SCHMIDT, Michael and SCHLEEF, Einar. Waffenruhe (Cease Fire). (Berlin): Dirk Nishen, (1987). Tall, slim quarto, original photographic self-wrappers.

First edition of this striking photo-essay on the Berlin Wall, with 39 rich full-page duotones (one gate-folded).

"Like much of Michael Schmidt's work, Waffenruhe (Ceasefire) is about Berlin… autumnal, dark, Schmidt does not employ the objective materiality of the traditional Social Landscape mode, but imposes a distinctly contemporary, updated, picturesque" approach in which "only the Wall—die Mauer— remains solid and potentially enduring" (Parr & Badger II:65). Schmidt "represents what is most promising about the New European photography. Working in a style that is impressionistic and seemingly casual, he fashions images that are simultaneously personal and political" (New York Times). As Martin Parr notes, "through Schmidt's dramatic perspective and keen eye for telling details and subtle nuances, he creates an air of inconsolable emptiness in his images of The Wall and those affected by it. These photographs will leave you speechless." Text in German. Open Book, 336.

See also

The Collector's Vision Martin Parr's Best Photobooks Photobook Phenomenon

Another Brick in the Wall – Michael Schmidt’s Waffenruhe

‘Wer Bunker baut, wirf bomben’ (Those who build bunkers, also make bombs)               Berlin graffito

‘You can’t get lost in Berlin; you always end up at the Wall.’         Wim Wenders, Wings of Desire (1987)


For the serious photographer with a confirmed belief in the artistic worth of ‘straight’ photography – the so-called ‘poetic documentary’ mode – these are trying times. More than ever, most of the world seems to think that the simple photograph is not enough. The photographic artist who still stubbornly works within the broad tradition of Atget or Weston, even Frank or Friedlander, is deemed wilfully anachronistic, a member of a mutated, almost extinct species.

The straight photographer certainly is an endangered species. Reviled either openly or covertly, and frequently passed over in favour of those utilising the medium for conspicuously more grandiose ends. These days, the straight photographer’s nominally modest, ‘unambitious’ tend to be swamped by the serried ranks of vainglorious photofabrications and moronic pieces of minimalist conceptualism masquerading as the ‘real thing.’ For example, in a recent exhibition shown in France and England, Another Objectivity, the work of the American ‘New Topographer’ Robert Adams – relatively smallscale, subtle, complex – looked like a fish out of water amidst the welter of overblown, vacuous variations on undergraduate themes that were purporting to make us ponder issues of ‘art’, ‘culture’, and ‘representation.’ Adams – unfashionably, daringly – seemed more concerned with life than with art.

Of course, I an deliberately oversimplifying the issue. I also wish that is were unnecessary to take such a reactionary tack, but I feel that a little revisionism is in order. An artist’ medium should not be the ground for value judgements and ideological conflict. The art, yes – the medium itself, no. Yet that is precisely what has happened, and what is happening with photography. Certain ideological applications of photographic processes, namely, where the primacy of the photograph is denigrated and challenged, are held to be superior to the documentary utilisation of the medium. The photo-hybrid – photopainting, photosculpture, the ubiquitous conceptual photo ‘piece’ – is seen as the only valid notional approach. There are signs of active discrimination against the straight photograph and the plainly veristic practice from both within and without the photographic enclave.

Yet, so many of those seeking to ‘extend the boundaries of the medium’, and refute the ‘hegemony of the documentary’, are fooling themselves. Whether deliberately or unknowingly (often the latter I suspect), they would seek to deny photography’s salient strengths and replace them with a diluted academicism. Much of what they trot forth as shining examples of the medium’s cutting edge are simply tired old ideas (intellectually kosher ideas, to be sure) wrapped in glossy new packages and bound with accompanying rhetoric. Invariably – lots of rhetoric.

I write this rather bitter preamble by way of a new book by one of Germany’s leading photographer – Michael Schmidt. I have been cheered immensely by the appearance of Waffenruhe (Ceasefire), and hope that it might rekindle the spirit in any straight photographer whose faith might be waning. For Schmidt confirms that photography certainly can be enough, a medium rich in allusion, visual surprise, and narrative quality when utilised by an intelligent mind’s eye. Furthermore, Waffenruhe reiterates a fact that has long seemed blindingly apparent to the more discerning photographer, that photographs must be put together like words, or individual movie frames, in order to sing their full song. It advocates persuasively that the most effective form of presentation for the straight photograph is probably the book. A vessel for the poetically juxtaposed sequence of images, the book becomes the primary artwork, rather then the necessarily less concentrated row of prints on a gallery wall.

_________________________

A few years ago, a friend of mine visited West Berlin on business. She was a senior consultant on Third World health education, and had confronted some extremely deprived areas of this planet. But two days in Berlin shocked her almost beyond rationality.

On the afternoon of her departure, her host, a leading light in West German aid agency circles, had lunched in one of the city’s most expensive restaurants. (An irony to which she had become inured, if not exactly reconciled). Then, on the drive out to Tegel Airport, he suggested, without prior explanation, the diversion which was to haunt her for some time to come. My friend was taken to Plötzensee, to the memorial which commemorates underground German resistance to the Nazis. There, in the old Plötzensee Prison, she was shown the chamber where more than one hundred implicated in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler were executed, some hung from meat hooks with piano wire, their death agonies obscenely filmed for the Führer’s delectation.


Why was this such a trauma for my friend? She was a sensible, mature woman-of-the-world, all too familiar with the residual miseries of power politics and the ideological injustices of the African continent. She was aware, and even annoyed at her host’s clumsy attempt to manipulate her sentiments in a probable attempt to assuage some of his own guilt. However, it was not simply Plötzensee, she felt, but the city of Berlin. There, I suspect, she felt the full weight of 20th century history upon her, for the first time. She felt both humbled and angry at this graphic demonstration of the awesome legacy bequeathed daily by our modern, so-called civilisation.

One cannot escape that in the divided city, even if one tries to ignore it. And it absolutely pervades the sense of Michael Schmidt’s book. The work’s very title, Waffenruhe – ‘ceasefire’, or literally, ‘fighting peace’ – implies an uneasy dichotomy, an unreal state of temporal stasis. And which sums up the sense of crazy unreality which characterises Berlin. The city is a living museum of 20th century history. It is a memorial, an island stopped in time while the rest of the world moves on – still occupied by foreign troops, still ostensibly on a war footing. Despite the modernist architecture, the forced gaiety, the punks, and the vibrant art scene, the city remains locked in 1945. If there were signs, hopes of escaping from that awful time warp, they were dashed around 1960. With Die Mauer (the Wall), Herr Ulricht, that model of a determined, implacable socialist leader, ensured that the spectre of Hitler remains hanging over the city like a dank, grey mist.

The swastika, Schmidt reminds us in one grim image, merely lies dormant, retaining remnants of potency despite surface decay. Nazism flourishes under different guises. What in another picture might be a grainy momento mori of an Auschwitz or Belsen victim turns out to be a much more recent newspaper image of a would-be escapee over the Wall. He was shot and left bleeding at the foot of the Wall, out of reach of the West, abandoned by an unfeeling Eastern bureaucracy until only a mortician was required to affect retrieval.

As may be determined by such imagery, the tone of Schmidt’s book is gloomily romantic, shifting, autumnal, dark. He uses not only the objective materiality of the traditional social documentary/landscape mode, but a distinctly eighties, updated picturesque miasma. He employs differential focus and distortions of scale to dissolve material forms. Berlin is viewed through a despondent veil, an incessant wintery drizzle.


Only the Wall remains solid and potentially enduring – a symbol of entrapment, certainly, but in this city of contradictions, perhaps also a symbol of the ultimate Schopenhaueran escape. The dying escaper portends this, followed later by a closeup of the slashed wrist of one of the photographer’s daughters. Then, almost two-thirds of the way through the book – the usual point of climax in sonata musical form, brought to its highest pitch in German culture – stand the two sharpest, most material, least evanescent images in the work. The first shows the damp, dark soil covering the base of a concrete wall (the Wall?). The second shows the structure itself, an awkwardly placed row of upright precast concrete panels, their serried ranks, along with the freshly turned earth making the obvious metaphor, but making it tellingly, poetically.

There are those, particularly his fellow countrymen I would guess, who might contend that Schmidt does make the metaphors crashingly obvious, and that we have seen all this before. Trees bandaged, tree trunks displaying ominous, numbered ‘armbands’, for instance, are not exactly subtle. Is Schmidt merely exhibiting more of that ponderous, mordant, sentimental, chronically Teutonic self-pity? ‘Wie dunkel is das Leben’ (How dark is life), and that sort of thing? Is he simply scratching at ground more spectacularly and thoroughly tilled by major league members of the School of Germanic breastbeating – most notably Anselm Kiefer?

I think not. Schmidt’s theme is not German art, or German mythology, German guilt and German reconciliation. The metaphors might be there, but much more pertinently, so is the stuff of life. Not, let it be said, ‘reality’, but life, experience, caught on the wing, or rather, on the ground and moulded into a cogent, poetic entity. Working with familiar themes – decaying nature and ruinous man – and decidedly unexotic material, Michael Schmidt has created a fetid poetry and an introspective gloom. This derives formally from the likes of Lewis Baltz and John Gossage – especially Gossage – but exudes a rhapsodic intensity of its own that marks it immediately as a European appropriation of an American vocabulary.

Certainly, the pain and sense of loss running through the whole book like a subliminal subtext would seem to be as much personal as historical, as eschatological as phenomenal, as much diary as report. Waffenruhe is a subjective, deeply felt work, elegiac and bitter by turns. This is confirmed by the book’s oblique, stream-of-consciousness text, and the bleak portraits of the photographer’s daughters, even of himself in the final frame, the very picture of a somewhat inebriated, German Dylan Thomas, and sharing that artist’s acute sense of the poetry of things, the fresh slant upon the apparently simple and obvious. As Janos Frecot writes in his brief afterword, Waffenruhe is not directly a book about Berlin, but a book that could have only been inspired by Berlin, a cri-de-coeur that could have emanated only from a Berliner.

Gerry Badger from Creative Camera (1987)

Winding Paths door Bruce Chatwin

Let’s think of a hunter-gatherer of stories, a seven floors tower, the fascination of a nomadic spirit and the power of b&w images: the result is a quite interesting exhibit dedicated toBruce Chatwin at the Tower of the Luni Bishops Castle in Castelnuovo Magra (Liguria).

The exhibit Bruce Chatwin... the journey continues, offers a different perspective on the writer as a photographer. Indeed, for the eclectic Chatwin, “writing and photography complement and reinforce each other with continuous cross-references. Pictures are a kind of visual notebook for him, as they find more substance in his traveling books, while his writings telling places, people, cultures manage to allow the readers’ imagination 'to see' what the author describes”, curator Maurizio Garofalo says. Chatwin is best known for his travelling and his writing books that amazed the literary world, like In Patagonia (1977), while his work as a photographer has long been underestimated. Some collections of his photographs - mostly color images - were published after his death in books like Photographs and Notebooks (1993).

The Luni exhibition in is the first one displaying b&w images only, according to a project by Luciana Damiano, founding member of Premio Chatwin and Associazione Chatwin, Ilaria Attuoni and Elizabeth, Bruce’s wife and president of the Chatwin Association. “We visited Elizabeth and she showed us some series of negatives: it was not easy reading their quality, but we foresaw something quite interesting in them. We were told they were unpublished: it was a kind of challenge”, Damiani says.

The Luni Tower hosts some 30 photos (1961-1985), including some vintage and restored negatives and many unpublished shots, like the ones he took with his wife in Yunnan. They come from the Oxford University that took over the preservation of Chatwin’s conspicuous archive (more than 3,000 images built up during his restless travelling). If Chatwin’s color images seem to aim at geometry and ideal proportions, his b&w production is affected by both his studies on aesthetics and art and his being a restless traveler and a storyteller, so they reveal a more social and anthropological slant. His knowledge of art provided him with a clear and accurate way of observing. These images were shot with his Leica CL and 40mm lens and with a Rolleiflex. He used to shoot with great discretion: according to his wife Elizabeth, “he would whip out his Leica, quickly take the picture, slip the camera into his pocket and walk on”.

“Chatwin, whose work revived the genre of travel writing, trekked across the world and left us the mystery and the enchantment of his stories together with his great rationalism, an amazing set that grabs the reader and is still effective today”, Damiani adds. Then the 6+1 floors of the tower: while climbing them, one walks across the continents according to Chatwin “wonder voyages”, from his first journey to Egypt and then to Afghanistan, Yunnan, West Africa, Patagonia (40 years since the publication of In Patagonia). Also on stage, on the seventh floor, his own mythical backpack, crafted as an English saddle.

Paola Sammartano

Paola Sammartano is a journalist specialized in arts and photography based in Milan, Italy.

Bruce Chatwin…il viaggio continua
July 8 to October 8, 2017
Torre del Castello dei Vescovi di Luni
Piazza Querciola
19033 Castelnuovo Magra (SP)
Italy

http://www.comune.castelnuovomagra.sp.it/ComAppuntamentiDettaglio.asp?Id=58562


Overal zelf in de hoofdrol
De Engelse schrijver Bruce Chatwin stierf tien jaar geleden. Hij was nog jong – pas 49 jaar – en hij had het met zijn een na laatste boek The Songlines net gemaakt van cult-schrijver tot literaire veelverkoper. Bijna niemand, ook Chatwins naasten niet, mocht weten dat de schrijver aids had. In de uitvoerige eulogieën die na zijn dood in de Britse pers verschenen (een commentator merkte op dat het wel leek of Lord Byron was overleden) was nog veelal sprake van `een mysterieuze tropische ziekte'.
Hieke Jippes
10 september 1999

Dat was de mythe die Chatwin zelf verspreid had. Hij schaamde zich voor zijn biseksualiteit en hij schaamde zich voor een ziekte die toen nog zo'n stigma had. Toen zijn moeder er vlak voor zijn dood achterkwam wat haar zoon mankeerde, zei ze dat ze hoopte dat ze zelf dood zou zijn vóór iemand zijn biografie zou schrijven. Die wens is vervuld, want Bruce Chatwin van Nicholas Shakespeare, voormalig literair redacteur van The Daily Telegraph, verscheen pas deze zomer: tien jaar na de dood van de schrijver, vier jaar na het overlijden van zijn moeder, drie jaar na het verscheiden van zijn vader.

Chatwins vroege dood maakte zijn aantrekkingskracht als schrijver zo mogelijk nog groter. De foto op de omslag van zijn boeken is die van een blondharige, blauwogige jonge God. De flapteksten van In Patagonië, De Onderkoning van Ouidah, On The Black Hill, The Songlines en Utz versterken het beeld van de glamoureuze schrijver-reiziger, precies het imago waaraan Chatwin zijn hele leven heeft geschaafd. Onvervaard, nederig in zijn wijsheid en messcherp in zijn weetgierigheid: zo wilde hij gezien worden. Chatwin modelleerde zich naar Hemingway en Flaubert. Hun zinnen placht hij in bad te reciteren, zo luid dat zijn gastheren er 's nachts wakker van werden. Hij schreef en herschreef zijn teksten tot ze ook uiterlijk een sobere indruk maakten. Alinea's dienden niet meer dan enkele zinnen te bevatten, zodat ze er op de pagina's uitzagen als die in een Franse roman. `Zinnen als Fabergé-eieren', noemt Salman Rushdie ze. `Koud proza van een warme persoonlijkheid.'

Aan flarden

Nicholas Shakespeare is er niet op uit geweest om een mythe aan flarden te scheuren. Dat was al evenmin de bedoeling van zijn echtgenote Elizabeth Chanlin, anders zou zij Shakespeare geen gebruik hebben laten maken van Chatwins dagboeken en aantekeningen. De biograaf heeft wereldwijd de bronnen nagetrokken die Chatwin gebruikte. Hij sprak ook met tientallen – zo niet honderden – intimi uit de segmenten waarin Chatwin zijn bestaan verdeelde. Het resultaat is dat het boek werkt als een kaleidoscoop: brokstukjes Chatwin vallen bij elke wenteling in een andere samenstelling ineen.

Het beeld dat zo van Chatwin ontstaat is even gecompliceerd als de werkelijkheid zelf. De man is een uitvreter, een snob en een intellectuele dief. Hij is ook een bezeten jager naar kennis, een poëet en een literaire fantast. Volgens Graham Greene schreef hij `een van de beste reisboeken die ik ken' (In Patagonië) en Tom Maschler, Chatwins eerste uitgever bij Jonathan Cape, vond dat boek `een van de tien opwindendste gebeurtenissen in mijn carrière als uitgever.' Alleen al in de Britse edities verkochten Chatwins boeken met honderdduizenden exemplaren, vorig jaar gingen daar meer dan een miljoen paperback-exemplaren van zijn werk over de toonbank. Chatwins werk is inmiddels vertaald in 27 talen. Hij won belangrijke prijzen als de Booker Prize en de Hawthorn. Cruiseschepen met Amerikaanse toeristen doen, op gezag van In Patagonië, de kleine Welshe gemeenschap in Argentinië aan en een bezoek aan de binnenlanden van Australië is niet langer mogelijk zonder kennis te nemen van The Songlines – hoe `onwaar' cultureel-antropologen dat boek over het gedroomde landschap van de Aborigines ook vinden.

Bruce Chatwin (13 mei 1940) werd geboren in een pretentieloos middle class-gezin in Birmingham. Zijn vroegste herinneringen werden gedomineerd door de afwezigheid van zijn vader, die in de Britse strijdkrachten diende, en de aanwezigheid van een rariteitenkabinet in zijn grootouderlijk huis. Daarin bewaarde de familie zaken als Bruce's doopbeker, een kompas, de ketting van een oom-missionaris, maar vooral een stukje huid met ruw rood haar – de veronderstelde huid van een prehistorisch wezen. Dat stukje huid en de lange wandelingen met zijn grootvader over de Yorkshire moors vormden de grondslag voor een levenslange obsessie met verzamelen en trekken te voet.

Op kostschool – tien jaar lang, van zijn achtste tot zijn achttiende – legde Chatwin zijn Birmingham-accent en zijn kleine-jongenseigenaardigheden af en werd hij volgens Shakespeare `emotioneel onaantastbaar'. Geen van zijn tijdgenoten had ooit gedacht dat die onopvallende Bruce Chatwin schrijver zou worden, al fantaseerde hij er toen al lustig op los.

Schurk

Op voorstel van zijn moeder kwam Bruce terecht bij het veilinghuis Sotheby, waar hij als beginneling nummers mocht plakken op de collectie in de afdeling Works of Art. `Smootherboy' trok al gauw de aandacht van de toenmalige topman Peter Wilson, die bezig was Sotheby een waardige concurrent te maken van Christie's, van oudsher het veilinghuis voor de Britse aristocratie. Bij beide veilinghuizen spelde men de overlijdensadvertenties om te zien welke objecten van de treurende families konden worden losgeweekt. Shakespeare schrijft: `Christie's stuurde bloemen, Sotheby stuurde Bruce.'

De jonge Chatwin ontwikkelde zo een feilloos kennersoog, maar ook een specialiteit in het omgaan met rijke oudere dames en het van zich afhouden van bejaarde homoseksuelen. In `een wereld van barokke monsters' gebruikte Wilson de jonge Bruce als aas. Dat was bovendien in een tijd dat homoseksualiteit nog niet modieus was en zelfs (tot 1967) bij wet verboden. Bruce zelf voelde zich op zijn minst seksueel gedesoriënteerd. Zijn mannelijke partners verstopte hij, zelfs voor zichzelf. In 1961 trouwde hij tenslotte met Wilsons secretaresse, de Amerikaanse historica Elizabet Chanler. Hun huwelijk zou tot het einde standhouden, al behandelde Chatwin Elizabeth abominabel (`ik was dat lastige element ergens op het platteland') en kroop hij alleen naar haar terug als hij stabiliteit of verzorging nodig had.

