Review: Will Steacy (ed.), Photographs Not Taken

We live in the age of photo proliferation. Digital technology in all its forms (cameras, phones, computers, the Internet) has made photography the most democratic of media, both in terms of making and disseminating images. And they are everywhere, all the time: on our TVs, our computer screens, our smartphones and in our streets. Of course, this state of affairs is not as new as we might think—it has been in place since Walter Benjamin and his age of mechanical reproduction—but digital technology has led this proliferation to take off exponentially.

The impact of this is clear, even in traditional, 'purist' photography circles. In 2007 the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne created a crowd-sourced exhibition entitled We Are All Photographers Now, allowing anyone to upload their photographs to be included in the show. More recently Europe's biggest photo-festival, the Rencontres d'Arles, centred on an exhibition entitled From Here On, a kind of manifesto for the age of the online image ("Now we're a species of editors. We all recycle, clip and cut, remix and upload. We can make images do anything.") where much of the work was made by artists appropriating or collecting other people's images. Even Elliot Erwitt has been saying that more pictures are better than one.  So what a relief to open a photobook (am I allowed to call it that?) and discover that it does not contain a single picture: the cover's 'empty' frame is the closest thing to an actual photograph.

Photographs Not Taken is a collection of essays about photographs that, for one reason or another, did not end up being taken. The writer and photographer Will Steacy, who edited the volume, asked an eclectic group of photographers (Emmet Gowin, Tim Hetherington, Laurel Nakadate and Jamel Shabazz all feature to give you an idea of the mix) to "abandon the conventional tools needed to make a photograph–camera, lens, film—and instead make a photograph using words." The book is both a collection of opportunities missed, of attempts to conjure up in words those images that got away, but also a look into the psychology of the photographer and their ethics, reflexes, and methods.

Naturally many of these non-photographs were not taken because of an ethical or moral decision by the photographer, a decision that photojournalists must face on a day-to-day basis. Interestingly, many of the writers contrasted the act of taking a photograph with the state of being present as a human being. In these cases the camera is described as a defense to hide behind, with which to shield the photographer from the impact of the moment happening in front of or to them. The book also has its more surreal moments: Matt Salacuse describes the scientologist jedi mind trickery of Tom Cruise forcing him to lower his camera and to pass up the opportunity of photographing Cruise and Kidman's newborn adopted baby.

It must be said that the essays are uneven... after all this is a collection of texts by photographers and not by writers. I found that some of the texts failed to bring the images to life, or perhaps that too many of these images ended up 'sounding' the same. For me Roger Ballen's essay stood out: he avoids any explanation of why he didn't photograph the scene he describes (did he even have a camera with him on that day?), but there is no question whose world this lost moment belonged to. Rather than in attempting to resurrect lost images through words, an exercise that surely would be better accomplished by a group of writers, I found Photographs Not Taken to be most successful when it makes the reader think about the decisions that go into making, or not making a photograph. And if it encourages us to put down our cameras from time to time, that can only be a good thing.

Note: The International Center of Photography in New York will be hosting a book signing with several of the contributors on Friday, March 23rd from 6:00-7:30 p.m.

Will Steacy (ed.), Photographs Not Taken, (Daylight, 2012).

Rating: Worth a look

Review: Donald Weber, Interrogations

The title of Donald Weber's latest book, Interrogations, is very appropriate: both because they are the book's subject, but also because this book raises a number of difficult questions which it deliberately refuses to answer. Set in Russia and the Ukraine, the book is made up of a series of portraits of people being questioned in different interrogation rooms, each as sparse as the next. By choosing not to include any captions and very little information about the context of these interrogations, Weber has put together a book which is an unflinching and discomfiting encounter with a particularly brutal and raw manifestation of power.

Although the interrogations themselves are book-ended by a prologue and an epilogue, these provide limited context. The prologue consists of images which set a mood for the book. They depict a bleak, difficult world punctuated by a few moments of natural beauty and provide an abstract sense of life in these parts. They also serve as a reminder that Weber did not parachute in to shoot his portraits but spent close to six years shooting in the region. Rather than showing us the specific worlds or lives of the subjects of the interrogations, the prologue creates a sense of foreboding for what is to come.

