Yaakov Israel

Beautiful images of Israel in the The Quest For The Man On The White Donkey by Yaakov Israel.

© Yaakov Israel

© Yaakov Israel

Susan Worsham – By the Grace of God

Not too long ago I posted a link to Susan Worsham’s work Some Fox Trails in Virginia. But after I keep coming back to her new project By the Grace of God I feel it’s worth pointing her out once again. I really think she does great portraits!

© Susan Worsham

© Susan Worsham

Paolo Woods

Unfortunately, I couldn’t develop and scan my medium format film because the lab was already closed for christmas

So instead a photographer I came across recently: Paolo Woods. I love especially his work about Iran Walk on my Eyes, which is in my opinion stylish/beautiful yet critical. I appreciate how he shows such a different site of Iran and makes the viewer aware that it is more diverse, human and complex then the stereotypes most people in the western world have in their minds.

© Paolo Woods

Alec Soth – From here to there

OK, I might be a bit obsessed at the moment with Alec Soth and am turning into a groupie I haven’t been, since being fifteen years old and adoring A-HA . But I am currently reading the book From Here To There about his work and find it really interesting and inspiring.

It gives a great overview about Alec Soth, also about his very early work. I like especially Siri Engberg’s article (see post below) and totally enjoyed the interview with him called “Dismantling my career”.

I would like to share some quotes. Perhaps somebody else finds it as interesting as me (maybe at least Rebecca?:))

“Photography is a very lonely medium. There’s a kind of beautiful loneliness in voyeurism.”

“I like the idea of the process. And I’m less interested in the masterpiece, or the icon.”

“This is the highly problematic nature of what I am doing. I’m using real people, real lives to create my little art project. It’s a problematic medium. It’s the Arbus problem”

“We are all using the same machines, and by doing it over and over and over again, you find your own voice but it’s just modestly different than somebody else’s. “

“I always used to lecture about how photographs can’t tell stories, because they are these fragmentary moments in time, and so you can’t get any kind of arc to a story. You are making these little points and you’re pushing the viewer to make connections between them. It’s not true storytelling.”

“I think photography is the most anti-Zen activity. It’s all about stopping time, possessing things, holding onto them. (…) If my goal was to be a healthy person, photography would not be the thing.”

Photos as Poems

I am thinking at the moment quiet a bit about what I am actually drawn to in photography within my own practice but also in others.

As mentioned I really do like Alec Soths work although I was pretty disappointed by his (daughters) project in Brighton Photo Biennale! 

But in general I do love his approach and the tension in his photos which Siri Engberg describes as a poetic friction. I never thought about his work as poems or of photographs as poems in general. For me this is as a very inspiring thought, which I find worth mentioning here, so I don’t forget…

What I believe is really good in the so called documentary approach in photography is the addition of lyricism (Evans).

© Alec Soth

Kurt Tong

I know Kurt Tong’s from his People’s Park project, which I saw 2 years ago during the Jerwood Photo Prize exhibition in London. He had then finished the same MA in Documentary Photography at the LCC in London as I did last year.

Last week I came across his work again and I was amazed to see on how many new interesting projects he has worked on ever since. I really like all of them a lot. ‘In case it Rains in Heaven‘ will be published soon by Kehrer. “The project is a series of photographs of items made of joss paper to be burned as offerings for the dead. Traditionally, many Chinese believe that when a person dies, he leaves with no earthly possessions and it’s up to his descendants to provide for him in the afterlife until his reincarnation. Originally, coins and animals were buried with the dead, but when that proved too expensive for commoners, they began burning joss paper decorated with seals, stamps, silver or gold paint, as offerings to the spirits to ensure they lived well in the afterlife. In the last 50 years, these offerings have become more and more elaborate as objects are molded from the paper, some reflecting traditional culture, but many reflecting the consumer culture which is taking over China. Cars, washing machines and MacDonalds meals are made out of the paper, and entire shops have been set up selling an array of joss paper products.”

In case it Rains in Heaven‘ is for me interesting because I have never heard of these paper offerings. But I especially like it a lot because of Tong’s approach to document the Westernization of China by just photographing objects.

© Kurt Tong

© Kurt Tong

Ben Westwood

I looked yesterday through the program of Brighton Photo Fringe and came across Ben Westwood’s photo. I think it’s brilliant! In general I am not too sure about what to make of his work but the one about his grandfather I find regarding my elderly project interesting. I like how he focused on details, it warms up my heart for this old man.

Susan Worsham – Some Fox Trails in Virginia

I love Susan Worsham’s project “Some Fox Trails in Virginia” because of her compositions, colours and the morbid and in the same time warm atmosphere. Just some of the still lives are too staged for my taste.

“At the age of 34, I came back to Virginia to care for my mother, who died shortly after my return. As the last of my family passed, I turned my lens to old friends, and their new families. I photographed the house in which I grew up. The man that lives there now houses snakes in my father’s old office, and rests them in my old bedroom, while he changes their cages. My mother always promised that there were no snakes in my room, and now that she is gone, there are.”

© Susan Worsham

© Susan Worsham

© Susan Worsham

Tobias Zielony – Story, No Story

Many people talk at the moment about Tobias Zielony’s new book. And they are probably right about it. I had the chance to look at it from close when I was in Germany.

The book provides an overview of the works Zielony produced between 2000 and 2008: pictures taken in Knowle West in Bristol, of public housing in Halle-Neustadt, of the Quartiers Nord in Marseille, and in South Los Angeles. Usually photographed at night, the teens are invariably drawn to generic locales like car parks, gas stations and other public spaces. As the book’s title suggests, their is no story. But this, in fact, it is the story of so many young people around the world. They gather at night and wait for something to happen. In an interview included in the book, Zielony quotes one girl he photographed who said, “We’re not bored. Boredom is just a word for what we do anyway.”

I came for the first time across his work two years ago. It was Trona then and I loved it. I like especially the moment he decides to be the decisive one and the mood he is able to create. That does not just apply to all his night time or dawn pictures but also to his bright desert pictures. However surprisingly, it seems that Zielony has no webpage and it’s very difficult to find a good overview of his work online. Otherwise I would have posted my three favorite pictures of him. Like that just an example of two pages of his book. Which I also like, though.

Alec Soth

As most people know, I am a big Alec Soth fan. He definitely has influenced me a lot. But crazily enough I had today for the first time a real book of his in my hands. I looked at Dog Days, Bogota and Niagara and loved them both. Pictures I had overlooked before I realized for the first time. I also found his notes at the end of the book very inspiring. Especially since I am still looking for a way to combine text with images in my East Germany project.

“Driving around Niagara, I have a list of thing I’m looking for taped to my steering wheel: High-school yearbooks, polaroids, men in pajamas. I almost never check anything of the list. I just drive in circles around the falls – listening to Roy Orbison for the thousandth time. ‘Dum-Dum-Dum-Dumby-Dob-Wah.’ I cruise the motels. I ask women in bars if they have love letters. I ask couples if they can pose nude. Most people think I am a pervert.”

© Alec Soth

“This picture of the Flechs was taken right after Aaron and Nicole were married at the Quality Hotel Love Chapel. There was no photographer. The only guests were children from previous marriages.”

© Alec Soth

“I went to a boxing tournament at the Polish Hall in Niagara Falls, Ontario. After each match, I would ask the battered boxer to come down to the basement to have his picture taken with his girlfriend.”