Chanarin kijken wat er onder die stippen zit. Dat werd People in Trouble Laughing Pushed to the Ground. De stippen leidden naar taferelen uit het dagelijks leven, maar ook naar angstige gezichten en begrafenissen. Mensen die op de foto stonden hadden zichzelf soms weggekrast om onherkenbaar te worden.
Performance
Gaandeweg kreeg het werk van het duo steeds meer het karakter van een performance. Een eerste echte performance organiseerden ze bij de opening van de tentoonstelling in Tate Modern. Achttien kadetten van de militaire academie speelden afwisselend een uur lang een onafgebroken drum roll in de museumzalen.
Een element van een absurde performance, maar ook van gevaar zat er in hun project The Day Nobody Died. In 2008 reisden ze naar Afghanistan om als embedded kunstenaars met de Britse troepen op te trekken in de provincie Helmand. Er vielen die maand de meeste Britse doden van de hele oorlog. Maar in plaats van een camera namen ze een enorme rol fotopapier mee, van 50 meter lang en ruim 76 centimeter breed, in een lichtdichte doos. Het leger moest die doos overal mee naartoe slepen, en de soldaten, die er niets van begrepen, deden dat vloekend. Zo werden ze hoofdpersoon in de klucht die de kunstenaars hadden voorbereid. Steeds als er iets gebeurde wat normaal gesproken aanleiding was geweest tot een nieuwsfeit of een foto – bijvoorbeeld dat er die dag niemand was gesneuveld – stelden de kunstenaars een zeven meter lange strook gedurende 20 seconden bloot aan het zonlicht. Het resultaat is een onbegrijpelijke kleurige veeg, een anti-nieuwsfoto. „Die foto, of althans die strook belicht fotopapier, krijgt betekenis doordat wij er zelf waren, aan het front, en ons net als de militairen aan het gevaar hebben blootgesteld.”
Het project dat straks in Foam te zien is, To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light, heeft voor Broomberg een sterkere persoonlijke onderstroom omdat het over Zuid-Afrika gaat. „De kleurenfilm van Kodak was ongeschikt om zwarte huid mee te fotograferen. Het bedrijf zag zwarten niet als klanten, blank was de maatstaf.” Dat impliciete racisme is te zien aan de portretten van Shirley’s, die Broomberg en Chanarin verzamelden. De eerste Shirley was een medewerkster van Kodak, later volgden er meer, en hun portretten dienden voor fotolabs als toets voor het correct weergeven van de (blanke) gelaatskleur. Pas in de jaren tachtig kwam Kodak met een film die beter in staat was een zwarte huid weer te geven, in codetaal de ‘details of a dark horse in low light’.
Flits voor zwarte huid
Polaroid maakte het veel bonter. In 1970 ontdekte medewerkster Caroline Hunter dat haar bedrijf indirect het apartheidsregime steunde. Polaroid leverde de ID-2-camera waarmee de portretten werden gemaakt voor de gehate passbooks die zwarte Zuid-Afrikanen bij zich moesten dragen als legitimatie. De camera had een knop voor extra flits voor zwarte huid.
„Hunter en haar vriend richtten de Polaroid Workers Revolutionary Movement op om het bedrijf onder druk te zetten zich uit Zuid-Afrika terug te trekken. Dat lukte nadat een medewerker die ook lid was van het ANC, de druk had opgevoerd.”
De kunstenaars kochten op internet een oude ID-2-camera en gingen ermee naar Zuid-Afrika. „Alles wat we ermee zouden fotograferen, was beladen met geschiedenis en politiek. In plaats van mensen hebben we daarom planten gefotografeerd met die dubbele lens, de ene dichtbij, de andere van verder weg. Dit project is zowel een liefdesverklaring aan het Zuid-Afrikaanse landschap als een commentaar op de politieke rol van de fotografie, zelfs van het filmmateriaal. Technologie is niet neutraal. De totstandkoming van beelden is net zo beladen als de beelden zelf.” ◆
Een versie van dit artikel verscheen op donderdag 19 maart 2015 in NRC Handelsblad. Op dit artikel rust auteursrecht van NRC Media BV, respectievelijk van de oorspronkelijke auteur.
