Related posts:

1. NY Photo Festival Blogging Panel
2. NY Photo Festival 2009 Round-up
3. Paris Photo and beyond

An image made by Aurelien Dumont using the Impossible Collection's new PX100 instant film

Please forgive the painfully unoriginal title of this post, but it does seem really appropriate. In a couple of days the aptly-named Impossible Project will begin to sell the first of their instant film packs for Polaroid cameras on their online store. Although there has been a fair amount of buzz out there on this for several months, it never felt entirely certain that they would really be able to save instant film when Polaroid decided to stop making it in 2008. At a time where materials for film photography are becoming painfully scarce, to the point where photographers are stockpiling paper or filling their freezers with film, it feels like a big deal that a company has found a way to actually start making new kinds of instant film. The British Journal of Photography has a feature on the new product launch and a few samples of images made with the new PX100 film.

No related posts.

I have just written a piece on Michael Wolf’s Paris Street View for edition 22, Peeping, of the excellent Foam Magazine run by the Amsterdam museum of the same name. The museum got as excited as I did about this new series and decided to go the extra mile by putting up an outdoor installation of 24 XXL prints from Paris Street View in Amsterdam’s Zuidas area (on the street where Google has its Dutch office) which is in the process of being redeveloped. I made the trip up for the launch and to find out a bit more about the Amsterdam photo scene.

The Paris Street View installation is very impressive (which this terrible installation view taken with my phone camera does not do justice to at all) and the work takes on an added dimension when displayed in amongst the city, rather than just on the neutral white walls of a gallery or museum. Wolf likened it to a “monument to privacy lost” and these massive figures dotted around this modern urban landscape also create an interesting warped sense of scale, making the buildings in the background look like scale models. It will be interesting to see how people in the area react to the works over time and whether the work can provoke some further debate over these issues. (Update: Michael Wolf just kindly sent me some proper installation views so I have uploaded one of these instead).

I also swung by Foam itself. For a museum that only opened in December 2001 in a small European country, Foam cuts an impressive figure on the European photo scene. The venue is not huge, but they use the space intelligently and a look at their programme schedule shows their ability to combine crowd-pleasing fare with ‘important’ exhibitions.

Ari Marcopoulos

The current programme is a great illustration of this as the ground floor is occupied by Amsterdam-born photographer and filmmaker, Ari Marcopoulos who has photographed street culture for several years on both US coasts. Although much of the photography in this exhibition left me cold, I was more interested in Marcopoulos’s large-scale xerox prints which reveal the influence of Andy Warhol, for whom he was a darkroom printer. But the highlight of It might seem familiar has to be a 10-minute video of Marcopoulos and an accomplice skating down a very steep road in California wearing matching pastel blue suits. This is far more exhilarating and revealing of the culture that Marcopoulos has spent 30 years documenting.

Alexander Rodchenko, The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky

The upper floor is devoted to an exhibition of vintage work by the Russian avant-garde artist, Alexander Rodchenko, which was first held at London’s Hayward Gallery in 2008. This is a very complete look at the photographer’s extraordinarily inventive and experimental career, from his early use of photography in graphic design in the 1920s to his later work on human movement. Every section of this show contains masterpieces, whether it be the early magazine covers, photograms or photomontages, the portraits or the later work on movement. The prints are all vintage and with a significant number coming from private collections this is a pretty unique opportunity to see this many quality Rodchenko’s in one place.

Between Paris Street View, the Rodchenko exhibit and the city of Amsterdam itself, there are more than enough reasons to make a visit.

Related posts:

1. Michael Wolf: Paris Street View
2. “La rentrée” in Paris: upcoming exhibitions
3. Review: William Eggleston Paris @ Fondation Cartier

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

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.

Related posts:

1. Japan: A Self-Portrait opening in Tokyo
2. Interview: Eikoh Hosoe’s Butterfly Dream
3. Review: Shigeichi Nagano, Hong Kong Reminiscence 1958

Maurizio Anzeri

Paris Photo 2009 has just drawn to a close and already the reports are flowing in thick and fast. There is much less of a consensus than for NYPH, which was generally perceived to have been a bit disappointing (see my previous round-up post on this). I am just happy to have survived it all at this stage and have yet to form many coherent thoughts, but here are my “impressions à chaud.”

