Portfolio reviews at Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, Toronto

© Ian Willms, from the series The Road to Nowhere, 2012-13. Winner of the 2013 Portfolio Reviews Exhibition Award.

Just a heads up to our readers in Canada. On Sunday 4 and Monday 5 May, our Editor in Chief Tim Clark will be participating alongside a whole host of curators and directors, publishers and photo editors who have been brought together for two days during Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto, Canada to do reviews for established and emerging artists, with a focus on documentary, photojournalism or photo-based art practices.

This is an important event for artists with projects at advanced stages of development who are seeking opportunities for publishing and exhibiting nationally or internationally- as well as looking for guidance on conceptual approaches or career development advice.

2014 Reviewers include:

Mauro Bedoni Photo Editor, Colors, Milan

Matthew Brower Lecturer in Museum Studies, University of Toronto

Laurence Butet-Roch Photo Editor, Polka, Paris

Johan Hallberg-Campbell International Board of Editors, Photo Raw, Helsinki

Federica Chiocchetti Independent Curator and Founder, Photocaptionist, London

Tim Clark Editor-in-Chief and Director, 1000 Words, London

Stacey McCarroll Cutshaw Editor, Exposure, Los Angeles

James Estrin Senior Staff Photographer, New York Times, New York

Kristen Gresh Assistant Curator of Photographs, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Cheryl Newman Photography Director, The Telegraph Magazine, London

Bonnie Rubenstein Artistic Director, Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, Toronto

Jonathan Shaughnessy Associate Curator, Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Stefano Stoll Director, Images Festival, Vevey

Amber Terranova Freelance Senior Photo Editor, The New Yorker, New York

Shelbie Vermette Director of Photography, The Grid, Toronto

Fu Xiaodong Independent Curator, Beijing

Portfolio Reviews Exhibition Award

One artist will be awarded with a solo exhibition presented at the CONTACT Gallery in January 2015. The award includes a $1000 credit at Vistek, and a $2500 credit at Toronto Image Works. Chosen by a jury of international professionals in the field of photography, this award recognises outstanding work presented at the Portfolio Reviews. The programme was created to support and advance the careers of talented emerging photographers.

Related Events

Portfolio Night & Cocktail Reception
Monday 5 May, 7pm
Artists and photographers are given the opportunity to share their work in an open forum with reviewers and invited local professionals.

Stories and Pictures
Tuesday 6 May, 5pm
Join James Estrin from the New York Times and Cheryl Newman from the Telegraph for an evening of lively discussions about identity and documentary today. The evening will also include a Q&A with members of the Boreal Collective moderated by Shelbie Vermette, Director of Photography, The Grid.

Stay for the afterparty with the band Das Piumas.
Presented with the Boreal Collective.

The Review Days take place at The Gladstone Hotel and the cost is $200 for 4 reviews. For those interested in attending, there may still be slots available. Please check with the organisers at Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival here.

1000 Words Workshop with JH Engström in Marseille, 13-17 July 2014

*04.06.14:THERE ARE STILL TWO PLACES AVAILABLE-APPLY NOW!*

1000 Words is delighted to announce a workshop with internationally renowned Swedish photographer, JH Engström. The workshop will take place between 13-17 July 2014 in the port city of Marseille, immediately after the opening week of Les Rencontres d’Arles.

Marseille is France’s second largest city. Located on the southern coast, it is a wonderfully exciting and vibrant metropolis alive with a heady mix of cultures, nightlife and Mediterranean verve. During 2013 it served as the European City of Culture. An extremely visual and diverse locale, it is the perfect environment for creative exploration.

JH ENGSTROM:

JH Engström is a leading Swedish photographer who lives between Värmland and Paris. He is best known for his influential photobooks, most notably the highly collectable monograph Trying to Dance, published in 2003, as well as From Back Home, a collaboration with Anders Petersen for which he won the Author Book Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles 2009. Engström is represented by Galerie VU in Paris and Gun Gallery in Stockholm. He was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2005.

