Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Prayer Flag and Chortens, Ladakh, India 1988 1988 Silver gelatin print
Connor’s photographs reveal the essence of her subjects, yielding a sense of timelessness while visually evoking the intangible. She uses a distinctive technique. A large-format view camera allows her to achieve remarkable clarity and rich detail. Her prints are created by direct contact of the 8 x 10-inch negative on printing out paper, exposed and developed using sunlight …
Connor embraces a wide range of subject matter, connecting the physical and the spiritual world. Just as sacred art evokes deep meaning even without an explicit understanding, Connor hopes her photographs serve a similar metaphorical function. Upon entering Chartres Cathedral, for example, one feels transported into another realm, regardless of religious beliefs. Connor’s images share this transformative nature as they transcend the boundaries of subject, culture, and time. She brings an equal amount of attention to a rock in the desert as she does when she photographs a temple.
Text from the Phoenix Art Museum website
Many thankx to the Phoenix Art Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Windows and Thangkas, Ladakh 1988 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Library of Prayer Books, Ladakh, India 1988 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor is an American photographer who photographs spiritual and exotic locations including India, Mexico, Thailand, Ireland, Peru, and Nepal. Her photographs appear in a number of books, including Spiral Journey, a catalog of her exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in 1990 and Odyssey: Photographs by Linda Connor, published by Chronicle Books in 2008. Connor was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1976 and 1988 and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979. Connor’s work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Portal Figures, Chartres Cathedral, France 1989 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Mudra, Mindroling Monastery, Tibet 1993 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Blind Musician, Kashmir, India 1985 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Apollo, Mt. Nemrut, Turkey 1992 Silver gelatin print
Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography, Phoenix Art Museum 1625 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85004, USA
The Americans. Photographs by Robert Frank. Introduction by Jack Kerouac. Scalo, Zürich/D.A.P., New York, 1993. First Scalo edition. 179 pp. Oblong quarto. Hardbound in photo-illustrated dust jacket. Black-and-white reproductions.
WOW! One of the seminal books of photography and signed as well.
“It was Frank’s The Americans that made the photographic book into an art form in its own right. Frank was following a lead set by [Wright] Morris’ book (The Inhabitants) and, especially, by Evans’ American Photographs, both of which are designed to let pictures play off each other in a way that controls and reinforces their effect on the viewer. Even Klein’s New York book displays this tendency. But Frank’s goes much further, creating a denser, richer, deeper structure of images than any book before it.”
Colin Westerbeck in Michel Frizot, et. al., The New History of Photography.
In Atlas of the Real World, global inequities in the third millennium are made strikingly visible. The book uses a clever mapping formula, massive amounts of data and a whole lot of computer power to produce 366 maps that stretch, twist and shrink the boundaries of nations according to how much they have of whatever is being mapped: money, disease, doctors, televisions, endangered animals …
The atlas (which builds on the free maps available at the website worldmapper.org) uses the simplest means to get across the most profound facts. Each country is brightly colour-coded and the maps are overlaid on a natural-looking ocean bed. The effect is a little like looking into a funfair mirror – you know what you’re seeing, but it takes a moment to work out what’s happened to it …
In the most extreme cases, the map no longer looks like the planet Earth: the map of people killed by volcanoes (302) shows two large round islands – Colombia and North Africa – and a small atoll of shrunken Asian nations …
They’re not really maps in the old-fashioned sense, but visual renderings of complex and sometimes frightening realities, perfectly suited to our supposedly post-literate age … As a wake up call, it’s not quite on the level of the first photograph of the Earth from space – the “blue marble” that inspired a generation of environmentalists. But it’s a reminder that everything we do, from fighting wars (map 318) to selling toys (129, 130), we do on the planet.
In visual form, statistics that seem like abstract numbers are transformed into a reality that can be as ugly as an Africa swollen with HIV cases (269), as hopeful as strong worldwide growth in education (226), or as simple as the fact America, and the rest of the West, could stand to go on a diet.
Jenny Sinclair1
1/ Sinclair, Jenny. “Inequality unfolds in warped world,” in A2, The Age newspaper, Melbourne. Saturday November 29th 2008.
I photograph because I am interested in people, what it means to be alive, and how we make sense of the world. Whether I am photographing on assignment, or for personal work, the same ideas direct my attention. On the psychological and narrative level, I am interested in looking at states of being: birth, childhood, ageing, physical fragility, death, sensuality, the animal world and people in nature.
Formally, I tend to emphasise the tactile qualities of the living world: skin, hair, light, surface, colour, and material. I recognise that these are very broad themes, but they are also the basis for essential philosophical questions. My photographs don’t provide answers to these questions, but hopefully act as moments of contemplation.
