Pix Channel: What Makes Photographers Click

I have just stumbled upon this absolute gem of a webpage, which I cannot believe I have not seen before! Pix Channel is the brainchild of Randi Lynn Beach who has ever so generously compiled this wonderful series of her interviews with various photographers and shared it with the online photography community for us all to pore over. Photography on the web at the moment is kind of like a garden bursting into life, there is so much brilliant stuff sprouting up everywhere!

"Before there was Ballen"-A special Presentation by Chas Bowie this Saturday at Quality Pictures, 10am

©Roger Ballen

The former Arts Editor at the Portland Mercury and frequent contributor to numerous publications about art and photography, Chas Bowie will be presenting his slide-show gallery talk in conjunction with the closing of Roger Ballen´s exhibition this Saturday at Quality Pictures Contemporary Art. If the content of his amazing blog on photography, That's a Negative is anything to go by, this should make for a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Given that it is free there really is no excuse to miss this one if you are a Portland resident so RSVP to info@qpca.com as space is limited.

Here is a teaser of what to expect from Chas:

“Although Roger Ballen's disquieting scenes of ambiguous, psychological tableaux look unlike any photography being produced today, Bowie will present historical photographs-both celebrated and obscure-to demonstrate what he calls "Roger Ballen's spiritual and aesthetic ancestry." Drawing from startling and evocative images from the past 150 years, "Before There Was Ballen" will explore photographic pioneers who sought to capture the tensions of insanity, theatricality, the grotesque, spontaneity, power relationships, animal interaction, and classical portraiture with their cameras.”

“The photographs Bowie plans to discuss include wide-ranging examples such as a remarkably formal abstraction by Roger Fenton of the queen's rifle target from 1860; Ralph Eugene Meatyard's hallucinatory compositions of children posing in latex masks of elderly, shriveled people 100 years later; archival portraits of 19th century zookeepers posing with their animal charges; and photo documentation of the female inmates of the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum from the 1850s.”

For those of you like me who sadly won´t be able to go, make sure you stop by his aforementioned blog, That´s a Negative which features a great selection of meaty critical essays and photography reviews to sink your teeth into. It really is such a great online publication that it must be added to your reader if, for some strange reason, it isn´t already!

Massimo Vitali at Galería Senda, Barcelona

©Massimo Vitali

Summer is now truly upon us; people are starting to flock to the beach, offering up their bodies to sun worship and self abandonment, and the Italian photographer Massimo Vitali evokes the great times that lie ahead with his beach scenes currently on display at Galeria Senda. Within his huge panoramas, masses of people crammed into public spaces have been frozen in time as they try to relax, play or pursue other idle leisure activities. What is truly remarkable about these images is not only the tremendous sense of scale or peculiar use of perspective, but moreover the way in which the camera´s crisp clarity renders crowds of tourists with such exacting detail that every person is like a single candid portrait. Viewing these mural size prints, our eyes move in and shift from one figure to the next, prowling photographs that bustles with life and action, their visual volume almost overwhelming. There is so much happening here, yet at the same time nothing is really going on at all; perhaps this is what is most captivating about Massimo Vitali´s work. The hundreds of mini stories being played out in the images arouse our curiosity; our minds have to inhabit the place with our own imagined narratives in an attempt to explain these random little moments. In the tradition typical of the gifted photographer, Massimo Vitali is able to capture scenes banal enough for us all to recognise while imparting his oblique vision through the very special qualities of his photographic imagery.

****
Massimo Vitali
Galeria Senda
Until June 28th
www.galeriasenda.com

The Image To Come: How Cinema Inspires Photographers

The debate over the similarities and differences between photography and cinema is as old as the two media themselves and while this fascinating exhibition currently on show at CCCB, Barcelona is the latest in a long list to explore the relationship between the two disciplines it is, much to its credit, a lot more original than many of its counterparts.

Magnum have teamed up with Cinémathèque Française and invited ten of their photographers to produce original works in response to specific film (or a single scene within the film), filmmaker, period or style and in this way demonstrates the influence of cinema in their own imagery.

The results are as wonderfully eclectic as the different generations and schools of documentary photography that the photographers represent. For example Abbas juxtaposes clips from Robert Rosselllini´s Paisà, (1946) against his own black and white photographs of violent and convulsive scenes of civil war that erupted on the streets across Tehran between 1978 and 1980 during the Iranian revolution. Rioting, demonstrations, arrests, executed bodies and the like are depicted through a series of 18 images while two large format projections of Rossellini´s film run simultaneously, the desired effect of which is to draw parallels between the similar aesthetic approaches and themes of heroism, nationalism and war. Essentially they are bound by brutal realism.