Judging from all the opinions that I have heard over the past few days, Paris Photo manages to be different things to different people. Pretty much everyone I spoke to had a different set of highlights and there have been many totally divergent assessments of whether this was a good year or not. The only common position I have seen emerging is that Maurizio Anzeri is great and I am certainly not about to disagree. I will be highlighting a few of my picks or discoveries from the fair in the next few days, but at first I wanted to give a few general impressions.

Overall this year’s fair felt less contemporary than previous years, with more vintage work on show particularly from the postwar years. Aside from the Arab and Iranian material which was on show given this year’s theme: there were strong representations of Japanese, Korean and South African work, both from domestic and international galleries. China was a notable absentee (only one Chinese gallery was present, 798 Gallery from Beijing), especially compared to the giddy heights of a few years ago.

I think that Paris Photo’s idea to have a guest country every year is a real asset (I would say this though as I am involved in trying to improve exchanges between Japan and the West in the field of photography). People often seem disappointed by the selection of work from the guest country or region, and some guests are undoubtedly stronger than others, but even if they just happen to see one new artist that they hadn’t before, I think it is worth it. The art market is often inclined not to take risks these days and Paris Photo’s guest country system helps to force a certain amount of new lesser known material in each year. One positive trend that I noticed is that a couple of Japanese galleries (G/P and Base) that were first-timers at Paris Photo last year have now stayed on. This cannot happen every year of course as space is at a premium but it is good to see that some doors are staying open.

The sheer quantity of work on show and its increasingly global scope make it very difficult to be completely disappointed: no matter what your specific area of interest might be, you will always find something to get excited about. I think treating Paris Photo like an exhibition is a mistake: too much work, too many people, not enough space,  no natural air or light, and the world’s longest queue for the world’s most expensive coffee are some pretty big obstacles to a great viewing-only experience.

A major part of what make’s Paris Photo’s success is the people: it has become the major destination in Europe (and even globally) for photographers, directors, curators, booksellers, publishers, magazines, journos, and bloggers and it is by running into all these people that the fair becomes really interesting. I have come to think of Paris Photo as a place to make discoveries and great contacts. This was the first year that I have attended as a blogger and thanks to Laurence Vecten of LOZ we had a discussion with a bunch of other European photo-bloggers which lasted two hours but could quite happily have gone on for a couple more days. This is the kind of event that makes Paris Photo such a unique opportunity.

My one (slightly old-mannish) whinge is that the fair really is getting incredibly crowded. I’d be curious to know how much more attendance there was this year compared to 2008.  I heard some dealers complaining that the crowds are making it difficult to show work to collectors as there are always dozens of people looking over their shoulder to see what is going on… not a very conducive environment for making a sale. As they are the ones that make the economics of the fair work, this could be a big deal, but the idea of giving a 1.5 hour slot to professionals and collectors in the morning is a good innovation and I don’t think it makes life that much more difficult for the general public. In terms of sales I am not in a position to gauge how things went overall, but my impression is that the feeling of panic that gripped everyone in 2008 has been replaced by cautious optimism. Let’s hope that keeps on going.

Further reading: for another round-up of the fair and links to even more, check out Nick’s excellent On Shadow blog.

Related posts:

1. Paris Photo and beyond
2. Paris in Amsterdam
3. “La rentrée” in Paris: upcoming exhibitions

So here are a few of my picks, at Paris Photo itself…

• Ryuji Miyamoto’s photograms at Taro Nasu Gallery
• The Arab Image Foundation in Beirut’s selection from their collection. I know very little about the photographic tradition of the region and I’m not usually a fan of Paris Photo’s central exhibition, but this promises to be an eye-opener.
• ‘Hanging out’ with Roger Ballen (Saturday, 4pm, Project Room)

… and beyond

• Irving Penn at Thierry Marlat. Penn passed away very recently and Marlat has represented him for many, many years. If anyone has got good Penn, it is Marlat and apparently Penn was involved in all aspects of the show down to the invitation.
• Daido Moriyama, Lettre à Saint-Lou at François Sage. I’m sure there will be some Moriyama at Paris Photo, but if you feel in need of a bigger dose of ‘are-bure-boke’ then try François Sage’s (appointment only) exhibition, which judging from the invitation alone, should be rather good.
• Pablo Hare (who I discovered at Photoquai), Alejandra Lavadia and Cinthia Marcelle at Bendana-Pinel.

After today blogging is likely to be patchy at best, so bear with me until next week.

