By John Szarkowski, originally published in Dot Zero, Spring 1967 The basic effect of modern mass media on photography has been to erode the creative independence and the accountability of the photographer who has worked for them. This is not a value judgement (except from the point of view of the photographer) but rather […]
From Photogenic Drafts, 1991 By Stephen Bull, Essay included in Vigovisións. Colección fotográfica do Concello de Vigo, Vigo 2003 Joachim Schmid is a thief and a liar. For twenty years Schmid has been taking other peoples’ photographs and using them for his own purposes. He has even gone so far as to falsely claim that […]
Googlegram 5: Abu Ghraib, 2005 By Robert Goethals, Forward Thinking Museum In 1988, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Joan Fontcuberta and Pere Formiguera mounted “Fauna,” an exhibition that included tenebrous photographs, scrupulously handwritten notes, X-rays, and the recorded shrieks of animals by a certain Dr. Peter Ameisenhaufen. The deceased German zoologist had allegedly […]
He had tea in the garden of a Mrs. Pabst, wife of a multimillionaire brewer. When Holdt showed her the photographs he had been taking in his travels, Mrs. Pabst would shriek, “I hate these lazy animals. Why don’t they get jobs?” Not born in the USA – A Vagabond’s Views By Jon Vankin, The […]
Wealth can make people insensitive. I’ve always promised myself I would never let that happen to me. By Anita Roddick Last year I crossed the great divide, traveling through rural areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia for my first look at extreme poverty in America. To be poor anywhere is always hard, […]
Car on Fire, Ohio, 1983-1984 By Justin Hoffman & Charles V. Miller, Artforum, January 1, 1993 Joachim Brohm’s work demonstrates that there are other kinds of “straight” photography in Germany besides the “Becher School.” The effect of Brohm’s work is comparable to that of the Bechers: he equates reproduction and the autonomous image, realism and […]
(Arctic Incursion – About Greenland in the viewfinder and the ability of documentary photography to renew itself, especially in light of Jacob Aue Sobol’s Sabine – Brought to you by ASX and Jacob Aue Sobol) By Finn Thrane Traveling in Greenland can be a humbling experience. At least, that is the impression from reading the […]
Case Study House #22 A place that exists in physical reality but more importantly, in the collective mythology… By Doug Rickard, ASX, March 2010 “LA” is a state of mind, a feeling and a “vibe” and Julius Shulman practically drips “LA”. To step into the pictures made by Julius is to step back in time, […]
Artificial Nature by John Divola Over twenty years ago I read an essay by Arthur C. Clarke that occasionally comes to mind. Clarke was speculating on the certainty that mankind would develop artificial intelligence, and that eventually such intelligence would have the ability to learn, move through the world, and act. It would not be […]
Nan Goldin on Jean-Christian Bourcart (2002) Nan Goldin, Paris, April, 2002 I first saw Jean-Christian Bourcart’s photos ten years ago in the home of my former dealer Gilles Dusein, in his little apartment on rue du Repos overlooking Père Lachaise. Gilles, whose ashes are now dispersed in the famous cemetery, had just begun to represent […]
Hauts-de-Seine, Parc de Sceaux, France, 1987. Czeslaw Milosz on Josef Koudelka’s “Exiles” While writing this essay I had before my eyes Josef Koudelka’s photographs. Let my words serve as a tribute to his art of telling stories without words. Rhythm is at the core of human life. It is, first of all, the rhythm of […]