Jocelyn Lee artist statement
Jocelyn Lee approaches her photographic subjects looking to reveal not simply the individuality of those who pose before her camera. She also wants to convey something deeper about how her subjects confront the place where they live and the situation in which they find themselves. This interest in the psychological dimensions of character is emblematic of her portraiture – whether she is working on an editorial assignment or on an independent project.
Jocelyn Lee’s photographs for this exhibition are drawn from work that she has completed in Maine, a place where she has spent much time. The images derive from several projects, including an advertising campaign for a local rug designer and a commission to portray adolescent girls. Seen together, they suggest the role that environment and narrative play in the art of portraiture. Although Lee is interested in photographing specific people at different stages of life, each portrait also provides a broader opportunity to reflect on our shared humanity. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Lee has served as a professor of photography at Princeton University since 2003.
America is a snapshot culture. Armed with a portable camera and a spirit of inquiry, we revel in the images that we create. Although we often treat still photographs – including portraits – as ephemeral fragments to be discarded or replaced by the next image, there are portrait photographers today who create pictures that defy an easy death. Often working on a specific commission or editorial assignment, these photographers compose portraits that cause us to pause and reflect.”
Portraiture Now: Feature Photography focuses on six photographers who, by working on assignment for publications such as the New Yorker, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine, each bring their distinctive “take” on contemporary portraiture to a broad audience. Critically acclaimed for their independent fine-art work, these photographers – Katy Grannan, Jocelyn Lee, Ryan McGinley, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller, and Alec Soth – have also pursued a variety of editorial projects, taking advantage of the opportunities and grappling with the parameters that these assignments introduce. Their work builds upon a longstanding tradition of photographic portraiture for the popular press and highlights creative possibilities for twenty-first-century portrayal. The exhibition has additional portraits not included in this website; it opened on November 26, 2008, and closed on September 27, 2009.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
~ KATY GRANNAN ~ JOCELYN LEE ~ RYAN MCGINLEY ~ STEVE PYKE ~ MARTIN SCHOELLER ~ ALEC SOTH
“A critic once pointed out to me the different ways in which I photograph men and women. With men I seem to be poking fun, he said, whereas my depiction of women is more reverent. He makes a good point. Many of my best pictures of men are playful (a man in a flight suit holding model airplanes, a shirtless man with carrots in his ears). But the women I photograph look more like saints than clowns. As a man, I suppose, I identify more with my male subjects. In them, I see my own awkwardness and frailty. Women are always “the other.”
In assembling this group of portraits of women, I’m aware that I’m treading on dangerous ground. When I was in college, I learned to be distrustful of men’s depictions of women. I remember seeing Garry Winogrand’s book ‘Women Are Beautiful’ in the school library and being shocked that it hadn’t been defaced for its blatant objectification of women. But looking back, maybe I was too harsh. Whether one photographs men or women, it is always a form of objectification. Whatever you say about Winogrand, his depiction was honest.
In putting together a collection of my best portraits of women, I’m trying to come to terms with how I honestly see and depict women. Are my pictures romanticised? Sexualised? Why do I see women in this way? For me, photography is as much about the way I respond to the subject as it is about the subject itself.”
Alec Soth artist statement
Adroitly navigating the disciplines of editorial photography and fine art work, Alec Soth has emerged as a leading American artist. He is an associate photographer with the famed Magnum Photos group, and has shown his work in galleries and museums in the United States and in Europe.
Born and based in Minneapolis and educated in New York, Soth first attracted critical notice with his series Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004). Since then, he has published NIAGARA (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), and Dog Days, Bogotá (2007). Unlike many contemporary photographers, Soth works with a large-format 8 x 10-inch camera, which, given the time involved in setting up for a photograph, creates an intense relationship between the artist and subject. Soth sees this as the crux of his work.
For this exhibition, we have chosen a selection of his portraits of women, drawn from past editorial work and fine arts projects, including three portraits from Fashion Magazine, which explored the world of Paris couture and countered those images with subjects from Soth’s Minnesota home. As he notes, “I’m trying to come to terms with how I honestly see and depict women. Are my pictures romanticised? Sexualised? Why do I see women in this way? For me, photography is as much about the way I respond to the subject as it is about the subject itself.”
This full-length portrait was created during the winter of 2007, after Soth’s return from Paris, where he made the first photographs for his commission from Magnum Photos that resulted in Fashion Magazine. Fashion Magazine is the third in a series of projects by the same name, in which Magnum asks one photographer to document the whirl of fashion week in Paris from his or her own point of view.
