Blog About Photography

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

© Greg Wasserstrom

© Greg Wasserstrom

GWB Operative Josh just sent me this dispatch from London:

Former Vice Magazine Photo Editor and Tiny Vices proprietor Tim Barber opened a new exhibition at the Gallery Soho in London tonight. Because I love my friend Greg a great deal, I flew out to see it (don’t worry, he promised he’d pay me back for the ticket). The exhibition is set over two floors in London’s Covent Garden neighborhood, not in Soho as the name of the Gallery suggests. Despite this semantic disturbance, the show is pretty interesting. The first floor is about what you’d expect at something curated by Tim Barber: lots of bright, punchy shots of young people in varying levels of nakedness, plus a few drawings and a badass picture of a van on fire.

The second floor, though, is where the action is. The uncredited photo series appears to have been taken almost entirely in Germany onboard subways or on their platforms. The photos are arranged either alone or in groups of two or three, in neat rows contrasting the scrapbook feel of the first floor. This ordered style gives the impression that the entire scene is visible from within one train car, and what a scene it is. A few large, central figures — mostly locked in embrace with a loved one — capture the attention of the people in the images around them. A covetous feeling exists within the exhibition, as though everyone in the smaller images wants to be the people in the bigger ones. Or maybe I just wanted another one of the free canapes.

There you have it, sounds like a great time. Thanks, Josh; I feel like I was there. And your check is in the mail.

© Greg Wasserstrom

© Greg Wasserstrom

I saw this article this morning on CNN.com which is the first thing I’ve come across so far to profile the characteristics of “Gen Y,” apparently the designation given to the group of people born between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s. When I’m not making photographs I’m a student of the social sciences at American University in Washington, DC and so this article fascinates me as it tries to examine this particular nexus of culture and sociology. Since it’s coming from CNN, it’s a little bit bullshit but sadly I can’t say that it is completely.

The focus of the article is on “Attracting the twentysomething worker,” but defines what the twentysomething worker “is” in the process. This kind of look at such a broad swath of the population seems sort of silly and it doesn’t help that the article is written in the most abrasively simplistic and un-hip voice CNN and Fortune could possibly muster. It also reminds me of all the talk in the media 15 years ago or so as Gen X was entering the work force, grunge, “Reality Bites,” Beck, etc. I’ve been reminded of this quite a bit in the past couple of years as the New York Time style section has been reporting more and more on “hipster culture,” (I’m sure you guys remember that infamous ‘blipster’ article - it echoes the 1992 “grunge speak” hoax).

So all the signs have indicated that something like today’s piece was on its way, and now here it is. A look at the items listed in the sidebar (’Spot the Gen Y’) is absurd and at the same time describes me perfectly if you eliminate the yoga mat (Really? Who does yoga? More like kickball or foursquare or skeeball or dodgeball or something that can be played while drinking beer). I have an ipod, i have a laptop from which I do just about everything, I have a camera I use to document everything and, yes, my life is posted all over the internet. And I guess I wear “hipster clothes,” which embarrasses me just to read let alone repeat. Once you get passed though, the article gets a little more substantive.

Laptop:
It’s how Gen Y does work. Who needs the office when you’ve got cafes, parks and your own living room?

I have two jobs. I work for a photo agency and gossip blog. I do both from my living room using my laptop, and I generally don’t get dressed or take a shower until the work day has ended and I’m ready to go out. Aside from making all kinds of lame aesthetic assertions (generally accurate), the article is full of nuggets like this the one I quoted, equally lame but also accurate if all the other kids are doing the things the way I am. And here I thought I was special. Here’s another good one:

When it comes to Gen Y’s intangible characteristics, the lexicon is less than flattering. Try “needy,” “entitled.” Despite a consensus that they’re not slackers, there is a suspicion that they’ve avoided that moniker only by creating enough commotion to distract from the fact that they’re really not that into “work.”

I felt like that was my dirty little secret! I’m supposed to be working right now. Instead I’ve written this extensive blog post, this blog, of course, creating the illusion that I’m not a slacker. Alas! What a product of my generation I am! A posterboy, one might even say! And if all the other kids, all 78 million of them, if we’re all the same then, well, I guess I’m pretty screwed unless I can manage to out-charm them all.

My father, who is critical of pretty much everything, dismisses the entire field sociology with the quip, “Some do, some don’t.” I try to ignore his little nuggets for the most part, but I think there is undeniable simplicity and generalization in this article (not to mention heinous photography) . It correctly describes us, I guess, but it raises one question that it fails to answer:

“So?”

Despite my best efforts, I can’t get them working again. Can someone help me with this? I’ll send you an inkjet print of any image you’d like as payment.

© Greg Wasserstrom
This is funny. I look like Bea.

The winners of the Spring ‘07 Hot Shot were announced yesterday, and I was thrilled to see I was given an honorable mention. Very encouraging! Take a moment to read about the winners and look at their work, and of course don’t forget to check out the honorable mentions too.

With these competitions, I always wonder what criteria are used to make the decision about the winners. No doubt all the winners are incredibly talented, but I don’t envy the job of the people who have to decide. This obviously isn’t a life and death kind of decision like picking who gets to use the life raft, but I’m sure that it’s something of a tough call. Choosing the best work seems problematic enough without having to worry about making sure all the artists work well together.

© Bea Fremderman

There was an item about Bea on Style Press the other day, and looking at the photographs on her site, I realized that she’s one of my favorite Flickr contacts. Maybe I’ll get tired of this brand of diaristic stuff, but right now it certainly doesn’t feel like it. Bea’s images are particularly interesting to me because at 19, her images seem more sincere than some of the people who are known in the art world for similar work.

© Brian Ulrich

I’m incredibly excited about A New American Portrait, opening June 21 at the Jen Bekman gallery. Perhaps my excitement affects my perception, but I have the sense that something historical is taking place with the hanging of this show, along the same lines of the 1967 New Documents show at the Modern that introduced Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Gary Winogrand. Thinking about MoMA these days, it’s hardly the place where cutting-edge work would be presented as it is happening. It seems to me that no group of people better understand contemporary photography than the group of people involved in this show.

Jen and Joerg Colberg have co-curated it and it will feature work from Alec Soth, Brian Ulrich, Todd Hido, Christine Collins, Jen Davis, Ben Donaldson, Amy Elkins, Shen Wei and Peter Haakon-Thompson. If this isn’t a definitive show, I don’t know what is and should probably think about finding a new way to spend my time. What’s more certain though is that it’s worth a bus trip to New York to be at the opening.

Will there be a book? I certainly hope so.

Update: The date of the opening has been moved to Friday, June 22. Anyone interested in going up to New York City with me?