Blog About Photography

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Team Gallery, April 2008

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

I hung out with Johnny Misheff last night after the Ryan McGinley thing. Real cool guy.

© 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.

© Peter Voelker

Peter took this of Bea Fremderman and Andrew Laumann and I think that’s just swell. Check out Peter’s hot new site, also.

I’m headed back to New York sometime in the next couple of days, and in a moment I’m going to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, a distinguished institution, to see Nan Goldin’s Ballad, which is a big deal to me for obvious reasons and I’ve never seen it in person. No doubt I’ll have all kinds of reverent things to say upon my return.

I hope things are going well with you. I’ll be back in the city soon and we’ll finally hang out again.

© Greg Wasserstrom

me: hey!

Bryan: hey man

me: hows it going/

howd the show go?

Bryan: pretty well. just got back

fucking awesome!!

me: yeah?

Bryan: yeah, you sold one

me: i did?

holy shit

Bryan: yeah, the swimming hole

me: fucking a

how much?

Bryan: i think $75, it’ll buy an african child school supplies

me:

dude that’s rad

im so stoked

Bryan: yeah, the galllery was small but super nice and the installation looke dreally good

me: fucking a

Bryan: lots of people for the opening and al. old guys with berets and shit

me: haha

do you have any pics of it?

Bryan: nah

there are shows on last nights shoes .com

but they are only shoes

me: hahah

So this would be the first time I’ve ever sold a print to someone who wasn’t a friend or relative. I’m glad that milestone could occur as part of the MWO launch, and the money will go to charity. Also, I didn’t realize how profane my speech is until reading back. Sorry, Mom.

Highlight: Dinner with Grant, Lana and Grady. Otherwise, it could be a blues song. My baby left me, I’m out of work, I lost my camera and my hard drive died.

Can I just say something about these hard drives? Every single one I’ve ever owned has crapped out on me. I know my friend Katsie has like bunches of them, most backing up the others, but is there a single dependable drive out there? 500GB of void, that’s what I have. Someone let me know.

I don’t like to compain. On the positive, Must Warn Others opened in Seattle, and I’m eager to get a report from Bryan Schutmaat about how that went. I wish I could have made it out too buddy, I’m sorry I couldn’t, but leave an update in the comments. I can’t want to see the book, the PDF looks terrific.

I was going to link to a breakup song I wrote once, but I can’t, because it was on that hard drive. Give it a listen on MySpace, it should autoplay.

http://chicagobeaf.com 

© 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!

Having spent 4 years in the District of Columbia, I feel almost immediate kinship with other artists hailing from the Mid-Atlantic region (particularly if they’re doing interesting work, though the shitty work can be pretty engaging also). Work of the former category that has recently caught my attention, the SAME TIME Project is a collaboration between Brad Walker (Baltimore, Md.), a graphic designer, and Michael Lease (Richmond, Va.). For a year, the two take a photograph every night at 7:15 pm. They are paired side by side, and the rather extensive gallery, divided month by month, yields some gems. I might suggest losing the captions or turning them into roll-over image descriptions instead, but on the whole the project works well, especially considering the size of the undertaking.