Toen Wilson Chatwin geen aandeelhouder-directeur maakte, zei hij Sotheby vaarwel. Hij zette zich alsnog aan een archeologie-studie. Die poging was ten dode opgeschreven, want Chatwin `zag zichzelf als de opvolger van Howard Carter', de ontdekker van het graf van Toetankhamon, niet als iemand die dodelijk saai veldwerk moet doen. Wanneer hem gevraagd wordt voor een galerie in New York een tentoonstelling in te richten over Nomadische Kunst van de Aziatische Steppes neemt Chatwins `grande idee' bezit van hem. Het is dat `de mens geboren is om te migreren; dat de evolutie hem een instinct heeft meegegeven om lange afstanden af te leggen en dat dat instinct, wanneer de menselijke soort zich vestigt, overkookt in geweld, in inhaligheid, in statuszoeken of in een manie voor het nieuwe.'

Zwerven

Wetenschappelijke bronnen noemen Chatwins these onjuist: nomaden zwerven op zoek naar voedsel, maar zouden liever op een vaste plaats blijven. Chatwins catalogus voor de expositie, een soort vingeroefening voor een boek dat hij Het Nomadisch Alternatief wilde noemen, was onleesbaar en werd afgekeurd, maar Tom Maschler van uitgeverij Jonathan Cape zag in Bruce Chatwin potentieel een equivalent van Desmond Morris, auteur van de bestseller The Naked Ape. Hij gaf Chatwin een voorschot en lanceerde daarmee diens carrière als schrijver.

Nicholas Shakespeare chroniqueert nauwkeurig de vele reizen die Bruce Chatwin tijdens zijn schrijverschap maakte, vaak in het gezelschap van anderen. Die blijken bij navraag een heel andere herinnering te hebben aan de avonturen waarin Bruce zichzelf steevast een hoofdrol toekende. De mensen die hem ter plekke informatie of een rolmodel verschaften, lijken zich onveranderlijk verraden te voelen door de manier waarop Chatwin er met hun verhaal of hun deskundigheid vandoor is gegaan, altijd maar suggererend dat hijzelf de allesweter is. De fotografe Eve Arnold, van wie hij een gesprek met de Indiase premier Indira Gandhi `stal', zegt: `Hij vond dat het verhaal gewoon beter werd als hij daarin nummer één was. Een auteur schrijft zichzelf gewoonlijk uit het verhaal. Bruce schreef zichzelf er opzettelijk in.'

Thuis schrijven, bij Elizabeth in het sombere buitenhuis in Oxfordshire, kan hij niet. Dus legt hij langdurig beslag op de gastvrijheid van kennissen – hoe beroemder, hoe beter – met voor hem geschikte accommodatie, en steekt daar vervolgens geen hand uit. `Hij kon zich gewoon niet voorstellen dat hij ergens niet welkom was', meent Elizabeth.

En toch, alle irritatie en gekrenkte trots en vertrapte emoties blijken uiteindelijk van ondergeschikt belang wanneer Shakespeare mensen aan het woord laat over die andere kant van Chatwin: de charmeur, de toneelspeler, de grappenmaker, de verhalenverteller, de verleider. `Of je nu een man, een vrouw, een jachtluipaard of een theemuts was, hij moest je eronder krijgen', zegt een van zijn vriendinnen.

Bruce Chatwin leefde vier jaar lang met de wetenschap dat hij aids had. Hij stierf in Frankrijk in het huis van Shirley Conran, ex-echtgenote van de ontwerper/restaurateur Sir Terence Conran en moeder van de mode-ontwerper Jasper Conran, die 22 jaar oud was toen Bruce zijn eerste grote liefde werd. Op zijn sterfbed had Chatwin Elizabeth bij zich. Jasper Conran voelde zich bitter verraden. `Waarschijnlijk hield Bruce meer van zichzelf dan van wie ook', zei hij. `Niets betekende meer voor hem dan het geschreven woord.'

Nicholas Shakespeare: Bruce Chatwin. The Harvill Press, 602 blz.


Toen de mens ophield met zwerven; De ambivalentie van Bruce Chatwin
'Niets maakt zo oud als een verzameling kunstwerken', schreef Bruce Chatwin, die kunst gevaarlijk vond omdat het zo verleidelijk is de kunst boven het leven zelf te stellen. Zijn boeken zijn volgens Bas Heijne onaf en Chatwin lijkt voortdurend te streven naar de ontbinding van zijn eigen schrijverschap. Over een van zijn boeken zei hij: 'Wat me voor ogen stond was het klassieke voorbeeld van een boek dat niet geschreven kan worden.' Het verhaal is bekend, hij heeft het zelf vaak verteld. Het is het verhaal over de Engelse jongen die begon als portier bij het veilinghuis Sotheby's en zich binnen enkele jaren opwerkte tot een van de jongste leden van de staf. Toen werd hij plotseling geslagen met blindheid. Vervolgens was er de arts die hem vertelde dat het verlies van zijn gezichtsvermogen psychosomatisch was en hem aanraadde er eens even helemaal uit te gaan. 'Kunst', zou hij later zeggen, 'ik kon geen kunst meer zien, en kunstverzamelaars al helemaal niet.'
Bas Heijne
29 juni 1990

De jonge man nam ontslag en begon een tweede leven. En zoals de meeste bekeerlingen koos ook hij voor een bestaan dat diametraal tegenover zijn eerste leven stond. Voortaan zou hij de reiziger pur sang zijn, een reiziger zonder thuis, een twintigste-eeuwse nomade.

Maar iemand die een tweede leven begint, draagt zijn eerste leven nog altijd met zich mee. En de twintigste eeuw, de eeuw van het bewustzijn, kent geen reizigers zonder heimwee. Wie een nieuwe horizon zoekt, weet wat hij achter zich heeft gelaten. Deze reiziger, Bruce Chatwin, was zich te zeer bewust van zichzelf om dat te ontkennen. Ook in zijn borst huisden twee zielen. Zijn persoonlijkheid leek bepaald door twee tegengestelde, en op het eerste gezicht onverenigbare instincten: de drang om te ontsnappen aan de beschaving waar hij zelf het produkt van was, en zijn aangeboren liefde voor diezelfde beschaving, voor het verzamelen van mooie dingen, kortom, voor de kunst. Een dergelijke gespletenheid blijft niet zonder gevolgen. Na zijn zwerversjaren probeerde Chatwin dan ook manmoedig een brug te slaan tussen die twee radicaal verschillende kanten aan hem. Probeerde hij aanvankelijk te ontsnappen aan de kunst door te gaan reizen, nu probeerde hij van zijn reizen zelf kunst te maken: door erover te schrijven. Vanaf zijn debuut, het reisboek In Patagonia uit 1977, tot aan zijn dood in januari 1989, schreef Chatwin zes boeken die hemelsbreed van elkaar verschilden, maar toch onmiskenbaar stuk voor stuk pijlers zijn onder dezelfde brug, die van de kunst naar het leven.

Reisdoel

Voor Chatwin stond vanaf het begin af aan vast dat zijn brug eenrichtingsverkeer zou hebben; zijn reisdoel was het naakte bestaan. In In Patagonia tref je gedachten en observaties aan die in zijn laatste boeken zouden uitgroeien tot een levensfilosofie, of sterker, tot een geloof: namelijk dat het nomadebestaan de enige natuurlijke manier van leven is voor een mens.

In dat eerste boek, een zoektocht met als beginpunt een stukje huid in een vitrine van een Victoriaanse eetkamer en als bestemming eenzelfde stukje huis in de dorre wildernis van Patagonie, is het verlangen naar dat nomadebestaan nog een onopvallend Leitmotiv, steeds gesuggereerd, nergens gemotiveerd. Zonder verder commentaar haalt Chatwin op een gegeven moment de ontdekkingsreiziger W. H. Hudson aan, die ervan overtuigd raakte dat de zwervers in de woestijn van Patagonie in zichzelf een voorwereldlijke rust vonden, die ook bekend zou zijn aan de simpelste wilde. Verderop in het boek vermeldt hij een discussie met een ornitholoog over de migratiegewoonten van een bepaald soort pinguin: 'We praatten tot diep in de nacht, discussierend over de vraag of ook in ons centrale zenuwgestel niet zekere routes zijn vastgelegd; het leek de enige manier om onze krankzinnige rusteloosheid te verklaren.'

En enkele bladzijden verder legt hij voor het eerst een korte geloofsverklaring af, een explosief zinnetje midden in zijn onderkoelde relaas over de ondergang van de Indianen-volkeren van Patagonie: 'De Gouden Eeuw vond haar einde toen de mensen ophielden met jagen, in huizen gingen wonen en de dagelijkse gang in de tredmolen begonnen.' Dat is alles, meer zegt hij er niet over. Wat hij precies bedoelt met die uitspraak, vermeldt Chatwin niet. Hoe dan ook, die en passant geformuleerde gedachte zou de rest van zijn leven beheersen en uitgroeien tot een religieus besef, of, zoals sommigen zullen zeggen, tot een krankzinnige obsessie. Zelfs in dit eerste boek vind je al een verwijzing naar het bijbelverhaal dat hij later tot zijn persoonlijke gelijkenis zou maken: het verhaal van Kain, de kolonist, de materialist, de verzamelaar, en Abel, de zwerver.

Lagentaart

Deze botsing van twee tegengestelde naturen loopt als een rode draad door Chatwins oeuvre. Maar wanneer deze twee zielen in dezelfde borst huizen, zit je met een probleem. De schrijver Bruce Chatwin was Kain en Abel tegelijk. Zijn zes boeken wemelen van de denigrerende opmerkingen over kunst. Ze zijn dodelijk voor de kunst, al te dodelijk. Het was alsof hij zichzelf ergens van wilde overtuigen. In In Patagonia merkt de Litouwer Slapelic ov over de verzameliprehistorische kunstvoorwerpen van zijn zuster op: 'Spullen van dode mensen. I do not like.'

'Ik ook niet', zegt de verteller dan. En in een later verhaal prijst Chatwin de inwoners van de stad Marseille, omdat zij 'gelukkig immuun zijn voor kunst. Hun stad is de enige grote stad in Frankrijk die niet te koop loopt met de grandeur van het verleden, of je terneerdrukt met het gewicht van zijn monumenten. Ook is ze een etnische lagentaart die haar deuren heeft opengesteld voor allerlei soorten reizigers en immigranten, van Spaanse anarchisten tot Grieken uit Smyrna, Armeniers en Afrikaanse zeelieden.'

Verstoord

Een gemeenschap zonder kunst, bestaande uit een potpourri van nationaliteiten; zo ziet voor Chatwin de ideale stad eruit. Maar ook dit paradijs is verstoord door de Kains van deze wereld. 'Nu de stad van individualisten de zee de rug heeft toegekeerd en gevangen zit in de nieuwe welvaart, begint zij vreemdelingen te haten en wordt ze terughoudend en wantrouwend.' Bezit, volgens Chatwin, is diefstal: van het leven zelf. En het gevaarlijkste bezit is de kunst, omdat het zo verleidelijk is de kunst boven het leven te stellen. 'Dingen, peinsde ik, zijn sterker dan mensen. Dingen vormen de onvergankelijke spiegel waarin we onszelf zien desintegreren. Niets maakt zo oud als een verzameling kunstwerken.'

Die regels staan in Utz, een korte roman met de zeggingskracht van een parabel. In dat boek, verschenen in het jaar van zijn dood, rekent Chatwin definitief af met de kunst. De naamloze verteller werkt aan een studie over de psychologie of psychopathologie van de dwangmatige verzamelaar. Hij raakt betrokken bij de Tsjechische jood Kaspar Utz, die een bijzondere vorm van idolatrie bedrijft: hij overleeft het communistische bewind in Praag door volledig op te gaan in zijn kostbare verzameling figuren van Meissen-porselein.

Huishoudster

Utz is aanvankelijk een Kain-achtige figuur. Hij verafschuwt geweld, maar verwelkomt niettemin de wereldrampen die verse kunstwerken op de markt brengen. Wanneer de verteller Utz vraagt of hij gelooft dat zijn verzameling figuren werkelijk leeft, kent deze laatste het porselein zelfs de kracht toe die Chatwin eerder het zwerversbestaan in de wildernis had toegeschreven: 'Porselein sterft in het vuur, en komt dan weer tot leven.' Maar dat blijkt slechts schijn. Wanneer Utz overlijdt, blijkt zijn verzameling verdwenen. Er wordt druk gespeculeerd, maar uiteindelijk denkt de verteller dat de verzamelaar iedere belangstelling voor zijn dode porselein verloor, toen hij zich bewust werd van zijn liefde voor zijn huishoudster Marta. Hij stelt zich het huwelijk van het tweetal voor en 'vanaf dat uur brachten zij hun dagen door in hartstochtelijke adoratie van elkaar, gebelgd over alles wat tussen hen kwam. Het porselein was nu niet anders dan wat oud aardewerk dat eenvoudigweg de deur uitmoest. '

Prullenbak

Maar Chatwin is nog niet klaar. In Utz zet hij het proces voort dat al in zijn vorige boek, The Songlines, was ingezet, namelijk de ontbinding van zijn eigen schrijverschap. Niet alleen de verzameling porselein verdwijnt in de prullenbak, ook de tot leven geroepen figuur Utz blijkt zijn schepper te slim af te zijn. Telkens weer moet de verteller zijn relaas over wat er met Utz is gebeurd herzien. Het is alsof Chatwin zichzelf een hak wil zetten. De schrijver gaat er prat op het leven in woorden te vangen, maar Utz ontsnapt moeiteloos. Hij blijft uiteindelijk een mysterie, waarover alleen vermoedens kunnen worden uitgesproken; net als de Golem, het door mensenhanden gemaakte monster dat 's nachts door de straten van Praag doolt. Het verhaal blijkt uiteindelijk op een wonderlijke manier onaf te zijn; onaf als het leven zelf. En zo heeft Chatwin het bedoeld.

Ook The Songlines is een nadrukkelijk onaf boek. In al het werk van Chatwin zijn, meestal op driekwart van het boek, kleine inzinkingen te bespeuren, alsof de schrijver tijdelijk zijn belangstelling in zijn werk heeft verloren, maar The Songlines lijkt hij bewust te laten ontsporen. Het boek begint als een reisverhaal over de teloorgang van de aboriginals en hun cultuur van zogenaamde 'zangsporen', dat wil zeggen, gezongen teksten waarin de lange omzwervingen van voorouders zijn vastgelegd, maar mondt uit in een stroom notities en citaten over het nomadische element in onze cultuur. Opnieuw is Chatwin zich bewust van de spanning tussen zijn artistieke en zijn nomadische instinct, opnieuw moet het artistieke instinct het ontgelden: 'Als het boek kwaliteiten heeft', zei hij in een interview, 'komt dat juist doordat het ongepolijst is en onvolledig.

Het boek dat me voor ogen stond was het klassieke voorbeeld van een boek dat niet geschreven kan worden. Het probleem van thema's als het nomadisch bestaan is dat je er niet over moet schrijven je moet het doen. Erover schrijven, het vastleggen van het zwerven, is een compromis, een soort lafheid.' Een boek dat niet geschreven kan worden. Een soort lafheid. Hier brengt Chatwin zijn eigen dilemma onder woorden, een dilemma dat hij nooit helemaal heeft kunnen oplossen. Onthechting was zijn grote thema, maar hij is blijven schrijven tijdens zijn slopende ziekte, hij is blijven schrijven tot aan zijn dood.

Maar natuurlijk is het niet alleen zijn ambivalentie. We kunnen er ons maar al te gemakkelijk in herkennen. Sinds de romantiek heeft de westerse mens altijd willen ontsnappen aan de beschaving die hij eigenhandig had opgebouwd. Zittend voor onze brandende kachels, hoog boven de wereld, omgeven door vele lagen beton, verlangen we naar de koele wind op de vlakke savanne; zwervend over de savanne verlangen we naar huis, naar geborgenheid, naar kunst, naar een goed boek. En dat boek gaat dan misschien wel over een tocht naar de Afrikaanse savannen. Dat maakt het werk van Chatwin fascinerend voor ons: niet zijn eventuele ontsnapping aan onze cultuur, maar zijn verlangen om eraan te ontsnappen.

Aboriginals

Uiteindelijk bracht hij de kunst heel dicht naar het leven. Wat hem in Australie zo fascineerde, was de wijze waarop de eerste bewoners van dat continent hun cultuur met hun nomadisch bestaan lieten samenvallen. De aboriginals zingen de aarde tot leven, hun zangsporen vallen samen met een werkelijk bestaande geografische route. Het bezingen van bestaande voorwerpen en plaatsen terwijl men reist, zodat gezongen routes ontstaan, die door anderen, nog generaties, nog eeuwen later, gevolgd kunnen worden, kwam volledig overeen met Chatwins ideaal van een harmonisch universum. Dit was levende kunst. De taal werd de reis, de reis werd de taal.

Dat was de oplossing; in The Songlines bracht Chatwin al zijn preoccupaties uit zijn andere boeken samen en maakte er een gewaagde theorie van. Aan het einde van dat boek vat hij het samen: 'en hier moet ik de grote sprong naar het geloof maken. Naar regionen waarvan ik niet verwacht dat iemand zal volgen. 'Ik stel me voor hoe de zangsporen zich door de eeuwen heen hebben uitgestrekt over de werelddelen. Hoe mensen overal waar ze voet zetten een spoor van gezang hebben achtergelaten (waarvan we af en toe nog een echo opvangen). En hoe die sporen in tijd en ruimte moeten terugleiden naar een geisoleerde uithoek in de Afrikaanse savanne, waar de Eerste Mens om de verschrikkingen die hem omringden te trotseren zijn mond opende en de eerste strofe van het wereldlied uitschreeuwde: 'Ik ben!' Dit was Chatwins voorwereldlijke en wereldwijde paradijs, waar de mens zichzelf buiten geplaatst had door zich op een plaats te vestigen. Volgens Chatwins diepste overtuiging was er in de evolutie geen plaats voor het kwaad. In den beginne was er geen agressie, alleen zelfbescherming. Het ging pas mis toen jagers verzamelaars werden, toen de zangsporen plaatsmaakten voor het eerste museum.

Deze theorie stelde Chatwin in staat zijn artistieke impulsen met zijn reizigersinstinct te verenigen. De laatste verhalen die hij schreef, in de maanden voor zijn dood, volgen de feiten van zijn eigen belevenissen bijna letterlijk op de voet. Maar hij is schrijver, geen journalist. Hij is de feiten niets verschuldigd, en hoezeer zijn relaas ook met die feiten overeenkomt, hij heeft de werkelijkheid naar zijn hand gezet. Met andere woorden: hij heeft van het leven kunst gemaakt.

Dat die verhalen de werkelijkheid niettemin zeer nabij komen en een vreemde, onvoltooide indruk maken, is ongetwijfeld opzettelijk. Deze laatste schetsen laten zich lezen als Chatwins antwoord op zijn ontdekking van de zangsporen van de aboriginals; vlak voor zijn dood heeft hij nog zoveel mogelijk sporen door zijn eigen leven gezongen. In de laatste regels van het laatste verhaal van deze laatste bundel, geeft Noel Coward hem het volgende advies: 'Never let anything artistic stand in your way.' Laat je door de kunst nooit ergens van weerhouden. Daar heb ik me altijd aan gehouden, besluit Chatwin. Het is de laatste zin in zijn oeuvre. Hij laat zijn boeken achter, waarvan de woorden als zangsporen over de hele wereld lopen. Wij zijn geen nomaden, maar we kunnen hem altijd volgen.

Deze tekst is de verkorte versie van de SLAA-lezing die Bas Heijne hield in de serie 'Literatuur en journalistiek'. Bruce Chatwin: In Patagonia. Uitg. Penguin, Songlines. Uig. Penguin,

Beyond Drifting: Imperfectly Known Animals encapsulates in miniature the much larger environmental problems of an imperfect world. This work presents a unique collection of plankton specimens related to the pioneering discoveries made by naturalist JV Thompson in Cork Harbour during the 1800s. These recently found specimens are deceptive, however, and mysteriously conceal their true origin.