“Photography is a kind of permission; it’s a way in. It’s a catalyst for extraordinary experiences that would otherwise not be possible. (This is the common thread between my personal projects and commissioned work.) I have had so many life-changing moments – some are dramatic, most are utterly mundane and exquisite.
I consider each of these experiences a privilege, and every subject worthy of attention.”
Katy Grannan artist statement
In images for the New York Times Magazine, Katy Grannan focuses on such poignant details as the teenager’s imperfect complexion, the sick man’s drooping muscles, a tidy kitchen counter, or a neighbourhood swing to make us understand heartrending realities of juvenile imprisonment, end-of-life decisions, or post-traumatic stress syndrome. For several of her art gallery projects, Grannan advertised for subjects in small-town newspapers. As she gained the sitters’ trust and helped visualise their fantasies, many posed nude or partially undressed. In Grannan’s work for the Times, we recognise similar qualities of risk, vulnerability, and, ultimately, empathy between the photographer and her subjects.
This portrait of four-year-old Audrey Wilbur is a study in contrasts between the cheerful fabrics of the clothing and decor and the impoverished bareness of the room’s mattress, walls, and floor. Grannan’s depiction of Audrey, made at the height of the dot-com bubble, was the cover for the New York Times Magazine’s March 19, 2000, issue, which included James Fallows’s “The Invisible Poor” and a photo essay titled “In the Shadow of Wealth.”
Schoeller photographed Barack Obama for a December 2004 feature on “Men of the Year,” in Gentleman’s Quarterly, where a variant of this photograph appeared. Reflecting upon the success of his address at the 2004 Democratic convention, Obama, who would go on to win the presidential election in 2008, observed: “The reason you do this stuff is not to … get your face in a magazine … You do this stuff because you care about the epic struggle to make America what it can be.”
A photographic close-up is perhaps the purest form of portraiture, creating a confrontation between the viewer and the subject that daily interaction makes impossible, or at least impolite. In a close-up, the impact stems solely from the static subject’s expression or apparent lack thereof, so the viewer is challenged to read a face without the benefit of the environmental cues we naturally use to form our interpersonal reactions.
After seeing Bernd and Hilla Becher’s water tower series in 1991, I was inspired by the idea of photographing a large group of subjects in the exact same style. The pictures in my Close Up series have all been taken from similar angles and with the same equipment, but here I have tried to bring out personality and capture individuality in a search for a flash of vulnerability and integrity. The greatest challenge in taking these images lies in the attempt to arrest the subtle moment that flickers between expressions, movements of which the subject is unaware. Like most portrait photographers, I aim to record the instant the subject is not thinking about being photographed, striving to get beyond the practiced facial performance, reaching for something unplanned. While trying to be as objective as possible, I acknowledge that every gesture is still an act of artifice. Familiar faces are treated with the same levels of scrutiny as the un-famous. The unknown and the too- well- known meet on a level platform that enables comparison, where a viewer’s existing notions of celebrity, value, and honesty are challenged.
Martin Schoeller artist statement
Martin Schoeller has exhibited his portraits internationally and has received numerous awards. His photographs have appeared in many prominent magazines, including the New Yorker, Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ), Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone.
A native of Germany, Schoeller, who now lives and works in New York, honed his skills by working with Annie Leibovitz. “Watching her deal with all of the elements that have to come together – subjects, lighting, production, weather, styling, location – gave me an insight into what it takes to be a portrait photographer,” he explains.
Equally important for Schoeller was the photography of German minimalists Bernd and Hilla Becher, who “inspired me to take a series of pictures, to build a platform that allows you to compare.” Schoeller’s portraiture brings viewers eye-to-eye with the well-known and the anonymous. His close-up style emphasises, in equal measure, the facial features, both studied and unstudied, of his subjects – presidential candidates and Pirahã tribespeople, movie stars and artists – levelling them in an inherently democratic fashion. Schoeller’s photographs challenge us to identify the qualities that may, under varying circumstances, either distinguish individuals or link them together, raising a critical question: What is the very nature of the categories we use to compare and contrast.
Well known for creating photographs of herself adopting a broad range of personas, Cindy Sherman’s own face is surprisingly unfamiliar. Originally published with a New Yorker profile of Sherman by Calvin Tomkins addressing “Her Secret Identities,” Schoeller’s portrait unmasks the influential artist.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Eighth and F Streets, NW Washington D.C.
Jean Louis Marie Eugène Durieu (1800-1874) was an early French amateur nude photographer, primarily known for his early nude photographs of men and women. A number of his male and female models were also painted by Eugène Delacroix, with whom he was friends.