Published by Steidl Edited by Robert Frank, Ute Eskildsen.
The publication of Paris marks the first time that the significant body of photographs which Robert Frank made in Paris in the early 1950s have been brought together in a single book. Having left Switzerland in 1924, this 1951 trip to France was only Frank's second return to Europe after he had settled in New York City in 1947, and some of the images he made during that visit have become iconic in the history of the medium. The 80 photographs reproduced here, which were selected by Frank and editor Ute Eskildsen, suggest that Frank's experience of the "new world" had sharpened his eye for European urbanism. He saw the city's streets as a stage for human activity and focused particularly on the flower sellers. His work clearly references Atget and invokes the tradition of the flaneur.
Copyright of Robert Frank published 2008 by Steidl
After purchasing and reading Robert Frank’s Paris, published by Steidl in 2008, I have been hesitating to publish my book review. Part of my procrastination was purchasing a copy of Frank’s The Americans, published by Steidl as part of their “Robert Frank Project”, as a baseline for comparison. And I am happy that I did buy The Americans, as it does make even more apparent the designer hack-job done on Frank’s Paris.
As background, Paris is a re-edit of prior work for a newly conceived bookwork developed from Frank’s photographs made between 1949 and 1952 while he bounced between Europe (mostly Paris) and United States (mostly NYC). Two other newly conceived bookworks that Steidl has recently published of Frank’s early photographs are London/Wales and Peru, which I have not seen yet. I hope that they have fared better.
For me, it was of great interest to see the photographs that Frank was making up to creating The Americans. The biggest issue of course is that the body of work is edited some 50+ years after the fact, with all of the historical baggage and current thinking. If we were to step back in time, perhaps we could see what the context that Frank was developing prior toThe Americans. But we can not, so we need to see what Frank has extracted now from what he had created then, and dig that data mind with him.
So with that, the bad news/good news and I need to get the bad news out of the way first, to give myself some space to discuss the photographic content within the covers. Simply that the book design suffers!
Okay, that felt good, but now why. Unlike the republished The Americans, in which Frank has a design say, this book was designed for design sake. Someone forgot to remind the designers that they are there to work for the photographer and his body of work, to place it in the best light. Unlike The Americans, every photograph in Paris is bleeding off the page, off every conceivable edge. The photographs are then further diminished by running many across the gutter and losing content in that same gutter. We get a glimpse of the potential and not the whole story.
We deserve better than this design crap, uber scheisse, and Frank does not need to have his work trashed. Shame on you Gerhard Steidl and Sarah Winter for putting your self first at the expense of the photographer, whom you say you are trying to tell his story. Let him fail on his own accord, don’t push him into the ditch. I guess this why publishers don’t like to have the photographer help with the book designs, might bring in some common sense and true design sensibility. Alright, I am done venting…
Now for the good news, when you can put together enough of the pieces and see the hints of the photographs left behind by the design team, you will find that same wit, even with my limited knowledge of the French language, iconic vision and delightful essence of The Americans. Such that we can see we are been seen. There are more atmospheric images in Paris, dealing with figures in the hazy fog, adding a different context of mystery. All of that unsettling vision of his is ever evident.
Is Paris now a controversial book for the Parisians as Frank’s The Americans was for the Americans in the late 1950’s, early 1960’s. I don’t think so, as that cutting edge is gone, if not dulled, by time and the images are not that contemporary by today’s standards. The book does provide a broader insight into what Frank’s photography was developing into at the time, that The Americans was no fluke.
I just can not recommend this book, as good at the photographs are, the design flaws can not be overcome, they are too great a distraction, the content has been too hacked. Maybe there might be improvement in the second edition? I would not hold my breath.
If you want to have a great book about Robert Frank in your photographic book collection, I would rather recommend you purchase The Americans, and not waste your money onParis. I think you would be much happier in the long run.
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