See also

Views & Reviews Anthroposceneries Mandy Barker Caleb Charland Yann Mingard Maija Tammi Unseen Photo Fair Amsterdam 2016 Photography

These Haunting Photographs Call Attention to Plastic Trash Swirling in the Ocean
Award-winning photographer Mandy Barker explores the beauty and tragedy of marine plankton and plastic waste

By Marissa Fessenden
SMITHSONIAN.COM
MAY 10, 2017
8351783938
At the start of creating her latest series, photographer Mandy Barker's 35-mm camera broke. She was pleased.

“It was quite interesting because it gave me unusual effects,” the Leeds, U.K.-based artist says. “The camera’s plastic light seal had deteriorated in the more than 20 years since it had been made, causing a sticky mess on the shutter that the film then stuck to,” she explains. “I thought, this was an idea to pursue because it relates to imperfection.”

Barker’s new series came to be called "Beyond Drifting: Imperfectly Known Animals." It takes a closer look at an environmental problem she has tackled before.

The photographer’s series have won international awards for tackling the grim story of marine plastic debris. Her series "SOUP" was inspired by learning about the great whirling gyre of plastic trash swirling in the mid-Pacific known as the Garbage Patch. She explored that idea even further with "‘Hong Kong Soup: 1826," featuring collections of plastic gathered from more than 30 beaches in the Hong Kong area since 2012. The trash swirls, floats, and schools like fish against a black background.

In the new series, the images resemble otherworldly life forms displaying curled, fanned or branching structures and surrounded by ghostly afterimages. Portions of the creatures are in focus and other portions are hazy, confined within a circle that evokes the field of view as seen through a microscope. Yet the creatures were never alive. As in much of her work, Barker is photographing pieces of plastic trash.

Barker had read about the tiny particles of plastic floating in the world's oceans that are being nabbed by hungry zooplankton. The miniature plastic particles have either broken down from larger pieces or started small, such as the microbeads found in face wash. By washing into the ocean, the tiny particles are creating huge problems for the health of zooplankton, oysters, corals and other sea life. Mistaking the particles for food, marine creatures fill their bellies with plastic and can succumb to intestinal blockages, perforations, poisoning from pollutants in the waste or simply feel satiated and starve to death. The microscopic zooplankton form the foundation of many marine food chains, so the effects ripple.

Barker was also inspired by a naturalist and biologist, John Vaughan Thompson. Thompson, born in 1779 in British controlled Brooklyn, published extensively on the natural history of various organisms, including marine plankton. Charles Darwin took Thompson’s memoirs, "Zoological Researches, and Illustrations Or Natural History Nondescript Or Imperfectly Known Animals: in a Series of Memoirs," on the Second Voyage of the Beagle.

Barker borrows that evocative phrase for her series and the idea of imperfection runs through the project. "The plankton are now imperfect because they have plastic in them," she says.

Ultimately, Barker broke four different cameras to complete her series. Each had the same flaw and let unexpected light leak in and alter the photographs. The series made the shortlist for the Prix Pictet, a prestigious international award focusing in photography and sustainability. An exhibition at The Victoria and Albert Museum in London opened May 6 and features all 12 of the photographers on the shortlist, including five works from Barker's 25-image series.

Barker spoke to Smithsonian.com about her new photography series.

How did you come up with the idea for the "Beyond Drifting" series?

The work actually began as part of an artist's residency in Cobh, Ireland, where I was introduced to the work of John Vaughan Thompson, a naturalist and biologist who worked in Cork Harbor. I thought it would be a really good idea to take current scientific research and tie it to the research in the 1800s. There's also the idea that in the 1800s, there wasn't any plastic around to be ingested by plankton.

I've represented plankton-like specimens from the plastic I collected from the same places in Cork Harbor where he did his work. The specimens look like plankton that are being viewed under the microscope, when in fact they're actually plastic objects that have been moved in camera to look like plankton. So it is a kind of a trick initially.

Can you tell me how you collected and selected the plastic objects?

For a month, I walked miles and miles of Cork Harbor. I engaged with the local community there and got people to come and do some beach cleans. The items that the public picked up, I've used. So it's a kind of nice collaboration.

There was lots and lots of plastic collected. I tried to select a cross-section of the sample. I picked out, for example, plastic bottles, beer can packaging, toys, plastic flowers. I wanted to get a bit of a diverse collection and all things people might use everyday. That might make them think: "How did that coat hanger end up in the ocean?"

How do you set these objects up and photograph them?

They are exactly as they were found, collected from the shoreline and unwashed. I bring them back to the studio and put them on a black velvet background. I use a fairly long exposure of several seconds, and I move the object on the velvet whilst the camera shutter is open. So this fairly long exposure gives the sense of movement. I studied the way that plankton moves in the ocean and tried to recreate that sort of motion.

What do you think people feel when they see these photographs?

I hope that they think they are sort of scientific microscope images, but when they read the captions and the descriptions, I hope it makes them think about the problem with plankton eating these pieces of plastic.

Plankton are at the bottom of the food chain, so when they eat the plastic it is detrimental to the rest of marine life and also to ourselves. Plastic pieces end up in fish and oysters that we eat.

I hope people will be shocked. I'm trying to create images that are beautiful in some way and attractive enough to draw the viewer in, make them curious. Then I want to shock them.

I think that science and discoveries are often put out are through scientific research journals or papers or things read in science circles. But it's hard to connect people to that. I feel that's my job as an artist and quite a powerful way of engaging an audience.

Your work has garnered a lot of attention and awards. Have you been surprised at this reaction to your photographs?

Yes, I'm constantly surprised. Perhaps my work has coincided with more attention on this issue, research-wise. Initially it was my "SOUP" series that was picked up about seven years ago. At that time, I don't think there was much public knowledge about the issue. Those images just went viral and since then people seem to enjoy my work. I feel very lucky.

That sounds like your work is doing what you hope—shocking people and grabbing them.

It does seem to work. I get a lot of emails from people saying it has made them think about their contributions of plastic waste. I couldn't be happier: That is my whole aim to make people think about what they have been using, to buy less plastic. If my work does that, then it has succeeded on some level.

This project involves more than photographs. Can you tell me about the pieces that accompany the plastic plankton images?

I've tried to recreate an old science book from the 1800s and emulate the work of John Vaughn Thompson. I wanted people to have a book to look at and take their viewing from there. Initially, I hope it will be viewed as an old specimen book that people will open and then realize what it is trying to tell.

And there are two specimen drawers. One has some marine plastic objects collected from around the world and in Cobh, as well as some microbeads—these are what they are finding in plankton. I balance that with the other specimen drawer, which shows a kind of old take on plankton specimens. They are my images, but they've been put in the drawer and pinned with old-style specimen labels.

So I've tried to recreate old and then current research.

What was it about John Vaughn Thompson's work that grabbed you?

There are lots of famous discoverers and adventurers—Charles Darwin, for instance. But Thompson was a very unsung hero. A scientist who works on plankton in the Cork Harbor explained this to me. John Vaughn Thompson really did a lot of fundamental research but scientists now haven't heard much about him. It was quite nice to highlight his work.

Do you have any new projects on the horizon?

For my next project, I hope to highlight the issue of synthetic fibers, which have now become a problem in the ocean. These are the sort of synthetic fibers that come from synthetic clothes. They are actually shedding off in the wash and going straight out to sea. Now, they can be found in the stomachs of fish. So this new research will be my next focus.

Peruse Barker's work digitally on her website or during her takeover of Smithsonian Magazine's Instagram feed May 6 - 12. Visit the work in person at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London May 6 - 28. Meet the photographer herself during Photo London, held May 18-21 at the Somerset House. Barker will be signing the book associated with her new series in the East Wing Gallery there on May 20 and 21.

The Photobook Review
Collecting the Japanese Photobook
Ryuichi Kaneko interviewed by Ivan Vartanian


Ryuichi Kaneko is a leading historian of Japanese photobooks, and over the course of four decades he has amassed a formidable collection of twenty thousand volumes, including magazines and catalogues. In his role as curator at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, from its nascency up until this year, he oversaw the development of the institution’s public collection. As a scholar, Kaneko has been an important figure in supporting and extending scholarship surrounding Japanese photography and photobooks. Ivan Vartanian, who guest edited the latest issue of The PhotoBook Review, spoke to him about how he became one of the first and most enduring champions of the Japanese photobook, the evolution of the form, and what makes a book irresistible. This article also appeared in Issue 6 of the Aperture Photography App: click here to read more and download the app.

Ivan Vartanian: You began collecting books at a time when no one else had interest in Japanese photobooks. How and why did you start?

Ryuichi Kaneko: It started in high school and university, when I was taking photographs and realized I possessed absolutely no talent for it. But I loved photography. My father was an amateur photographer, and after the war he worked as an editor at a fashion magazine, which influenced me too, with all the exposure to material it provided. Since I couldn’t make images, I thought intensely about what I could do that would connect me with the world of photography, and started to just consume and absorb whatever materials I could get my hands on. Photobooks were a vehicle for that.

The first Japanese photobook I ever purchased was Otoko to onna [Man and Woman, 1961] by Eikoh Hosoe. And the first book I purchased by a foreign photographer, in 1967 or ’68, was William Klein’s New York [1956]. Around that time, 1967 or ’68, I started to become acquainted with a lot of photographers, and by 1974 or ’75 I started to buy books actively.
Kazuhiko Motomura is a publisher and editor who made Robert Frank’s The Lines of My Hand [1972] with Yugensha. When I ordered a copy of the book, Motomura delivered it by hand to my door. And from there started a long friendship and a sort of mentorship. He introduced me to a slew of photographers, bookstores, and bookstore owners, particularly in the Kanda area of Tokyo. After that, Kanda became my library, where books and magazines could be bought. My passion became my mission.

And it was just about this time that independent galleries were operating in Tokyo. To the photographers in these places— which were hangouts as much as they were noncommercial exhibition spaces—I became known as the guy who had all these photobooks from Japan and the West. It was an opportunity, or excuse, if you like, to talk to photographers and be connected to the medium that I loved so much. For example, at Photo Gallery Prism, I met photographers Hitoshi Tsukiji, Kineo Kuwabara, and Hiroshi Yamazaki. At Image Shop Camp, I met Keizo Kitajima. These photographers were of the same generation as me. That was an important point because they had an antiestablishment way of thinking.

IV: So what was the experience of buying photobooks at that time?

RK: It wasn’t simple. There weren’t a lot of photobooks by Japanese photographers. And of those that were in existence, only a handful were worth buying, like Shomei Tomatsu’s Taiyo no empitsu [The pencil of the sun, 1975] or Kikuji Kawada’s Sacré Atavism [1971]. But there were several gems from the West: Lee Friedlander’s Photographs [1978], Garry Winogrand, Nathan Lyons, and Bruce Davidson, as well as Aperture’s Paul Strand and Walker Evans retrospectives. There was also Dorothy Norman’s book on Stieglitz, An American Seer [1973], which I went around and showed to everyone, and it changed our impression of Stieglitz. It was this process that led me to become interested in the history of photography, too.

IV: After the mid-1970s, with the proliferation of photobooks, were you able to keep up?

RK: I bought pretty much ninety percent of everything that was published then. I don’t think you can imagine this: I would go to Kanda twice a week, and then Waseda, to visit used bookstores. And of course Shinjuku’s Kinokuniya bookstore. Unlike now, when there is a surplus of books, at that time there weren’t many Japanese photobooks to buy. How could I use the ¥10,000 I had in my hand? There were days when I couldn’t find a single book to buy and would go home feeling dejected.

IV: Were there any other people buying photobooks at that time?

RK: No! There was no one else.

IV: So how did this culture of collecting books grow in Japan?

RK: It’s thanks to me and Kotaro Iizawa. He, too, was studying Japanese photo history, and when we eventually met we realized we were both doing pretty much the same thing at the same time. Iizawa often said that we needed to change the culture from the enjoyment of taking photographs to the enjoyment of looking at photographs. That was in the first half of the 1980s, just before I started working at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. But the culture of actually enjoying reading Japanese photobooks didn’t evolve until after the 1990s. The 1980s were about foreign photobooks, but I was a cheerleader for Japanese photobooks.

IV: Were there any dramatic shifts in the form of Japanese photobooks between the 1960s and the ’80s?

RK: No, except for the dramatic improvements in printing technique. It was something that became apparent later. There was gravure printing in the beginning, after the war, and then after the 1970s it was all offset printing. But there still wasn’t this sense that a photobook was a function of its printing. That would be entirely the influence of the American photobook, which was recognized in Japan in the 1980s.

IV: Japanese photobooks have special value as the vehicles by which a lot of Japanese photography has been seen by the West. Do you think some distortion has resulted from this, by not seeing the prints themselves and only seeing the work in the form of photobooks?

RK: In Japan the photobook has had special significance for photographers from the 1930s onward; from the 1950s to the 1970s, there was a widely accepted understanding that there were certain modes of expression that could only be achieved in the form of a photobook. The print was forgotten to a certain degree. And when it came to academic matters of collecting, which is what I did as a curator for the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the first selection of images was often based on what was in photobooks. Quite frankly, many Japanese photographers are quite unconcerned with how work is shown in a gallery setting because the photobook is already out in the world and circulating among people.

It is precisely because of this imbalance that Japanese photobooks have their unique sensibility and can achieve new levels of expression. A great example of this would be the 1963 version of Eikoh Hosoe’s Barakei, which was printed in gravure. You could cut those pages out of the book and frame them. One shot of Yukio Mishima staring into the camera at close range has not only become a symbol of that body of work, it has become iconic. So when the prints from that series are sold, that image gets prominence over the other images, and the book’s context and complexity get lost.

IV: So how about contemporary photobooks? Are you actively collecting those too?

RK: [laughs] To be totally frank, it’s no different from the situation I was facing back in the 1970s. It’s very difficult to find a book I feel I must own. There are a lot of books out there now, which is like a dream come true, but sadly only a few make it into my collection. There are few books that communicate an innate need to exist, or to even be a photobook to begin with. Then there are the books that you just take one look at and know, “I must own this.” That’s what I’m looking for when I visit bookstores.

Translation from Japanese by Ivan Vartanian.

Ivan Vartanian is a Tokyo-based independent curator and author as well as the founder of the imprint Goliga.

Ryuichi Kaneko is a critic, historian, and collector of photobooks. He has authored or contributed to numerous publications, including Independent Photographers in Japan 1976–83 (Tokyo Shoseki, 1989),The History of Japanese Photography (Yale University Press and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2003), Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s (Aperture, 2009), and Japan’s Modern Divide (J. Paul Getty Museum)

Breuk met traditie: koningin en prinsessen close-up op de foto
Tentoonstelling Erwin Olaf breekt met de traditie van afstandelijke fotoportretten van koninklijke hoogheden, in een fotoserie voor de jarige koning.
Paul Steenhuis
2 oktober 2017

Het moderne gezicht van de monarchie: koningin Máxima, voor de lens van Erwin Olaf

De Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst heeft afgelopen weekeinde vier opmerkelijke fotoportretten online gepubliceerd van koningin Máxima, prinses Catharina-Amalia, prinses Alexia en prinses Ariane, gemaakt door fotograaf Erwin Olaf.

De foto’s zijn opmerkelijk omdat ze, anders dan de meeste foto’s van leden van de koninklijke familie, van heel dichtbij genomen zijn: close-up. De vier vrouwen kijken je van dichtbij recht in het gezicht. Zo dichtbij, dat in de pupillen van de geportretteerden fotograaf Olaf te zien is. Die keuze van Olaf om zo overrompelend dichtbij te fotograferen, is een stap in de modernisering van de portretfotografie van het Nederlandse koningshuis, zegt de curator van het Fotomuseum Den Haag, Wim van Sinderen, die een overzichtsexpositie van Erwin Olaf voorbereidt. Want, zegt hij: „Door die close-up van het gezicht komt de nadruk erg op de ogen en de mond te liggen, en dat zie je niet vaak bij foto’s van koninklijke personen, wel bij autonome kunstfoto’s.”




Ook in de popcultuur zijn zulke close-ups, met wind in de haren, gebruikelijk. Olaf maakte de foto’s op 18 april 2017 ter gelegenheid van de vijftigste verjaardag van koning Willem-Alexander. Het nieuwe fotoportret van Máxima is sinds zondag te zien in het museum Jan Cunen in Oss, als onderdeel van de expositie Powervrouwen!. Dat is een expositie in drie delen, met onder meer geschilderde en gefotografeerde portretten van vijf koninginnen, Emma, Wilhelmina, Juliana, Beatrix en Máxima. Onder meer Andy Warhols beroemde portret van Beatrix hangt er.

De steeds losser wordende, moderne manier van portretteren van koninklijke hoogheden is daar goed te zien. Vooral Beatrix zorgde voor een vrijere manier van het geschilderde en getekende portret van de koningin, met portretten die onder anderen Marte Röling, Peter Struycken en Jeroen Henneman van haar maakten. Die wijken af van klassieke, afstandelijke staatsieportretten. Maar wat betreft fotografie koos de toenmalige vorstin nog vaak voor traditionele fotografie. Historica Reinildis van Ditzhuyzen deed daarom in NRC in 2007, bij Beatrix’ 70ste verjaardag, een oproep aan haar om modernere fotografen in te schakelen voor koninklijke portretten. Willem-Alexander en Máxima doen dat: ze vragen moderne Nederlandse fotografen, zoals Anton Corbijn, Rineke Dijkstra en Erwin Olaf.

Olaf maakte al eerder een fotoportret van Máxima, en hij maakte ook van koning Willem-Alexander een portret, dat voor de 2 euromunt werd gebruikt.

Max Pam
Photographer, House, Fremantle, Perth
2 2 Mar 2014  26 Photos
FvF
Interviews > Max Pam
 
Max Pam is an Australian contemporary photographer. Originally from Melbourne, he now resides in the quiet yet charismatic port side area of Fremantle in Western Australia. Max first visited Perth in the 70s after a brief stint abroad. After traveling extensively in his earlier years and even calling Brunei and London home among others, Max has found his place in Perth. Max’s work is a self described mixture of photography as a contemporary art form and photojournalism. Using a developed technique and a distinctive style, Max has told a lifetime’s worth of stories through a combination of personal journals, paintings and of course, photographs. He has exhibited widely, both locally and internationally, in addition to publishing over a dozen photo books.

While keeping busy with photo commissions and attending his overseas exhibition openings, we tracked Max down for an afternoon at his uniquely positioned penthouse apartment with spectacular views. In the company of endless bookshelves stocked with just as much of his own work as other people’s we discussed what it means to be a contemporary photographer in the 21st century and his early years working as a photojournalist. Max’s most recent publication Supertourist is an epic artists’ monograph that was over ten years in the making. Wrapping up his last year as a university lecturer in photomedia before retirement, today he is as energetic as ever and the end of his artistic career is nowhere in sight.



























Max, you’re originally from Melbourne right? What first brought you to Perth and what has kept you here?
I left Melbourne in 1973 for good. I spent quite some time away from Melbourne between 1970 and 1973, but in 1973 I left for good. I wasn’t happy with Melbourne at all and even going back there now I’m not happy with the place. Just my personal experience I suppose. My sister had her first child and she lived in Perth, so I figured that I’d get the boat from Fremantle – the port of Perth – to Singapore. You could get dormitory class on the boat back then. It was ten days on the Indian ocean for 75 dollars. It was a beautiful way to travel. So I caught the train across from Melbourne to Perth. My sister was living in Peppy Grove.

I stayed with her for about three months. I got a job working in a photo lab out in Belmont. It was kind of mass production photography with portrait snapshots, I worked in the photo lab and operated the film machine. That gave me three months experiencing Perth. I was really on my way out of Australia and wasn’t in a hurry to ever come back. That was my mindset when I got to Perth, however after three months in I figured that I really liked the place. I really connected with it in a meaningful way. So I after my trip to India I was able to contemplate coming back to Australia, which certainly wasn’t my thinking before I crossed the Nullarbor – the desert between Melbourne and Perth. Good old Perth, you got to love Perth.

Did you live in Borneo for a while during that time? Were you doing some work as a journalist there?
Yeah, I couldn’t work. I was in Brunei while my wife was working for the sultan of Brunei’s medical service. Basically the condition of the deal was that I could stay there with her, but I couldn’t work. Which suited me fine. I didn’t want to work. Jan, my wife, was earning enough for both of us. So, I started to do color editorial work for inflight magazines like Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines. I would think of somewhere to visit in that region, for example The Philippines or Thailand, and I’d do a story for the magazine which would usually cover the trip. I would shoot it with 35mm kodachrome 64 film and I would shoot my black and white stuff for myself with my big camera. I would create the magazine story with the picture editor of those magazines in mind.

