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Sunset Park, 2005 by Debora Mittelstaedt

The photographers to be included in Remain in Light, the Photography Journal spearheaded by my pal Shane Lavalette and Karly Wildenhaus, have just been announced and a good looking site launched for the project.

The list is:

Andreas Weinand
Anne Lass
Coley Brown
Debora Mittelstaedt
Ed Panar
Estelle Hanania
Gustav Almestål
Hiroyo Kaneko
Kamden Vencill
Mark McKnight
Michel Campeau
Nicolai Howalt & Trine Søndergaard
Nicola Kast
Nicholas Haggard
Shawn Records
Raimond Wouda
Richard Barnes
Thobias Fäldt
Whitney Hubbs
Yann Orhan

It’s also going to include an essay by Tim Davis. That’s pretty sweet.

My good friend Ben over at Planet of the Books just sent me a heads up about the interview he just posted with photographer Brian Finke. I first saw Finke’s work on the Goings on About Town section of the New Yorker, a page near the front that features one of the magazine’s only photographs every week. It was a picture of a couple of acrobats stretching and I was so capitvated by it that I emailed Brian to say hey. Hey never wrote me back, but I’m sure that was just some kinda oversight or he hadn’t heard of me yet or something, you know? Anyway, dude recently showed his Flight Attendants at ClampArt and PowerHouse Books just put out a monograph of the work.

BEN: The first question that will no doubt come to everyone’s mind as they look through this beautiful book, Flight Attendants, is “How is this possible?” Gaining access is always a challenge for documentary photographers, how did you gain access here? Was your previous work and reputation an aid or do you believe you could have gained access without that history?

BF: Flight Attendants is a personal project I started in 2004. I began proposing airline related story ideas to magazines. I worked with them to help gain access and get my first introductions to airlines. For the proposals I had to come up with an editorial perspective. An early proposal was to photograph airlines that had hired high end designers to design their uniforms. I photographed a portfolio about Flight Attendant fashion for City Magazine and another portfolio the following year for their travel issue. I also did stories for the New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Newsweek and Cathay Pacific’s in-flight magazine photographing flight attendants working during flights, at home and at training schools.

The magazines and I contacted airlines public relations departments. The airline would either want nothing to do with the stories or would totally be into the press. Once the airlines were on board I would have amazing access, running around airports with my assistant, during flights and out on tarmacs. And flying all around the world.

Read the rest of the interview at Planet of the Books

© Greg Wasserstrom

For a lot of us, Polaroids were like a gateway drug that developed into more serious photography-abuse. Above are the first images I made that ignited my interest in photography in March 2001, almost 7 years ago.

In light of Polaroid’s recent discontinuation of instant film, I thought I’d compile a list of Polaroid collections from some of history’s greatest photographers. There are far more of these instances and projects than I reasonably include here. Also, I only really know the obvious ones, anyway. Please expand the list with your links and descriptions in the comments.

WALKER EVANS: POLAROIDS

Evans pioneering work of the ’30s and ’40s made photography a particularly American mode of social exploration for much of the 20th century. There is nary a photographer to follow that could escape his influence. Evans was one of the very first photographers to begin experimenting with the Polaroid in the early 1970s. The company was so thrilled by this living legend’s interest in their product, they quickly offered him an unlimited supply of SX-70 film. Today, a similar offer would yield a stock that would last only through 2009.

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE: AUTOPORTRAIT

From the book jacket: “The black-and-white Polaroid photographs that Mapplethrope produced during the early 1970s constitute an in-depth self-portrait, intently and graphically exploring expressions, moods, postures and actions that range from angelics and innocent to sinister and erotic. Comprised of Mapplethorpe’s earliest photographs, Autoportrait presents the artist’s most revealing attempts to wed the erotic and sexual with other theoretical concerns.

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE: POLAROIDS

The reason I’m doing Mapplethorpe twice is to emphasize not only his influence on contemporary photography but also to make the point that Polaroids were an important part of his process and his use of the medium in and of itself was not without influence. This collection of black-and-white polaroids from the 1970s shows Mapplethrope making portraits of his closest friends and lovers and his immediate surroundings. His use of Polaroid add to the spontaniaty, immediacy and intamacy of the work which has had, without question, unmeasurable impact on later photographers like Nan Goldin.

ANDRE KERTESZ: POLAROIDS

In 1979, among increasing attention to an international appreciation for his work, Kertesz began to experiment with the SX-70. Many seem to agree that the exploration of this new medium had much to do with a search for a new way of working after the death of his wife. Or, at least that’s what it says on the book jacket and in the Wikipedia.

