Review: Mariken Wessels, Queen Ann. P.S. Belly Cut Off

From the moment you hear its title, it becomes clear that Queen Ann. P.S. Belly cut off is not going to be an 'easy' photobook. By 'easy' I mean a book that gives itself to you on first viewing, immediately hitting all the right buttons. To use one of my favoured musical analogies, in the case of LPs (when people still used to listen to those) people often talked about growers, records that required several listens before your ears became accustomed to their particular register or sonic world.

The first time I went through Mariken Wessels' new book, I couldn't really make head or tail of it. This is a book that raises more questions and narrative possibilities than it gives information or makes statements. The experience of going through Queen Ann is akin to finding an old shoebox full of snapshots of a stranger's life. Why are some of the images scratched, cut, defaced or painted on in a childlike way? Who scribbled these few messages and to whom were they destined? The book even contains a little piece of this shoebox in the form of a sealed translucent envelope containing a few small prints. Why is the envelope sealed? Are we expected to open it or to peer at the prints it contains through the translucent paper?

The book follows the life of a woman named Anneke from childhood to her troubled later life. Through Anneke's "personal materials" Wessels draws us into this (fictional?) woman's inner world. She appears as a tragic figure, but one who is capable of joy, love, humour and her fair share of craziness too. As the title suggests, she appears to have struggled with obesity throughout her life and the book is infused with a sense of looking back to the past and of what might have been. Many of the images have been written, scratched, drawn or painted on, as if this woman was desperately trying to change her past by refashioning these photographic memories.

This is not a photobook in the conventional sense, but rather an artist book that makes use of photography to create a character. For me the book's greatest strength is that in the process of bringing 'Queen Ann' to life, Wessels also plays on our understanding of the nature of photographs and how we relate to them as personal documents. She succeeds not only in creating a complex character through a handful of snapshots, but also in making us question the unreliable role of the photograph as a memory.

The book is extremely artfully composed and sequences different elements successfully, from smaller snapshots, to sequences of hazy blow-ups and collages giving the book a rhythm, but also several distinct changes of pace. Queen Ann is a fine example of the benefits of the current independent photobook publishing boom: no mainstream publisher would ever dare to produce a book like this. It is both difficult and confusing and, for these very reasons, extremely rewarding.

Mariken Wessels, Queen Ann. P.S. Belly cut off. Alauda Publications (Soft cover, 80 pages, 75 B&W and colour plates, 2010).

Rating: Recommended

Review: Hijacked Vol. 2, Australia/Germany

When I first saw Hijacked Vol. 2, I did a double-take. With an Australian mother and German father, you don't come across many photobooks that appear to be you in book form. I had missed Hijacked Vol. 1, Australia/America when it came out two years ago so I was excited to discover the Hijacked 'format'. Each book in the series pairs Australia (the homeland of the brains behind Hijacked, Mark McPherson of Big City Press) with another country (Vol. 3 will take on the UK) to present the work of emerging photographers from both countries. The focus is squarely on up-and-coming photographers... you won't find any big names here, except for as points of reference in the book's many essays which discuss the different schools and influences in both countries.

Weighing in at a hefty 412 pages with work by no less than 32 photographers (sixteen from each country), Hijacked Vol. 2 is a sizeable undertaking and there is no shortage of young talent to be discovered here. My interest in the project is best summed up by the questions asked in the introduction to one of the essays in the book: "What connects photographs created at opposite ends of the globe? (...) And even more fundamentally: is there such a thing as specifically German or Australian photography at all?" Beyond showcasing individual young talents, what struck me as most interesting about Hijacked is that although it groups photographers together based on nationality, it also questions the notion of a coherent national photography. I think this is particularly important given how often photographs are grouped together based (often arbitrarily) on nationality and the general reluctance to look at different photographic cultures from a comparative perspective. I was intrigued to see whether the book would create the impression of two coherent bodies of photography and how these two groups would resonate with each other.

The German and Australian sections of the book left me with different impressions and, overall, my preference was for the former (sorry mum!). I think this is natural given that Germany has a much stronger photographic tradition, a more developed photographic education system, and a bunch more photographers to choose from! I was particularly taken with Jörg Brüggemann's work, which deals very intelligently with the illusion of 'adventure' travel to places like Thailand or India. Having just returned from a two-week trip in Morocco, these days it is difficult to escape the feeling that tourism has become the global equivalent of the amusement park, with the same overblown drama and suspension of disbelief. Brüggemann's pictures are the first I have seen that look at the interaction between tourist and 'local' and the different expectations of these two groups. As with this work, many of the German pictures in Hijacked Vol. 2 were not taken in Germany, which is a small illustration of the complexity of defining a national photography.