I had really nothing but contempt for color editorial photos. What it did however, was make me much more productive in the field. It meant that I changed from shooting one roll of film per day – which was twelve shots – that were all carefully considered and slow in the way it evolved to working much faster. I think by the time the early 80s came along I didn’t have that kind of time anymore. I had a small family and doing the color photo stories made me much more efficient in the field. What would take me three to six months previously would only take me a month after that stint in Brunei. It was a pretty good education.

How much work did you do as a journalist? You talk about it like you seemed to enjoy it?
A lot of my work is informed by photojournalism. I don’t know what percentage, it could even be divided by 50 percent between the visual language of photojournalism and photography as a contemporary art form. For me doing photojournalism was and is something I can do. When we lived in London in the early 90s I worked for a French photo agency and I was the representative for the French journal Liberation in England. I did lots of stories for them and looked at stuff I normally wouldn’t go near out of my own volition, but because they were paying me and commissioning me I did it. And I got some really good enduring photos out of that. So, I’m pretty confident that if somebody said to me, “you can’t make any money out of anything other than just working on hardcore photojournalism,” I know I’d have that down. I know I could do a good job. It’s just that I only really wanted to photograph what I wanted to photograph. I think there is a pay-off for being stubborn about what you want to do about what you want to achieve.

You famously turned down an invite to the Magnum photo collective. What was your reason?
The Magnum thing. It was a real honor to be tapped on the shoulder in 92 in Paris. The president of Magnum – François Ebel at the time – came to an exhibition opening of mine. I knew François from quite a few years before. So I went to meet Magnum at the London office. It was in Brixton not far from where we lived. I really didn’t like the people I met there, I had no connection with them at all. So it wasn’t about not joining Magnum, I would’ve joined Magnum if the people in the London office had been even half human. I would have loved to have joined Magnum but the people I met once I got in the office made me think it really wasn’t worth the effort. At the same time I was invited to join this new photo agency in Paris. I went with them instead. That agency went down the toilet a few years ago. When they asked me to join it was kind of like the new kid on the block so it was exciting. I don’t regret walking away from Magnum however, that’s for sure.

You’ve just released your new book, Supertourist, your biggest work yet. You’ve been making photo books for 20 to 30 years or something now?
I’ve been doing journals since I was 20. I started my first journal on my first trip away from Australia driving a VW from Calcutta to London. I carried on from there. I was at art school in London. So it has always been part of my process from the get go. I mean it has always been a review tool for me and a repository for writing about my process, ever since 1970 – that’s quite a few decades of practice now! I’m slow to evolve with my photography so that process of keeping the books, nudging them this way and that, it helps.

The last three books you produced seem to be some of your strongest works: Ramadan in Yemen, Narcolepsey and Supertourist. It seems you’ve got more and more energy to make books as time goes by. Do you feel like you’re slowing down at all? Is your creative energy still flowing?
Yeah it is. Going to Italy recently was interesting. In Italy I was working on this thing called the Adriatic coast project. Basically I had four days to do it. It was pretty underwhelming but I was on fire. I got about 50 good pictures in four days. As you age you can still really evolve as a photographer. I think that’s really indicative of still being able to do it, still having the juice to do it, and doing it better than I ever could of before. It’s sort of interesting how, if you do have a long slow career like mine has been, it just keeps going if you have the opportunity.

I remember in the early 90s on the strength of my book GOING EAST that won the photobook prize at d’Arles I got offered quite a few projects. I remember one in particular in Andalucia, in Spain. Centered around Almeria I had a week to comment on Almeria with my camera. I had a week of rubbish really. I didn’t respond to Almeria at all. There was nothing there I really wanted to photograph but I was being well paid to do it so of course it was important to go through the process but I was really disappointed with what I got. What amazed me was that this project was so well funded. They had the list of everyone who was hot in photomedia working on the project, they had people like William Klein, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Martin Parr, among others. This was when Martin Parr was really at the height of his power and he did his best work. For his week in Almeria he did some extremely good work. It was a lesson for me. I looked at my stuff and I looked at his stuff and I learned a lot from that. I think part of my learning process is always learning from my mistakes.

Basically, I was unprepared for the project because I wouldn’t choose to go to Almeria and photograph normally, and my whole modus operandi was going somewhere where I wanted to be and commenting on it. The brief was the opposite to how I worked. But the wild thing is, here I am 20 years later doing the same thing really.

I want to talk about the cliché, how do you feel the digital age has transformed photography? I am interested to hear your perspective on it. With the internet, a million blogs, every man and his dog having a camera and wanting to be a photographer, do you think it is for the better?
For five seconds photography was very cool. Simply because it was the art form of choice for gen X and gen Y. You could say something about the specific culture you connect with and you could say something about your personal life. Maybe you’re not a good writer or you’re not good at anything else but you do have this ability to interrogate aspects of your life that you see as important and turn those things into a visual language. A lot of people got onto that with digital cameras in particular. It took the expense out of the process among other things and it gave the young questing photographer the tools to interrogate their worlds in a way that was very free and easy. But on the back of that came an almost oversubscription to photographing anything and everything that moved. There are too many photos out there.

People have been overwhelmed by photos and the idea of posting them every five seconds: this is me picking my nose, here I am massaging my scalp. The banal has kind of hijacked moments that people used to photograph because they were really aware of them. They were aware of them in a way that connected with their camera. It got lost in translation. Now it’s a question of tell me something I don’t already know or haven’t already seen. I think people are now suffering from a lot of photomedia fatigue. It’s not cool anymore, it’s just something everyone does. I actually think it’s quite an exciting time to be a photographer because there’s so much wallpaper out there. The really committed people operating a camera are going to do something strong. I think there’s always opportunities.

You have some strong artist influences in some of your work. I know August Sander’s work being one with the double portraits – an obvious one there. Is there much talent out there in the 21st century?
There’s good work out there. I like Tina Barney’s work a lot, she’s an American photographer and I like how she operates. Actually she’s not that new on the scene. Photomedia has a bit of a short attention span with regard to who’s hot and who’s not. A lot of really classy performers get lost in the woodwork. I still look for inspiration from the modernists. Not a lot that’s happened in the 21st century so far has really been meaningful for me. I still look back to the 20th century for inspiration.

There are a lot of photographs nowadays that appear to have all been taken before, which is not necessarily a bad thing. However, I’m just really amazed when I see something completely new. I guess there’s not too much room for originality.
Well, for me the last big thing to happen in photomedia was Nan Goldin, with her Ballad of Sexual Dependency in 1984. So that’s a long time ago. Some people would argue that there have been substantive players since then, but not on such a massive scale. Nan Goldin changed the way people constructed visual language. She set them all up for the 21st century.

A lot of people talk about the difference between an artist practicing photography and a photographer. What do you think about this? Would you call yourself an artist or a photographer?
I don’t know about labels. We are all photographers. I think that’s the point, we are all potentially writers as well. We are all potentially everything. I mean I taught myself how to use watercolors and I taught myself how to draw. There are lots of things we can do, but somehow these labels, I am this or I am that… I mean sure a brain surgeon, I understand how that label fits. When it comes to the notion of modernists and art and where it comes from and where you can take it, anyone can have a stab at that, and you can call yourself what you want. No one has the right to say you are not what you are.

Max thank you for the visit and chat. To find out more about Max’s photography visit his website here. His latest book Supertourist is available for purchase through Editions Bessard.

Photography: James Whineray
Interview & Text: James Whineray

Jens Olof Lasthein
Moments in between
Photographs: Jens Olof Lasthein
Text: Jesper Lindau
Publisher: Journal
120 pages
Pictures: 54
Year: 2000

Comments: Hardcover with dust jacket as issued, 210 x 255 mm. Text in english and in swedish. First edition, 2000. Included in Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, vol.II. Copy in very good condition.

The walls are peppered with bullet holes, while the remains of the blown up mosque act as a wood store. A young lad stops and looks down the street in both directions, comes closer but then turns away. After a few steps he spins round, comes back and says :

- Everyone here knows what happened to the Muslims. They all know about the mass murder, but nobody can bear living with it. He then walks quickly away and disappears round a corner.

A stop in the killing and a media withdrawal doesn't mean the Balkan war is at an end. Jen Olof Lasthein's book deals with daily life in the shadow of a war. Between shellings, after ethnic cleansing or before a shot is fired.

Photographs and texts in the book came into being during travels made together in former Yugoslavia 1994-99.

From Martin Parr and Gerry Badger: "Moments in Between is an impressive example of the new, artistically aware photojournalism. It deals with the murderous break-up of Yugoslavia following the erosion of the communist bloc...Lasthein, typically, does not look at these vicious conflicts directly, but like a nineteenth-century photographer he documents the landscape of war rather than the war itself. In a series of luscious, even lyrical landscapes taken in Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia, he documents an urban topography and a social landscape blighted by war -- scarred buildings, wrecked cars, piles of rubble; yet on the streets daily life continues as routinely as possible -- women shop, children play, men work. This is the reality of a war zone: long, uneasy moments of no fighting, menaced by the continual threat of further violence. Thus Lasthein deals with the poetry rather than the hyperbole of war. He is concerned 'with daily life in the shadow of a war. Between shellings, after ethnic cleansing, or before a shot is fired.'"

Mentioned by Parr / Badger THE PHOTOBOOK: A HISTORY Volume II
JENS OLOF LASTHEIN: MOMENTS IN BETWEEN: PICTURES FROM FORMER YUGOSLAVIA from RRB Photobooks on Vimeo.

KISMARIC, SUSAN - American Children. Photographs From The Museum Of Modern Art

 



 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

Hiroshima-Nagasaki Document 1961 (Ken Domon, Shomei Tomatsu & others)

“This book–along with Ken Domon’s Hiroshima (1958), Kikuji Kawada’s The Map (1965)and Tomatsu’s 11.02 Nagasaki (1966), and –represents one of the most significant attempts on the part of photographers to memorialize the horror of the 1945 atomic bomb blasts. As Parr and Badger point out, they also mark a progression from a more "sober and didactic tone” to one that is “more symbolic [and] emotive”. Published under the auspices of The Japan Council Against the A and H Bombs, this book comes much closer–in feel at least–to an ‘official’ history than the two books that followed. Many of the photos contained here were reproduced in Tomatsu’s 11.02 Nagasaki, but to very different effect.“ - photoeye


"From pictorialism to Provoke: the most extensive history of Japanese photobooks ever published" Among others the over 500 pages counting book features such renowned photographers as Yoshio Watanabe, Akira Hoshi, Hayao Yoshikawa, Shinichi Kato, Yasuo Wakuda, Tetsuo Kitahara, Moriyama Daido, Koji Taki, Takuma Nakahira, Yutaka Takanashi, Kimura Ihei, Hamaya, Katura, Kazano, Kikuti, Mituzumi, Watanabe, Yamahata, Sozo Okada and Kazano Karuo, among many others. -- "'The Japanese Photobook, 1912–1980' illustrates the development of photography as seen in photo publications in Japan—from the time of influence by European and American pictorialism, the German Bauhaus and Imperial military propaganda, to the complete collapse and destruction of the country in 1945. Then followed a new beginning: with the unique self-determination of a young generation of photographers and visual artists highlighted by the “Provoke” style as well as protest and war documentation of the late 1950s to the early ’70s, the signature Japanese photobook, as we have come to know it, was born.

With detailed information and illustrations of over 400 photo publications, an introduction by Kaneko Ryuichi and essays by Fujimura Satomi, Duncan Forbes, Manfred Heiting, Mitsuda Yuri, Lizawa Kotaro, Shirayama Mari and Matthew S. Witkovsky, this is the first extensive English-language survey of Japanese photobooks of this period." (publisher's note)

About the main author:
Ryuichi Kaneko is a critic, historian, and collector of photobooks. He has authored or contributed to numerous publications, including 'Independent Photographers in Japan 1976–83' (Tokyo Shoseki, 1989), 'The History of Japanese Photography' (Yale University Press and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2003), 'Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s' (Aperture, 2009), and 'Japan’s Modern Divide' (J. Paul Getty Museum)

See also 

Five Aspects of Japanese Photobooks Ryuichi Kaneko Photobook Phenomenon

Wim Wenders on his Polaroids – and why photography is now over
Vigils for John Lennon, road trips with Annie Liebovitz, portraits of Dennis Hopper … Wim Wenders took thousands of Polaroids while making his classic films. He shares the stories behind them

Valley of the Gods, Utah, 1977, by Wim Wenders.
'They were made from the gut’ … Valley of the Gods, Utah, 1977, by Wim Wenders. Photograph: © Wim Wenders/Courtesy Deutsches Filminstitut Frankfurt

Sean O'Hagan
Thursday 12 October 2017 06.00 BST
Wim Wenders reckons he took more than 12,000 Polaroids between 1973 and 1983, when his career as a film-maker really took off, but only 3,500 remain. “The thing is,” he says, “you gave them away. You had the person in front of you, whose picture you had just taken, and it was like they had more right to it. The Polaroids helped with making the movies, but they were not an aim in themselves. They were disposable.”

Four decades on, the Photographers’ Gallery in London is about to host an extensive exhibition of Wenders’s early Polaroids called Instant Stories. They date from that prolific period in the 1970s that produced now classic films such as The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty, Alice in the Cities and The American Friend. Many capture moments in the making of these movies, but others are records of the places he travelled through: cities, small towns, deserts, highways and hotels. Like his films, they all possess a melancholic romanticism. “My first reaction was, ‘Wow! Where did this all come from?’ I had forgotten about so much of it. I realised I had been taking pictures like a maniac.”

Self-portrait, 1975, by Wim Wenders.
Melancholy romanticism … Self-portrait, 1975. Photograph: © Wim Wenders/Courtesy the Wim Wenders Foundation

The Polaroids have been grouped under characteristically evocative titles: Photo Booths, Jukeboxes and Typewriters; Looking for America; California Dreaming; Mean Streets. Together, they add up to an impressionistic diary of a time when “there was no sadness, no anger, there was nothing but sheer innocence, not only my own, but everyone around me. The films were made from one day to another without any great thinking process. They were made from the gut – and the Polaroids also are made from the gut.”

We are sitting in a spacious, well-ordered office in Wenders Images, a studio complex near the centre of Berlin that houses his vast, meticulously organised archive. He had turned up earlier wearing a helmet and cagoule, having travelled from his nearby home on an electric bike. With his shock of grey hair, thick round glasses and high-waisted trousers with braces, he looks like an eccentric professor.

New York Parade, 1972, by Wim Wenders.
 ‘They are a healthy memory of how things were – and what we have lost’ … New York Parade, 1972. Photograph: © Wim Wenders/Courtesy the Wim Wenders Foundation

Wenders, now 72, was given his first camera as a child in Düsseldorf by his father, a doctor. “He took pictures all his life, but never thought of himself as a photographer. He passed on his appreciation to me. I had to learn about exposure, focus, all the technical stuff. But much as I loved doing it, I also never thought of myself as a photographer. Even later with the Polaroids, that was still the case.”

Does he think that defined the images he made? “Yes. For sure. If ever I had wanted to really take a picture of something, I would not have done it with a Polaroid. I never thought of it as giving the real picture.”

When approached by the Photographers’ Gallery, he thought long and hard about exhibiting them. “I really hesitated. The only justification for putting them in a gallery is that they show what happened. They are a healthy memory of how things were and what we have lost. The realisation that we have lost something is not necessarily nostalgic. It can be tragic.”

Heinz, 1973, by Wim Wenders
Heinz, 1973, by Wim Wenders Photograph: © Wim Wenders

In the context of a gallery, the Polaroids have a complex presence. Often creased or marked, with their colours slightly faded, they evoke another time, one that already seems impossibly distant. What’s more, they lend that era an aura of mystery and romance – even when they are blurred or badly composed. That was part of the charm of the unwieldy, hard-to-focus camera. But, in an exhibition space, they are elevated from ephemera to art.

It is an uncomfortable transition, which has not gone unnoticed by Wenders. “The meaning of these Polaroids is not in the photos themselves – it is in the stories that lead to them. That’s why the exhibition is called Instant Stories – the catalogue is a storybook more than a photo book.”

The accompanying stories are certainly fascinating. In one, he recalls a chance encounter in 1973 with “a tall young woman” who takes the seat beside him at the bar in CBGB, the legendary New York nightclub. Sensing his loneliness, she gives him her name and number as she is leaving, telling him to call should he find himself alone in San Francisco.

When I got to New York, I joined the thousands of people gathering in silence for John Lennon

A week later, he does just that – and so begins a friendship with a young music photographer called Annie Leibovitz, who takes him on a road trip to Los Angeles. “I took some pictures on the road and so did Annie,” he says. The seven shots she took of him driving are in the exhibition.

In another story, he recounts hearing about John Lennon’s death while driving along a freeway in Los Angeles. “That was a very decisive moment in my life,” he says. “I pulled over and let the traffic go by and it slowly sank in and I started to cry. I sat there and wept until there were no more tears left.” On impulse, he drove to the airport and caught the red-eye to New York. “When I got there, I was part of a silent gathering of thousands of people. It was an act of common trauma. We had all lost something essential that we thought was not going to end so soon. For me, it was my childhood, my youth.”

Unlike his later photography, which is mainly landscapes and buildings, Instant Stories includes several portraits, including the great Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller, the German actor Senta Berger, and the late Dennis Hopper, who starred in The American Friend. Hopper was also an accomplished photographer. Did they compare notes? “Not really. Dennis was” – long pause – “a carefree person. By the time our paths crossed, he had left photography behind and was painting. We spoke about photography and I saw and loved his work. We even made a film in which his character talks about photography a lot. But for Dennis, photography was a thing of the past. I knew him from 1976 and I never saw him taking a picture.”

Campbell Soups, New York 1972.
Ephemera … Campbell Soups, New York, 1972. Photograph: © Wim Wenders

Wenders, too, now regards photography as a thing of the past. “It’s not just the meaning of the image that has changed – the act of looking does not have the same meaning. Now, it’s about showing, sending and maybe remembering. It is no longer essentially about the image. The image for me was always linked to the idea of uniqueness, to a frame and to composition. You produced something that was, in itself, a singular moment. As such, it had a certain sacredness. That whole notion is gone.”

Last year, as if in acknowledgment of this, he gave his Polaroid camera to his friend Patti Smith. “Hers was old and damaged and letting the light in,” he says. “I had the same camera. I was never going to use it any more.”

So Instant Stories is also an elegy for the Polaroid itself, and all it stood for. “At the time, it was part of everyday life, another thing you used for living – like food and air and the stinky cars we were driving and the cigarettes everyone was smoking. Today, making a Polaroid is just a process.”

He sighs and rubs his eyes. “The culture has changed. It has all gone. I really don’t know why we stick to the word photography any more. There should be a different term, but nobody cared about finding it.”

Instant Stories. Wim Wenders’ Polaroids is at the Photographers’ Gallery, London, 20 October to 11 February.

NEDERLANDSE POSTZEGELS 1987/88: 2 Volume Set

Dutch PTT Books designed by Irma Boom

A Highlight of Modern Dutch Graphic and Book Design

Irma Boom [Design], Paul Hefting [introduction/compilition]: NEDERLANDSE POSTZEGELS 1987/88 [POSTSTEMPELS, ACHTERGRONDEN, EMISSIEGEGEVENS EN VORMGEVING]. The Hague: Staatsbedrijf der PTT, 1988. First editions in 2 volumes. Text in Dutch. Quartos. Blue and chipboard printed thick wrappers with foil stamping. 116 + 112 pp. Translucent vellum signatures  printed in 4-color recto and black versos, and perfect-bound in the Japanese-style. Multiple paper stocks. Elaborated design and typography throughout by Irma Boom. Former owner inkstamp and small glue stain to front endpapers of each volume. Wrappers lightly worn with trivial wear to edges, but a very good or better set.

