Visual titles and comments

I saw Taryn Simon's work at Tate Mod last year. In her work A Living Man Declared Dead and other Chapters displays of faces were juxtapositioned with photographs of other objects that related to the people in the portraits in one way or another. The function of these comments becomes similar to that of a title.

Photographing film

Schapiron and the way that we normally encounter a strip of film stills

In a resent visit to Stockholm I went to Fotografiska museet. I saw the work of Steve Schapiron, he was the American photographer who worked alongside the moving image camera men at Taxi-driver and Godfather sets to take stills of the action. These stills are now celebrated within the moving image world as a still image photographer Schapiron could capture the atmosphere and the action from a different angle then the moving image camera, he could hover just outside the mise on scene to capture an in-between of reality and stage. Also possible because of the notion of photography as an honest and truth-telling medium in contrast to film as a fictional one.

a dossier new english definition

Dossier, I relate it to some sort of collection of body fluids slightly spiced up with a few breadcrumbs and other forms of fluff wiped up from the bathroom floor and the bit where the mattress sits on the bed-frame and the balls of black often collected on the base of the hairbrush pins. Basically a jar with a collection of human residue from the last few moths. A bit like the skin that a snake sheds as it goes from small to larger.

The mother

Melanie Manchot

My mother and my mother's mother

Melanie Manchot visited on last weeks guest lecture program and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her talk again. She showed some of her earlier work and I am fascinated about how open she is on her talks. As a contrast to the Otolith Group who's work is currently shown at Fabrica and they seem a lot more reserved and private. 

Manchot showed images that she took of her mother and I remembered hearing Ester Teichman talk about taking nude picture of her mother. I am wondering what those two projects have i common, if anything. What does the mother represent and how can that be shown in photographs? Melanie put her mother in the foreground of sublime landscapes while Esther Teichmann had her mother pose in-front of backdrops. 

Ester Teichmann

Possible journey of the gaze

A mirror with an incling

Unknown artist

Daguerreotypes have been called a mirror with a memory. In that case this is a mirror with a fading or maybe even a secret memory.

Photography, a present without a future

Wing Walker Todd

Aaron Siskind Terrors and pleasures of levitation

Falling Man

Capa's Falling Man

The Snapshot of falling/failing/death versus the rigidity of the daguerreotype.