Overall the German selection felt more coherent to me, perhaps because of these anchors of education and tradition. As for the Australian selection, it seemed a little chaotic and I would have liked to see more work that engaged with Australian national identity in an interesting way. Although some of the work felt derivative to me (Bronek Kózka, Suzie Fox), there is a lot to discover here: I particularly enjoyed Michael Corridore's 'barely there' images that brilliantly capture the blazing atmosphere of their subject and the delightfully awkward work of Rebecca Ann Hobbs who bravely takes on perennial Australian themes, including vomit and possums, with hilarious results. The good thing with Hijacked is that with a selection as broad as this you will definitely find a lot to love. However, the flipside of this is that the sprawl of the selection felt overwhelming to me. Even in the case of the seven (!) different essays, it felt like the authors were stepping on each other's toes: although they raise a lot of interesting points they often were covering similar ground.

The printing of the book is good and the design and production are of an equally high standard. Although I think Hijacked Vol. 2 falls short of its ambitions and could have benefited from some trimming down, this remains a rare and intriguing look at the emerging Australian photo scene and one that raises interesting questions about the idea of a coherent national photography.

Hijacked Vol. 2, Australia/Germany (Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag/Perth: Big City Press, hardcover, 26.6 x 21.2 x 4.3 cm, 412 pages, colour and B&W plates, 2010)

Rating: Worth a look

Book of the Week #2: Erik Van der Weijde / Der Baum

I wrote about Erik van der Weijde's eclectic publishing activities before over on eyecurious books etc. The title of his latest book,  Der Baum (The Tree), is taken from Der Baum im Bildde der Landschaft, a 1931 photobook published as part of a series which aimed to "provide cheap educational tools for the uneducated masses." Most of these trees are anonymous, identified only by their location...  on a parking lot in Sao Paulo or a Burger King in Nürnberg. There are three that get a little more detailed identification, the cover, which turns out to be the tree on the street where the young girl Natasha Kampusch was held as a prisoner for 8.5 years, and the opening and closing image of the book which refer to Adolf Hitler... Van der Weijde is never shy of a little provocation and although I'm not sure you will learn anything about trees as such from this book (no matter how uneducated you are), you will definitely learn a thing or two about how they can be photographed. The images are understated, distant, muted, some even a little muddy even, but the strength of the book for me is how these trees all seem to acquire quite different personalities by being brought together in this way. A fascinating cast of characters, Hitler or no Hitler.

Update: Book of the week is moving to eyecurious books etc. Look out for new picks there!

As a bonus, Erik has even been good enough to provide us with a little video preview if you fancy seeing a bit more.

Review: 10 years of in-public

Street photography is a strangely controversial photographic genre. When I started blogging, I was a little surprised at how divisive it seemed to be within the photo community and its ability to get people worked up, whether they were in the 'for' or 'against' camp. As with many other photographic genres 'street photography' is a pretty broad appellation. There is no dictionary definition of it but a fair assumption would be that it refers to photographs taken in the street (I won't wade in to the debate on whether those photographs have to be 'straight' i.e. not to have undergone any manipulation, as that is a blogpost in and of itself), which seems to allow for a fair bit of artistic license. And yet, street photography seems to find itself in a bit of an artistic ghetto, often being, or feeling, completely ignored by the art world. I have already added to the recent debate surrounding Paul Graham's essay The Unreasonable Apple on this subject, which, although it doesn't deal with street photography specifically, is a good place to start to get an idea of what the fuss is about.

To use a musical analogy, I sometimes think of street photography as the jazz of the photography world. A genre that requires great timing, a strong sense of improvisation and that appeals especially to men with beards. Arguably the progression of street photography over time has mirrored that of jazz pretty closely. Jazz went through a series of creative explosions in the 50s, 60s and 70s through which the genre was constantly radically redefined. Since then, it is generally perceived to have been unable to reinvent itself and people think of it as an old-school genre rather than a contemporary one. I think much of the criticism that is levelled at street photography follows a similar line.

I am like Switzerland in my position on street photography: neutral. I'm not instinctively drawn to it, but I definitely don't think of it as irrelevant or unworthy of a place in the art world. So I was intrigued when Nick Turpin recently sent me a copy of his latest book, 10, 10 years of in-Public celebrating ten years of in-Public, the street photography collective started by Turpin that is now twenty members strong. This seemed like a good opportunity to see a broad cross-section of what is going on in street photography, with ten images from each of the group's members. I won't name them all here, but a special mention has to go to fellow bloggers Blake Andrews and Jeffrey Ladd.

It's always difficult to review a book that covers as much material as 10 as it is never going to be entirely coherent with this many different voices being represented. For me the real strength of the book is that it makes a strong case for the continued relevance of street photography today and more importantly for how diverse a genre it can be. To go back to my musical analogy, yes this is a compilation album, but its more like one of those artfully put together Soul Jazz numbers than a 'Now That's What I Call Music' #472. You get work from right across the spectrum: classic be-bop images, fizzing hard-bop, free jazz, to the more spacey ECM ("most beautiful sound after silence") style ... thankfully I didn't spot any easy listening shots in here.

