Lassal – photography
The Ligovsky Prospekt is one of the largest streets in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The image above only shows a small excerpt of the whole composition of old photographs à la Ed Ruscha, which went around several walls at Paris Photo. The photographs are said to be from 1933 (photographer unknown?), apparently made to assist some vast rebuilding of the area. Which might explain the pencil sketches on the work.
See also this French documentation of the project.
Jörg Colberg over at Conscientious just posted a link to Stuart Whipps’ website. Apart from the project that Jörg pointed out, there are some other nice approaches. The one pictured above is from the series “A Thing Of Beauty and a Joy Forever”. It is certainly an approach that one has seen before in similar versions – I have a multiple from the German artist Matthias Vatter (no website?!) next to me, who did a similar work with a whole issue of “Der Spiegel” magazine – but so what?! I like this press cuttings version!
You might also want to check out Suart Whipps’ other projects. There is more than one that crosses the borders of pure photography.
Everybody is waiting for spring, right? So to get you into the mood, here is something I found on the contact sheet of my latest Holga experiment. If you look closely you will see two flowers. At least I hope you will. A little imagination please!
With this I also want to ask for some more patience on your side. I have been getting concerned emails asking for the continuation of the photography & illustration theme, and I am terribly sorry for the delay. Believe me, I do have a huge stack of books & projects from all over the world waiting to be mentioned … BUT I am on a tight assignment right now until the end of March. The only thing I am managing to throw in between the lines, are my little ramblings and weather reports.
The next time I have a couple of hours free, I will come up with Eggleston for you. Promised.
While I am having a headache about how to proceed after this post, considering the fact, that so so many of the examples shown in Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and’70s dance along many visual disciplines, I had no trouble picking out “Someday, Somewhere” by Yasuhiro Ishimoto as a perfect bridge leading from Roger Ballen into the for me still unknown world of japanese photography (although I am working hard to change this unsatisfactory status).
I could not resist putting the image above together. It would be my absolute dream to have two of each of my favorite photobooks and to keep them as above on countless walls of an immense library, that would be my home. I am pretty sure I would live a short life, never making it past all the books to the kitchen to have some food and drink …
Ok. Enough of this. How embarrasing. Err… :)
Have a closer look at the double page on the right:
It contains a composition of 5 images, each of them showing some traces of human “illustrative” activity. The pictures on these pages, which were taken in Chicago and Tokyo, are devoid of people, at least directly. While I like each one of the five images, they would not be too meaningfull by themselves – it is the composition that makes them strong and gives them enough contrast and rhythm.
It is just marvelous how the two images on the top left resonate in the one on the top right – the same goes for the images below.
Here you can find more informations about Yasuhiro Ishimoto, and I find it absolutlely fascinating to see how vast his influences are and how he finds his personal balance between the US and Japan, between New Bauhaus and traditional Japanese aesthetics …
As an aside: while I write this post, there is a copy of “Someday, Somewhere” up on eBay for $4.190!
There has been a lot of talk about “Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s”, and now that I hold one of them in my hands I totally understand the reasons for the applause. If you are interested in photobooks this is definitively a must-have book. But do not take my word for it, have a look here:
5b4
Conscientious
The British Journal of Photography
… and here is an interview with Ivan Vartanian, one of the authors, on japan exposures, who said that “apart from helping the reader learn how to understand Japanese photography books, I want them to know how essential it is to Japanese photography. It’s very different from western photography, which has this idea that photographs must exist as a print. Japanese photography, in its ultimate form, is the photobook. Communicating that simple idea, to even a Japanese audience, is the main homework of this project. And you’d be amazed how revolutionary that idea is to people who are well versed in photography in the West.”
I will be showing some of the work featured inside this wonderful survey in “photography & Illustration” next.
Peter Beard’s Book Zara’s Tales: From Hog Ranch – Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa is just one of his many books. It was written for his young daughter Zara, and bought by me for my young niece Carlotta – although I fear I will have to wait until she is a little older to understand the content.