©Abbas


















Utterly different in tone and technique is Antoine d´ Agata´s private autobiographical diary of his stay in Tokyo inspired by Oshima´s Empire of the Senses. His photos are not hung, but take the form of a film called Aka Ana, in which he stars as the main character who is seen with a lover. Far from being sexually explicit, the way their bodies glide over one another is in fact more sensual than anything, and the close up camera shots and disorientating perspectives make many of the body parts hard to discern. The design of the video installation itself is such that it seamlessly interweaves still photographs with moving images, so the boundary between the two works becomes blurred.















©Antoine d´ Agata

Elsewhere, Alec Soth pays homage to Wim Wender´s cult classic Kings Of The Road(1979) that was based on the story of a wonderer who fixed film projectors for a living in a time when cinemas were rapidly disappearing in the German Federal Republic. Soth is a renown photographer of modern American life who often reveals striking yet vacuous and disturbing aspects of his country; for this project, he travelled across Texas taking pictures of thirty six abandoned movie theatres and one funeral parlour to follow in the footsteps of this film that profoundly marked his teenage years.


















©Alec Soth










Each pairing is so unique in this exhibition that the viewer never tires nor do they grow complacent since there is no formula, no repetition. There are, instead, many different slices of reality on display, showing how cinema left an imprint on these photographer´s psyche and, in turn, how this imprint manifested in their work.

*****
Magnum 10 Sequences
CCCB
Until September 7th
www.cccb.org

American Beauty-Stephen Shore

Have a look at this short clip on Stephen Shore wherein he eloquently explains his thought processes when taking pictures, how the medium can be used to explore perception, the way in which his visual problem solving has changed over the years, the lessons learned from watching Andy Warhol work and even his views on cropping. It´s nice this.

Thorsten Kirchhoff

All images ©Thorsten Kirchhoff

Berlin based photographer, Thorsten Kirchoff got in touch a little while back and presented his body of work called Alibi that immediately struck a chord with me. This collection of eerie and enigmatic photographs are a brilliant example of the transformative potential of our everyday environment. Silent and secret, they suggest notions of interlude and aftermath since we get the feeling that something is about to appear in or has has just left the image.

Another reality slowly unfolds itself in Thorsten´s solitary ballad. The spaces he has photographed are often lacking in references to the formal bases of the city: history and geography are abolished. Perception roams freely and it is as though these images have sprung from the dark recesses of our imaginations and fantasies. He is clearly more interested in the atmosphere rather than any one particular object. Out of focus, grainy, slanted, full of movement and with sharp contrasts, these photographs are the result of a rapid gaze and weaken the idea of the place by the ephemeral way it is recorded.

The words he chooses to designate to his project are as follows:

"The pictures in the series, Alibi appear to be far removed from reality and present in a disturbing way. Time and place seem to disappear-the photographer moves through timeless and undefinable spaces. A space of interpretation as wide as possible emerges and the beholder is required to make up his or her own stories."

Thorsten Kirchhoff was born in Thuine, Germany (1973). He studied Publishing in Leipzig and Photography at Fas in Berlin. He has worked as a book designer for different publishing houses including Powerhouse Books, New York and was also a member of Neonplus, a collective of photographers in Berlin. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions at the Konika-Minolta Gallery (Tokyo, Japan), Prg (Bern, Switzerland),Museum Neukolln, Fas and Neonplus (all Berlin, Germany), Phototrinnale Hamburg 2008 (Hamburg, Germany), Photomonth Crakow (Crakow, Poland) and more recently at the Inaugural New York Photo Festival 08 (New York,USA).

Alana Celii

All images ©Alana Celii

This work was passed my way a few days ago for which I am most grateful. It is titled, Odd Sympathy and was produced by a very precocious young talent called Alana Celii who quite rightfully won the inaugural 2008 New York Photo Festival Student Award.

This is a very interesting body of work which as she tells me "focuses on the ties between memory and relationships." She goes onto explain,

"I would like to re-involve myself with the people who are, or who have become a part of my family. I've been inspired by the aesthetics of painting, and would like to reinterpret the poses and iconography through a contemporary lens. As humans, we collect tangible and intangible artifacts to voluntarily remember places and times. However, it is often the most nondescript cues that trigger recollections of the past without conscious effort. Through photographing the interior spaces of my family's homes, I want to address the ties between memory and collecting. I am curious about the value and significance we give to objects, and how that value does not always transcend our personal and cultural differences. In addition to the interiors, I want to re-address the landscapes of my childhood by photographing the spaces I grew-up in."

Alana Celii was born in Chicago in 1986. She is currently pursuing her BFA from Parsons School of Design, and lives in Brooklyn. Her work has been featured in publications such as A Field Guide to the North American Family, Hijacked, Canteen Magazine, Beautiful/Decay Anthology, Ruby Mag and Look-Look magazine. She has exhibited work in group shows in New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, London, Sydney and Dallas. I expect we will be hearing a lot more from her in the future.