The epilogue—a longer essay by Larry Frolick and two shorter pieces by Frolick and Weber and by Weber on his own—refuses to provide much context either. Like the book's photographic introduction Frolick's essay is also a mood piece documenting a difficult trip that Frolick took with his Ukrainian fixer, an echo of the bleakness, strength and the violence of the world photographed by Weber.

As an object, the book is very well made. Its size, unusual 'vertical' format and the full-bleed one-per-spread treatment of the portraits all contribute to its intensity. The cover is initially a little confusing, until the portraits reveal that it replicates the cheap, textured wall of one of the interrogation rooms, a clever design feature.

Naturally the meat of the book is the portraits themselves. Taken in a handful of dingy, sparse interrogation rooms, they show different people undergoing a psychologically and sometimes physically violent interrogation process. We are not told who these people are are, what they are accused of, or why they are being interrogated. Indeed the book only indirectly reveals that these photographs were not staged and were taken during real interrogations. As one portrait follows the next, the emotions intensify. Concern and defensiveness give way to terror, panic and perhaps most alarmingly to expressionless faces, the faces of people whose spirit has been broken. The claustrophobia and tension of these portraits is heightened as the interrogators are never revealed. The few glimpses that Weber affords us are manifestations of pure violence and intimidation: a hand outstretched to grab a man or to strike another on the back of the head. In two of the most shocking portraits an interrogator presses a gun to the head of their subject.

Weber prides himself on his unflinching gaze and this comes through clearly in these portraits. Just as for those being interrogated, there is no respite or redemption in the book: we are 'forced' to stare head on at raw terror, at the loss of dignity, at brutal physical intimidation. The overall effect is visceral and deeply uncomfortable. In Weber's words, "the unseen subject of these photographs is Power". For me this is the success of the book: by removing any context about these people, thereby turning them into the "Invisible Man", and by reducing the interrogators to faceless threats, to an abstraction of brute force, Interrogations is able to grapple with the 'capitalised' ideas of Power, Violence and Fear.

The book also raises some fundamental questions about the photographic process at play here. By sitting through these interrogations and photographing them without intervening, was Weber not complicit in their violence and their brutality? Indeed, by looking at these pictures are we not also complicit in their violence? What did Weber have to do to get access to these situations, who did he have to associate with and what, if anything, did he do for those that were being subjected to this violence? Why did he show them stripped of all dignity and reduce them to total anonymity? These questions are not new: they are at the heart of any documentary photographic practice, but this book poses them in the starkest manner possible.

Although he does not answer them directly in the book, Weber has been quite open in interviews (with Colin Pantall and with Pete Brook) about his process and the questions his images raise about his motivation and responsibility as a photographer. However, for me the book's one failure is in Frolick and Weber's short essay outlining the intentions for this project. The text manages to be grandiloquent ("the photos in this book were ... the inevitable product of a Western artistic sensibility confronting the mystery of the Other"), confused ("the artist's goal is to shock us with our own wordlessness: to show us proofs of life in its willful alternative histories") and sometimes a little silly ("exposing yourself to the cold winds of the void", "speaking in silence"), in a way that feels very much at odds with the directness and simplicity of these photographs. The book would have been even more brutally powerful without this poor articulation in words of what it succeeds in doing with images alone.

Donald Weber, Interrogations. (Amsterdam: Schilt Publishing, 160 pages, colour plates, 2011).

Rating: Recommended

Photobooks 2011: a view from Japan

As 2011 came to an end, I (somewhat foolishly) decided to compile the many 'best photobooks of 2011' lists that were popping up all over the internet to see whether there were any books that were consistently getting all the plaudits. The result is the previous post, a meta-list drawn compiling a total of 52 lists and 313 books. The final tally was reassuringly inconclusive: I'm not a big believer in the idea of absolutist Top 10s and the huge diversity of books that were selected is proof that there are great photobooks being made all over the place. However, it was also a reminder of just how many photobooks are being published and how few of them any one person is likely to see in a given year. I was particularly struck by the almost total absence of books published in Japan from these 52 lists (6 books out of 313!), particularly as two of the books with the most 'votes' were by Japanese photographers (Rinko Kawauchi's Illuminance and Yukichi Watabe's A Criminal Investigation). I thought it would be interesting to get a view from Japan, so I joined forces with Dan Abbe of Street Level Japan to ask some Japanese residents to pick out a few books that they enjoyed which were published in Japan in 2011. The contributors are: Dan Abbe, Nao Amino, Atsushi Fujiwara, Peter Evans, Ken Iseki, Ryosuke Iwamoto, Tomoe Murakami, John Sypal and Ivan Vartanian.

