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 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.

Rephotographing Atget photos and text by Christopher Rauschenberg Eugene Atget documented Paris from 1888 until his death in 1927. Like many people, I consider him to have been the greatest photographer of all time. Atget straightforwardly documented the city with photographs that give you the feeling that all the transitory things that people do and are have washed away, leaving only their transcendent accomplishments. On a 1989 trip to Paris, I suddenly found myself face to face with a spiral-topped gatepost that I knew very well from a beautiful photograph by Atget (the photograph on the left). I rephotographed his gatepost from memory (the photograph on the right) and wondered how many other Atget subjects might still be holding their poses. There, among the things and places that Atget had admired, I resolved to return and do a rephotographic exploration to discover if the haunting and beautiful Paris of Atget’s vision still existed. Eight years later, in 1997 and 1998, I made three trips to Paris and rephotographed 500 of the scenes that Atget photographed. 24 of those image pairs are shown here in Lens Culture, with my image on the right and Atget’s image on the left. As I was rephotographing Atget images, I kept seeing places that he hadn’t photographed but that seemed to me to be also rich with the feeling of his work. I photographed hundreds of those places where I felt Atget’s spirit. Included here are just six of them. I don’t claim to have been channeling Atget, or that Atget would have photographed those places were he to see them. I was walking around Paris “in Atget’s shoes” and this is where they took me. Having photographed all of these scenes, it is clear to me that the Paris of Atget’s vision is still there and available to eyes that look for it. In central Paris, most of the scenes that Atget photographed are still there, and still posing. You can see the effects of acid rain on them; you can see the effects of graffiti; most of all, you can see that the magical streets of Paris are now thickly covered with parked cars. However, among all the other Parises that co-exist so thickly in one amazing city, Atget’s Paris is still definitely and hauntingly there. --Christopher Rauschenberg

Projecton of the grown up onto the young

Untitled (Boy in Old Man’s Mask with Doll)
c. 1960

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

http://photoi.tumblr.com/

Re-examing relations

John Stezaker

The relationships between the small and the large make a new reality, a new truth.

Uncomfortable stillness

From Any Warhol's Kiss.

What to do next..

I thought I would flag up my parallel blog where I am writing about what I am doing for professional practice. It can be found at http://propraktik.blogspot.co.uk/

Appropriation in photography

Just before the show "Acting Out: Invented Melodrama in Contemporary Photography" Roberta Smith wrote a piece for the New York Times. The show featured young artists and brought back old memories and differences. Specifically, it recalls a point in the early 1980′s when Douglas Crimp, a pioneering art critic, lamented in an essay the growing popularity of postmodernism’s cutting-edge strategy, appropriation. 

Appropriation had begun only a few years earlier as a radical, primarily photographic practice introduced by artists like Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince. As I remember it, Mr. Crimp’s general complaint was that appropriation was raging out of control. Conceived as a way to “interrogate” the images that inundate and condition us, it had pretty much morphed into an academic, reactionary technique used by artists of all aesthetic stripes, political viewpoints and mediums. . . .

You can read the article in its entirety here

Richard Prince from Cowboys

 

sunless

I watched Chris Marker's Sans Solei today on the train back home. Commuting is normally quite a terrible activity, spending between 6-7 h a day on trains and buses, but when watching a good film it can be great and quite quick.
As we pulled in to Brighton station the lady next to me asked if it was my own film I was watching.. very flattering indeed. But as I told her it was Sans Solei she recognised it.

Experimental Filmaker

CHRIS WELSBY

Vilhelm Hammershøi

Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi's (1864-1916) paintings often portray people turned away from the viewer in muted tones of greys, greens and purple. He mostly worked in native Copenhagen and I think a lot of the paintings are photographic in the framing. 
Look at how the table as been cropped in half, suggesting a limitation of the space that the artist is able to capture and also an outside world, beyond the frame.

I think these paintings are really scandinavian in their moodiness and muted tone.  I am comparing to his contemporary Andres Zorn. Although, there are significant differences in subject (interior vs exterior) and also aura, Hammershoi is more moody while Zorns seem more reflective yet almost passing. More like a snapshot of joy than sorrow. Both artist use a similar pallet and I think is is one that is symbolic of the scandinavian light and also something I am considering in my photography.

Anders Zorn Sommarnöje

Anders Zorn

Anders Zorn "Out"

Growing up I used to admire Anders Zorn in Gothenburg's art museum. They have the image directly above in their collections. I used to visit the art museum alot and would always peak into the photographic exhibition at Hasselblad's center althoug my favourite rooms were on the third floor where the late 1900th and early 2000th century art was located. (Zorn amongst other such as Picasso, Cezanne, Monet and more)

This is a particular one that I would spend a long time looking at. I used to look at the gentlemans foot as it does not seem to touch the railing it is also slightly too large, it just does not look right.

Richard Bergh, Nordisk sommarkväll, 1899-1900.

Whitechapel Gallery on Thursday

I am going to Whitechapel Gallery on Thursday with my friend Maria. We haven't had a day together for a long time and I am really looking forward to a day out with her. I hope it will cheer me up a little and also get my energy back to get on with my work.

Zarina Bhimji is on and I have heard that the exhibition is great. Alison went up last week and she called me from the gallery because she really felt I would like it, when I didn't pick up the phone she even left a voice mail to tell me so. That was probably the niceest voice mail I have had.

Bridget Smith

b. 1966, Essex, England

Bridget Smith works within the documentary genre but she photographs places of fantasy and escapism. Smith is interested in the places where people go to seek refuge from the outside world: to escape boredom, to be diverted, transported, absorbed – places to lose oneself, where pretence and reality are often confused.

Smith’s photographs have documented the construction of fantasy and the architecture of entertainment, the function of which is to disconnect people from their everyday lives and concerns. Since 2005 her practice has expanded to include both still and moving images which address our struggle to feel connected: within society, the landscape and the wider universe. The photographs and videos often point to the gap between one’s imagination and reality and the interplay between the two. The work flits between objectivity and subjectivity, the real and the fake.

From her bio on Frith Street Gallery

Bridget Smith Odeon Green

Mres/MA?

I am thinking about what to apply for the coming term. MA in Photography or Mres in arts and cultural research perhaps. This looks interesting Mres. This course was founded by Mary Ann Francis.