Durieu was born in Nîmes, and became known for making studies of nudes for Delacroix. During his career Durieu was a lawyer. His last job was inspector for education and culture. In 1849 he went into early retirement and devoted himself to the newly developing technology of photography. In 1853, Durieu worked with Delacroix on a series of photographs of different male and female nude models.
In the early 1850s, Durieu, like many of his photographic peers, gravitated from the daguerreotype to the calotype. None of the works from his daguerreotypical oeuvre can be attributed to him with any certainty. Apart from the Delacroix album held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, another work on paper does exist, however, a more personal album preserved at the George Eastman House in Rochester, which was once part of the Gabriel Cromer collection. Its repertoire is more varied and includes female nudes in fairly elaborate settings, as well as portraits and reproductions of paintings and engravings. …
“I look with passion and without fatigue at these photographs of naked men, this admirable poem, this human body on which I learn to read and whose sight tells me more than the inventions of scribblers.”
Delacroix, ‘Journal’, October 5, 1855
Delacroix was confronted, like his entire generation, with the emergence of photography. An intriguing tool fascinating for the painter, this medium occupies a place apart in all of his work. He is at the source of a deep reflection on artistic truth in the face of photographic realism.
Far from seeing photography as a potential rival to painting, Delacroix took a keen interest in the development of this new medium, following its technical progress with sufficient curiosity to become a founding member of the Heliographic Society in 1851. He amassed a considerable photographic collection-of frescoes by Raphael, paintings by Rubens, and cathedral sculptures. Moreover, although he did not use a camera himself, a series of male and female nude models were photographed at his request by Eugène Durieu, in 1854. We know from his diary and letters that he sometimes used these photographs to practice drawing when no live models were available. These shots, which he sometimes carries with him, are a valuable tool for practicing drawing during his stays in the province. They meet very personal criteria; Delacroix wanted to use images voluntarily a little blurry and mostly stripped of all the quaint accessories conveyed by commercial photographs to the attention of artists.
However, despite a deep fascination for photography, Delacroix keeps a critical eye on this new medium. He adopts an attitude sometimes skeptical about his proper use and mastery of the technique, refusing to award benefits beyond its instrumental value. His reluctance is particularly keen with regard to one’s own photographed image: he even goes so far as to demand the destruction of some negatives, fortunately in vain.
The album of thirty-two photographs preserved in the department Prints and Photography of the National Library de France and commonly known as “Durieu Album”, by the name of the author of the photographs contains mainly photographs of two nude models, a man and a woman, taken by Eugene Durieu in the presence and on the indications of Delacroix during two sessions of successive poses, on Sunday 18 and 25 June 1854. The album was probably in lot 1532 of the sale after the painter’s death, bought by the critic Philippe Burty, who said on the front page: “All this sequence of photographs was bought by me at the posthumous sale of Eugène Delacroix’s workshop. He used it often and his cartons contained a considerable number of pencil studies from these photographs some of which were made expressly for him by one of his friends, and the models posed by him.” This album went on to the bibliographer and historian of the art Maurice Tourneux, who offered it in 1899 to the Cabinet des Prints.
The examination of the album, whose pages are all presented here in the order of the pages, shows that divides into four distinct sequences. Plate I represents a seated male nude model. His black beard and its abundant hair absolutely distinguishes him from the model with the better drawn musculature having posed in the following photographs. This test is undoubtedly part of a different set provided by Durieu to Delacroix.
The twenty-six photographs that follow in the album are, like the first, calotypes, that is to say prints from negative on paper. The calotype is characterised by a slight blur that Delacroix’s eyes found useful and tolerable photography, the grain of the negative paper producing, in the prints, less precise contours than in the daguerreotype or prints based on collodion glass. These twenty-six photographs of June 1854 form a very homogeneous series, with two models. The man that Delacroix calls “the Bohemian” appears by the development of his musculature and his ease to pose, as a professional model. He is present alone on seventeen views, and on the other nine in the company of a female model, probably an Italian, also a professional model, who posed again in 1855 for two other photographers.
The album ends with three prints, based on a glass negative, of the same model draped to the waist, sitting in front of a plain canvas background. The sharpness, due to the negative on glass, the rigorous composition and images, their “professional” aspect make them totally different from the previous ones, to such that we can hesitate to attribute them to Durieu. While the calotypes posed by Delacroix are very rare, these last three images are seen in more than one collection; they have been broadcast to a wider audience.