Dan Abbe, (blogger and publisher)

Kazuyoshi Usui, “Showa88” (Zen Foto Gallery)

"Maybe my favorite book of the year. Bright colors, geisha and yakuza draw you in, but Usui is very conscious about playing with Japanese culture and history. I will definitely introduce this work in more detail in 2012."

Kazuo Kitai, “Spanish Night” (Tosei-Sha)

"Color photos of Spain in the 1970s that Kitai dug up from his basement. Simple and excellent. I posted a few photos here and they were later picked up by a blogger in Spain who wrote some very nice things about them."

Haruna Sato, “First of the Month” (Self-published)

"A criminally cheap self-publication which creates an artificial structure for 'daily snap photography' – it's a book of photos only taken on the first of each month."

Hiroshi Takizawa, “A Rock of the Moon” (Self-published)

"Color photographs from a psychology graduate turned photographer. You could actually buy this zine using the link above."

Taishi Hirokawa, “Still Crazy” (Korinsha, 1994)

"I'm cheating. This book was actually published in 1994, but it's the most I spent on a book this year, and with good reason."

*****

Nao Amino (Editor. Worked at Little More and FOIL, freelance editor and exhibition planner from 2011)

Rinko Kawauchi, “Illuminance” (FOIL)

Katsumi Omori, “Everything happens for the first time” (Match and Company)

Shigekazu Onuma, “SHIGEKAZUONUMA” (limArt)

Anders Edstrom, "Two Houses" (part of a special book published by X-Knowledge)

Emiko Nagahiro, “Reverb” (Self-published)

*****

Atsushi Fujiwara, (photographer and founder of ASPHALT Magazine)

Eiji Sakurai, “Hokkaido 1971-1976” (Sokyu-sha)

Mao Ishikawa, “Here’s What the Japanese Flag Means to Me” (Miraisha)

Takao Niikura, “Scorching Port Town” (Seikyusha)

Hara Yoshiichi, “Walk while ye have the light” (Sokyu-sha)

Hiroh Kikai, “Tokyo Portrait” (Crevis)

*****

Ken Iseki, (website editor and blogger)

Masayuki Yoshinaga, "Sento"* (Tokyo Kirara-sha)

"Masayuki Yoshinaga, who has been shooting groups of minority and outsiders in Japan, made this series of work in 1993 when he was still a photographer's assistant. Building good relationships with the subjects made it possible to photograph these relaxed naked men from such a close distance."

*Sento is an old style public bath (not a natural hot spring) that can be found almost anywhere in Japan.

Masafumi Sanai, "Pylon" (Taisyo)

"After publishing tons of photobooks with various publishers since his debut in the late 1990s, he launched his own publishing label 'Taisyo' in 2008. Sanai is a very typical Japanese photographer in a way: strolling around neighborhoods and shooting photos without any concept, but no other photographer's work has as much strength as his photography. This is the tenth book of his own from the label."

Takashi Homma, "mushrooms from the forest 2011" (Blind gallery)

"As many other photographers did, Takashi Homma also left for the Tohoku area to document the aftermath. But he didn't photograph any debris or people like others did, instead he chose to shoot the forest and mushrooms in Fukushima which also suffered from radioactive contamination."

Kotori Kawashima, Mirai-Chan (Nanaroku-sha)

"Because this photobook reached people who don't buy photobooks or who are not even interested in photography at all. Simply amazing."

Masterpieces of Japanese Pictorial Photography (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography)

"The exhibition "Masterpieces of Japanese Pictorial Photography" at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography reminded us that there was also an significant movement, which is hardly recognized, before the era of Araki and Moriyama. This is the catalog from the exhibition."