WILLIAM WEGMAN

It’s fair to say I’m not Wegman’s biggest fan, nor would I consider him a “master photographer” comparable to the three previous ones. But as a prolific producer of massive, crystal clear Polaroid portraits of his, dogs– generally dressed adorably as people– it wouldn’t be right to leave him off the list. So there you have it. Wegman’s been using Polaroids to photograph his Weimaraners, first Man Ray and now Fay Ray, since the 1980s. He’s also the only photographer on this list to appear on Sesame Street.

ANDREY TARKOVSKY: INSTANT LIGHT

Tarkovsky isn’t exactly a master photographer; he is the Russian director responsible for the film Solaris (the orignal mind you, not the one with George Clooney) who also snapped Polaroids in his spare time. I think the same is true for Stanley Kubrick too, though I have to say that at this point I’m not that inclined to investigate. But the wonderful thing about Polaroid is that for a person with an eye, like, say, an internationally acclaimed filmmaker, can take rich, complex pictures without having to understand the the technical working of a non-instant camera. Not that Tarkovsky was a beginner, but you get my point. I found this book in a used bookstore long ago, and it’s great.

So there it is. I know there are many, many more and please share them in the comments.

© Greg Wasserstrom

I’ve finally gotten my selection for Fjord straightened out, I think. Go check out the project if you haven’t looked in a while - it gets better with every update. I was really giving it all an in depth look the other night and was reminded of what a wonderful project it is. It’s really, really rad to have all these people grouped together in one place; Fjord really provides a snapshot of this moment in the development of fine art photography. Priceless!

Well, so I’m a little late to game writing about Fjord, but I have to check in on this one because I’m so excited to be a part of it. Fjord is a book project spearheaded by Grant Willing and Alana Celii, which they describe this way:

The drastic shift in the way work is being presented today has become especially noticeable in the more technologically adept generation. Fjord’s goal is to bring together a collection of notable photographers from the internet and showcase their work in book form. This transition from internet to book will allow a different audience to experience the work thus bringing emerging artists into the public’s view.

As we all know, photography lends itself rather well to internet and, as a result, there’s a rather vibrant community of young photographers here. There’s no arguing the fact that our dialogue is having an impact on they way images are created. Fjord will be a beautiful catalog of this transitional moment. Though we are contemporaries, I have viewed many of these artists as mentors as my passion for photography has grown over the past few years. I’m exceedingly proud to be included with them in these pages!

Be sure to peruse the gallery. There are familiar names in there and also less familiar ones, but all the work is absolutely wonderful!

Lastly, gettingFjord to bookshelves is a is a grassroots effort. If you can help us promote the book in any way possibly, from sending some cash to linking to the website to simply distributing some postcards, we’d really appreciate it. Any extra dollars you might have can be sent to Alana thru paypal at sailbellyup at gmail dot com.

© Alec Soth

What a pleasing end to today. I’ve been applying to jobs in New York non-stop over the weekend and all day again today. Trying to find work and an apartment in a city I don’t live in yet has been stressful to say the least. I got a treat in the mail though. My copy of Alec Soth’s Niagara arrived from Germany today - I followed a hot tip from some helpful commenters to get a copy of this thing because it went out of print probably the day I ordered it from Amazon the first time.

As far as the job thing goes, my best lead so far is with a company that makes school portraits! This might not be glamorous work but it actually sounds pretty great to me. I love things bizarre, campy and awkward and school portraits are all three. I’ve also applied to several journalism-oriented jobs because on paper I’m probably more qualified to do something like that than take pictures for money. In any event, I’m still at the beginning of this process so we’ll see what turns up.

So anyway, that’s what’s going on over here. If anybody out there wants to employ me just give a holler.

I just learned from Muse-ings that Alec Soth’s Dog Days: Bogota is being published. Not only is this my favorite of Alec’s projects, but it’s the only one I will have the opportunity to own now that both Sleeping by the Mississippi and Niagra have both gone out of print. I have already pre-ordered a copy of Dog Days on Amazon because I learned the heard way that it’s important to get your hands on one of these books as soon as humanly possibly. I ordered a copy of Niagra from Amazon before they stopped publishing it, but I guess the demand for it was so high they weren’t able to ship it to me before new ones were made. I then got a message from them saying I was hosed, there are none left.

But not with Dog Days, oh no sir. You can take that to the bank.