This 2 volume set represents Irma Boom’s first published book designs, her first award-winnng book design and an enticing glimpse of her future career as “Queen of Books.” A copy of this set is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art [item 892.2007.1-2].

  [2] 9.75 x 7.33 softcover books with 228 total pages elaborately designed and printed in the Netherlands.  The two-volume celebrates the special edition stamp designs commissioned by the Dutch PTT during 1987 and 1988, and also features an index of the different postal cancellations used during those years. Each designer and their commission is given a thoughtful and almost dreamlike presentation via Irma Boom’s mind-blowing mise-en-page.

  “I compare my work to architecture. I don’t build villas, I build social housing. The books are industrially made and they need to be made very well. I am all for industrial production. I hate one-offs. On one book you can do anything, but if you do a print run, that is a challenge. It’s never art. Never, never, never.”

Irma Boom designed the interior pages using  4-color offset lithography for the front pages and black for the versos, then binding them japanese-style for a ghostly effect with the images of the past represented by faint blacks glowing through the color pages. An amazing, early example of Boom's groundbreaking book design, and another classic example of the forward thinking standards set by the Netherlands Post, Telegram and Telephone Services [PTT].

“Since 1920, the PTT Art & Design Department had commissioned artists, architects and designers to design its services and products. To me, the whole idea of Dutch design comes from the design policy of PTT, especially in the 1970s and 80s when Ootje Oxenaar was head of the department. “

“Working at the Staatsdrukkerij meant enormous creative freedom. Those were the heydays of art-book publishing. If you made a book cover, they would encourage you to use foil or special printing techniques. The department was a springboard for young designers who would work there for one or two years and go on to something more exciting. After my internship, I went to Dumbar and the Dutch television (NOS) design department. After I graduated I went back to the Staatsdrukkerij, and ended up staying for five-and-a-half years. I learned a lot. In retrospect, it was a very productive and super-creative time.”

“I did jobs nobody else wanted, like the advertisements for the publishing department, which was – thinking of it now – a smart thing to do because I could experiment. Those assignments were completely under the radar but they were seen by Oxenaar. He invited the designer of the ‘crazy ads’ to do one of the most prestigious book jobs: the annual Dutch postage-stamp books.”

  “Places like the Staatsdrukkerij don’t exist any more. When I started working there after graduation, I was immediately a designer (not a junior), and I quickly became a team leader. At that time I was very naive and fearless. I was not aware of an audience, and certainly not a critical audience! This vacuum is no longer possible for designers starting out today. I only became aware of the outside world after the prestigious postage-stamp yearbooks were published: hate mail from stamp collectors and design colleagues started to come in. But there was also fan mail.

“The books polarised the design community. They won all the awards and a Best Book Award, my first one. In the jury report they mentioned ‘a brilliant failure’. Suddenly people knew who I was. I realised negative publicity has an enormous impact, more than positive publicity.” — Irma Boom, 2014 [Eye no. 88 vol. 22]

Jean van Royen’s early adherence to typographic and design excellence set a standard for the PTT for years to come. In the early 1930s, he commissioned Piet Zwart to transform PTT’s in-house design style. This beautiful chapter in the history of graphic design came to "a brutal conclusion" when van Royen died in 1941 because of his opposition to fascism. Fortunately, van Royen’s design legacy was revived after the war and continues to this day.

Includes work by Piet Zwart, Karl Martens, Studio Dunbar, Tom van den Haspel, Walter Nikkels, Gerrit Noordzij, Anton Beeke, Win Crouwel, Jan van Toorn, Hans Kruit, Willem Sandberg, Cees de Jong, Helen Howard, Victor Levie, Matt van Santvoord, Max Kisman, Reynoud Homan, Rudo Hartman, Rik Comello, Pieter Brattinga, Kees Nieuwenhuijzen, Vincent Mentzel, Charlotte Mutsaers, Henk Cornelissen, Rick Vermeulen, Tessa van der Waals, Kees Ruyter, Arthur Meyer, Frans van Mourik, Jan Bons, Dick Elffers, Johan Lots, Dennis Jaket, Frans van Lieshout, and others whom I’m sure were overlooked.

Irma Boom [b. 1960] is an Amsterdam-based graphic designer specializing in book design. Her use of unfamiliar formats, materials, colors, structures, and typography make her books into visual and tactile experiences.

Boom studied graphic design at the AKI Art Academy in Enschede. After graduating she worked for five years at the Dutch Government Publishing and Printing Office in The Hague. In 1991 she founded Irma Boom Office, which works nationally and internationally in both the cultural and commercial sectors. Clients include the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Paul Fentener van Vlissingen (1941-2006), Inside Outside, Museum, Boijmans Van Beuningen, Zumtobel, Ferrari, Vitra International, NAi Publishers, United Nations and OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Koninklijke Tichelaar, and Camper.

Since 1992 Boom has been a critic at Yale University in the US and gives lectures and workshops worldwide. She has been the recipient of many awards for her book designs and was the youngest-ever laureate to receive the prestigious Gutenberg prize for her complete oeuvre. Her design for ‘Weaving as Metaphor’ by American artist Sheila Hicks was awarded 'The Most Beautiful Book in the World’ at the Leipzig Book Fair. Her books have been shown at numerous international exhibitions and are also represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Boston, 1986 © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Francois Hébel’s Foto/Industria opens tomorrow
written by Diane Smyth

See also
Industrial Worlds David Goldblatt Henri Cartier-Bresson Robert Doisneau Elliott Erwitt Industria Bologna 2013 Company Photography

Bologna : Foto/Industria 2015 From Albums to (Company) Photobooks Photography

Best-known for making Arles the most important photography festival in the world, Francois Hébel is bringing stars such as Friedlander, Koudelka and Rodchenko to the Foto/Industria in Bologna

Foto/Industria Biennial returns to Bologna, with 14 exhibitions centring around identity and illusion in photographs of work by image-makers such as Thomas Ruff, Josef Koudelka, Lee Friedlander, Joan Fontcuberta, Alexander Rodchenko, Mitch Epstein, Yukichi Watabe, John Myers and Michele Borzoni. The Biennial, which is back for its third edition, is produced by the MAST Foundation, a cultural centre established in 2013, and the festival is curated by Francois Hébel – the man best known for resurrecting Les Rencontres d’Arles, which he directed from 1986-87, and from 2002-14. First time around at Arles, Hébel showed photographers such as Nan Goldin and Martin Parr and was greeted with outrage; second time, he took an event on the verge of bankruptcy, €450,000 in debt and attracting just 9000 visitors per season, and transformed it the world’s most important photography festival. BJP caught up with Hébel to ask about the third edition of Foto/Industria; read our 2015 interview with him here.

BJP: The festival is now in its third edition – what’s different, and what’s the same this year?

Francois Hébel: Foto/Industria improved its audience a lot with the second edition, and hopefully will confirm with the third. [Last time] the big surprise was to see people travelling from other Italian cities and abroad for the weekend, taking advantage of the numerous connections to this university and industrial city. We also got to know the magnificent venues of this Renaissance city better.

1030, 2003 © Thomas Ruff, by SIAE 2017

BJP: The Thomas Ruff show is about machines, rather than about industry per se. Similarly, the Yukichi Watabe series Stakeout Diary is tangentially related to industry. How free do you feel to interpret the ‘industrial’ theme?

FH: Absolutely free as long as it relates to work or production. This is a very broad approach, and in previous years the festival has gone from mining to office work, from corporate assignments to fictional projects and independent, critical ones. This is a great freedom agreed with Isabella Seràgnoli, who is the founder of MAST and who asked me to create this extension to her foundation – Foto/Industria.

One of the consequences is that the festival also extends to all genres of photography, all styles and periods. The relationship with work and production is an incredibly rich one, which is why from a one-off event for the opening of MAST in 2011, Isabella Seràgnoli asked me to turn Foto/Industria into a Biennial.

France, 1987 © Josef Koudelka / Magnum Photos

BJP: Some of the artists you feature are very well known, others are emerging or all but forgotten. How do you choose the projects you want to show?

FH: You name it [I do it]. A festival is a global experience, if you show famous artists you have to revisit their work. This is the case here with Koudelka, as his industrial work was never exhibited [the show is titled 30 Years of Industrial Landscapes and will include 40 images shot on commission for organisations such as the Lhoist mining group]. Similarly, Friedlander isn’t that famous for his corporate assignments [his show, At Work, gathers images made over 16 years in the US in spaces such as factories, offices and telemarketing centres].

These important characters and the festival form encourage people to dedicate more time than they would to just seeing a show – instead of spending a couple of hours at a galley then spend a whole day or a weekend, and let themselves be surprised by work they didn’t expect.

I balance the program in total freedom, taking advantage of 36 years of working with photographers [who are as well-established as Hebel]. But I am also very attentive to emerging styles and artists, and there is a “hot” dimension to a festival that is different to an institution, which may work for three years on a show.

BJP: Some of the work is archival, other images are very contemporary. What does this mix help to do?

FH: It helps the audience enjoy photography, and to show how it sometimes evolves on similar themes.

New Industrial Estate, Lye, 1981 © John Myers

BJP: It’s great to see John Myers’ work included in the festival – how did you come across it? [Myers is a little-known British photographer currently undergoing a critical reassessment, and is showing an exhibition titled The End of Manufacturing, featuring images shot between 1981 and 1988 in the Black Country]

FH: I do my job in order to learn everyday, and often do so thanks to friends. In John’s case, Brian Griffin mentioned that I should look at these pictures for Foto/Industria. To be honest, John had sent me a catalogue with this series a long time ago, but at the time it didn’t fit in the programmes I was preparing and I forgot them. Good work always come out.

BJP: I notice there are no female photographers in the festival this year. Why do you think that is?

FH: Because I do not try to put this as a criteria, but if you look back to the probably more than 1000 shows I have produced in my career, especially in 15 editions of Arles, Beijing Photo Spring, or the recent month of photography of the Grand Paris, there are always many female photographers – especially in recent photography, there were not as many before.

Chinese textile workshop seized from Prato Municipal Police © Michele Borzoni/TerraProject

BJP: Some of the series on show this year were made on commission from the companies they depict; others are taken from ‘outside’ the companies, independently. What are the pros and cons of each approach?

FH: Access and freedom are obviously the key issues. But in the selection we made this year, you will see that it didn’t make much of a difference.

BJP: The MAST Foundation is run by the Coesia Group [a group of companies that makes industrial and packaging solutions]. Are there limits to how much Foto/Industria can critique big business when it’s underpinned by a company?

FH: I never face such a situation. Before taking over the company from her parents, Isabella Seràgnoli was more into social science, and she has always been a social philanthropist. This is probably why she wouldn’t see any reason to force the program into political correctness – nor would I accept it.

BJP: What are your future plans for the festival? Is there a limit to how long a festival of industrial photography can run?

FH: I am sure this broad approach can run and run, as the photographic approach is as important as the theme; we also have an extensive public programme. Growing in size is not a necessity, we just want to keep on producing original and quality shows, in amazingly beautiful venues. Increasing the visitors is our first goal for this young festival.

Foto/Industria is open from 12 October  19 November in venues throughout Bologna city centre; Thomas Ruff’s solo show at MAST is open until 07 January 2018. www.fotoindustria.it/en/

1183, 2004 © Thomas Ruff, by SIAE 2017

The Lingotto rooftop test track (Fiat). Italy, 2004 © Josef Koudelka / Magnum Photos

AMO Factory. Moscow, 1929 by Alexander Rodchenko. AMO Factory. Moscow, 1929
Collection of Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Wood factory “Vakhtan.” Nijny Novgorod region, 1930 by Alexander Rodchenko. Collection of Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Portrait of colonel Ivan Istochnikov © Joan Fontcuberta

Ivan and Kloka in his historical EVA (extra-vehicular activity) © Joan Fontcuberta

Cray, 1986 © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Festival dell’Unità, Napoli, 1976
Unity Festival, Naples, 1976 © Mimmo Jodice Archivio

Open competitive exhamination for recruitment of 40 historians at the Ministry of Heritage and Cultural activities. 1550 people applied for the exam which took place in the new Fiera di Roma © Michele Borzoni/TerraProject

Ergol #12, S1B clean room, Arianespace, Guiana Space Center [CGS], Kourou, French Guiana, 2011 © Vincent Fournier

Amos Coal Power Plant, Raymond, West Virginia, from “American Power,” 2004 © Mitch Epstein, courtesy the artist and The Walther Collection

BP Carson Refinery, California, from “American Power,” 2007 © Mitch Epstein, courtesy the artist and The Walther Collection

Yukichi Watabe © Yukichi Watabe
in)(between gallery Paris & roshin books Tokyo

# 01000 Crespellano, Bologna, IT, 2016 © Carlo Valsecchi

07-8-18-3, from the series “Machina”, 2007 © Mårten Lange

Circle of men, from the series “The Mechanism”, 2017 © Mårten Lange

Seuil (Kembs), from the Transform: Power series, 2015 © Mathieu Bernard-Reymond


Transformation (Turbine 144, Marckolsheim), from the Transform: Power series, 2015 © Mathieu Bernard-

Aruhi Arutokoro. (Someday, Somewhere).
ISHIMOTO, Yasuhiro.
Published by Geibi Shuppan., Tokyo., 1958
4to. (285 x 233 mm). pp. 168. With 7 colour & 178 black-and-white photographs including various gatefolds and fold-outs. Publisher's black cloth, yellow spine and printed dust-jacket. Ishimoto was born in San Francisco, then moved to Japan with his parents in 1924 before returning to the States in 1939. Following internment in the war, during which he learned photography, he studied under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at the Chicago Institute of Design, graduating in 1952. He returned to Japan in 1953, but continued to travel between the two countries. Thus his work is an interesting and distinctive blend of cultural influences, neither wholly Japanese nor wholly American in style. In 1958 he had the distinction of producing the first major postwar Japanese photobook, the elegant Aruhi Arutokoro (Someday, Somewhere), shot in both Tokyo and Chicago. 'Aruhi Arutokoro is a photobook of truly international stature, providing Japanese photographers with a model of expression that transcended both the parochial and the purely documentary tendency dominating Japanese photography of the time.' (Martin Parr). [Parr & Badger, The Photobook I, pp. 272-273; Kaneko & Vartanian - Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and '70s, pp.


"From pictorialism to Provoke: the most extensive history of Japanese photobooks ever published" Among others the over 500 pages counting book features such renowned photographers as Yoshio Watanabe, Akira Hoshi, Hayao Yoshikawa, Shinichi Kato, Yasuo Wakuda, Tetsuo Kitahara, Moriyama Daido, Koji Taki, Takuma Nakahira, Yutaka Takanashi, Kimura Ihei, Hamaya, Katura, Kazano, Kikuti, Mituzumi, Watanabe, Yamahata, Sozo Okada and Kazano Karuo, among many others. -- "'The Japanese Photobook, 1912–1980' illustrates the development of photography as seen in photo publications in Japan—from the time of influence by European and American pictorialism, the German Bauhaus and Imperial military propaganda, to the complete collapse and destruction of the country in 1945. Then followed a new beginning: with the unique self-determination of a young generation of photographers and visual artists highlighted by the “Provoke” style as well as protest and war documentation of the late 1950s to the early ’70s, the signature Japanese photobook, as we have come to know it, was born.

With detailed information and illustrations of over 400 photo publications, an introduction by Kaneko Ryuichi and essays by Fujimura Satomi, Duncan Forbes, Manfred Heiting, Mitsuda Yuri, Lizawa Kotaro, Shirayama Mari and Matthew S. Witkovsky, this is the first extensive English-language survey of Japanese photobooks of this period." (publisher's note)

About the main author:
Ryuichi Kaneko is a critic, historian, and collector of photobooks. He has authored or contributed to numerous publications, including 'Independent Photographers in Japan 1976–83' (Tokyo Shoseki, 1989), 'The History of Japanese Photography' (Yale University Press and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2003), 'Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s' (Aperture, 2009), and 'Japan’s Modern Divide' (J. Paul Getty Museum)

See also 

Five Aspects of Japanese Photobooks Ryuichi Kaneko Photobook Phenomenon

Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921-2012): The “ Visual Bilinguist” in Japanese and American Postwar Photography
Posted on March 7, 2012by Russet Lederman

On February 6, 2012, it was announced primarily through blogs, Facebook and Tumblr that Japanese photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto died at the age of 90. The only mainstream US news organization to run a story on Ishimoto was CNN via its photography blog. As an important link in the postwar dialogue between Japan and America, Ishimoto was, according to Minor White, “a visual bilinguist” – a photographer who was uniquely positioned due to his birth and education to act as the cultural liaison between two highly distinctive photography cultures. Despite his crucial role as both an advisor to and photographer in numerous exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago, Ishimoto’s death was largely ignored in the American press and sadly unnoticed by most in the western photographic community. This is a shame because Ishimoto was a remarkably talented photographer whose work merged a western formalist approach, learned under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at the Chicago Institute of Design, with a Japanese attention to subtle beauty. He was a “photographer’s photographer” — a friend who selflessly supported his colleagues in both the east and west as he acted as an aesthetic and cultural translator in an exchange that still continues today.


When over a year ago I undertook to explore the Japanese photobook collection at the International Center of Photography Library, the very first book I pulled out of the stacks was Ishimoto’s Someday, Somewhere / Aru Hi, Aru Tokoro (1958). The copy that I held in my hands that day was not a pristine edition that would be found in a photobook collector’s bookshelf. It was a well-worn book whose pages had been repeatedly turned and scrutinized over years by ICP staff members, students and teachers. It simultaneously spoke to Ishimoto’s role as a “photographer’s photographer” and the mission of the ICP Library as a resource for “information and inspiration to anyone interested in the medium [of photography].” The last time I had held this book was at a bookseller’s tiny shop in Osaka, Japan. To see it in New York and so readily available was a nice affirmation that, despite diminished visibility in recent years, students, teachers and scholars still regularly sought out his work.


Ishimoto’s life continually moved back and forth between the U.S. and Japan. (A February 2012 post by Richard Pare in the blog La Lettre de la Photographie provides a wonderful and detailed biographical overview.) Born in San Francisco in 1921, while his father was employed in the U.S., Ishimoto returned to Japan in 1924 and spent the rest of his childhood in the Kochi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. In 1939 his family sent him back to the U.S. to study agriculture in California. Two years later, America entered WWII and Ishimoto was relocated to the Amache Internment camp in Colorado, where he first developed an interest in photography. Upon his release, he enrolled in Northwestern University’s School of Architecture, but quickly realized that his central focus was photography, not architecture. Ishimoto transferred to the Chicago Institute of Design (New Bauhaus), which was led by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Advocating a new photography of “seeing while moving,” Moholy-Nagy’s curriculum emphasized the formal aspects of the pictorial space and had a profound influence on Ishimoto’s distinctive east-west aesthetic that reinterpreted traditional Japanese culture through the lens of modernism.


It is this visual sensibility that unifies the seemingly diverse subjects in Ishimoto photography, a range which includes: architecturally focused images of an early 17th century imperial villa in Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture (1960); identity as explored in the provocatively posed precocious Lolitas and the urban scenes of African Americans in his Chicago, Chicago (1969); graphic and textural studies of signage, defaced facades and nature in his Someday, Somewhere / Aru Hi, Aru Tokoro  (1958); and a confrontation of the transitory in the formal abstractions and blurred Tokyo street scenes of Moment / Toki (2004). Ishimoto’s ability to take both eastern and western subjects and recontexualize them through his unique bilingual aesthetic vision, made him the perfect Japan-America photography ambassador-at-large.

While still a student at the Institute of Design in the early 1950s, Ishimoto’s teacher Harry Callahan introduced his work to The Museum of Modern Art photography curator Edward Steichen, who would exhibit it in the seminal 1955 Family of Man group show and a later solo show in 1961. Impressed by Ishimoto’s ability to easily navigate both the Japanese and American photographic communities, Steichen asked the young photographer after his return to Japan in 1953 to host the museum’s architectural curator Arthur Drexel, in addition to gathering Japanese submissions for the Family of Man show. More than 20 years later in 1974, MoMA’s John Szarkowski and his Japanese co-curator Shoji Yamagishi would include Ishimoto’s work and acknowledge his help “as a selfless liaison with the other [Japanese] photographers and, as a translator who [understood] the photographer’s special language” in the museum’s New Japanese Photography exhibition catalog. In his role as a photographic bilinguist, Ishimoto was also largely responsible for introducing a formal modernism imbued with a distinctly western sense of individuality to a new generation of Japanese photographers through his 1954 solo show in Tokyo, and his widely published architectural images of Katsura. This exposure contributed to the emergence of the more expressive “image school” generation, whose members included Ikko Narahara, Shomei Tomatsu and Eikoh Hosoe.


