Yaakov Israel

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

© Yaakov Israel

© Yaakov Israel

Olivia Arthur

I just found out that 2 minutes up my street is a photo gallery.

At the moment there is an exhibition of young Magnum photographers. I loved especially the project of Olivia Arthur on women in Saudi Arabia. It’s nice to see work about this topic, which feels different from what I have seen before! Also the pictures and the book have both amazing quality.

© Olivia Arthur

Reinaldo Loureiro

I came already a while ago across Reinaldo Loureiro’s Hothouse. Recently a friend reminded me of the project: It’s great work about the mass production of vegetables in Almeria.

© Reinaldo Loureiro

California is a Place

I love the project California is a Place. Great stories and visually amazing!

Peter Granser

There is not necessary warmth in Peter Granser’s project J’ai perdu ma tete in which he attempts to develop an image of the world of insanity from an interior perspective. But I appreciate his distant view even more.

In order to learn about mental disorder Granser spend a couple of month in an institution in France, getting familiar with patients and their fates, their joys and compulsions. During this time he produced still lives, portraits and videos,  I particularly like the photographs of traces which are left behind by the inhabitants and also the images of their art works.

Tobias Wall is right when he writes that the images are successful without creating a freak show. Granser’s pictures from the insane asylum make do without any freak-show thrills or horror scenarios. They unfold their intensity through the photographer’s reserved gaze and intimate familiarity with his subject. These are compositions made up of nuances, of suggestions and presentiments, images that do not show the grimacing mask of insanity, bur rather its human countenance (Tobias Wall).

© Peter Granser

© Peter Granser

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