There are some attributes that are common to much of the work in this book: a sense of humour, a penchant for the surreal, but the overriding impression I got was one of a real diversity in style and approach. For my money, street photography really comes into its own when these moments captured on the fly can be woven into a broader tapestry of some kind, not necessarily a narrative, but tied together in a way that transforms them into something more than a collection of well-composed moments. This isn't the case of all the photographers in the book, but when it is, as in the case of Trent Parke (whose recent book Bedknobs and Broomsticks sold 1,000 copies in three days), it can be really rewarding.

The book includes an essay by the Guardian's Jonathan Glancey and interviews of all the photographers by the photography writer David Clark. Rather than posting several images, you can get a nice preview of the contents of the book in the slideshow below put together by Turpin. 10 is recommended, if nothing else as proof that street photography is alive and well.

http://vimeo.com/13094478

10 years of in-Public, London: Nick Turpin Publishing, Hardback, colour and black-and-white plates.

Rating: Recommended

Review: Leo Rubinfien, A Map of the East

I should say this up front: this is not so much a review as a eulogy. It has been a long time since a photobook has had such an strong impact on me (to the point where I found myself poring over it at 3am during a bout of insomnia). I am not going to pretend to be impartial here: as a westerner who is interested/obsessed with Japan and East Asia, this was always likely to resonate with me. Instead, I'm just going to try and put into words the reasons why I think it is so great. To paraphrase the brilliant Kingsley Amis, "Why did I like women's breasts [this book] so much? I was clear on why I liked them [it], thanks, but why did I like them [it] so much?"

I first came across Leo Rubinfien through the text he wrote for Shomei Tomatsu's catalogue, Skin of the Nation (another photobook deserving of a eulogy of its own), but, embarrassingly, I didn't realise at the time that he was an accomplished photographer in his own right. It wasn't until last year that I came across Rubinfien again, when Naoya Hatakeyama introduced me to this book. Unfortunately, this was after a few beers and although I was intrigued at the time, the drinks got the better of my memory... until the book resurfaced a couple of weeks ago at the excellent Comptoir de l'Image bookstore. You can see an image of this tiny store here, which will give you a bit of an idea of why I consider it to be nothing short of miraculous that I found this book buried in one of the floor-to-waist piles of books that line this tiny store... like stumbling upon a needle in a haystack.

The book opens with an image from a busy street in Tokyo, where Rubinfien spent his early childhood. The bemused, vaguely unimpressed salaryman staring into the camera is the perfect introduction: his look of incomprehension says "What are you looking at? Why are you taking this picture?" This image conveys both our fascination with 'Asia' as well as a sense that Asia is gently shaking it's head at the strange behaviour of the overly curious foreigner.

The book bounces all around East Asia – Japan, China, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, with a couple of glimpses of South Asia along the way – in no discernible order. Importantly the captions situating the images are all located at the end of the book: by doing this Rubinfien avoids us thinking about the specific location of each image in order to bring the abstract notion of 'Asia' into being.

How can you possibly define something as massive and diverse as Asia? You will rarely hear a European refer to themselves as such (or maybe only in certain corners of Brussels) and I'm always slightly amused when I hear someone say "I'm going to Europe." It seems like a total non-sense: how can you go to a place that vast with so many fragmented and opposing identities and cultures? And yet I'm sure that to an American or an Australian, the idea of Europe is more coherent and evokes certain notions which aren't necessarily reductive stereotypes like baguettes and shrugs, pasta and wild gesticulation or beer and extreme organization.

The real success of this book for me is that Rubinfien manages to bring this concept of Asia to life with a few handfuls of images (one hundred and seven to be precise). Yes, this is most probably an Asia that Asians themselves wouldn't identify with, but this is not an idealisation of the pure exoticism of the East either. This isn't a book of geishas, buddhist monks or minimalist 'zen' landscapes. This is the Asia of smells and sounds, of tangled wires, hotel lobbies and heavy skies. Rubinfien knows that he is an "alien", a foreigner, and it is through those eyes that he draws out his map. It is a book of an incredibly astute and observant outsider's experience of Asia... of the feeling that it evokes. He accepts that he cannot capture Asia's essence and so he chooses to capture perfectly the experience of searching for it.

Both Rubinfien's introduction and Donald Richie's afterword are brilliant... I probably would have been better off just quoting them at length here. In his review, Jeff Ladd described the printing as 'chalky', but I actually like the muted effect that it has on the images, and I agree with him about the intelligence with which the images have been edited. The only thing I don't love about this book (I had to find something) is it's cover, which seems a little too obvious given the subtlety of the images on the inside. Mercifully, although it is almost twenty years old, this book doesn't cost $200, but more like $20 (for the hardback version, the paperback is probably even cheaper). If you have any interest in Asia and in photography, you should own this.

Leo Rubinfien, A Map of the East. David R Godine, (Hardcover, 132 pages, 107 colour plates, 1992).

Rating: (Extra-)Highly Recommended