Broadway Convertible, New York, by Louis Faurer c.1949

Out of all of the photographs in the "Picturing New York"exhibition portraying the city in so many different ways, this photograph stood out to me because it portrays the city in a way that I have personally experienced it. Like the many people who go to New York for the first time, the feeling of excitement and awe is captured in this image. It, for me has a nostalgic dimension, very similar to a song you hear which reminds you of an event, a person or an experience in your past. In that way, a photograph, any photograph for that matter, can have so many unforeseeable and unimaginable effects on the viewer in addition to anything the photographer is trying to portray.

Louis Fraurer moved from Philadelphia to New York in 1947 where he met Robert Frank, a Swiss photographer. They quickly discovered a shared alienation from postwar America, along with a disdain for the cutthroat monde de mode. Frauer worked at a fashion photographer for more then twenty years but its his personal work from the '40s, '50s, and '60s for which he is best remembered. He photographed the streets of New York and Philadelphia, capturing the restless energy of urban life. Faurer experimented with blur, grain, double exposures, sandwiched negatives, reflections, slow film speeds, and low lighting to achieve the effects he was seeking. As exacting in the darkroom as he was in the field, he was notorious for being a tireless perfectionist when it came to cropping and printing his work.

Just to add to Alice's note, I think of the six episodes of Genius, the two most useful to watch would be Paper Movies and Documents for Artists, although it is all very good. Someone might check if there is already a dvd copy on reserve in the library as I remember putting it on reserve at some point..

Hugh

Space Framed Week 3

To aid and abet our proposed group discussion on the history of Photography on 8 Feb @ 11, the assignment this week is to watch 'The Genius of Photography', a BBC documentary. Most of this can be found online, and we will post some links to particularly relevant parts on the blog. It is a good idea to watch as much of this as possible, as it gives a good, broad introduction to the subject.

Also, following on from the posts last week, post your chosen image from 'Picturing New York' to the blog, plus a brief verbal description in time for the discussion next week.

Idaho 1972, Lee Friedlander

Together with figures such as Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander transformed American documentary photography in the 1960's. By the late 1970's he was widely seen as one of the most penetrating photographers of American cities. In Friedlander’s images, surfaces are frequently broken, disrupted, or complicated; objects jut forward, obscuring others. Mirrors and windows reflect and refract events already in flux. Through his oblique take on the social and visual fabric of townscapes, unexpected patterns and social processes emerge.
I choose this image because I liked the interruption of the wing mirror in the picture. I gives another dimension to the picture, placing the photographer and therefore, the viewer in relation to the landscape. The picture is divided in three parts, showing three different images of the same landscape. The view to the left and right of the wing mirror could be conceived as two completely different photographs but the cloud in the sky connects the two together, almost assuring the viewer that it is only one image.

Space Framed Week 2

We'll meet at reception to the 'Picturing New York' exhibition at IMMA at 4pm on Tuesday 02 Feb.
Have a photograph from the exhibition selected for the group discussion.
Some books to look at:
'Picturing New York' - Catalogue of the exhibition on Temporary Reserve in the Library
'Bystander - A History of Street Photography' - Colin Westerbeck & Joel Meyerowitz
'Life is good and good for you in New York' - William Klein

Hartford, 1979

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

I think this is one of the most powerful images I've seen. It seems almost solidly still - calmly banal but filled with emotion. This picture doesn't attack or offend or shock, but it screams a silence at me. We see a man, staring out a window. He seems entirely detached from his surroundings, searching, beyond our view. We see a man that seems an icon of american society, a pioneer of that american dream. Dressed in suit and tie, early or late, with coffee and cigarette he is here, at this moment, searching for something else. Here, we see a man that is sad.

I find myself following his gaze. I notice a tree creeping into the frame. Looking closely, I see there are little buds - it must be spring. It looks black against the fading sun. Then I notice a potted plant in the man's house, an all year green lit yellow in an artificial light.

The man lives higher than his neighbours. The staging of the photograph places us at an imaginary point, floating outside his apartment, looking at him, who in turn is looking for something else. The brick facade of his apartment takes over half of our framed view - takes priority over the natural world in the background.

Otto Steinert

I chose the photograph “A Pedestrian Walking” by Otto Steinert, taken in 1951 in Paris. Steinert was a founding member of Fotoform and throughout his life espoused the idea of “subjective photography”, which values the photographer's personal interpretation and vision, often in abstract forms, over documentary realism. While personally I believe that both forms of photography is important I do think that the photograph highlights the fact that the medium can go beyond simply framing a snapshot of a moment in time, to creating images that one simply cannot otherwise see.

The photograph is impressive on a technical level for the difficulty involved with getting the right shutter speed to blur just the body of the pedestrian while leaving his leg sharp, and I believe is excellently composed with the solidity of the tree contrasting the pedestrian. Though the image is composed of mundane everyday objects - footpath, road, tree and pedestrian, it is framed in such as way as to create abstract shapes with them, and ironically, while the photograph captures movement, the overall image feels static.

Peter Buckley

This is a photo by Peter Buckley from 1957. It is part of a series taken in Bilbao to capture the drama of a Bullfight.