Text from the Delacroix et la photographie exhibition pdf (translated from the French by Google translate)
Enchanted by the play of light and reflections which transformed the appearance of matter, Riesener began a new aesthetic that made him one of the precursors of impressionism. A passionate colourist, he researched all the nuances of colour and studied the techniques of ancient Greece and the Renaissance, including Titian, Veronese and Corregio. Impressed by his research into colour, he turned towards Rubens, which for him was the Shakespeare of painting. Very early in his career Riesener studied tonal divisions, well before the physician Chevreul discovered their scientific basis. His tactile taste led him to look for the most perfect expression of matter and particularly of skin. He put poetry into his painting by the play of shadow and he passionately admired nature, life and all the beauties they produced.
He researched the subject of life in the countryside and, liking to paint reality, said he wanted to express “the heat of the day, the melancholy of the evening, meadows, flowers as they are in nature”. His study of the elements caused him to paint a series of skies which varied according to the light and time of day – the subjects were ahead of their time and Riesener had to fight hard against the Salon juries and the Institut. Using pure colours, he excluded the blacks and whites which had been used for shadows and light before him. His material science of colour was the opposition which gave birth to contrasts from juxtaposed pigments. He did not portray faces by contours, but by shadows and modelling.
Exhibition dates: 27th November – 7th December, 2008
Patrick Christie (Australian) Black COCKatoo 2008 53 x 44cm ink on paper with hand embossing
This is the first exhibition by artist Patrick Christie exhibiting at Green-Wood gallery in South Melbourne. The ink illustrations are a mixed bag featuring native botanical specimens, beetles of various varieties and colourful birds – a red COCK, a blue peaCOCK and a black COCKatoo (the ‘cocks’ of the title). While the beetle images and the cowboy illustrations feel flat and uninspired it is the larger flower arrangements and the beautifully detailed birds that hold the attention.
With an abundance in the rendering of their subject matter both produce an uplifting cornucopia – vase, flowers, fruit and material overflowing; feathers of the Black COCKatoo repeating and blending like an Escher drawing into the gum leaves behind. The hand marks the page again and again forming exquisite line. Dutch still life of the 17th century come to mind with the flower arrangements and whilst I like the embossed word COCK under the bird images I am not sure it is really necessary. The drawings are strong enough to stand on their own.
There is real talent here. Yes the exhibition needed more conceptual rigour as the whole did not match the sum of the parts. Yes the framing needs attention especially in the bird series, where simpler frames with more space around the images would have let the work breathe but these things can be addressed. For an artist what needs to be there from the start is passion, a good eye and the talent to develop a personal language that is vibrant, interesting and unique – that can be nurtured and developed over many years. This exhibition sets Patrick Christie squarely on this path.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Patrick Christie (Australian) 5 Wasps 2008 67 x 50cm ink on paper
Fazal Sheikh (American, b. 1965) The Victor Weeps: Afghanistan (Abdul Aziz holding a photograph of his brother, Mula Abdul Hakim) 1997
Conference
What is Real? Photography and the Politics of Truth
This conference brings together renowned photographers, artists, writers, curators, and scholars in a series of panels and conversations:
– Redefining Documentary: The State of Documentary Photography Today – Art versus Document: An (Un)comfortable Union? – Public/Private: Community in the Digital Age – Who Needs Truth Anyway? The Uses and Ethics of Documentary
Participants include Ariella Azoulay, Geoffrey Batchen, Nayland Blake, Okwui Enwezor, Thomas Keenan, Thomas Y. Levin, Maria Lind, Susan Meiselas, Walid Raad, Martha Rosler, Brian Wallis, and others.
The International Center of Photography Presents A Two-Day Symposium to Examine The Changing Nature of Documentary Practice.
Friday December 12th 2008 6 – 10pm Saturday December 13th 2008 9 – 5pm
The Times Center 242 West 41st Street New York City
Europeana – the European digital library, museum and archive – is a project that began in July 2007. The website gives users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers.
The digital content will be selected from that which is already digitised and available in Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. The website aims to have representative content from all four of these cultural heritage domains, and also to have a broad range of content from across Europe. The interface will be multilingual. Initially, this may mean that it is available in French, English and German, but the intention is to develop the number of languages available following the launch.”
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Somebody’s House, Baltimore, Maryland, 1964 1964
from the book
Certain Places Photographs and Introduction by William Clift. William Clift Editions, Santa Fe, 1987. 44 pp., twenty-two tritone illustrations.
One of the most ravishing photographic books ever produced. Sensitive photography, luminous images, wonderful reproductions on quality stock. Nothing more need be said. My favourite of so many great images is above.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
All photographs are used under fair use conditions for the purpose of education and research. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Apple Blossoms, Velarde, New Mexico, 1973 1973
Â
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Desert Form No. 1, New Mexico, 1984 1984
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1976 From the County Courthouse series Gelatin silver print 16.5 h x 13 w inches
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
You must be logged in to post a comment.