*****

Ryosuke Iwamoto (photographer)

Naoya Hatakeyama, “Natural Stories” (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography)

"For me, the best thing wasn’t a book but an exhibit—Naoya Hatakeyama’s show 'Natural Stories' at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. It’s not really 'today’s Japanese style,' but I thought it was great on the whole, so I’ll pick the catalog that he made for the show."

*****

Microcord (blogger)

Nobuyoshi Araki, "Rakuen" (Rat Hole Gallery)

Shinya Arimoto, "Ariphoto Selection vol. 2" (Totem Pole Photo Gallery)

Hiroh Kikai, "Anatolia" (Crevis)

*****

Tomoe Murakami (photographer and lecturer)

Naoya Hatakeyama, "Terrils" (Taka Ishii Gallery)

*****

John Sypal (photographer and blogger)

"2011 saw the publication of several more photobooks by Nobuyoshi Araki. In addition to being featured in at least one magazine each month, the man puts out more solo photobooks in a year than most established Western photographers put out in a career. Here are three of my favorites and one non-Araki publication."

Araki, "Theater of Love", (Taka Ishii/Zen Foto)

"A small visual treat published by Taka Ishii & Zen Foto galleries which is a collection of recently rediscovered pictures taken by Araki in the mid 1960s, several years before his Sentimental Journey debut in 1970. The book, published in an edition of 1000 copies, matches the 5x7 size of the actual rough little prints while the content allows one to see the the very foundations of Araki's future major themes coming to light. A must-have for those interested in learning more about the early stages of this artist."

Araki, "Shakyo-rojin Nikki" (WIDES)

"With a title that roughly translates into "The Diary of an Old Man Photo Maniac", Araki again employs his date-imprint function to great effect chronicling the three months to the day after the Tohoku Earthquake on March 11th. Where his inclusion of color paints to black and white photographs resulted in brilliant and moving imagery, his alteration of the images in this book was subtractive in his scratching of the negatives with the edge of a coin. Each image bears a scar or fault line through it with results that fluctuate between sadness, horror, and at other times comedy. His tenacious treatment of the actual physical essence of film-based photography comes across as a rebellious challenge to the dry dull digital era he has been lamenting in recent interviews."

Araki, "Shamanatsu 2011" (Rathole)

"The third and most beautiful of three Araki books published by Rathole Gallery in 2011, Shamanatsu continues on with the artist's personal destructive alteration of physical photographs. The book is divided into two parts, the first being pictures taken with his Leica over the past 5 years from various commercial assignments and personal experiences. Each print has been unsettlingly and completely torn in half only to be mended back together with cellophane tape across the front the prints. The publisher did a marvelous job recreating the shimmer of the tape on each page. The second half of the book is a series of images Araki took over the unusually hot 2011 summer with a new Fuji 6x7 camera purchased earlier in the year. In a recent interview in the mens' fashion and culture magazine, HUGE, Araki states clearly that Shamanatsu is not any sort of Art with deep meaning, but simply the photographic manifestation of his own physiology. He also added that after his new camera broke this series came to its sudden end."

Meisa Fujishiro, "Mou, Uchi ni Kaerou 2" (Let's go home 2), (Rockin' On)

"Photographer Meisa Fujishiro's sequel to his wildly popular book "Let's go home". While his first book, now in it's 9th printing, simply dealt with married life with his wife (a professional model) and dogs, the sequel introduces his son from birth and five years after that. For a skilled photographer who mainly shoots celebrities and bikini models, Fujishiro's pictures of his home life are never bogged down by excessive slick camerawork or sentimentality. Their delightful frankness is a simple kind of beauty."

*****

Ivan Vartanian (author, editor, publisher and book producer)

"With the risk of sounding contrarian, compiling a list of books as a year in review is tricky business because most often such lists are mistaken for "best of" and do a great disservice to publications whose stand-alone value is problematic. If there is one thing I've learned from working with Japanese photography and Japanese photobooks it is the need for trepidation in looking at things in isolation, which is the inherent project of such review lists. So much of Japanese photography has to do with the relationship and context of images within a given sequence, as well as the circumstance of publication and why a book was made. In a similar regard, the books I've selected aren't necessarily "best of" books. Rather, they were selected for what they say in relationship to the photobook oeuvre of each individual photographer."