This is kind of laying saying you get Playboy for the articles, but I have a serious passion for catalog essays. I love them for the pretty much the same reason I love the circle of photography blogs we are all reading so avidly - at their best, essays provide invaluable insight into the creative dialog artists participate in (a couple of months ago, reading once sentence about the work of Stephen Shore had a substantial impact on the fundamental way I approach photography).

The art market, of course, drives the production of books and essays and things. I moved to slowly on Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi for example, which has a woderful essay by Anne Wilkes Tucker, and it went out of print. As soon as I found out it was no longer available, I ordered Niagra that very day. That book too, has gone out of print, and I’m still waiting for my copy to arrive.

I while back, I scanned and posted James Agee’s essay from Helen Levitt’s 1946 book A Way of Seeing. John Szarkowski has said this essay is one of the best ever written about photography and the book has long been out of print. Starting as soon as I have a little more time, I’m going to start scanning essays and putting them online, and I encourage others to do the same. I’m going to do my best to collect and organize them and keep them in a central place.

I’m declaring this a life-long project. Or at least a project for the long term. I’m not going to start furiously checking out books or anything and I intend to approach this in a very leisurely way. But this is a call to action: I think that all you collectors of catalogs and monographs out there should scan your particularly interesting and out of print essays and post them on your blogs. If you don’t have a blog, send it to me and I’ll post it. Also, if you know where essays have been posted previously, please leave a link the comments.

Seriously. Do it. It’ll be awesome.

UPDATE: I have added a page called Essay Collection. Currently it has two items, but it’s going to grow explosively, I’m sure.

A little over a year ago, John Szarkowski gave a fairly lengthy interview to Art in America. It was around the time of his retrospective and publication of related books and he was doing the rounds, which is sort of funny to think about considering who he is. In any case, in that interview, he says that James Agee’s essay at the start of Helen Levitt’s 1946 book A Way of Seeing is probably the best piece of writing on photography ever committed to paper. As soon as I read that, I went on eBay and secured myself a copy.

I haven’t read nearly enough of these to come to a conclusion on whether or not it’s the best but it certainly is an interesting read. I scanned it, so give it a look and hopefully a discussion will follow. Perhaps you other photography bloggers out there will share some of your hard to find essays.

I just went through my Amazon Wishlist and removed all the things from it that I’ve picked up in the past couple of months, which was really satisfying. Of course, I want more stuff than I’ll probably ever actually have, but it was great getting to scratch a couple of things off.

There is not a photographic document out there that is more prescient to the current political era than Robert Polidori’s “After the Flood”. I don’t want to harp on that point too much, but this painstaking record of post-Katrina New Orleans resonates far beyond the reporting the destruction reaped on poor, black neighborhoods. Each photograph, of which there are hundreds, is meticulously rendered, yielding a serene, quite portrait of something horrible that can’t and won’t be forgiven.

Of all the people out there who aren’t photographers, Ed Ruscha is probably my favorite. He’s been in a couple of different shows I’ve seen with my Mother while visiting her in Houston last year, and so she gave his book, “Photographer” for my birthday. “I take pictures to do a job, which is to make a book,” Ruscha famously said in the 1960s when he was busy doing projects like Tweny-Six Gasoline Stations, his series of parking lots, or Every Building on the Sunset Strip. They’re all in this book, which is came out alongside his retrospective at the Whitney last year. What a guy.

I bought Alec Soth’s second book “Niagra” in a panic last week after I learned that his first, “Sleeping by the Mississippi” has gone out of print and is impossible to find for less than $350. Soth is one of the contemporary photographers I am most interested in, and I was horrified by the prospect of going without his books. Snatch up “Niagra” while you can If you don’t already have it, I’m sure it will be unavailable soon.

I was in Second Story Books last night, which is a great used bookstore here in DC, poking through the photography section. I go in there from time to time looking for cheap monographs, and I was so excited to see Stephen Shore’s “American Surfaces” sitting there on the shelf that I knocked a whole bunch of stuff down frantically trying to grab it. There was no need for this. There was no one else around.

I have one professor in particular who loves to assign reading from this, and I’ve read various photo-copied chunks of it in the past few years. I bought it used the other day, and one of these days, I’ll get around to reading it front to back. Who doesn’t love and respect Susan Sontag? Nobody. I feel having her books around makes me smarter by proxy, though it’s tempered by the fact that I can’t really stand Annie Leibovitz. But I guess that goes without saying.

I also just got Eggleston’s new book “5×7,” though it’s still sitting here in shrink wrap! I guess I want to open it kind of ceremoniously and then relish every single page.