Related posts:

1. Paris Photo: crossing the finish line
2. NY Photo Festival Blogging Panel
3. NY Photo Festival 2009 Round-up

Fred Ritchin

A couple of weeks ago I attended a talk at the American University of Paris given by Fred Ritchin, the author of After Photography, who has been thinking and writing about the future of photography in the digital age for longer than most people. The session was tantalisingly entitled Photography and human rights, but mercifully it was far more interesting than the title suggests.

His talk (given in total darkness so that we could see the slide show that he had prepared), was much like the man’s career: it darted off in several directions at once, with ideas constantly being eaten up by new ones. While I did will him to slow down on more than one occasion, his rapid-fire thought-process is fascinating and the quantity of ideas that get thrown at you at once are in keeping with Ritchin’s message that we need to wake up and smell the digitally enhanced coffee.

In his view (one which I share) slick, glossy photo-journalism is antiquated and only has a minuscule impact on the contemporary audience. In recent times it has been replaced by ‘citizen photo-journalists’ taking photos with whatever cameras they have to done. Somewhat strangely, poor quality, pixelated, uncomposed images have become a mark of authenticity, some kind of indication of a raw truthfulness. In the era of reality TV we want images made by insiders not outsiders, no matter how good the latter are.

Ritchin’s central thesis is that we are lagging way behind technological innovation in terms of the way we use photography to address issues of human rights and more broadly issues of sustainable development. He illustrated this idea by a number of image-related tools (not all of them photographic), which Ritchin sees as having huge, virtually untapped potential: Google’s Street View, Photosketch, Photosynth, etc. One great example of the use of technological innovation to make photography do something completely new and actually useful is the Extreme Ice Survey, a project that provides visual proof of how the glaciers are melting using time lapse photography.

I had to keep stopping myself from thinking about Ritchin’s propositions in the context of fine art photography, which is where I spend most of my photographic time, because these are ideas that are centred around press or, more loosely, documentary photography.

Overall, while I don’t agree with Ritchin’s doom-mongering message that press photography is all but dead, I think he is right in his provocative call for shaking things up and, more importantly, for making use of the amazing technology that already exists. This applies far beyond the realm of photography to much of web 2.0’s innovations, particularly to social networking. If we could get Facebook to be about more than looking at drunken photos of college frat parties or throwing virtual sheep at each other, it could potentially make some kind of difference.

Further reading: for some reasons why photography may not be entirely dead, try reading these Asian photographers’ answers to the question, “Why photography now?“

Related posts:

1. Photo-journalism: leaving Nachtwey behind

Ihei Kimura, Paris, 1954-55

As Paris slowly drags itself out of its long summer slumber, I thought this would be a good time to draw up a list of a few of the forthcoming photography exhibitions to look out for when the city switches itself back on in the next couple of weeks.

• The Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in the 14th will be showing vintage work by August Sander taken from the collection of the SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne. Sander was a master of the portrait and, with a lot of work that will be shown for the first time in Paris, this one should not be missed. From September 9th.

• Galerie Vu in the 4th will be showing work taken from the collaboration between Anders Petersen and JH Engström, From Back Home (the book won this year’s Author Book Award at Arles and I recommend tracking it down if there are any copies left). Engström was Petersen’s assistant in the early 90s and their photographic wanderings intertwine beautifully in this project. From September 11th.

• Vera Lutter will be having her first solo show at Galerie Xippas in the 3rd with work spanning the past ten years of her career. Lutter makes pin-hole cameras out of entire rooms and the resulting photographs of architectural and industrial landmarks are monumental in scale. From September 12th.

• For some more photographic portraiture, but in a totally different vein to Sander, Erwin Olaf will be exhibiting recent work taken from the series Laboral Escena at the Magda Danysz Gallery in the 11th. The work, inspired by the eponymic building in Gijon, Spain, consists of portraits in period costume reminiscent of “the classic paintings of the Spanish Gold century.” Some of his work is a little too cold and metallic for my liking, but I am curious to see these. From September 12th.

• The Quai Branly Museum in the 7th is holding the second installment of its photography biennale, Photoquai. Although the first edition of this event did not exactly fulfill its potential, it still promises to be a good opportunity to discover work that doesn’t make it onto the conventional photography circuit. From September 22nd.