Yurie Nagashima, "SWISS+" (Akaaka Art Publishing)

"From her earliest and strongest photography projects, Nagashima has used Family, her family in particular, as the source material for her photography. As a book production, SWISS+ interleaves pages of photography with prose printed on tracing paper. The photographer has recently turned her attention to writing both non-fiction and fiction. This book most poetically gives us a framework for how she finds a sort of concordance between the two mediums, sometimes independent, sometimes dependent on one another."

Takuma Nakahira, "Documentary" (Akio Nagasawa Publishing)

"This book was largely overlooked and under-appreciated after its publication. Documentary compiles this master photographer's recent color work. The photography's awkward vertical format and how it reveals the position of the photographer relative to his subject matter seem to be at odds with the book's lofty title. But when we consider this publication in light of Nakahira's early and other experimental work, the project of his color work is slightly more understandable—resisting the dogma and trappings of contemporary photography. The publication of Documentary was almost simultaneous with the publication of a facsimile edition of his legendary For a Language to Come (Osiris, 2010)."

Daido Moriyama, "Sunflower" (MMM Label [Match and Company])

"The lush black and tonal range of this publication are an example of how beautiful basic offset printing can be. The same is true of the craftsmanship exhibited in the book's layout and edit. In its simplicity, it shines."

Takashi Homma, M2 (Gallery 360)

"M is an ongoing series of about fast food restaurants around the world. M refers to the identifying logo mark of the McDonald’s chain of restaurants. Such establishments have been a continual object in Homma Takashi’s photography since his Tokyo Suburbia series, which addressed the Americanization of Japanese culture. The screen printing of the photobook’s cover has a plain visual kinship with the discernible dot pattern on the cups and packaging produced by the fast-food chain. Does eating too much fast food also effect vision? Among the 500 copies of the edition, there are multiple cover variations."

Koji Onaka, "Long Time No See" (Média Immédiat [France])

"This is a bit of a cheat. This book was not published by a Japanese publisher but, as a body of work, it may be one of Onaka's best photobooks so far, especially when considered relative to his previous publications. This is an example of the photographer stepping outside of his familiar territory and producing a body of work that is free of his usual rigor. The full weight of his previous work still lingers in the air of this tiny book. It is a treat to see the cone-shaped birthday hat worn by his otherwise hapless mother, dutifully giving her son (Koji) a birthday party. The photographer scanned monochromatic photographs from his family albums and added color to each image in Photoshop. Onaka’s father was a photographer so there was a wealth of snapshots to choose from."

Naoya Hatakeyama: a book and an exhibition

Installation view, Natural Stories

My most recent trip to Japan in October happily coincided with Naoya Hatakeyama's first retrospective at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Regular readers will know that I am a big fan of his work – and there is quite a lot of it – so I was curious to see how this exhibition, entitled Natural Stories, would be put together. The exhibition has now closed in Tokyo but opens at the Huis Marseille in Amsterdam today until the end of February 2012. To coincide with Natural Stories, Hatakeyama also released his latest book, Ciel Tombé, which I included on my best books of 2011 list, so I thought I would discuss them together here.

I will admit to being a little surprised at the selection of work in Natural Stories. Although there are ten different bodies of work in the exhibition, none of Hatakeyama's work on Tokyo (Underground, River, Maquettes/Light...) was included. However, in the curator's text on the exhibition she is quick to explain that this was a conscious decision given that Hatakeyama already had several solo exhibitions in Japan including a 2007 show at the Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura & Hayama which took the city as its theme. With that in mind the exhibition's focus on the natural landscape makes sense.

Lime Hills, 1990

The title Natural Stories is an intriguing one. I think it works best in french (Histoires naturelles), which I believe is the language in which the title was originally given. In french 'histoire' can mean both history or a story. The title evokes Natural History, stories about nature, and perhaps even a history of nature itself. The essay by the French writer Philippe Forest in the exhibition catalogue explores these notions in detail so I won't dwell on them any further, but the title evokes the very different considerations that inform Hatakeyama's photographic approach to the landscape. His landscapes are never 'just' landscapes: they are always the reflection or the echo of something else. For instance, although it depicts the limestone mines, the series Lime Hills deals with the transformation of the natural landscape to feed the insatiable growth of the city of Tokyo.

