Conscientious

The background: New Orleans, ca. 1912, the red-light district called "Storyville". The "hero": E.J. Bellocq, a photographer there, whose active period extends into the 1940s. The other "hero": Lee Friedlander, whose interest in jazz and in the city brings him to New Orleans, where through a collector named Larry Borenstein he first comes across the (re-printed) photographs and then the original glass plates of some of Bellocq's work, found in a desk after his death. In 1966, Friedlander acquires the plates - by now, some of them heavily damaged by years of abuse by the elements, neglect and acts of censorship (some of the faces are scratched out). Through a bit of trial and error Friedlander manages to produce a full set of prints, eighty-nine of them, thirty-four of which (there are thirty-three numbered plates plus one image in the front) are reproduced in Storyville Portraits, published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1970 (using an edit by John Szarkowski).

These days, the perks of being a magician are not overly exciting (unless you love to "dazzle" party crowds with doing card tricks and "finding" coins behind the ears of people you want to spend more time with). But as a magician, you do get access to whatever the places are called where magicians hang out - which is great, I suppose, if you're a magician, and it's also great if you're a photographers. Enters Christiaan Lopez-Miro (for effect, you will have to imagine he suddenly pops up, with us not knowing where from - man, how did he do that?) and his series "Smoke and Mirrors". (thanks, Alesh!)

"A few months ago I met with the Department Head of Photographs at a major art museum to show them my new book Fall River Boys. During the meeting I asked if I could show another more recent body of work that appeared on my website. They obliged and handed me a laptop to bring up my site. When I entered the url a message was returned that my website was blocked due to adult content [...]. This was regarded as no big deal by the curator. I was told that there were many artists whose websites were blocked because there was some form of nudity in their work." - Richard Renaldi

I really like Annabel Elgar's series Refuge, and I wish I could find out more about it. Unfortunately, on the website there is only a text written by someone else, which, with its combination of vague art speak ("process of allegorical bricolage") and bad cliches ("a bleak Orwellian vision of sad bedsits, neglected kitchens and subterranean basements"), I find offputting.

This video by Andrew Hetherington is worth watching for Phil Toledano talking at length about his work (once you're beyond the "this is my studio" bit - and you also get to see the fabled astronaut suit).

This photo is not particularly representative of Kai-Uwe Schulte-Bunert's work, but it shows a different side of a German photographer who sometimes seems to get a little bit lost in formalism.

If you're thinking about joining Robert Lyons and me for one of the Summer Workshops send us your materials now! The deadline for applications is tomorrow (30 June)!

A.D. Coleman, the NY Times' first photo critic and author of, for example, Light Readings: A Photography Critic's Writings, 1968-1978, now has his own blog.

Jonas Holthaus' Heimat-Raum shows Turkish tea rooms and entertainment centers in Germany.

You have probably seen it already on Ofer's blog: Two French art students created a fake photoreportage, to win first prize at a competition (more coverage here, and - if you are able to read French - here). Ofer translated some of the students' motivation from the Figaro article: "Speaking to Le Figaro, Guillaume Chauvin [one of the students] confided that they 'wanted to enter the contest in order to show the codes used too often in photojournalism and to prove that something real could be translated into something staged.'"

As I mentioned on this blog before, there is a little bit of soul searching going on in photojournalistic circles. What I find fascinating about the debates and commentaries I've seen is the implicit acknowledgment that fine-art photographers not only managed to expand the public's idea of what photography can look like, but they can also produce work that challenges standard photojournalistic practice. Eirik Johnson's Sawdust Mountain can be seen as a good example.

DLK Collection offers some thought provoking commentary on summer group shows: "Like kudzu covering every inch of the roadside, the summer group show is an invasive species, crowding out all other offerings, creating a monoculture of culture. The formula is simple: gather together a handful of artists already represented by the gallery, select 4 or 5 works each, and hang them in groups in the gallery space, covered by a catchy summer related title. Think of it as the pu pu platter of Americanized Chinese food: a thrown together sampler of otherwise unrelated items."

Like probably everybody else, I have been following what is going on in Iran, and this cartoon by Steve Bell, which I found here, might well be the most fitting visual commentary I've seen so far.

Marion Belanger's website contains a fairly large number of projects; make sure to check all of them out.

"Worth The Trip is a reflection of the cultural landscape; specifically the areas between my former home in Tennessee and my current in Chicago." - Melissa K Stallard (via)