My review of Gary Ciadella’s book The Calumet Region is now up on photo-eye.
Archive for the 'Books' Category
Danny Wilcox Frazier updates his book “Driftless: Photographs from Iowa” with a documentary that is now playing on Mediastorm.This is one of the best sorts of presentations I have seen. Taking the time to make it the right way helped. Words are escaping me right now. Watch it is really all that I can say.
The greatest bookstore in America, photo-eye, launched their new website today. Included is their magazine and a blog. It is well worth checking out.
Robert Frank and “The Americans” is featured heavily in the magazine. This story about the conversation with Charlie LeDuff got my blood boiling again. Jeff Ladd, the author, refers to him as “evasive” in public. LeDuff’s article in Vanity Fair points that out plainly. But, any effort by LeDuff to engage Frank was deemed clownish. No one has taken Frank to task for being evasive. Well, I am now. Anyone who has/had a problem with this interview should place the blame directly on Frank’s shoulders. He is evasive and he chose LeDuff. This fact is glossed over because no one wants to criticize Robert Frank. Well, I am. If you do not like what you hear in this interview, write Robert Frank a letter. Or me, I can take it.
Charlie LeDuff is one of the last characters left in Amercian journalism. When I say characters I am putting him up there with Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, George Plimpton and Hunter S. Thompson. I doubt someone who treated Frank reverentialy would have gotten less out of him than LeDuff did. Also, from what l understand Frank chose LeDuff, a fact that is glossed over. After reading his article I don’t think that there is anyone else who could have accomplished what LeDuff did.
OK, that is off my chest, no go to photo-eye and buy a book. I would suggest this I almost bought it when I was in Santa Fe a few weeks ago. I bought this instead. Nice work all around.
I skimmed the nearly 1,800 entries to the Photography Book Now contest Blurb is sponsoring. These are just the ones online. I do not know how many hard copy entries that were submitted. This contest has been mentioned in other blogs out there. My initial response is that the photograph is far from dead. Digital is keeping it alive with the advent of book publishers like Blurb. Thank goodness.
There are a lot of people taking pictures out there. Some good, most OK, and more than a few people are taking pictures of naked women.
I did not look at all of the entries. I am guessing that a third of the entries are really worthwhile and of that about 100 are the best. Here are some that caught my eye. By that I mean: I had heard of the photographer before, the cover was interesting, the title was interesting, there was no image on the cover or I just thought, let’s take a look.
I know that if I entered mine would not be in the worthwhile category, so please stick with me. I do not think that just portfolio books were the spirit of the competition.
After a while I could guess at the pictures. There were some covers that proved to be the best picture in the first 15 pages. (Blurb lets you browse the first 15 pages.) There is a lot of Alex Soth inspired landscape work being done. A lot of three-quarter length portraits. There is nothing wrong with that, but I could tell what I would see from the cover image.
If I had to choose one, from all of what I saw, I would easily say Olivier Pin-Fat. No question his work was the most unique, in my opinion, from what what I saw. He is pushing photography to its limits more than most of the people who entered the contest. I could just say go look at his book and you will see the best one, but I am probably wrong about that since I did not look at every book and did not see the hard copies.
Having witnessed a few contests being judged, I would say getting down to 100 will be more about editing out the obvious for one reason or another. From the top third. I will take time. Probably getting down to 10 or 20 will be more difficult. It will take a consensus. Picking a winner from 10 or 20 will be the real work, but, if they are all doing it together in one place, my guess is that as a group, they will have a an idea of what they want and don’t want.
I did not enter this contest. I really felt like I do not have enough right now to put together to make a book. I hope the contest will continue. In time, I hope I have enough pictures to make a book.
I bookmarked about 30 titles I liked. These four round out my top five in random order: Lisa Wiltse, Aaron Hobson, Tim Clayton and John Lehr.
Feel free to see what others have to say about the contest. They include: Cara Phillips, Andrew Hetherington and Jorg Colberg.
There are other books that are worth buying. I do not know how it is priced, but some are expensive. I tend to be populist and would want a smaller and cheaper book out there so people would buy it. Then again, I do march to the beat of a different drummer. I should not forget to mention Paho Mann’s book.
