Review: Stefan Heyne, The Noise

By eyecurious | Published: 9 March 2010

The NoiseStefan Heyne’s The Noise is aptly named. His images give the impression of being situated between two states, like the static between radio stations. Their subjects, a window, the keel of a boat, a doorway, a phone, are still recognizable but are reduced to the most basic forms emerging from the surrounding darkness. Heyne uses blur to create these abstractions of simple objects in such a way that there is little that is obviously ‘photographic’ about these images. The essays in the book refer to Gerhard Richter’s photorealistic paintings and Heyne’s images feel like a similar exploration of the boundary between painting and photography.

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March Madness: 1 month, 2 exhibitions

By eyecurious | Published: 1 March 2010
Shigeichi Nagano, Workers at 5pm, Marunouchi, Tokyo, 1959

Shigeichi Nagano, Workers at 5pm, Marunouchi, Tokyo, 1959

Blogging has been slow this month since I am curating two exhibitions opening in March. The first of these, Tokyo Stories, with work by Hiroshi Hamaya, Tadahiko Hayashi and Shigeichi Nagano, opens at Stockholm’s Kulturhuset on 6 March. I’ll be giving a talk from 1-3pm that day on Japanese photography and photographing Tokyo, so for any Swedish or Stockholm-based readers out there, do come along. The show runs from 6 March to 2 May 2010, and you can find out more about it here and here.

Eikoh Hosoe, Ukiyo-e Projections #1-1, 2002

Eikoh Hosoe, Ukiyo-e Projections #1-1, 2002

Then on 20 March, Eikoh Hosoe: Theatre of Memory opens in Cologne at the Japanese Cultural Institute. We are producing a catalogue for this show, which I am very excited about so keep an eye out for more news about that in the next couple of weeks. You can find out more about the exhibition here and here.

In between all of this, I am planning to turn at least a couple of the 20+draft posts that have been staring at me for weeks into published ones.

Posted in Events, Japanese photography, eyecurious News | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Plastic, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways

By eyecurious | Published: 27 February 2010
Megumi Tomomitsu

Megumi Tomomitsu

Megumi Tomomitsu is fond of the plastic bag. She has even compiled a pretty exhaustive list of reasons why. For someone (and somehow I think I am not alone here) who stores hundreds of the things for absolutely no discernable reason, this interests me. Thinking about it, I probably own more plastic bags than photobooks, than items of clothing, than pretty much anything actually. Thank you Megumi, you have convinced me that I should learn to love my plastic bags, or at least to set them free.

Posted in Asian photography, Japanese photography, On a lighter note | Tagged | Leave a comment

Review: Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s

By eyecurious | Published: 24 February 2010

Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and '70s

Ivan Vartanian and Ryuichi Kaneko’s Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s belongs to a new breed of photobook: the book on books. Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s two-volume history of the photobook is probably the best known of these, but there are other interesting examples. Jeff Ladd’s Errata Editions is taking this one step further with the ‘Books on Books’ series which each focus on a single photobook in order to make rare and out-of-print books accessible to us mere mortals.

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Posted in Asian photography, Book reviews, Collecting, Japanese photography, Photo-books | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Plagiarism in photography

By eyecurious | Published: 18 February 2010

There is a bit of a fuss going on at Conscientious and PDN over photographs that look very similar. I am less interested in debating how similar two images are and whether we can consider there to be plagiarism (although if you have a few hundred hours to waste, I imagine that you could devote them all to trawling the internet comparing images by fine art photographers and finding striking similarities), but there are some very interesting questions surrounding this issue in the context of photographic ‘art’ and hopefully I will manage to turn my thoughts on the subject into a post soon. In the meantime, here is my latest random online discovery of two images that look pretty similar.

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Shomei Tomatsu, As Salaam Alaykum

By eyecurious | Published: 15 February 2010
Shomei Tomatsu, Kingdom of Mud

Shomei Tomatsu, Kingdom of Mud

For any Tokyoites out there, Gallery 21 will be showing a selection of works from a lesser-known series of Shomei Tomatsu’s work next month. Although he has never been to Europe or the United States, Tomatsu has done his share of wandering around Asia and in the 1960s he made a trip to Afghanistan, which led to a series entitled Kingdom of Mud. I hope these will be vintage works, but in any case a Tomatsu exhibition is always worth a visit.

Shomei Tomatsu, As Salaam Alaykum, Gallery 21
2-28 March 2010

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Moment of sublime strangeness: Medvedev on photography

By eyecurious | Published: 12 February 2010

A little Friday fun for you: the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, on a 7-minute rant on the nature of photography. I love the way this is all delivered straight to camera, as if he really wants every last Russian to know his thoughts on the subject. Would love to know who wrote this speech for him.

(via foodforyoureyes)

Posted in Existentialist photo-ramblings, On a lighter note, Tangents | Tagged | 4 Comments

Giacomo Brunelli

By eyecurious | Published: 12 February 2010
Giacomo Brunelli, The Animals

Giacomo Brunelli, The Animals

Giacomo Brunelli is currently showing his work The Animals at London’s Photofusion gallery (until March 26th). Brunelli’s images have a ferocity that is absent in a lot of wildlife photography. The images are not shot from a human perspective but from that of the animals themselves, which contributes to the immersiveness and energy of the images. This is not a photographic portrait that seeks to emphasize the human traits of animals or the majesty and elegance of the animal kingdom. Brunelli’s “animal-focused street photography” highlights the bestial traits of these animals, and the presence of violence and death comes through to powerful effect.

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Posted in European photography, One to watch | Tagged | 1 Comment

Interview: Hiroh Kikai, A man in the cosmos

By eyecurious | Published: 10 February 2010
Hiroh Kikai, An older man with a penetrating gaze, 2001

Hiroh Kikai, An older man with a penetrating gaze, 2001

I first met Hiroh Kikai in 2007 after discovering his portraits taken over several decades in Askausa, Tokyo, in his stunning book Persona. A collection of these photographs entitled Asakusa Portraits has since been published by Steidl. On a trip to Japan in May 2008, I managed to sit down with Kikai for an interview in Shibuya, Tokyo. The interview was conducted in Japanese and the following extract from the interview is a translation.

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Posted in Interviews, Japanese photography | Tagged | 3 Comments

iPhoneography

By eyecurious | Published: 8 February 2010
iPhone fitted with a SLR lens

iPhone fitted with a SLR lens

iPhone’s have been on my mind recently as E just had hers brazenly stolen straight out of her hand on the metro last week. I may be just a bit behind the curve writing about the iPhone when Apple have just launched their new revolutionary (and badly named) iPad, but I recently received an email from Chicago-based Jeremy Edwards with information about his From the Pocket iPhone photography project, a kind of visual diary of his city, which he is planning to publish as a series of print-on-demand books starting this year. His site comes with a kind of (dis)claimer, “All of the images featured on this site were captured using iPhone cameras. Images were processed using various iPhone photography applications only.” Jeremy calls himself an iPhoneographer and refers to photographs taken with an iPhone as a specific genre, “iPhoneography”.

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Posted in Existentialist photo-ramblings | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

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