• The blockbuster show of the the next few months promises to be the Pompidou’s Subversion des images, a huge (over 400 pieces) overview of surrealist photography and film including work by Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, Claude Cahun, Raoul Ubac, Jacques-André Boiffard, Maurice Tabard, André Breton and Paul Eluard. This should make an excellent companion to the Bilder träume exhibition of surrealist painting and sculpture which is on in Berlin until November 22nd. From September 23rd.

• And finally, the Marais’ Galerie Particulière is reopening today so you have another chance to catch Metropolis, a great exhibition of work taken from Michael Wolf’s Architecture of Density and Transparent City series (I reviewed the show when it opened in July). Until September 26th.

Related posts:

1. Paris Photo and beyond
2. Paris in Amsterdam
3. Michael Wolf: Paris Street View

The excellent dispatches magazine recently organized a debate at Brooklyn’s VII Gallery with Gary Knight, one of the magazine’s co-founders, and Tim Hetherington, a young photo-journalist (and ‘thinker’) who has made some interesting attempts to break out of the dark corner in which photo-journalism finds itself. The debate is available in its entirety on the dispatches website and is well worth a look.

At the conversation I attended earlier this week one of the panellists, a former journalist for the NY Times, kept steering the discussion towards his experience of photo-journalism, blurring the lines between it and photography. I found that there was a palpable feeling of discomfort in the air each time that he drew this parallel: as if  ‘photo-journalism’ has become a dirty word which is not really supposed to be mentioned in a discussion of Photography with a capital ‘P’. The fence (or is it barbed wire?) between these two fields has always seemed a little artificial to me and thankfully up-and-comers like Hetherington are contributing to tearing holes in it (see Sleeping Soldiers for a good example of this). I have been wondering whether the recent turmoil that is hitting newspapers and magazines (the traditional homes of photo-journalism) so hard is going to further contribute to blurring this distinction. In the dispatches debate the Knight explained his concern that the only images of war that get distributed are overly legible, presenting the extremities of war (tragedy, suffering, violence) and not the body of it. This used to be precisely what photo-journalists searched for in conflict photographs—James Nachtwey still seems to think that by presenting the most dramatic forms of these images that he can single-handedly change the course of history—but thankfully this is changing. Maybe that, as photo-journalists are forced to find new ways of distributing their images, we will start to see a less selective picture and one which will be a lot harder to categorise as unrelated to ‘fine art photography’.

Related posts:

1. Is the photo-album giving way to the mixtape?
2. The Aftermath Project
3. Photography has died (again)

Last night’s conversation was heated, if pretty inconclusive. The most entertaining comments of the evening were quoted from a recent issue of Cabinet magazine, in which an Iranian contributor laid out her vision of the art world of the future. In this quite wonderful art utopia every critic would be forced to produce one piece of art every year, and every artist one piece of criticism; art sales would be decided by every wannabe buyer writing a two-page letter to the artists explaining what the piece means to them and why they are the most suitable owner for it, with the artist deciding on the buyer on this basis.

Much of the time was spent knee-deep in nostalgia for the good old days. One of the speakers suggested that over the last few years we have seen the chain of influence in the art world essentially reverse itself. Twenty years ago critics were those who spotted talent, museums and dealers followed, with collectors completing the cycle. Today the collectors call the shots: dealers scurry around behind them trying to dig up more of whatever was selling last month, museums put on shows based on secondary market values, and critics get called in at the end of all of this in order to write the requisite eulogies. It’s a generalisation but one which certainly explains why most arts criticism has lost its teeth. Everything seems to be ranked somewhere between good and excellent, or simply shrugged off. Partly this is due to the staggering proliferation of exhibitions, art fairs and book launches and the even more staggering proliferation of opinions. Most arts writers are trying to keep up rather than having any time to digest anything, let alone spend the time writing about something that left them unimpressed.

What emerges clearly from all of this is that any writer on the arts that thinks that thinks they limit themselves to art criticism will be crashing back down to earth by the time I have finished writing this blog post. I recently reviewed Dans L’Oeil du Critique at the National Museum of Modern Art. Interestingly, this might be the first show in France (or anywhere?), which is based on the work of a critic, the late Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, rather than an artist, theme or movement. What I found even more striking is that by the time a museum got around to taking such a ‘bold’ step, it seems that the role of critics has dwindled to the point where there isn’t anyone left worth making such a show about.

Related posts:

1. Stormy weather over the US museum landscape
2. Word of the Year 2009
3. State of the photo-book market