Ciel Tombé (Super Labo, 2011)

Although it is almost never directly present in this exhibition, the city is never very far away. In the series Ciel Tombé Hatakeyama explored the Parisian catacombs and their underground 'fallen skies' (ciel tombé). This series is the subject of Hatakeyama's latest book, Ciel Tombé (Super Labo, 2011). For this book Hatakeyama has deviated from the standard photobook formula and asked the French author Sylvie Germain to contribute a short story based on his photographs . I won't go into detail about this book as this post is already overly long, but I will say this: I first saw the work from Ciel Tombé a few years ago at a gallery in Tokyo. Several months later I had the opportunity to read Sylvie Germain's deliciously strange and unsettling text. I had not seen any of the images since that first viewing, but as I read through the story the images appeared in my mind as if I had only just seen them. For the moment the book only exists in a deluxe edition of 200 which includes a print, a book of Hatakeyama's photographs and another book containing Sylvie Germain's text in French, English and Japanese, but there is word of a second edition in the making.

Ciel Tombé (Super Labo, 2011)

Returning to Natural Stories, for me the final two rooms of the exhibition were the highlight. The first of these rooms (pictured at the top of this post) contained Hatakeyama's most recent work on his hometown of Rikuzentakata in Iwate prefecture, one of the many towns destroyed in the tsunami of 11 March 2011. Although very little time has passed, Hatakeyama decided to include a series of photographs in the exhibition that he took in the wake of the disaster. Many images have been produced of the aftermath of the tsunami, but most of these fail to connect beyond conveying the scale of the physical destruction. What stands out about Hatakeyama's images is how matter of fact they feel. He has photographed these landscapes with the same unflinching precision, intelligence and quietness tinged with nostalgia as any other landscape. His photographs strike me as the most natural possible response to the disaster, but they must have been incredibly difficult to make given the deeply personal and tragic nature of the subject. These images are presented on three adjacent walls in the space, while on the fourth a slideshow of images taken between 2008-2010 in his native region is presented in the guise of a framed photograph.

The final room contains the companion series Blast and A Bird. Both series have been exhibited and published in the past, but for this exhibition Hatakeyama also chose to present Blast as a stop-motion video projected on a huge wall in the space. These photographs have a potent mix of beauty and brutal force which is heightened even further when animated in this way. It is an overwhelming end to the exhibition and one which resonates long after you leave the space.

Installation view, Natural Stories

Another best books of 2011 list...

I have given up, caved in, admitted defeat. Although the world does not need it, the temptation was just too great, so I have gone ahead and compiled a selection of my favourite books of the year. Instead of giving you a top 10 I decided to humbly borrow the format of the Oscars and select the best books by category (as with the Oscars, my categories are suitably ridiculous). So without further ado, I bring you the the official eyecurious Best Books of 2011.

Best really good book

Enrique Metinides, Series (Kominek)

 

Most unlikely best book of the year

Yukichi Watabe, A Criminal Investigation (Xavier Barral)

 

Best self-published book that is too big for most bookshelves

Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, As long as it photographs / It must be a camera (Self-published)

 

Best spiral-bound book

Ricardo Cases, Paloma al Aire (Photovision)

 

Best sold out collectible book that gets damaged very easily

Valerio Spada, Gomorrah Girl (Cross Editions)

 

Best super-deluxe VIP book with all the trimmings

Naoya Hatakeyama, Ciel Tombé (Super Labo)

 

Best really weird book

Paul Kooiker, Sunday (William van Zoetendaal)

 

Best book cover

Takashi Homma, M2 (Gallery 360°)

 

Best book that I bought in 2011 but wasn't actually published this year

Tadanori Yokoo, Tokyo Y-junctions (Kokushokankokai)

 

Best book of outtakes

Rob Hornstra, Safety First (Self-published)

 

Best book of pictures made using an archaic photographic process

Christian Marclay, Cyanotypes (JRP Ringier)

 

Best calendar for a good cause

Yuka Amano, Seiji Kumagai, Aya Muto & Hiroshi Nomura, One Year for Japan (Lozen Up)

I will leave you with a final word of advice: the number of best books of 2011 lists that have already popped up is proof that you should NEVER publish a book in December. You'll be too late for all the best books lists and will be technically ineligible for the best books lists of the following year. You have been warned.