The official description on his website: “Zara’s Tales is an intricately woven series of eleven irresistible stories told to Peter Beard’s daughter, Zara, about his adventures in Kenya. His tales capture the essence of East Africa, bringing to life a cast of characters, including a 300-pound warthog named Thaka, who lived near his encampment. Man-eating lions and fifteen-foot crocodiles are part of every day life for Peter Beard, as he draws on the richness and diversity of East Africa to seduce the reader into a world of exploration, creativity, and excitement.”
I am not familiar with all of Peter Beard’s books but with some. While I am not normally drawn to overly decorated photographs, I totally dig the diary aspect of his work, which actually for me changes the whole frame into something I can very much appreciate. It is thus important to know that Zara’s Tales, like most of Peter Beard’s work, is part of his extended form of diary-keeping, which usually not only includes his writings and photographs, but also drawings and paintings, collages, blood and whatever else he thinks is necessary …
Zara’s Tales was published 2004 as a hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf in NY. It has 176 pages and includes Peter Beard’s photographs as well as “paintings by Mbuno, Mwangi, Galo-Galo, Kivoi, and the other members of the Hog Ranch art department.” (the Hog Ranch is Peter Beard’s Ranch in Kenya)
Have a look at Peter Beard’s official website
Here is an interview with him from 1998 (in German only)
Here is some kind of trailer about him on YouTube: Peter Beard – Scrapbooks from Africa and Beyond
And you can still get Zara’s Tales at Amazon - at least at the time I wrote this post.
By the way, Peter Beard did the Pirelli Calender 2009 :)
Read an interview about how he sees the current situation in Africa (and more) on the National Post website.
There was a very interesting feature on ARTE TV, called La BDs’en va-t-en guerre (“Comic Books Go War”, Italia, 2008, 64min by Mark Daniels).
The documentary shows how the “documentary comic” is being used to describe events that are usually covered by journalists/photojournalists. It tries to explain why this is important and relevant and that it appears to be easier to communicate and share views on human tragedies in this way, even considering the amount of time and engagement that is necessary to prepare a comic book.
The documentary introduces the most important artists of this genre like Keiji Nakazawa’s Gen d’Hiroshima, where the author shares his memories about how he witnessed and survived the fall of the atomic bomb when he was 7 years old, Art Spiegelman’s unforgettable Maus, and younger artists such as Joe Sacco (Palestine, une nation occupée, Gorazde), Marjane Satrapi (Persépolis), Ted Rall (Passage afghan), Emmanuel Guibert (Le Photographe) and Joe Kubert (Fax de Sarajevo), who convey testimonies through stunning visual stories, which are often just as brutal but nonetheless “easier” to look at than pictures from journalists.
This is certainly a very interesting topic which one could talk at length about, especially regarding the arguments claiming that we are getting “numb” towards a certain type of crisis documentation. For some stories – witness stories for example, where not enough photographic material exist or where the personal aspect is to be stressed – the documentary comic could be a way to go.
I wrote about The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders here … and it was interesting for me to see an interview with Emmanuel Guibert on this documentary, telling about the work on the books and about his friendship with Didier Lefèvre.
“Comics go to war” will be reaired Jan. 31st on ARTE, if anybody is interested.
‘Lost Boy Mountain’ is said to be Lester B. Morrison’s first book. I found it by accident when I was looking through Alec Soth’s new blog ‘Little Brown Mushroom‘, which is a shared site between him and five other people – one of them being Lester B. Morrison, who also has some tips on a nice cave property for sale in Tennessee. Anybody into that? (I actually would be terribly interested, if I only had the money :)
Back to the book.
It has 24 pages including the title page which is of the same greyish paper an is about 14 x 21,5 cm (5.6 x 8 in) in size. It is staple bound, printed in coloroffset and it looks almost like a facsimile – with the smeared pencil writing all over the pages (it really shimmers in the light as if it were pencil, and not print).