His photography is marked by a distinctly subjective approach to documenting his surroundings. Born out of emotional encounters, at the heart of his work lies both an intimate connection with his subjects and expression of his own self. Critic Martin Jaeggi has spoken speaking of Engström’s pictures as having “the impression of looking at memories”.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOPS:

1000 Words Workshops will take place in the heart of Marseille at Le Percolateur atelier in the Longchamp district. The workshops will be an intense and productive experience lasting five days but numbers are limited to a maximum of 14 participants. 

PRACTICAL INFORMATION:

The cost of each workshop is £800 for five days. Once participants have been selected they will be expected to pay a non-refundable deposit of £400 within one week. Participants can then pay the remaining balance on a case-by-case basis. Participants are welcome to arrive the day before the workshop begins for a welcome dinner. The price includes:

-tuition from JH Engström (including defining each participant’s project; shooting; editing sessions; creating a coherent body of work; creation of a slide show; projection of the images of the participants.)

-a welcome dinner

-24 hour help from the 1000 Words team and an assistant/translator with local knowledge.

Participants will be expected to make their own travel arrangements and find accommodation, which in Marseille can be considerably cheap for the week. We can advise on finding the accommodation that best suits you. For photographers using colour film we will provide the means for processing and a scanner. Photographers shooting digital will be expected to bring all necessary equipment. Please note that for the purposes and practicalities of a workshop, digital really is advisable. All participants should also bring a laptop if they have one. Every effort will be made to accommodate individual technical needs.

HOW TO SUBMIT:

We require that you send 10 images as low res jpegs and/or a link to your website, as well as a short biography and statement about why you think it will be relevant for you to work with JH Engström (approx. 200 words total). Submissions are to be sent to projects@1000wordsmag.com with the following subject header: SUBMISSION FOR 1000 WORDS WORKSHOP WITH JH ENGSTROM.

31 May 2014: Final deadline for applications

12 July 2014: Arrive in Marseille for welcome dinner with JH Engström

13 July 2014: Workshop begins

17 July 2014: Workshop ends

IN ASSOCIATION WITH:

INTERVIEW:

1000 Words Deputy Editor, Michael Grieve, catches up with JH Engström ahead of the workshop for a quick discussion about one of a number of his recently released photo books, Sketch of Paris, published by Aperture Foundation. Enjoy, and see you the other side of Arles in Marseille!

Michael Grieve: Your new book Sketch of Paris is part of a fine photographic, literary and filmic lineage of representation of that city from Brassai, Henry Miller, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Christer Stromholm, Robert Frank, to name but a few. How do you regard your work in this history?

JH Engström: These names have inspired me and influenced me. Then it’s later now, it’s another era. All those people have done their job. I’m still working.

MG: Why is the book a ‘sketch’ of Paris? Why a sketch?

JHE: Because a sketch is the only way I could in any way represent Paris with photographs… Paris is really ungraspable to me… Also a sketch is unfinished. It’s a first tryout. I like tryouts and unfinished expressions. The attempts... A sketch is also something that is linked to spontaneity, which I also like.

MG: The photographs in Sketch of Paris are very grounded. We never look up and it is devoid of sentiment. You appear to be consumed in it. Do you think the book is a portrait of you or of Paris?

JHE: It’s both I think. But of course very much a portrait of me, of me in Paris. And yes I am totally consumed by Paris. I could of course have that feeling of being consumed anywhere on this planet, because of the dry fact that I exist. But in Paris that feeling often hits me very strongly. Sometimes I wish it was less like that. 

MG: Is your work honest?

JHE: I hope so. I want it to be.

MG: Your work generally deals with spontaneity, chance encounters, and you seem to be guided by your unconscious. What do you think it is in your early life experience that has steered you to work in this way?

JHE: That is of course impossible to answer. I believe a lot in things that cannot be explained. I believe in having the courage to stay in the ungraspable.

MG: You once said to me that what is more interesting about the work of Nan Goldin is not so much the diaristic aspect but more how she inadvertently documents her time. We can observe fashion, décor; In this regard your work this same form of documentation?

JHE: It’s not only the question of time that’s so strong with her work of course. It’s also her fantastic way of making photographs that talk about deeply existential, human issues. To me her work is quite painful and talks a lot about our mortality.

MG: So far your photography represents lived experience from your own experience. Love, loss, joy, melancholy, uncertainty, hope and the banal constantly permeate throughout your oeuvre. What is the need to share this to an audience?