Although he became a naturalized Japanese citizen in 1969, Ishimoto continued to visit the U.S. to work on a variety of photographic projects – many of them resulting in photobooks. Within the ICP Library collection there are 5 Yasuhiro Ishimoto photobooks, published over a period from 1958 to 2009. When viewed together, they show the different sides of Ishimoto’s multi-tiered photographic vision, while also confirming a unity in what on first glance seems to be a disparate body of work. The earliest is Someday, Somewhere / Aru Hi, Aru Tokoro (1958), the well-read book I pulled from the stacks on my first visit to the library. It is organized into three sections and includes images taken in both Chicago and Tokyo. The book, often cited as one of the first important postwar Japanese photobooks, begins with a selection of black-and-white and color offset images that highlight a formal modernist exploration of signage, graffiti and urban abstractions. Towards the end of this section, the prints become rich high contrast gravures, some with vertical gatefolds that showcase a repetition of flat Warhol-like graphic car images. “The Beach” section that follows continues his focus on the formal, as it shows the cropped sandy legs and torsos of beach visitors along with groups of bathers lounging or standing in the abstracted patterns of the sand. “The Beach” gives way to the last section called “The Little Ones,” which allows Ishimoto to shift gears and explore identity and race with photographs of masked children that bring to mind later images by Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Shot in both the U.S. and Japan, Ishimoto’s photos of white, Asian and African American children progress in a formal manner, grouping together like-image of girls with glasses or boys with guns. Often the children stare at the viewer with a knowing edge that suggests the weight of an adult world.



With Ishimoto’s relationship to Chicago as their starting point, 2 later books in the collection present distinctly different historical studies of his work. Yasuhiro Ishimoto: A Tale of Two Cities (1999), the comprehensive catalog for a traveling retrospective exhibition organized by Colin Westerbeck at the Art Institute of Chicago, does a thorough job of covering the different themes found in Ishimoto’s photography up to1999. Although the images included overlap with several of those found in other more narrowly focused Ishimoto books at the library, the context and the wonderful essay are extremely valuable in confirming Ishimoto’s role as a “visual bilingulist.” On the opposite end of the spectrum is the slim Stephen Daiter Gallery (Chicago) catalog Newman & Ishimoto – Reunion in Chicago: Photographs 1949-52 (1999) on the friendship between Ishimoto and the American photographer Marvin E. Newman. The two photographers met while both students at the Chicago Institute of Design and cemented their friendship during long hours spent together in the darkroom of the Fort Dearborn Camera Club. The Daiter Gallery catalog, which presents familiar Chicago street scenes by Ishimoto, is particularly beneficial for elucidating the common thread of an underlying formalism rooted in modernism that shaped both photographers’ work.



This strong sense of form and composition is always present in Ishimoto’s work and photobooks. Whether the street scenes of his Shibuya, Shibuya (2007) that sequence images in groups based on the patterns and logos worn by fashionable Tokyoites or the abstractions of leaves and clouds interspersed by blurred urbanites in his Moment / Toki (2004), these two later books in the ICP Library are further affirmation of a vision that consistently merges a western modernist education grounded in the teachings of the Bauhaus with an eastern attention to a subtle and often fleeting beauty. Completed when Ishimoto was already in his 80s, Moment /Toki (2004) calmly confronts time, a time that is changing and ultimately fading.  Shibuya, Shibuya (2007) is more rhythmic and patterns its sequences to the beat of the urban environment. Both books speak to Ishimoto’s role as a bilingual guide in a photographic journey that conflates an abstraction centered on form and texture with a social exploration bound to western individuality. The mementos of this bi-directional east-west passage are deceptively quiet images that emerge from a refined visual sensibility that “[writes] haikus with a camera” (Westerbeck). As James N. Wood, the Director and President of The Art Institute of Chicago commented in the foreword to Ishimoto’s retrospective catalog, A Tale of Two Cities, “…Ishimoto’s photographs build a bridge that spans a hemisphere. The magnitude of Ishimoto’s accomplishment was recognized… in his homeland when he was made a ‘Person of Cultural Merit,’ an honor that entails a fellowship for life… Now it is our turn to celebrate Ishimoto’s lifetime achievement…”











Yasuhiro Ishimoto books at the ICP Library:
Someday, Somewhere / Aru Hi, Aru Tokoro. Tokyo: Geibi Shuppansha, Showa 33, 1958. TR681.C5 .I84 1958 -R

Westerbeck, Colin. Yasuhiro Ishimoto: A Tale of Two Cities. Chicago, IL: Art Institute of Chicago, 1999. TR647.I83 .W47 1999

Newman and Ishimoto – Reunion in Chicago: Photographs from 1949-52. Chicago: Stephen Daiter Gallery, 1999.  TR647.N489 1999

 Moment / Toki. Tokyo: Heibonsha Ltd., 2004. Signed. TR655 .I38 2004

Shibuya, Shibuya. Tokyo: Heibonsha Ltd., 2007. Signed. TR659.8 .I83 2007

Daido Moriyama “Hunter”
Retail price: ￥150,000-, Published by Chuokoronsha (1972)
Hardcover, H26.5 x W21.9 cm
Texts include; essay by Tadanori Yokoo, text by Shoji Yamagishi (English and Japanese)


"From pictorialism to Provoke: the most extensive history of Japanese photobooks ever published" Among others the over 500 pages counting book features such renowned photographers as Yoshio Watanabe, Akira Hoshi, Hayao Yoshikawa, Shinichi Kato, Yasuo Wakuda, Tetsuo Kitahara, Moriyama Daido, Koji Taki, Takuma Nakahira, Yutaka Takanashi, Kimura Ihei, Hamaya, Katura, Kazano, Kikuti, Mituzumi, Watanabe, Yamahata, Sozo Okada and Kazano Karuo, among many others. -- "'The Japanese Photobook, 1912–1980' illustrates the development of photography as seen in photo publications in Japan—from the time of influence by European and American pictorialism, the German Bauhaus and Imperial military propaganda, to the complete collapse and destruction of the country in 1945. Then followed a new beginning: with the unique self-determination of a young generation of photographers and visual artists highlighted by the “Provoke” style as well as protest and war documentation of the late 1950s to the early ’70s, the signature Japanese photobook, as we have come to know it, was born.

With detailed information and illustrations of over 400 photo publications, an introduction by Kaneko Ryuichi and essays by Fujimura Satomi, Duncan Forbes, Manfred Heiting, Mitsuda Yuri, Lizawa Kotaro, Shirayama Mari and Matthew S. Witkovsky, this is the first extensive English-language survey of Japanese photobooks of this period." (publisher's note)

About the main author:
Ryuichi Kaneko is a critic, historian, and collector of photobooks. He has authored or contributed to numerous publications, including 'Independent Photographers in Japan 1976–83' (Tokyo Shoseki, 1989), 'The History of Japanese Photography' (Yale University Press and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2003), 'Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s' (Aperture, 2009), and 'Japan’s Modern Divide' (J. Paul Getty Museum)


Review: Karyudo (A Hunter) by Daido Moriyama (Kodansha reissue) by By Joerg Colberg 
May 25, 2012 


May 9th, 2017

The Endless Outer World

Daido Moriyama speaks about his Provoke days and capturing the streets of Tokyo.

By Tsuyoshi Ito

Daido Moriyama, from the series Hunter, 1972 © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation

By the time Daido Moriyama joined the magazine Provoke for its second issue, he had already perfected the art of the accidental image. Embodying the revolutionary spirit of this late-’60s collective, Moriyama has since become one of the world’s most recognized photographers. His blurry, angular photographs of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district challenged conventional notions of photography. Moriyama’s early mentors included the legendary photographers Shomei Tomatsu and Eikoh Hosoe, but it was Takuma Nakahira who proved to be his greatest collaborator and closest friend. Decades on, Moriyama has continued to photograph Toyko’s streets using a small, handheld camera, inspiring generations of image makers. Tsuyoshi Ito of A/fixed spoke with Moriyama about his time with Provoke.

Daido Moriyama, from the series Hunter, 1972 © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation

Tsuyoshi Ito: What drew you to participating in Provoke in the first place?

Daido Moriyama: Takuma Nakahira invited me after the first volume had already been released. Without his invitation to join, I likely would not have been involved. We were best friends and I had a great fondness for him. So rather than being interested in Provoke itself, it was more of an interest in him that made me want to join.

Ito: What was the energy like when you joined for the second issue of Provoke?

Moriyama: Provoke was a lot of fun. Everyone had the similar ideologies about photography, but the way each person expressed it was very different so we all stimulated each other. Since Provoke came at the end of the ’60s, much of it was very political. I had no interest or opinion about politics, so I did not partake in political movements and demonstrations. I focused instead on the need to reform photography. Provoke provided me with comrades.

Daido Moriyama, from the series Hunter, 1972 © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation

Ito: How did you get acquainted with Nakahira?

Moriyama: I met Nakahira when he was still an editor working for Shomei Tomatsu, so it was through Tomatsu’s projects that I was introduced to him. Compared to me, Nakahira had an opposite stance on things. Rather than seeing him as a charismatic photographer, I saw him as my only rival and also my only true friend. Never, before or after him, have I had a relationship like that with anyone else. So I thought that if I were doing something with him, then surely it was going to be fun.

Ito: How was it working with Yutaka Takanashi, one of the other key figures behind the magazine?

Moriyama: It was not a daily occurrence for us to see or hang around each other. Our ideologies on photography were also slightly off, but at the root we had a sense of consciousness of each other’s work that tied us all together.

Daido Moriyama, from the series Hunter, 1972 © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation

Ito: What was your reaction to Provoke breaking up after the third issue?

Moriyama: When the members of Provoke got together to discuss disbanding, I was the only one who was against it. I questioned why we were doing such a thing because we hadn’t accomplished anything yet. I understand now that perhaps we had reached our limit, but at the time that reason did not satisfy me. It made me question what three volumes were going to accomplish and what it could possibly provoke. But as I said earlier, I got to spend time in meetings with people I had never worked with, and being exposed to them was very stimulating. I am still in the mindset of my Provoke days.

Daido Moriyama, from the series Light and Shadow, 1982 © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation

Ito: You mentioned that you got your start in graphic design. What kind of relationship does that discipline have to photography?

Moriyama: When I was younger I did not think about what graphic design had taught me, but as I grew older I realized that it was actually very important. This was particularly clear during the construction of a photography book. It made me realize that there was a part of me that was still curious about design. There is part of me that wants to create something for the graphic aesthetics, rather than for the story. Being exposed to graphic design from countries such as America at a young age played a major role in shaping my photography.

Daido Moriyama, from the series Light and Shadow, 1982 © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation

Ito: Shinjuku was the center of Japanese arts culture in the 1960s. Did you enjoy being part of its atmosphere and people?

Moriyama: In the ’60s, there were diverse people in Shinjuku, but I was never one to hang around with many people. Shinjuku was a labyrinth, and what it had to offer meshed very well with my personality. It was a center of chaos that was both stimulating and fun. As a street photographer, I was trying to capture the people and the distinctiveness of the time, but simultaneously it was the city itself that was my focal point. In the end, I was trying to capture an essence of myself. All photographers, no matter what their concept, are all just trying to photograph themselves in a sense.

Daido Moriyama, from the series Dog and Mesh Tights, 2015 © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation

Ito: How do you view the importance of the photography book?

Moriyama: Books are essential to photographers. I do not go out to shoot with the thought of finding material for my next book. I travel streets to find reality. I still have moments when I’m photographing and wondering why I’m taking pictures and what they mean to me. As a result, my photography books turn into a jigsaw puzzle. But unlike a normal puzzle, there is no completion to my works; they do not perfectly fit together. For me, that is what a photography book is. There’s no such thing as completion; rather, the last puzzle piece is contemplation about the next book to come. The process of asking myself questions of why I do what I do is the process of making books. Each book has no correlating theme; it just captures the endless outer world.

Tsuyoshi Ito is founder and managing editor of A/fixed, a leading resource on the history of Japanese photography.

A/fixed’s inaugural publication, Provoke Generation: Japanese Photography, ’60s-’70s is now available.



ZONDAG, JULI 16, 2006

Daido Moriyama

De Tweede Wereldoorlog, de jaren erna onder Amerikaanse bezetting in een land dat naarstig op zoek was naar een eigen identiteit en het enorme tempo waarmee het van oudsher gesloten, traditionele Japanse volk de 21ste eeuw in werd gekatapulteerd, het moet voor Daido Moriyama (1938) een onthechtende periode zijn geweest. De Amerikaanse aanwezigheid zal hem voor het leven beïnvloeden. In 1960 ziet hij “New York”, het boek van William Klein. Net als Klein heeft Moriyama eerst voor grafisch vormgever gestudeerd, voor hij de overstap naar fotografie maakt. En net als Klein zal hij fotoboeken als het meest effectieve medium beschouwen om zijn beelden onder de aandacht te brengen. Over een periode van veertig jaar publiceert Moriyama een veertigtal boeken, in 1999 zelfs vijf achter elkaar.

Moriyama’s tweede boek – “Shashin yo Sayonara” (1972), dat afwisselend als “Bye Bye Photography Dear” en “Farewell Photography” vertaald wordt – is een van de meest extreme fotoboeken die ooit werden uitgegeven. Moriyama morrelt aan de vorm van de fotografische sequentie en aan de fotografie zelf en duwt die over de grenzen van leesbaarheid. Alle normen en waarden op het gebied van fotografische technieken worden opzij geschoven. De foto’s lijken gedrukt van afgekeurde negatieven, opgevist uit de prullenbak in de donkere kamer. Ze lijken afkomstig van de beginopnames van een nieuw fotorolletje, als er zonder te kijken op willekeurige objecten wordt ingesteld om de film naar het eerste beeld te transporteren. Of van de eindopnames, wanneer er nog net ruimte voor een half beeld over is. Moriyama’s fotografisch vocabulaire is er een van onscherpte, van beweging, van krassen, vals licht, vlekken en stof. “Shashin yo Sayonara” is een mijlpaal in de geschiedenis van het fotoboek. Moriyama reikt voorbij de grenzen van de fotografie en schept daarmee een van de meest radicale expressievormen die ook dertig jaar later nog staat als een huis. Moriyama’s derde boek, “Karyudo” (Hunter) draagt hij op aan Jack Kerouac en de beeldtaal wedijvert met de associatieve, razendsnelle schrijfstijl van Kerouacs bijbel van de beatnikgeneratie, “On The Road”. Reizend door Japan fotografeert Moriyama uit rijdende auto’s en treinen, de sluiter bedienend alsof het de trekker van een wapen is en de camera ladend met Tri-X films alsof het patronen zijn. De werkelijkheid is zijn prooi. Hij geeft zichzelf geen tijd om te denken en vertrouwt op zijn instincten en reflexen. De beelden hebben hoge contrasten en zijn grofkorrelig, het onderwerp is de gruizige, zwarte ziel van een in toenemende mate veramerikaniserend naoorlogs Japan.

De Zweedse fotograaf Anders Petersen (“Café Lehmitz”) is een bewonderaar van Moriyama. “Hij is afschuwelijk en daar hou ik van. Hij heeft een obsessie. Hij is opgefokt. Hij is wanhopig. Ik ben ook altijd op zoek naar dat gevoel. Het is de wanhoop waardoor je in beweging blijft. Daar gaat het om als je fotografeert. Je moet zo dicht op het moment en je emoties zitten dat het pijn doet. Dan ben je op je sterkst. En op een bepaalde manier moet je gevaarlijk zijn. Je moet ergens doorheen breken. Daido Moriyama, die is gevaarlijk.”

Na “Shashin yo Sayonara” en “Karyudo” heeft Moriyama een kleine twee jaar geen camera meer aangeraakt, een enkele, zeldzame opdracht daargelaten. Hij werd gekweld door een ondragelijk gevoel van onbehagen, een onbeschrijfelijk besef van machteloosheid. Hij is zijn geloof in schoonheid, in de mensheid kwijt.

Samen met Nobuyoshi Araki wandelde Moriyama in augustus 2004 door Shinjuku, een drukke stadswijk van Tokio, op de grens van het zakencentrum en de rosse buurt. Deze smeltkroes van culturen en activiteiten is een van de favoriete locaties voor Moriyama. Met meer dan twee miljoen treinreizigers per dag is het station van Shinjuku het drukste van Japan. “Ik moet agressief zijn om foto’s te maken in Shinjuku,” zegt Moriyama die per dag moeiteloos twintig rolletjes kleinbeeld door zijn Ricoh GR1s jaagt. Het resultaat van de wandeling was een dubbeltentoonstelling, “Moriyama-Shinjuku-Araki”. En of Moriyama voor een stijlaanpassing koos die als een commentaar op het werk van Araki kan worden uitgelegd, of dat het de leeftijd is, in vergelijking met “Shashin yo Sayonara” is het nieuwe werk van Moriyama toegankelijker dan voorheen. Hij concentreert zich niet meer uitsluitend op de kille, diepduistere krochten van het menselijk bestaan. Er zit meer detaillering in zijn foto’s en de ergste ruwheid is eraf. Die nieuwe helderheid zou op een meer afgewogen visie kunnen duiden van een rijpere kunstenaar. Maar Moriyama’s oog is nog altijd even opmerkzaam.

©Pim Milo, 2006

Als een hond door de grote stad
Daido Moriyama, een van de belangrijkste naoorlogse Japanse fotografen, exposeert in Amsterdam. De man die beroemd werd met grofkorrelige zwart-witfoto’s, zwerft het liefst door de stad. Hij werkt nu ook met een digitale camera en zelfs met kleur. „Mijn manier van werken is niet veranderd, de stad wel.”
 Tracy Metz
 25 mei 2012

‘Tights’
Image Daido Moriyama, courtesy Reflex Gallery 

De Japanse fotograaf Daido Moriyama was al boven de zeventig toen hij voor het eerst met een digitale camera ging werken. Een fabrikant bood hem er een aan toen hij drie jaar geleden aan een nieuw project begon, een diepgaand portret van Tokio in twee delen. Twee weken geleden verscheen het eerste deel en het is niet minder dan een revolutie in het werk van deze invloedrijke en productieve fotograaf. Niet alleen is het digitaal, maar ook nog in kleur. Kleur! Terwijl Moriyama, een van de bekendste naoorlogse fotografen van Japan, juist de grove, grafische zwart-witkorrel tot zijn handelsmerk heeft gemaakt.

De 74-jarige Moriyama was onlangs kort in Nederland voor de opening van zijn expositie Journey for something bij de Amsterdamse Reflex Gallery en de presentatie van het gelijknamige boek.

Snel en intuïtief grijpt Moriyama taferelen vast uit het dagelijks leven zoals dat toevallig aan zijn ogen voorbij rolt. Zijn onderwerp is vaak het grotestadsgevoel – energiek, anoniem, raadselachtig, vaak met een verscholen belofte erin alsof er iets staat te gebeuren. Een rennend, dus onscherp kind op straat; nat plaveisel met de weerspiegeling van koplampen; een straathond; mooie billen en benen in netkousen; een meute overstekende voetgangers op het brede zebrapad in de uitgaanswijk Shinjuku in Tokio, een foto die met zijn sterke diagonale zwarte en witte lijnen wat weg heeft van een houtsnede.

Dit najaar brengt Tate Modern in Londen het werk van Moriyama samen met dat van de tien jaar oudere Amerikaans-Franse fotograaf William Klein, eveneens chroniqueur van het straatleven. „Wij kennen elkaar niet”, zegt Moriyama via een tolk, „maar hij is voor mij altijd een bron van inspiratie geweest. Amerika is sinds de oorlog ook altijd prominent aanwezig geweest in het dagelijks leven in Japan.”