Inside it starts right with the first Haiku (5-7-5 syllables) which combines the metaphors of wooden treehouses, caves and Lester between them … Echoing the Haikus, we find pictures of treehouses and caves, often joined together by pencil drawings. Altogether it contains 11 Haikus in pencil handwriting and 11 pictures/drawings of different sizes – all variations of the same theme.
‘Lost Boy Mountain’ comes as an edition of 1000 but unfortunately it is neither signed nor numbered. There is only a printed ‘LBM’ on the bottom of the last page.
I have to say, I really enjoyed this little book a lot. It’s multi layering gave me more pleasure than most of the ’straight’ photobooks I have piled up here in the last months. It only LOOKS like a big understatement, and the looks fit well to the overall idea of Haikus.
I bought 5 of the 1000 prints last December. So I have some nice presents for artist friends on the table now. If I ever come up with a contest on this site, I might choose it as a prize. It would be a worthy prize.
If you do not want to take the chance, hurry to purchase it on “Little Brown Mushroom”.
Little Brown Mushroom
Lester B. Morrison
Lost Boy Mountain
LBM
… I have to say that some questions do arise here … :)
Here comes post #2 about artists/photographers who are using drawings/illustrations alongside photography.
The photographs above are from Roger Ballen, an American photographer who has been based in South Africa since the late 1970s. The image on the left is called ‘Room Of The Ninja Turtles’ and is from 2003, the image on the right is from 2002 and is called ‘Crawling Man’.
Roger Ballen often adds different kinds of drawings to his settings before photographing them. While the drawings are often literally done on surfaces, such as walls, he sometimes uses objects like wires or similar (and their shadows) as a means to do a 3D drawing instead. When I saw the image on the top right, the first thing that came to my mind were Francis Bacon’s “cages”.
By including drawings into the picture, he adds an additional layer of texture and meaning to his images.
There is one video interview with him over at Lens Culture, which I found very interesting. It is called ‘Psychology, metaphor and controversy in the art of photography’.
You can find a slideshow with some of his work together with an audio interview here. And another audio interview together with a review about his photobook ‘Boarding House’ here. I ordered ‘Boarding House’ as soon as I saw it and I am looking forward to hold it in my hands!
On my search for examples of work that uses photography alongside illustration, I recently acquired a book by Guibert, Lefèvre and Lemercier, called The Photographer: Into war-torn Afghanistan with Doctores Without Borders.
On the jacket I found this short description of the project:
“At the end of July 1986, Didier Lefèvre left Paris for Afghanistan. He barely returned to tell the tale. It was his first major assignment as a photojournalist, documenting a Doctors without Borders mission. Camera in hand, Lefèvre traveled with a band of doctors and nurses into the heart of Northern Afghanistan, where the war between the Soviet Union and the Afghan Mujahideen was raging.
The mission affected Lefèvre as profoundly as the war affected contemporary history. His photographs, paired with the art of Emmanuel Guibert, tell the story of an arduous journey undertaken by men and women intent on mending what others destroy.”
The book starts with an historical overview and introduction by Alexis Siegel, who is also responsible for the translation. The story itself is made out of a combination of the available contact sheets from Didier Lefèvre and – where there was no photographical material – illustrations from Emmanuel Guibert. Knowing how difficult it is, to successfully combine both photography and illustration, I was impressed to see how well they were married in The Photographer . Emmanuel Guibert did a good job contrasting the the richly detailed black and white photography with very simple looking (!) artwork with thick blotted lines, that go extremely well with the darks in the photos without competing. To set the illustrations further apart, they are held in subdued colors, filled in by Frédéric Lemercier, who was also the designer of the book.
The Photographer: Into war-torn Afghanistan with Doctores Without Borders was originally published in three volumes in France.
 |
 |
 |