I have been racking my brain trying to come up with an artists genealogy for myself. Larry Towell is on my list for sure. Over on Heather Morton’s blog she talks about his new show “The World from my Front Porch” that was up at the Stephen Bulger Gallery.
These are the pictures he makes when he is not off documenting the landless.
The lyricism of his work draws me in and holds me. If it is El Salvador, Mexico, Palestine or his front yard the lyricism is all the same, beautiful.
Magnum in Motion has an essay to go with the exhibition. He has great hats.
When I sat down and saw that Philip Jones Girffiths had died from cancer today I felt saddened.
“Not since Goya has anyone portrayed war like Philip Jones Giffiths.” Henri Cartier-Bresson
His career was amazing, his pictures painful.
Here is a good interview with him. God Speed Philip Jones Griffiths.
I found a great quote from the BBC obituary.
“The only thing we photographers really want more than life, more than sex, more than anything, is to be invisible.”
Philip Jones Griffiths
David Burnett has also published a remembrance of his mentor and friend.
This video won first place in the POYi Multimedia Feature Story category. Jim Lo Scalzo is an amazing photographer who always put his own visual stamp on whatever image he is making.
Compared to a lot of videos that I have seen, well to be honest started to watch and then grew bored and clicked off, this one blends the still image well with the video image. I am assuming he is using two different cameras, which is why I like this. There are two different thought processes going on. Not one, with a frame grab later like the local paper likes to do.
His book is also worth checking out, from what I have heard. The online component of it also did well at POYi.
Allison V. Smith announced that zine #2 is on the way to the printer, so you need to head over there and get your name on the list. It is going to be pictures made with her lomo. Maybe this picture made the cut. I was #5, what will be your number? There are only 250
Danny Wilcox Frazier’s book “Driftless Photographs from Iowa” is published by Duke University Press and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. It was the CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography. The juror was Robert Frank, who wrote the forward.
Well, who wouldn’t want Robert Frank to write the forward to your first book? I would. I remember when I saw “The Americans” at the Kemper Museum in Kansas City a decade or so ago. I got chills. I liked Robert Frank before I saw the show, after it I was amazed.
The 80 pictures in this book are a testament to the fact that Robert Frank’s influence is alive and well in photography. Danny also acknowledges Josef Koudelka, Nan Goldin, Larry Clark and Gilles Peress. I know Danny is in the Real Photographer camp, no question about it.
The first time I met Danny was five or six years ago in Indianapolis during the women’s basketball Big 10 Tournament. Purdue played Iowa, and I think he sat next to me. He was working at one of the Iowa City papers (there are two). He was using a digital camera, I don’t think I was. I had my newly purchased Leica with me, and I remember him saying something about wanting one, and I said something about always wanting to shoot basketball with it. To me, that was a real photographer sort of thing.
I bumped into him yearly, usually during a Big 10 basketball tournament.
I am glad he bought his Leica and left the paper to go to grad school, where from what I understand, this book originated.
A few years later, I followed his plan (leave paper go to grad school). Needless to say, I asked his advice and sort of followed it, but here I am telling you about his book which you should buy right now. Danny is one of the nicest guys I have met and it is clear from his pictures that breaking down barriers and coming back with the goods (flat out great pictures) is something he has a talent for. To quote Jack Kerouac: “You got eyes.”
Danny has done some traveling, but this work is from his home state, which is very refreshing. In the age of the College Photographer of Year contest having an international story category, it is nice to see someone work the back 40 for all it is worth.
And work it he does. This is Iowa beyond the image of pigs, corn and politicians. Real people populate these pages. Veterans, rabble-rousers, Hasidim, farmers, Plain People, families all make an unexpected portrait of a state few truly know.
Danny Wilcox Frazier
In stark black and white images his Iowa appears on the page. Grain competes with snow and ice at times. Yes, grain, real grain, not the digital kind. The good kind, it comes from film.
Turning the pages I am struck by unexpected images. Moments come out the shadows. All the action is up close and personal. You feel the corn fly through the air while being harvested on the family farm. I hear snow crunch under the feet of hunters on their way to the killing fields. These pictures come alive.
Danny Wilcox Frazier’s clarity goes beyond what may be fashionable in some journalism circles. There are no fancy tricks of composition or electronic flash. He has the clear and direct voice of an Iowan adn the eyes of a poet.