Hij was 33 en maakte al in Japan furore toen hij voor het eerst naar Amerika ging. Hij sprak geen woord Engels en liep een maand lang met zijn camera in de hand door New York. „Als een hond”, zegt hij „mijn neus achterna” (een van de ruim 75 boeken die hij door de jaren heen heeft gepubliceerd, heet ‘Memories of a Dog’). New York maakte diepe indruk en de foto’s die hij toen maakten keren telkens terug in zijn boeken en tentoonstellingen, nu ook bij Reflex.

„Een paar jaar daarna heb ik er een performance in Tokio meegedaan. Ik wilde als fotograaf iets nieuws doen, niet weer gewoon wat afdrukken aan de muur hangen. Dus heb ik foto’s van New York onder het kopieerapparaat gelegd en twee verschillende omslagen gezeefdrukt. Bezoekers konden hun eigen fotoboek samenstellen en ook het omslag kiezen.” Die performance heeft hij vorig jaar in de New Yorkse fotogalerie Aperture herhaald en dat doet hij dit najaar ook in de Tate Modern.

Reflex heeft één wand gevuld met grote afdrukken van een aantal belangrijke beelden uit het reusachtige oeuvre van de Japanner. Natuurlijk zijn daar de stadsbeelden bij, zoals een schitterende nachtfoto van de verlichte gebouwen van New York en het interieur van een theater in Buenos Aires, maar één is totaal anders. Het is een foetus, op de rug gezien, liggend op tapijt. In het boek is er nog een opgenomen, nu in het gezicht gezien. „Dit was mijn eerste werk als zelfstandige fotograaf, uit 1964”, vertelt Moriyama. „Als kind had ik gelezen hoe de mens zich voor de geboorte ontwikkelt en dat wilde ik graag in het echt zien. Het heeft moeite gekost om een ziekenhuis te vinden dat bereid was de foetussen te laten fotograferen die ze op sterk water hebben staan, maar uiteindelijk is het gelukt. Deze serie was de enige keer dat ik als een studiofotograaf te werken ging, met een achtergronddoek en uitgekiende verlichting. Nu weet ik; dit is het begin, die is de essentie van de mens. En daarna ben ik de straat opgegaan.”

Moriyama loopt nog steeds het liefst op straat. Met zijn nieuwe digitale camera maakte hij 30.000 beelden van zijn woonplaats. „Mijn manier van werken is niet veranderd”, zegt hij, „maar de stad wel. Hier in Europa waar alles heel lang hetzelfde blijft is het misschien moeilijk je voor te stellen hoe snel Tokio verandert. Zo zijn er bijvoorbeeld geen zwerfhonden meer.”

Deel één van het nieuwe boek heet Color. Maar Moriyama verloochent zijn geliefde medium niet: voor het tweede deel heeft hij uit dezelfde 30.000 beelden een andere selectie gemaakt die in zwart-wit is afgedrukt. Dat boek verschijnt later dit jaar en heet simpelweg Monochrome.











Karyudo (A Hunter) [reissue], photographs by Daido Moriyama, 192 pages, Kodansha, 2011

William Klein 東京 TOKYO / 日本写真家協会, 名取洋之助 （編集）
1961, Tokyo, 173 pages, 216 x 249 x 17

After documenting the streets of New York, Rome, Paris and Moscow, William Klein is back at the Polka gallery with a series of photographs portraying 1960s Tokyo. Klein first discovered Tokyo in ’61, on an official visit to Japan. Shown around by government representatives, he found a way to sneak off into back streets of Tokyo and captures the essence of the city at a time when Tokyoites were recovering from war and preparing for the 1964 Olympic Games. Klein makes his way through the busy streets observing everyone he meets, from children fighting on a street corner to a Butoh dancer poised in a contorted position and geishas posing in their rooms. Intimate and full of life, Klein's images bear witness to a society in transition. 

William KLEIN
ウィリアム・クライン

Born 1928 in New York. His career as a fashion photographer began in 1955, followed in 1956 by the publication of New York. Breaking taboos in photography, he introduced a new style of audaciously blurry and out-of-focus pictures that went on to influence numerous photographers up to the present day. After New York, the series continued with Roma (‘59), Moscow (’64), and Tokyo (’64). In addition to working as a photographer, he also produced the fashion-related movie Qui etes-vous Polly Maggoo? A solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1995 established his reputation, which he had mainly earned in Europe, also back home in America. In Japan, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography showed the ”Paris+Klein” exhibition in 2004, and in 2005, the ”William Klein Retrospective” exhibition was held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The exhibition “William Klein + Daido Moriyama” with Daido Moriyama at London’s Tate Modern in 2012-13 created a buzz not only in the realm of photography, but in the fashion and film worlds alike.

MOSKAU (MOSCOW) / William Klein
1965, Hamburg, 184 pages, 263 x 352 x 24

William Klein
Moscow
Photographs: William Klein
Publisher: Zokeisha
184 pages
Year: 1964

Comments: Hardcover without dust jacket as issued, 355 x 265 mm. Japanese edition, 1964. Black & white photographs. Gravure printing. Text in japanese. 

"William Klein's four city books, New York (1956), Rome (1959), Moscow and Tokyo (1964) firmly established a place for him in photobook history. They have become treasured classics, with the ability to enchant half a century after their original publication.
Moscow is one of my all-time favourite photobooks. It is structured into four chapters: 1 moscovites, 2 privileged class 3 parks and places 4 streets. The matt gravure printing is superb, and the deep blacks add a powerful force. The double pages clearly demonstrate Klein's talent for creating stunning landscape-format images. He comes much closer to his subjects than previously, and paints a picture of a lively, thriving Moscow at odds to the much greyer image the West preferred to portray at this time.
William Klein's stunningly graphic cover design is used here for the first time and he quickly established it as his signature look."

Andreas H. Bitesnich, Achtung photography


http://www.achtung.photography/

May 2, 2017
Five Questions with William Klein
The 89-year-old photographer talks Ali, Trump and using the camera as a weapon

Written by NADJA SAYEJ


New York street photographer William Klein is the self-taught outsider who’s trail-blazed modern photography over the past 60 years. Klein, who’s now a resident of Paris, developed a new style of photography that rivalled the technically perfect style of the 1950s. He wasn’t afraid to experiment and broke all the rules of conventional photography.

William Klein: Photographs & Films is a new retrospective at the C/O Berlin photo museum in Berlin. Over 300 photographs are on view, from trans activists at New York Pride in the early 2000s to Muhammad Ali, and from Vogue fashion shoots in the 1970s to civil rights protests in the 1960s. The show also includes vintage prints, short films, contact sheets and the streets of Moscow during the Stalin era. For Klein, “Photography is just an extension of what you feel constantly when you see people, a scene, a situation.”

The 89-year-old photographer told us about his friendship with Ali, his hatred of Trump and why his camera’s his weapon (with his camera on his lap).


ALEKSANDRA YABLOCHKINA, RUSSIAN‘S SARAH BERNHARDT, MOSCOW 1960 © WILLIAM KLEIN

How does it feel bringing together over 65 years of work?
When you’re living, you’re just thinking about what you did last week, so an exhibition is like a dialogue with yourself. There are things that I forget, but once again, I’m reminded by them in my photos. In life, when you take photographs, people ask me, “Why do you think this photo is important or not?” But when you work and you see people, you have a feeling about them. And when you work in a new situation, you always have a feeling what’s going on—who these people are and what they mean to you.

One of the photos here is from the 1950s and has someone holding up a sign that says ‘God is a Republican.’ How do you feel about what has changed politically in America then and now?
When Reagan was elected president, I thought it was the end of the world. Now we have Trump and once again, I think it’s the end of the world. But you know, things don’t change that much. These are the little accidents, we don’t know where we are going, but we will find out.


COWHEY MARINE, NEW YORK 1955 © WILLIAM KLEIN

What was it like photographing the civil rights movement?
I grew up in America when sports played a fantastic part of life. I remember how when there was a championship fight with the African-American boxer Joe Lewis, it played a tremendous role in my life. When Lewis was knocked out by German boxer Max Schmeling in 1936, it was a catastrophe for America, for the Jews and all who thought, “Here is a Nazi boxer knocking us out of the championship.” It played a big role in my life.

Is it true you knew Muhammad Ali?
Yes. I never thought I would be close to someone like Muhammad Ali who would be the hope of what is more than just sports and boxing. Muhammad Ali was a dream for us because here was somebody who was great; he took a position against the war in Vietnam so that things would change. I was amazed and very happy a man like that existed.


SANDRA + MIRROR, TIMES SQUARE, NEW YORK 1962 © WILLIAM KLEIN

Now, he just died and I was watching the funeral procession, I was very moved to see the culmination of love and respect. It was amazing the way the people brought flowers, so many people coming with flowers, the respect how they brought the flowers. It was a very moving thing. I thought how much more than sports he illustrated. I was very happy a man like that existed and I was close to him. I saw the different steps he took from 1964 to 1974 to 1984 and for me it was a great story that was unravelling before our eyes.

Did you use your camera as a weapon to help and speak for the people who were silenced?
Yes, I was always hoping people would understand what politics are about. It was something I had hoped would happen and it did happen. I felt things would take place the way they did, and they did.


William Klein: Photographs & Films runs until July 2, 2017 at C/O Berlin, Hardenbergstrasse 22-24 in Berlin, co-berlin.org

William Klein

As next month’s retrospective at Tate Modern will show, the US-born painter, photographer and film-maker has lived artistic life to the full

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012 by Liz Jobey


Bikini, Moscow, 1959. Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art, London

Even now, nearly a hundred years after Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald first stepped off a boat in Europe, there are young Americans who dream of following in the footsteps of the Lost Generation, living in Paris, meeting in bars, writing novels, or just reading them, painting in rooftop studios, fulfilling their idea of what an artist’s life should be.

This was certainly the life that William Klein dreamt about as a teenager in New York in the early 1940s. Partly it was to escape his family destiny. His father had lost his money in the Wall Street crash and was reduced to selling insurance. His uncle Louis, by contrast, was a top entertainment lawyer, the Phillips in Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, and Krim, whose clients included Charlie Chaplin, Mae West and Salvador Dalí, and who would, in the case of Benjamin and Krim, take over United Artists and eventually form Orion Pictures.

“Anybody [in our family] who could read and write would end up in this company of lawyers,” said Klein, when we met last month in Paris, where he has lived for over 60 years. “My father was like Willy Loman, you know, he never really made it – and he was from a family where there were people who had made it.”

We were sitting in Klein’s apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, a beautiful sun-bleached room lined with books and paintings – his own and those of his wife, Jeanne, who died in 2005. They were married for nearly all of those 60 years, and as I’d waited for Klein to appear, the room had offered a palimpsest of their life together: layer after layer of papers, pictures, totems and souvenirs; books of every stripe, in English and in French, from Kerouac to Sartre to Moholy-Nagy. Eventually Nanou, their ancient tortoiseshell cat, strolled in following a beam of sunlight, and sank down, like a shade, apparently oblivious to my presence, and we waited together in the silence.

Klein came in, explaining a calamity that morning. He’d set off to drive back from his studio in Montparnasse at dawn, found the car battery was flat and had to call for help. Always a handsome man, at 84 he is still a striking figure – tall, rangy, slightly stooped, dressed in an elegant muddle of old sweaters, with a mane of white hair swept back from his hawkish face. He arrived in Paris in 1947, at the age of 19, a beneficiary of the American GI Bill, which funded ex-servicemen to finish their education. He had served from 1946 in Germany as an army radio operator and when the offer came, he chose Paris and the Sorbonne. He had always wanted to be an artist. In New York as a schoolboy he had haunted the Museum of Modern Art, particularly the cinema, where he’d seen films by Eisenstein and Fritz Lang. After the Sorbonne he enrolled briefly with the painter André Lhote, who had taught a young Henri Cartier-Bresson 20 years earlier, before moving to the far more stimulating atmosphere of Fernand Léger’s studio.

Léger encouraged his students to look beyond painting, to get out into the street, to work with different disciplines, particularly with architects, which is how, in the early 1950s, Klein came to make a series of small abstract paintings intended as maquettes for large-scale murals. It was only this year, after they were unearthed from a pile of old artworks in his studio by the directors of HackelBury, his London gallery, that the paintings were restored, and one of the geometric panels scaled up to full size, to be included in an exhibition that runs concurrently with the retrospective of Klein’s work that opens at Tate Modern next month.

Painting, for Klein, was only the beginning. He soon moved into photography, and from there into film-making, gradually incorporating all three disciplines into a career that has been, and still is, a testament to his creative energy and a determination to do things his own way. From the 1960s onwards, he has used his income from fashion and advertising photography, TV documentaries and commercials to finance his own feature films, which have famously satirised the fashion world, been for the most part violently anti-American and, in some cases, been banned in France.

At the Tate, Klein’s work – including his paintings, photographs and films – will be shown next to another exhibition of work by the Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, a decade younger than Klein. Although their lives have been entirely separate, Moriyama has acknowledged the impact of Klein’s work, particularly his 1956 book of New York photographs, which plunged the viewer head-on into a blurred, grainy, frenzied city that seemed to vibrate with urban tension. Klein’s book, Life is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels, remains, with Robert Frank’s Les Américains, published two years later, one of the most influential books in the history of photography.

Showing Klein and Moriyama side by side is what Simon Baker, head of photography at the Tate, refers to as an “argument show”, an in-house term for the kind of exhibition that brings two (and sometimes three) artists together. In this case, he says, pairing Klein and Moriyama “complicates the idea of photographers as artists”. The aim is to consider their “mutual influences, their affinities and their contrasts”. Last year, talking at the Japan Society in New York, Moriyama described the effect Klein’s photographs had on him at the age of 22 or 23. “It was a huge shock, such a huge impact on me … When I was questioning what exactly is photography, that’s when I encountered Klein’s work… [The New York book] is the one photobook that still poses the question, ‘What is photography?’ to me. There is nothing like it. It is an incomparable photobook for me.”

At Tate Modern, there will be two separate exhibitions: visitors will be directed first through Klein, then into Moriyama, but Baker promises that at the heart of the show “you will find a point of contact that is pivotal”.

Klein came to photography entirely by accident. His early figurative paintings, which clearly show Leger’s influence, soon gave way to geometric works and then to abstraction. In 1952, after an exhibition at the Galleria del Milione in Milan, the Italian architect Angelo Mangiarotti commissioned Klein to do a series of black-and-white abstract paintings that could be hung as revolving panels to make a room divider for the interior of a modern apartment. It was only then that he picked up a camera and, seeing the panels spinning on their axes, realised “that something… could be done with the blur in the darkroom. That was my first contact with photography.”

He began to experiment, cutting out paper shapes and moving them about under an enlarger, to make free-flowing “light-drawings” and dramatic geometric prints. Some of them inspired the cover designs he did for the Italian design and architecture magazine Domus. In 1953 his abstract photographs were exhibited in Paris, where they were seen by Alexander Liberman, the art director of Vogue, who asked him to move back to New York and work for him.

By then Klein was already married. He has told the story many times, but it loses none of its magic. During his first weeks in Paris, thanks to the Red Cross, he’d been given a bicycle and was cycling round the city when he saw a beautiful girl. He stopped and asked her for directions. She gave them. He asked if she would meet him later. She said no, not that night, but she agreed to meet on the next. And that was that. She was Jeanne Florin, the daughter of strict Catholics, a French mother and a Belgian father, who was an architect. She became his collaborator, his muse.

“When I met her she was studying Russian and sculpture. And she was learning English, with a Hemingway book. I would pick her up at the little school where they were teaching English and she was reading ‘Far Well to Arms’ – that was the way she pronounced it.”


Klein in Milan, 1952, with the pivoting panels he had painted for Mangiarotti. Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art, London

They were married the following year. They were both 20. They lived on the outskirts of Paris, above a wine merchant. “There was a boulangerie on the corner, so we could smell the croissants being made. We had a big apartment and one of the rooms was my studio … very cheap. Living in Paris was something I always dreamed of. I saw myself hanging out at the Coupole and clapping Picasso on the shoulder … We had this apartment, my wife was incredibly beautiful, and people would stop her on the street. They would say, ‘Why don’t you go to Vogue and do photographs?’ And she was from this semi-aristocratic family and she thought that was very vulgar, and being a model was not something she thought was cool.”

Nevertheless, when they needed the money, she went to Vogue and worked as a model, and even then, fortune smiled. In the Vogue studios she met Richard Avedon, America’s most famous fashion photographer. Klein chuckled as he told the story.

“He asked her, ‘What does your husband do?’ And she said, ‘He’s a painter.’ So he said ‘Can I come to the studio?’ and he came, and … I was kind of good-looking at that time, and he said, ‘You are the most beautiful couple I’ve run into, I have a commission to do a photograph of a couple kissing in front of Sacré Coeur, would you do it? I can give you $500.’ Five hundred dollars was a lot of money, and we did it and a couple of months later a friend called me from New York and he said, ‘You folks are in the windows of every drugstore in New York …’ and it was [an advert] for some product, I forget what … ”

Klein has never seen the poster, but he has some of the contact prints from the session. “A few years ago, just before he died, Avedon sent me a note … ‘I’m preparing a big retrospective, been going through my archives, and found this, remember?’ He was very sweet, actually, and we got to be friendly.”

In 1954, having accepted Liberman’s offer, they set sail for America. One of the other advantages of the GI Bill – aside from the money, was, “if you got married to a European, she got a visa and a free trip to New York. So we went on the Queen Mary, paid by the United States government.”

It was in New York that Klein’s career as a photographer took off. He began working for Vogue, but more importantly he began to make a photographic record of his return. “I felt like a Macy’s parade balloon, floating back after a million orbits,” he wrote later. “My priority was coming to terms with myself, and keeping a diary of what it felt like to come back home … I realised that whatever culture shock I felt would wear off eventually, so I went to town and photographed nonstop with, literally, a vengeance. I’d hit a vein, I had to do this book, mix everything I had learned as painter with my own New York craziness and let loose … I had neither training nor complexes. By necessity and choice, I decided that anything would have to go. A technique of no taboos: blur, grain, contrast, cockeyed framing, accidents, whatever happens … the rawest snapshot, the zero degree of photography.”

Thanks to Liberman, Klein’s supplies of film and paper were paid for, and his pictures could be processed at Vogue. He could also use the Photostat machine and experiment with enlargements that only emphasised the grain and the blur.

As Klein explained, “It wasn’t as if my book was a revolution – well, it was kind of a revolution – it was, I mean, grunge and I had no photographic training and didn’t know the rules and didn’t care. But if I had a negative and I could put it in an enlarger, I figured I could do anything with it.” He took his inspiration for the layout from the New York Daily News, with its grainy pictures and heavy graphics. “I saw the book as a tabloid gone berserk, gross, over-inked, brutal layout, bullhorn headlines. That was what New York deserved and would get.”

Did he really feel so anti-American?

“You know, my father thought New York was the greatest place in the world and America the greatest country. And if I ever criticised America, they would say [adding a parodic hint of a New York Jewish accent], ‘Your cousin Norman has this business in Tokyo and when he comes back and gets off the boat he kisses the ground …’

“I remember one of my uncles came to Paris and he took me to lunch at a place where he hung out, it was called Chez Louis. And he pronounced it “shezz”. And he said, ‘Hey Shezz, you wanna meet my nephew, he lives in Paris, he’s an aaartist.’ He had taken over one of the most prestigious movie outfits and didn’t know shit about films.”

His photographs, then, were a sort of revenge. “I came from Paris and I saw these underdeveloped slobs and I thought I could do what I want with them. And nobody objected to my taking photographs. What people don’t realise today is that in those days – in 1955 – there weren’t people walking around with a camera taking photographs. If anybody asked me what I was doing, I said, ‘I’m ‘The Inquiring Photographer’ – the Daily News had this guy who photographed people and asked them questions – and people said to me, “Oh, when is it coming out?’ And I said, ‘Tomorrow.’ ‘Tomorrow? You’re kidding?’ ‘No, it’s coming out tomorrow.’ I know these people and I knew how dumb they were. I thought I had the run of the city and I could do what I wanted.”