JHE: I have of course asked my self that. I don’t know to be honest. I have a necessity to do it. Maybe it’s simply a way to deal with things you mention in your question.

MG: Many contemporary photographers and artists seem to want to produce conceptualised projects. What do you think about this?

JHE: I think all photography is conceptual per definition. Therefore conceptual photography can not be defined as different from the rest of photography. But I think maybe some artists tend to lean very much on the concept.

MG: To what extent should contemporary photography practice be aware of itself, by that I mean, should it have a critical awareness contained within itself? Does your work have a critical awareness of itself and if so how?

JHE: I don’t really like to talk about what photography “should” or “should not”. Or what art “should” or “should not”.

MG: What does the aesthetic of a photograph mean to you? Is the meaning of a photograph contained within the aesthetic more perhaps than the subject/object depicted. Is it about expression rather than content?

JHE: It’s impossible to separate the two.

MG: You speak often of the emotional aspect of photographs, that your spontaneous attitude is brought about by an unconscious rather than conscious decision-making process. Do you regard a photograph of a street as equal in relevance to a sexual act or a portrait?

JHE: Yes, if you talk about “equal” in some kind of hierarchal way of thinking.

MG: I am often reminded by your work with someone like Bob Dylan, in the sense that your work is introspective, and it is both real and romantic. Therefore it collides to reveal a fundamental uncertainty. Is it fair to say that work is really about the space and tension in between the beautiful and the ugly?

JHE: You could say that it deals with tensions and the dynamics being created in those tensions.

MG: Your photographs tend to work on the level of the senses, by which we can almost taste the dust in the atmosphere, and the stale smell of bars. Is your sensory perception heightened as a result of your photography?

JHE: I don’t know if it’s heightened. But I know my sensory perception is high. And as I touched in an earlier question I would maybe sometimes like that it was a little less active…

MG: Considering your work is eclectic and on the verge of chaos how do you keep control. I imagine you take control at the editing stage? How do you edit and then sequence? Is the association between images made at this point?

JHE: I don’t think it is control, maybe more an illusion of control. And that is as you say very much done at the editing stage. My process of editing is strongly based on intuition. Once something is finished, like printed in a book, the cards have been laid out on the table and then you can’t take them back.

MG: Given the increasingly sterile nature of contemporary what do you feel is the future of the more subjective approach and really what is your definition of ‘subjective’ photography?

JHE: I think there will always be an interest for the subjective approach. The subjective photography is a method among others. And in that method the photographer uses very much of him/herself as a starting point and tool.

MG: How has your relationship to Paris changed over the years?

JHE: I’m still amazed by the city. Maybe I go to bed a little earlier now a days but it is sure that it is a lifelong love story.

All images © JH Engström, from the series Sketch of Paris.

Maciej Pestka

All images © Maciej Pestka

Brad Feuerhelm rubs shoulders with Maciej Pestka’s self-published photobook The Life of Psy and gets a glimpse into a hilarious case of mistaken identity.

Maciej Pestka’s The Life of Psy is a brilliant navigation between the borders of fame, photography, and the complexities of credence sought through images. During Barcelona Fashion Week in 2013, Korean-born, French-raised Dennis Carre attended a whole host of parties and events in which people throughout the fashion and beauty industry wrongly identified him as K-Pop singer, Psy of ‘Gangnam Dance’ fame. Quick to capitalise on the doppelganger syndrome he represented, Carre’s appearance takes on a surreal façade as he tangos and kisses his way through a bevy of fashion mavens at various parties, where his image or rather the image of an international superstar administer Carre attention to acts of debauchery and trickery.

Maciej Pestka’s photographs themselves are event-type images where the rules of composition and pictorial photographic systems are reduced to a pop-and-flash candid mimicry much en vogue in fashion circles at present. But the point is not really about the quality of the photograph itself, but that of the embrace of spectacle and fame. Clever not to present Carre’s audience as too vacuous or vain, the photographs become a totem of celebration and “I was there” type of infamy. Brilliantly paced throughout the book are shots of Carre at work, partying and living up someone else’s life. Added ephemeral documents such as ‘cease and desist’ letters from Psy’s management add further umpf to the joke and bestow added value to the book as spoof and document of the existential trauma of where belief and need reside.

Brad Feuerhelm

Kuba Dąbrowski @ Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Poland

Piotr Drewko drops in on Kuba Dąbrowski’s solo exhibition at Walsaw's Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Poland.

Kuba Dąbrowski’s exhibition titled A Drama Feature Film of Polish Production is a vibrant attempt to create well-structured visual correspondence based on artist’s long and fruitful escapade with photography. Entering the gallery we are faced with a chaotic, yet pleasurable space filled to capacity with a vast number of snapshots and portraits from Dąbrowski’s past.

Having read the curatorial statement we’re starting to grasp the principle narrative stream, which is a very personal and intimate portrayal of artist’s adolescent experiences, friends, spontaneous situations and palpable borders of now and then. What is emerging from rhythmic visual tensions is a certain diaristic photography. Dąbrowski’s exhibition does not formulate conceptual method, which situates the viewer at the intersection of art, philosophy, semiotics or science. Instead, the material presented is simply fiction-augmented documentary selection of artist’s life experiences, smattered across the white cube.

And while it seems choreographically careless what becomes vital is his ability to effortlessly translate the spirit of experienced situations and events. The viewer does not see anything that is beyond traditional representation but at the same time he becomes hypnotised by on-going dialogue arranged by the artist. We do not see any seeds of revolution in the way he operates the camera - it is rather very conscious and stimulating evolutionary journey through life. Dąbrowski’s work can be described as simply capturing visual coincidences, which happened to occur within his sight. A major facet of Dąbrowski’s practice is the engagement of our memory and collective experience. The sense of superficiality is reduced before the artist presses the shutter, which generates a strong feeling of familiarity in relation to every single depicted situation. By acknowledging that fact we are able to strengthen the relationship with presented images and address ourselves as participants in that particular conversation. Dąbrowski simply changes our positions as viewers: from being a passive audience we’re starting to actively contribute to the story. All the photographs with their synthesis of subjective and objective planes, of past and present articles, of dual and individual creative vision, become an poetic invitation into which new space is created for any individual, who is willing to look. What we see depends on what we look for.

Piotr Drewko

 

The Advanced Photography Intensive at Columbia University School of the Arts

Our partners at Columbia University School of the Arts have announced its Advanced Photography Intensive, which aims to engages students in all elements of photographic practice and the development of a portfolio. A combination of technical tutorials, individual meetings with internationally renowned artists and art professionals (Thomas Roma, John Pilson, Elinor Carucci, Michael Spano, Susan Kismaric and Vince Aletti), as well as a series of seminars and group critiques, provide students with the tools they need to advance professionally and further develop the core elements of their practice.

The Advanced Photography Intensive creates an exceptional workshop environment where students have 24-hour access to traditional and digital facilities, coupled with daily hands-on assistance from experienced faculty and staff, culminating in a group exhibition at the LeRoy Neiman Gallery. Students are expected to produce work independently throughout the six-week term and fully dedicate their time and efforts to the course.

The course is designed for several distinct types of students: exceptional undergraduates passionate about photography, college graduates preparing to apply for MFA programmes, experienced photographers looking to gain knowledge of the photographic tradition and its advanced techniques, and seasoned artists and teachers wishing to rigorously develop their practice through a critical dialogue with faculty and other students.

For more information on the features of the course, and how to gain admission click here.

FOAM Talent Call 2014

FOAM have announced their annual talent call, which gives entrants the chance to have their work published in the prestigious Foam Magazine and be exhibited in Amsterdam during Unseen Photo Fair. The Foam Talent Call is a springboard into the photography industry, giving young photographers international recognition and acclaim. Previous Foam Talents include Ina Jang, Alex Prager, Jessica Eaton, Shane Lavalette, Sam Falls, Pieter Hugo, and Mayumi Hosokura, as well as 1000 Words featured artists, Taryn Simon, Daniel Gordon, Daisuke Yokota, Melinda Gibson and Esther Teichmann.

Entrants must be between 18-35 years old and the entrance fee is 35 euros. 15 selected talents will receive an eight page portfolio showcasing their series along with an interview by an esteemed writer. The competition is open for entries until the 12 March via their website or through their Facebook page. Click here to apply or watch the video preview below for more information.

1000 Words Photography Magazine #17: New work from Christian Patterson, Doug Rickard, Cristina De Middel and much more!

It is hard to believe that 2014 marks the fifth year of publishing 1000 Words. Yet, we still remain as passionate and committed to the mission of exploring the limits and possibilities of photography, and to stimulating debate around the medium’s myriad of current practices and discourses as ever.

It therefore gives us great pleasure to announce the launch of issue 17, our first release of the new calendar. To view it, please go to www.1000wordsmag.com

We bring you a new project from Christian Patterson, entitled Bottom of the Lake, made over two days when he was home for the holidays at Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, a small city perched on the southern end of Lake Winnebago in the US. Accompanied here by an essay from Milwaukee Art Museum’s Curator of Photography, Lisa Sutcliffe, the series maintains the emotional distance of his critically acclaimed Redheaded Peckerwood, and is not so much a story about returning home, instead it speaks to transformations in vision and point of view as one evolves as a person.

Elsewhere, the renowned photography critic and former recipient of ICP’s Infinity Award for Writing, Gerry Badger reviews Doug Rickard’s eagerly anticipated new book N.A (National Anthem), which continues the current tradition of American documentary photography, essentially telling stories about the country. But, as Badger notes, is ‘documentary’ the most apt way to describe a publication largely compiled from blurred screen grabs from You Tube videos?

Academic and independent curator, Duncan Wooldridge brings us an essay on EJ Major’s Love is…. ahead of her major solo show at Forum für Fotografie in Cologne, Germany later this year. For this work, Major methodically selected an image from each frame from Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 film Last Tango in Paris, printing 7000 postcards. On the verso, she included the prompt ‘love is…’ so that recipients of her cards - strangers, living across the UK - were invited to return them, with or without response, to a freepost address, printed on the right hand side of the card’s reverse.

In a different feature, Michael Grieve takes a look at the recently released title from Max Strom, a survey of the forty-year career of preeminent Swedish photographer, Anders Petersen. Instinctive, unconscious and shot from the gut, Grieves describes Petersen’s photographs as “fragments of a strangeness of reality, the contorted and juxtaposition of expressions, clothes, bodies, objects, stuff, feelings, skin, indeed all that is out there.”

Brad Feuerhelm catches up with Cristina De Middel in London to discuss Party, the follow up to her meteorically successful photobook, The Afronauts. A subversive reworking of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, commonly known as the Little Red Book, De Middel combines photographs from a recent trip to China with negations of the original text to devastating and often satirical effect.

And last but by no means least, we are extremely proud to reveal the first of four pieces of newly commissioned photographic work from the 1000 Words Award winners. Here, our Editor-in-Chief, Tim Clark, has penned an essay on Virgílio Ferreira’s Being and Becoming. Couched in a symbolic, literary mode of photography, the series is a subjective and dreamy meditation on the lives and environments of several migrant workers from Portugal, who left their country of birth to start a new life in new lands, principally due to economic reasons. The series will be shown as part of a group exhibition curated by 1000 Words at Flowers Gallery in London during June 2014.

Over in our dedicated Books column, Tom Claxton pulls back the veil on Linda Fregni Nagler’s Hidden Mother published with MACK, an extraordinary collection of predominantly late-nineteenth century portraits of mothers who have modestly sacrificed their own depiction in order to exhibit their precious infants as the centrepieces of the photographic ritual; David Moore considers the limits of allegory in Robert Hutinki’s elegic ATAVISM by Akina Books, which ostensibly shows family archives from Celje in Slovenia, prior to the Nazi holocaust, that are then redacted and excavated; and finally Federica Chiocchetti sits down with José Pedro Cortes’ Costa, a hypnotic new title from the exciting Portuguese imprint Pierre Von Kleist Editions, that drags us on a journey to the pocket of natural and suburban wilderness that lies 14km south of Lisbon.

Thanks to the writers and photographers, as well as their studios, galleries and publishers, who have provided assistance in making this issue of the magazine project possible. Extended thanks to our newly appointed Editorial Assistant, Dominic Bell, for his outstanding work on production and a special mention to Leica who have graciously supported this edition of 1000 Words.

Tina Hillier

All images © Tina Hillier

Every once in a while, there is a major news event that stops the whole world in its tracks with its impact. The passing of Nelson Mandela on 5 December 2013, aged 95, arrested the attention of every nation, with the images of the great man himself and the people he inspired being viewed and circulated globally. When work by Tina Hillier came in to the 1000 Words submissions inbox, it was interesting to see this photographer’s singular way of depicting the mass of people and lives South Africa’s 'Father of the Nation' had touched.

The project, entitled Mandela - The Last Goodbye, documents the funeral and memorial service but from an usual perspective. Hillier opts to focus on the feet of the hoards of visitors, all of whom are making their journey and waiting in line to pay their respects. The images are a cycle, with no clear beginning, middle or end, but a procession of struggle and freedom. Hillier’s statement on the work adds further insight to the pilgrimage made by so many people :

“Over three days, between Mandela’s memorial service and his funeral in Qunu, an estimated 100,000 people visited the Union Buildings in Pretoria to see his body lying in State. Many more people queued for hours but were turned away on the afternoon of the last day, 13 December, 2013. Some 2000 mourners passed his body each hour. The images in this series document the long lines of people waiting. Queues on that scale had not been seen since Mandela was voted in as President on election day in 1994. He was the first democratically elected President South Africa had ever seen. Almost twenty years on, after his death, South Africans came out in their thousands to pay their last respects to the man who set them free.”

Tina Hillier studied Photography at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth. She now lives in London, working on editorial, commercial and personal projects. She exhibits regularly in group shows and has twice been selected for The National Portrait Gallery, Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize Exhibition in 2010 and 2011. Her work has been included in many magazines and publications including the Saturday Telegraph Magazine, Monocle, Sunday Times Magazine, The Guardian and Dazed & Confused.

Dominic Bell

Max Pinckers

All images © Max Pinckers

As part of our call out for portfolios for issue 17 of 1000 Words, we recently received the work of Max Pinckers into our submission inbox, for which he has deservedly received a great deal of critical acclaim, in particular his series Fourth Wall.

The project, released as a self-published book (now sold-out), explores the impact of the Bollywood industry on the broader society in India and incorporates a curious blend of documentary photography with elements of fantasy and fiction, perfectly suited to his subject matter. Originally scouted on the streets of India as an extra in Bollywood, Pinckers returned to India during the final year of his MFA at the School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium, assuming the role of director by intervening in his surroundings, with the passers-by on the street responding to the camera and its operative, as Pinkers writes:

“A photograph of two men in uniform climbing over a fence, escaping. A re-enactment of a moment that just passed. They do it over again with great pride and pleasure. Later I read an article in the newspaper. Two men use sleep-inducing gas to rob a struggling actress in her home; the same gas used in a 1972 super hit film in which a cook robs his landlord. An image that I’ve been planning to make for some time comes to mind - a thick cloud of smoke in a bedroom film set. Two men in uniform sitting in a park. I photograph them. They pretend to have just woken up. On a Bombay rooftop I make a portrait of a Salman Khan look-alike. Another article tells me how a young girl loses herself in this big city in search of her idol, Salman Khan.”

Max Pinckers was born in 1988 and lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. His work has been published, amongst others, in Dear Dave Magazine, The British Journal of Photography, Monthly Photography Magazine, IMA Magazine, De Morgen Magazine as well as part of FOAM’s most recent Talent issue. He was announced as the winner of the 2013 Winner City of Levallois Photography Award, France and the book Fourth Wall was nominated for the Best Photo Book of the Year at the 6th International Fotobookfestival, Germany and a nominated as a finalist in the Paris Photo / Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards 2013. In short, a hugely promising young talent, and a definite name to remember. We look forward to seeing where he takes his practice next.

Dominic Bell

Top photobooks of 2013

It’s that time of year to reflect, and with it comes a customary list of favourite photobooks selected by members of our Advisory Board here at 1000 Words Photography Magazine.

Lieko Shiga: SPIRAL COAST/album
AKAAKA

There is a logic to Lieko Shiga’s photobook marvel SPIRAL COAST/album, but for now I want to remain as blissfully ignorant as possible. At this point in my relationship to this book I simply just want to look and become delirious for as long as possible. My favourite French surrealist writer, Georges Bataille, who I quote perhaps too often, once said something to the effect that it is the manner of expression that is more important than the content, that it the sensibility more than the intelligence in all its sensitive character that counts the most. Indeed. This book contains a bizarre yet respectable spirituality born from the disaster of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in an area of Japan that Shiga is from. But rather than pity, this book radiates an energy of reincarnation tainted with the sorrow of loss. It is a book that is at once beautiful by virtue of its wrongness.

Michael Grieve, photographer and Deputy Editor, 1000 Words

Zhao Renhui: A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World
The Institute of Critical Zoologists 


What evolves when bees become dependent on caffeine, seeking drops of nectar from factory waste? The Institute of Critical Zoologists' recent publication, A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World, maps this subject and more with an impressive set of plates collated from considerable research, documents and field notes. Charting the curious flora and fauna that have changed as a result of human habitation or scientific manipulation, the pseudo-scientific study offers an encyclopedic visual lexicon, from fish tomatoes, venomous cabbage and bioluminescent squirrels to square apples. Beautiful images of specimens in the field or still lives at the lab, together with a narrative history, make every page a pleasure to explore.

Louise Clements, curator and Artistic Director, FORMAT International Photography Festival/QUAD

Emile Hyperion Dubuisson: FAR
ADAD books

FAR is a stunning first book from a new independent publisher, ADAD books, which debuts a deeply enigmatic series of photographs of life in the Yamal peninsula in Siberia. Dubuisson’s pictures were taken in the early 90s, but then damaged, lost and refound, so the published images offer an account not only of the incredibly bleak remoteness of the place depicted, but also the effects of the passage of time, evident in the scratches and scuffs on the surfaces of each image. The book is beautifully designed and sequenced, with a text (in both Russian and English) by Boris Mikhailov, reflecting on a series of photographs frozen in the eternal present.

Simon Baker, Curator of Photography, Tate 

Rinko Kawauchi: Ametsuchi
Aperture

Ametsuchi - meaning heaven and hell in Japanese - arrived in 2013 courtesy of a near perfect photo trinity: Aperture, Rinko Kawauchi and Dutch designer Hans Gremmen, the result of which might be described as a work of photographic mysticism. It began fittingly with a dream. Seven years later Kawauchi was watching TV and, amazingly, spotted an identical image from that dream. This led her to southern Japan and, in turn, the annual and ancient practice of field burning. Ametsuchi is a remarkable meditation on transience, life cycles, and the human need for ritual. As I ploughed through 500 photo books at this year’s Les Rencontres d’Arles, the book stood out as a work of exceptional depth and ambition.

The term ‘mysticism’ comes from the Greek word ‘to conceal’. In a masterstroke of photobook design, each double page fittingly conceals hidden images, folded origami-style into the book’s spine.

Nicholas Barker, film maker and collector 

Todd Hido: Excerpts from Silver Meadows

Nazraeli Press

Fascinated by the idea that photography can be a vehicle for exploring the ‘architecture of his childhood’, Todd Hido once again sets out down the street that runs through his neighbourhood in Kent, Ohio where the artist grew up. Cinematic and highly-charged with a bitter-sweet intensity, Excerpts from Silver Meadows continues Hido’s trip from the innocence of childhood to the darker side of what prevails in his own adult universe.

Effortlessly blending portraits, interiors and brooding landscapes as well as appropriated images, it’s an intricate and complex tapestry that tells Hido’s own story while employing the power of suggestion to impressive effect. With lavish production values (the book is printed on matt Japanese paper with tipped-in images on the case binding), this oversized but elegant book marks Hido’s sixth monograph to date with the esteemed publisher, Nazraeli Press.

Tim Clark, Editor in Chief, 1000 Words

Special offer from Bitcasa!

Our friends at Bitcasa are offering 1000 Words readers a special discounted offer for those planning to keep on top of their digital storage needs going into 2014.

Apart from the die-hard masters of traditional SLR photography, many of us professionals now hold vast digital libraries of photographs on our desktops, laptops, external hard drives and basically any free space we can find. Not only is storage space an issue, but despite the best cataloguing and archiving efforts, keeping track of our work and having access to it when we need it is a major challenge.

That’s where Bitcasa comes in. Bitcasa is an easy to use, private and secure cloud storage platform that allows you to protect your digital belongings and make them more useful to you. You can access, share and stream any of your photography from any device, such as your laptop, tablet, Web or phone. You can also view your digital belongings offline by marking files as a “Favourite.”

It is even possible to view RAW images on the Bitcasa Web portal at my.bitcasa.com – the format of choice for many professional photographers. Supported RAW image types include 3fr, arw, cr2, crw, dcr, dng, erf, kdc, mef, mrw, nef, orf, pef, raf, sr2 and x3f. Porfolios of any size can be shared with clients via a Web link. This makes it easy for downloading and streaming of content if you are a Bitcasa user or not.

Bitcasa knows that as photographers we are responsible for protecting our client’s digital assets. This is why it offers unmatched privacy and security with its client-side encryption. Even if someone did enter Bitcasa’s system, they could never reconstruct the files to see what was stored inside — thus ensuring your privacy at all times. This means only YOU can have access to YOUR data – the way it should be. It is the Fort Knox for your digital belongings and definitely a lot safer than the collection of external hard drives that is typical for photographers.

In terms of pricing, the service is free for users storing up to 20GB worth of content and is £10 per month for one terabyte, enough space to store 200,000 photos. For the really storage hungry, five terabytes is available for £49 per month, or you can get infinite storage for £99 per month.

However, the great news is that Bitcasa is offering all 1000 Words Photography Magazine readers a discount of 20% for its monthly or annual Premium plan if you use discount voucher PHOTO20. The code expires on the 31 January 2014.

Alberto Feijoo

All images © Alberto Feijoo

1000 Words Associate editor Brad Feuerhelm is gripped by Alberto Feijoo's self-published photo book, Something we used to know, a mash up of lost moments from music concerts running parallel to an examination of the photographer's own roots in Spain.

Alberto Feijoo’s Something we used to know is a quiet gem of a book, bent on the precipice of solitude wherein the divide of screen-based memory and empire of collated events from late 90’s to the early noughties collide.

Comprising pixellated, stepped, and glitched images of youth culture in wild throes, music concerts are revisited via DVD rips and images made from grabbing reconciled YouTube clips of the crowds at these events. All are awash in a sombre palette of colour hinting at the coppery smell of blood or an air of violence when wires get crossed at uncomfortable intervals. There’s a palpable sense of nostalgia too, but one slightly askew, as if forced into a colander and the remnants from the sieve are mashed into one idea of a memory of the time and place where scores of people shared a perception of an experience. Orphaned images, orphaned lives are appropriated for our collective familiarisation, and within this disequilibrium we conjure meta-memories fecund with what photography had previously presented us in material form.

Thinking ‘Was I there? I remember being there, but this face here in the crowd…its distortion…its dragged features…Could this have been me? It looks like me…I had that Nailbomb shirt’ and yet with a shaky hand I fondle the same shirt and I can attach no transference to it and the monster on the screen. This is the meme of self-given birth to the next meme of self, desperate for a “real” genetic disposition for the flesh that fingers its image from the console of the computer. Concrete matters dissolve into utopian super memory which collapses upon itself when applied to the representation we desperately seek through the locus of photographic image.

That said, the Spanish photographer's book is not all fodder for woe in terms of its content. There are very soft interludes of images that we can only presume are taken by Feijoo himself. Delicate still lifes in abject surroundings, such as oranges left to rot on discarded and soiled mattresses found in alleyways are interspersed with portraits - more lyrical fragments of friends, people collected, impressions even. They stand as sentimental bastions of memory for the author, his culture, the good life and currently his life under the economic collapse of his country. They represent the boom, the bust, and the lust for looking back to the golden days of untroubled youth.

There is almost a passive sublime in the work although it is achieved through the depiction of people as opposed to landscape - not a Friedrich-type sublime, but rather oracles of the personal divine found in the slow burn of change through descent. As such, this is a book full of disquiet. Yet the disquiet that is found here is asking more questions of our recent past, its interpretations and the way in which we will navigate our troubled futures.

Brad Feuerhelm

Something we used to know is self-published. To order a copy for €30.00 click here.