I chose this picture for a few reasons. Firstly, i really like the strong stylized composition of the photo, the steep triangular form created by the two figures and the contrasts between the two.

I also like the drama of the narrative and the action in the picture. The arrogant pose of the fighter as he leads the bull behind his back and the look of surprise on the bulls face as he realizes that he has been tricked. There is also the realization that this is near the end of the fight, with the Bullfighter in control, and Buckley captures an almost 'human-like' expression on the bulls face, as if the bull himself realizes that the fight is lost.

Thomas Struth
“Paradise 9”


I chose a photograph by Thomas Struth from the book “The Nature of Photographs”. It is part of his “Paradise 9” series. I chose this photograph because it revealed to me how photographs do not have to portray a specific image of an object but can infact let your mind reflect on the image and come to its own conclusions. Thomas Struth took this photo and others of the jungles of Australia, Japan and China. However he took it with the notion in mind that he was not portraying a specific place or country, rather just a scene that could be located in numerous places. The photo presents a kind of empty space, allowing the observer more room for inward contemplation. There is no context, social or cultural, to be discovered. He has changed the use of the photograph. It is called an “opaque” photo.

Space Framed Week 1

We touched on some interesting subjects in our first discussion.
Prior to our visit next week to IMMA to see & discuss 'Picturing New York', it would be good to post our initial photographic selection with a brief description on why we chose it.

Parade - Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955. Gelatin silver print; 8 3/8 x 12 3/4 cm. Robert Frank - From The Americans

I chose the above photograph.

The building offers the women a safe vantage point to view the parade, removing them from the action. They are passive observers but their faces and expressions are obscured from the observer and each other– by their building and their flag. There is a sense of dis-connection.

The photograph is, I feel, a combination of a snatched moment of time (perhaps it was momentary that the flag blew in such a way while they were standing in adjoining windows) and carefully considered framing. The selection of this frame exposed a spatial relationship but also clearly communicates something of Frank's observations on American life.

SPACE FRAMED 2010: PHOTOGRAPHY & THE HUMAN HABITAT

Julius Schulman - Visual Acoustics

This documentary on Julius Schulman is showing in the IFI on Wednesday 4 Nov @ 6.30pm....
Well worth a look...!

Photochrom

The Library of Congress has an outstanding collection of Photochroms dating from 1890s-early 1900s.
These are not colour photographs, but ink-based photolithographs.
They were primarily used as travel-postcards, but still serve as an example of beautifully composed landscape and city photography.

Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin.

Klampenborg Hermitage with view of the park, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Loen, Kjendalskroenebrae, Nordfjord, Norway.

Gols Church with Hovenstuen and Staburet, Christiania, Norway.










Fingal's Cave, Scotland

The road from Eide to Voss, Hardanger Fjord, Norway

The Encounters

'What is a camera? "why do people take photographs?" I am always brought back to this very basic question when I take photographs or think about photography.'
- Daido Moriyama







As part of 'A Day in the Light' workshop for now what?, we were talking about how to photograph a place that has been photographed and re-photographed countless times by tourists...Mohammedreza Mirzaei's 'The Encounters 2007-08' came to mind.
Here, he addresses this by photographing the tourists who are in turn photographing the place...








"What emerges is the idea that people seem locked into their insatiable craving to take pictures while on holiday more so than the actual experience of the spectacle itself."
-Tim Clark, Editor and director of 1000 words

"Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel."
- Susan Sontag - On Photography (1977):

Julius Shulman 1910-2009

Case Study House #22 (playboy), 1960 LA.
Architect: Pierre Koenig.

Kramer House, 1953, Norca CA.
Architect: Richard Neutra.

Singleton House, 1960 LA.
Architect: Richard Neutra.

Recreation Pavilion, Mirman Residence, 1959, Arcadia CA.
Architect: Buff, Straub & Hensman.

Case Study House #22, 1960 LA.
Architect: Pierre Koenig.

camera truck images

Photographer Shaun Irving made these images using a truck as a camera - check out his work at Camera Truck....



and here's how he does it

Satellite Photos - Las Vegas over 25 years

via earth observatory

1984

1989

1994

1999

2004

2009

Naoya Hatakeyama

Naoya Hatakeyama - Underground/River Series



T6912



T6601



T6403



T6601



T6205



T6109

Photographic Scale #2: The Sea

Just in time for the bank holiday weekend...



Nicholas Hughes, In Darkness visible, Verse 2, Image #7, 2007.




Nicholas Hughes, Edge, Verse 1, Image #29, 2007.




Asako Narahashi, Jonanjima, 2008.
from the Series 'Half awake and half asleep in the water'




Nicholas Hughes, Edge, Verse 1, Image #34, 2007.




Gary Coyle, from the series 'The daily practice of swimming', 1999.




Hiroshi Sugimoto, from the series Seascapes, 1980





Marine Hugonnier, N9, 2001.
From the series 'Towards Tomorrow - International Date Line, Alaska',




Richard Misrach, from the series 'On the beach', 2002-2005

further to Alice's selection, see also Naoyo Hatekayama's series Blast