But New York didn’t want his book. Despite Liberman’s support, Klein couldn’t get it published in America. “I showed the pictures to editors who saw no reason to print them because [they said] New York looked like a slum – they said, ‘they’re so anti-American’. And I said, ‘What do you know about New York? You live on Fifth Avenue. You go to the office on Madison. What do you know? Have you ever been to Queens or the Bronx?’”

It was only when he returned to Paris and took his photographs to Editions du Seuil, where he’d heard about a young editor called Chris Marker who was in charge of a travel imprint, that the book found a fan. Marker saw the photographs and decided on the spot. Apparently he put his job on the line – “This is going to be a book, or I quit.”

“Marker was like their wunderkind,” said Klein. “He was a writer, he did films, he was the house genius … so they went ahead.”

Through his friendship with Marker, the now legendary film-maker who died in Paris last month on his 91st birthday, Klein met Alain Resnais and other directors of the French new wave, who encouraged him to move into films. Fellini, who admired the New York book, invited Klein to come to Rome to work as his assistant on his 1957 film Nights of Cabiria. During delays in the filming, Klein took the photographs for his second book, Rome, and in 1958 he returned to New York to make his first short film.

Broadway by Light is often described as the “first pop film”, and to watch it now is still an exhilarating 11-minute roller-coaster ride through the neon of Broadway and Times Square. Klein invented his own kind of visual jazz – violent, vulgar, seductive and beautiful, with a soundtrack to match. The camera moves ceaselessly in and out of the alphabet of signs as the bulbs bloom and fade into abstract blobs of pure colour: Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Rock Hudson, The New York Times. Fascination. Continuous till 4am. Orson Welles said it was the first film in which “colour was necessary”.

In 1959, Klein went to Russia, for his third book, Moscow, published in 1960. That year he worked as artistic director on Louis Malle’s film Zazie dans le Métro, and was then invited to Japan to begin work on a book about Tokyo. “I went because I thought that Japanese photography was something very far from me, Zen and cool, and then I found that the Japanese were sick of the image of Zen photography and they wanted real vulgar, brutal and dirty photography.”

In 1962 Klein and his wife appeared in Chris Marker’s most famous film, La Jetée, a film about memory, in which they play a couple of the future. If you watch the film dubbed into English, the voice of the narrator you will hear is the voice of William Klein.

“You wanted to know about movies?” he said, picking up a book of his photographs that he had put together for the Tate and flicking through it. Instead, he began a running commentary, picking out each of the models. “My favourite model was Barbara Mullen” – he shows me the picture of her dragging on a cigarette beneath a rose-covered hat. “She was a tough, Irish-American living in Brooklyn and she had a foul mouth, she was not at all [well bred].

“And this is Polly Maggoo [Dorothy McGowan, the star of his 1966 fashion film Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?] She’s all over the book.”

He stopped at one of his most famous fashion photographs, of two models in black and white dresses passing one another on the pedestrian crossing of the Piazza di Spagna in Rome.

“That’s a girl I discovered, Simone. You know I was up on the steps with a telephoto lens and I asked the girls to walk back and forth and do double-takes and the men thought they were hookers.

“Here’s Fellini. I said to him ‘Federico, come and be a model,’ and he turned up. All these women were more or less society women. The guys are from Cinecittà. They’re extras, I dressed them up. I like to mix up these real aristocrats with two-dollar …

“And this is the mother of Uma Thurman …

“Why did I take fashion photographs? I thought it was fun. And there was a lot of money. I really had a lot of money. I had the highest page rate in Vogue. This is a girl called Anne St. Marie … It’s like a family album. This is a girl called Rosemarie, she ended up a concierge in Paris, she’s dead now.

“I like these tough girls, they’re very tough.”

After Broadway by Light, he made a string of films, many of which fall under the late critic Gilbert Adair’s definition of “scattershot satire”. Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? mocked the absurdities of the fashion business, making no concession to the fact that he was still working for Vogue; Far from Vietnam (1967) was an anti-war film made by a series of directors, among them Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Claude Lelouch and Agnès Varda. Mister Freedom (1969) was his hilarious cartoon take on American imperialism, which was banned in France for six months. The government thought it was a satirical assault on the French and Klein was almost thrown out of the country. Muhammad Ali: The Greatest (1974) took footage from Klein’s 1964 film about Cassius Clay and film of the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire. The Model Couple (1976) anticipated The Truman Show and attacked the state’s invasion of privacy. A young couple are selected to share a modern apartment under national surveillance and their life is broadcast on television. It is in his films that his contrary, absurdist, political side really comes through, though they’re rarely screened at the cinema and are hard to find on DVD. In 2008, the US film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum showed Mister Freedom to a group of his students, after describing it as “conceivably the most anti-American movie ever made”. They loved it, he wrote afterwards. “Maybe it took a George W. Bush – a full, real-life embodiment of Klein’s ridiculous anti-hero – to drive home the satiric point.”

By the 1980s, though, Klein’s photographs were being discovered by curators who wanted to exhibit his pictures, which had rarely been printed up for galleries until then. Going back over his contact sheets, he began to study the strips of images he’d outlined with waxed pencil as his best shots. This inspired a new series of works he called Contacts, for which he enlarged the selected frames, then reproduced the strokes of the pencil with wide slashes of glossy paint in primary colours.

For his most recent film, Messiah (1999), he invited different choirs to join the professionals and sing their way through Handel’s oratorio. They included the Sugarland Prison choir in Texas and a drug addicts’ gospel choir from New York. Mary Blume, in the International Herald Tribune, called it “a robust threnody for our times.”

Last year he was in London to photograph the crowds at the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton. When we met, he had just finished a fashion shoot for American Harper’s Bazaar. He pulled out one of the layouts. He’d used a familiar method, in which he blows up one photograph to create a backdrop and superimposes another photograph of the model on top of it. In this case the backdrop showed a group of male skydivers in a cloud-flecked blue sky with the model, in an evening dress, floating in their midst.

He’d been much amused by the Queen’s parachute leap with Daniel Craig from the helicopter at the opening of the Olympics.

“Do people in England still like the Queen?” he asked. I nodded.

“Incredible.”

People seem to love her more than ever, I said, particularly because this is her Jubilee year, they want to pay tribute.

“I think it’s obscene.” He leaned forward, suddenly combative. “I don’t know how you support the monarchy. How can you do that?”

“But you came to photograph the wedding …”

“I was photographing the street,” he said firmly.

The Queen would make a great subject for a movie, I suggested, only half-jokingly.

He raised himself up in his chair. “No. Way.”

When I asked for the bathroom he directed me to the back of the apartment, along a long, black-painted corridor on which is arranged a family album of photographs. Here was Klein as a child, as a young soldier in uniform sitting on a white horse. Here was Jeanne, as a lovely young woman; then Klein in the studio, surrounded by huge abstract photographs, his baby son Pierre – now a film-maker – naked at his feet; then Jeanne again, older, working in her studio, and a still from La Jetée, showing the two of them in semi-profile, the beautiful couple of the future.

When he had talked me along the wall of pictures, he came to an empty space.

“I haven’t completed it,” he said. “Some kind of superstition …” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

“William Klein, Paintings etc” is at HackelBury Fine Art, 4 Launceston Place, London W8, until December 20.

The accompanying book is co-published by Contrasto, HackelBury Fine Art and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, £40.


“William Klein + Daido Moriyama” runs at Tate Modern, London SE1, from October 10 to January 20 2013. “William Klein ABC” is published by Tate, £25

MACHINA & MECHANISM
Mårten Lange works in series, developing a specific language for each one, leading the audience through his visual grammar. Two series have been selected for Foto/Industria: Machina (2007) gathers images of nuclear physics, microscopy, and nanotechnology research labs, revealing the technological sublime, transcending science to create poetry.

The Mechanism (2017) is a melancholic series of black-and-white photographs that tell a science fiction story about contemporary life, dealing with themes of technology, surveillance, and urban society in working environments.

Exhibition organised with the support of Robert Morat Galerie, Berlin.

Location
AngelicA Centre for Music Research ­– Teatro San Leonardo
Via San Vitale 63 – Bologna



THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 2008

Mårten Lange


I quite like Swedish photographer Mårten Lange's work for a couple of reasons.
The first is pretty obvious - his Woodland project approaches the whole "trees/forest" subject in a way that seems failry close to my own approach - and on the whole I like the way he's done it.


His Machina work has also grown on me quite a bit. I also like the similarly between the two projects; the view of complex tangles, a sort of disorder (yet with an underlying - less obvious - order) and messiness. Visually confusing but intriguing.


The second reason is how he approached publishing his work. He has established his own Press and publishes what are basically photo-zines which are in a way closer to the zine comic book world than the fine art photo book world. It's a nice approach. 5B4 has a good review of his books and his publishing

"When most young artists dream of publishing a photography book they may desire for it to be accepted into the hands of a Hatje Cantz, Aperture or Steidl. Often the dream entails lush production values and a care given that is tantamount to the respect one tends to place upon their own work.
On the other side of the coin, there are artists that have a DIY approach similar to the vast amounts of fanzines (’zines) that appeared throughout the heyday of the punk and hardcore music movements in the early 1980’s. ‘Zines are rather cheaply produced magazines of varying length, often Xeroxed and staple bound and distributed through various independent channels...


One such small publisher who is taking advantage of this type of low-fi production is called Farewell Books which is run by a photographer named Marten Lange in Sweden. Originally started to publish his own photography, he has branched out to publish others including the prominent photographer and conceptual artist John Divola. All of the books are various sizes; laser printed and perfect bound in soft cover."


Finally, I'm pretty sure I can see a big dose of influence from Lee Friedlander in his work - both the Desert and Olmsted work and also the At Worker and Cray projects. I wonder if Lange is breaking away from that a bit more in new work?
POSTED BY TIM ATHERTON AT 10:08 AM

BIEKE DEPOORTER

See also

CouchSurfing in Siberia OU MENYA Bieke Depoorter Winner 2009 Magnum Expression Award Photography

As it may be

Now until Jan-14-2018

Magnum photographer Bieke Depoorter has visited Egypt regularly since 2011. She first went there during the Arab Spring. Travelling through the country, Depoorter set out to explore the downside of the uprising. During this time of great uncertainty and mistrust, each day she would look for a new place to spend the night, preferably with a family in their home. Looking beyond the news and the politics, she searched for the intimate moments that often happen at home. From 21 October The Hague Museum of Photography will be showing an exhibition of the resulting work, for which Depoorter was awarded the prestigious Prix Levallois earlier this year.

Though Bieke Depoorter was greeted hospitably, initially she was never invited in. She sensed that people wished to protect their privacy, and felt it would be impossible to gain people’s trust. But it was precisely the impossibility of the task that attracted her. Her quest for trust was the start of a long journey. An encounter would often begin with a cup of tea and lots of sugar, an invitation from a woman cooling off on her front of doorstep in the evening. Visitors would be given a bed in the guest room, where the chairs have gold legs and Chinese teacups unused since the wedding party stand in the cabinet. The dividing line between private and public is a white lace curtain in the visitor’s room. Beyond that, a pan of lentils stands on the stove, hair is plaited and a school uniform hangs on a hook.

Return to Egypt
Through her efforts to connect with people, Depoorter gradually became aware of her own perspective and position as an outsider, both culturally and as a photographer. In 2017, therefore, she decided to return to Egypt with the first version of her new book, to talk to the people about the photographs she had taken back. People from all over the country who happened to be passing by wrote their thoughts and ideas on the photos, as if they were putting subtitles to a silent film. This created a fascinating multi-layered conversation between people who might otherwise never speak to each other. This new layer breaks through our western view, puncturing the vacuum in which the images seem to exist. Depoorter will present these results alongside the original photographs at The Hague Museum of Photography.

About the artist
Bieke Depoorter (b. 1986, Kortrijk, Belgium) graduated from KASK in Ghent in 2009. In that same year she was nominated at The Hague Museum of Photography for the Photo Academy Award, for her graduation series Ou Menya. In 2012 she became a nominee for the renowned Magnum photographers’ collective, becoming a full member in 2016. Her photographs record extraordinary encounters in painterly, often filmic images. She has previously published photobooks entitled Ou Menya, with pictures from Russia, and I Am About to Call It a Day, documenting her travels round America. While working on these three projects, Bieke Depoorter would look for a new place to sleep every day. Her route would be decided by a series of chance encounters, driven by wonder.

Publication
To coincide with the exhibition, Hannibal will be publishing the Dutch edition of As It May Be / Mumkin (ISBN 978 94 9267 717 4; €57.50). The English edition will be published by Aperture (New York) and the French edition by Edition Xavier Barral (Paris).

In de slaapkamers van Egypte
De Belgische fotograaf Bieke Depoorter wist toegang te krijgen tot Egyptische slaapkamers. Op straat vroeg ze Egyptenaren om hun commentaar op haar beelden.
Rianne van Dijck
26 oktober 2017

Egyptenaren schreven hun commentaar op de foto’s van Bieke Depoorter.
Foto Bieke Depoorter/Magnum Photos.

Fotografie
Bieke Depoorter: As it May Be / Mumkin. T/m 14 januari in Fotomuseum Den Haag

●●●●●

‘Ik denk dat je maar beter helemaal opnieuw begint met het boek. Neem foto’s die iets duidelijk maken en iets zeggen over de Egyptische beschaving.” Het is een van de teksten die we lezen in het fotoboek van de Belgische Bieke Depoorter (1986), waarin ze aan willekeurige Egyptenaren vroeg of ze iets wilden schrijven op foto’s die zij in hun land had gemaakt. Depoorter, sinds 2016 een van de jongste leden van fotoagentschap Magnum, reisde sinds 2011 meerdere malen naar Egypte. Daar vroeg ze, zoals ze dat eerder deed in Rusland en de Verenigde Staten, aan mensen op straat of ze een nachtje bij hen mocht blijven slapen en in de avond een foto van hen mocht maken. Geen makkelijke opgave in een land dat wantrouwend staat tegenover buitenlanders en waar vooral vrouwen hun privéleven liever afschermen. Lastig ook omdat Depoorter de taal niet spreekt en ze na de eerste kennismaking – waarbij ze werd geholpen door haar Arabisch sprekende gids, de Belgische journalist Ruth Vandewalle – in haar eentje bij de families achterbleef. Mumkin sura? Die woorden kende ze. Mag ik een foto nemen?

De beelden die ze maakte in de intimiteit van de avond en de nacht, op het moment net voordat mensen gaan slapen, leveren sprookjesachtige taferelen op van vaak gesluierde moeders en hun kinderen (op slechts een paar foto’s staat een man). Zo is er een feestelijk beeld van een meisje dat vanuit haar bonte bed verrukt kijkt naar een duif die per ongeluk de kamer binnenvliegt, zien we moeders die hun kinderen liefdevol toedekken of die in gewijd avondlicht een laatste gebed bidden. Depoorter creëerde zo met een spel van licht en donker schilderachtige beelden. In de tentoonstelling As it May Be wordt dat schilderachtige nog eens benadrukt door een aantal grote foto’s in een lichtbak te exposeren, waardoor de intense kleuren van het scherm spatten.

Naast tien grote prints zijn in vitrines alle originele pagina’s te zien van de dummy van As it May Be waarop de Arabisch teksten werden geschreven. Dat levert op zich al een spannend grafisch beeld op: die witte en zwarte letters op al die bonte kleuren. In de Nederlandse vertalingen lezen we dat er kritiek is op haar fotografie (‘Deze foto is onduidelijk’) alsook kritiek op de politiek van het land (‘Het is gevaarlijk de straat op te gaan en je rechten op te eisen’), over de religie (‘Je mag deze foto niet publiceren; in de islam mag je geen naaktheid tonen’) en de positie van de vrouw.

Depoorter is niet de eerste fotograaf die een extra laag in haar werk aanbrengt door het toevoegen van tekst. De Amerikaan Duane Michals duwde al tegen de grenzen van de fotografie door naast zijn foto’s zaken te noteren die niet zichtbaar waren in het beeld. Magnum-fotograaf Jim Goldberg vroeg de geportretteerden commentaar te geven op hun eigen foto’s. Die nieuwe dimensie leidt het oog van de kijker, doet hem nieuwe dingen zien en andere verbanden leggen. En maakt tegelijkertijd duidelijk hoe beperkt een foto eigenlijk is als informatiedrager.

Door terug te gaan naar Egypte voegt Depoorter niet alleen meer informatie toe, maar maakt ze ook de serie minder afstandelijk en haar betrokkenheid groter. Al blijft ze, met alle goede bedoelingen, voor de meesten nog steeds een buitenstaander: ‘Het leven op die foto heb je niet geleefd.’

Quindicigiorni. Il Festival Nazionale de l'Unità a Napoli (Italian) 
by Luciano D'ALESSANDRO
Publisher: Sezione Centrale di Stampa e Propaganda della Direzione del P.C.I.,; Prima edizione (First Edition) edition (1977)
Hardcover
Language: Italian

The book gives an impression of the meeting of the C.P.I. in Naples in 1976. The photos of Luciano d'Alessandro show the preparation and the actual event. The book also contains an introductory text by Enrico Berlinguer, one of the foremost politicians of post-war Italy and chairman of the party from 1972 until his death in 1984.

Supein: Idainaru gogo　スペイン・偉大なる午後 (Espana grand tarde fiesta vaya con dios)
Photobook. Two volumes. First edition.
Narahara Ikko (奈良原一高) biography
Date 1969
Tokyo-to(Asia,Japan,Honshu,Tokyo-to)

It must have been an act of serendipity that brought Narahara to Spain in the early half of the 1960s. As he explains in the preface, he felt drawn to Europe on account of being born in Nagasaki, the city in Japan to first open its doors to the “Southern barbarians” (nanbanjin) from Spain and Portugal. Narahara spent two long summers driving around Spain with his wife and he got to know the country well. The present record, produced - as he insists - unintentionally, is the best book of photographs ever produced on Spain. This is a book full of Spanish passion, Spanish sensibilities, and of course the Spanish “dance to the cult of the smell of blood” features prominently in the first chapter. “As death, which every one must meet ultimately in his life, is not in itself the purpose of life, the death of the bull is never the purpose of this drama of bullfighting.” The final chapter of the book is entitled “Vaya con Dios”. Here Narahara finds the void of timelessness. One can feel the heat, one can smell the ham, and the deep humanity in spite of - if not because of - the poverty. No copy in OCLC. (Titus Boeder, 4/07)

See also 

Guerre à la Tristesse [Fiesta in Pamplona] Cover by Picasso Inge Morath Magnum Photography

The emergence of Mr. Hemingway as an authority on bull-fighting should not be a surprise to any one who has read the passages in "The Sun Also Rises" which touch upon that peculiarly Latin sport. That he is an authority may be conceded, even by those who have never seen a matador, not only from Mr. Hemingway's statement that he has seen fifteen hundred bulls killed on the field of honor and his acknowledgment of indebtedness to some 2,077 "books and pamphlets in Spanish dealing with or touching on tauromania," but from the internal evidence of the book itself. One would say that Mr. Hemingway knows bull-fighting at least as well as the specialized sports writer in our own country knows baseball, football, racing or fighting. He knows it so well that on occasion only the introduction of an extremely singular old lady as the author's interlocutor, a few digressions on death, modern literature and sex life, joined with Mr. Hemingway's extremely masculine style of writing, save the reader from drowning in a flood of technicalities.



It may be asked why Mr. Hemingway should infer in American readers a sufficiently passionate interest in bull-fighting to induce them to buy and read a book of 517 pages on the subject. But this would be to put the cart before the horse--or letting the bull wave a red cloth at the matador instead of vice versa. Bull-fighting, one infers, became a hobby with Mr. Hemingway because of the light it throws on Spain, on human nature and on life and death. In a sense this book is Mr. Hemingway's book on "Virgin Spain." The reference is pertinent because, as he explains in an extremely candid bit of analysis, Mr. Hemingway does not particularly like that style of writing for which his most flattering epithet is "bedside mysticism." But the author's fundamental motive is perhaps this:

10×10 Japanese Photobooks door Michael Lang  Edited by Matthew Carson, Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich