When Simon Roberts sent me a copy of his new book Motherland, I thought that instead of writing a review I could talk to him about the book. I am glad he agreed to participate.
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When I first saw Andrew Miksys’ Baxt I realized I was dealing with something a bit different. Let’s face it: Most people only know the Roma (“gypsies”) as a comedic backdrop from the movie Borat, and there still exist considerable stereotypes (and worse) about them. So I asked Andrew whether he would be up for a conversation about his work.
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Todd Hido might be mostly known for his eerie night-time scenes of anonymous suburban settings, but has also done portraits. In fact, he is one of the photographers whose work will be shown in A New American Portrait. I talked with Todd about his work, and about how to shoot a great portrait.
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I had been aware of several of Misty Keasler’s projects, but it took me a while to connect them with the same name. Misty has covered topics ranging from people living in huge garbage dumps to Japanese love hotels, and I was curious how she managed to do this so (seemingly) effortlessly - so I asked her.
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As a Magnum and Newsweek photographer, Luc Delahaye covered many of the most recent areas of conflict like, for example, Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan. Apart from other prizes, he won the World Press Photo three times. With time, his work evolved from standard photojournalistic practice, both towards other areas (for example, for his project “L’Autre” he stealthily took photos of Parisian subway passengers) and methods (he started to use a panoramic large-format camera for photojournalistic assignments). “History” might be considered the culmination of this development, a series of panoramic photos often showing vast scales, such as the whole UN assembly hall while President Bush was giving a speech, and printed quite large (4 by 8 feet). Most famously, his photo of a dead Taliban soldier, exhibited and sold by a commercial art gallery, caused a stir a few years ago. A year later, he resigned from Magnum. I talked to Luc about his earlier and current work.
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Apart from being an accomplished photographer, Martin Parr has been active as a book editor (for example, Boring Postcards or The Photobook: A History) and curator. This Summer, “Colour before colour - 1970’s European Color Photography” will be on view at Hasted Hunt gallery, curated by Martin and showcasing six not very widely known early European colour pioneers. I talked to him about the show.
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A photo by Roger Ballen is not something that you look at and then forget. His photography possesses a very intense beauty. I was recently given the opportunity to speak with Roger about his work and its background.
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After I found an article about blogs in a German photography magazine, I contacted its author, photographer Peter Bialobrzeski, to ask a couple questions about the German scene - and from there, it was almost a logical step to ask him for an interview. I was/am very happy about his willingness to participate, especially since there has been a lot of talk about German photography on this blog. So is bigger better? Is there a uniquely German style of photography? Let’s find out!
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Jeff Brouws’ book Approaching Nowhere had long been on my list of books to buy, and I finally bought it. It’s a fascinating book, not just for the photography alone. There are essays at the end of the book about what is depicted, and I contacted Jeff to ask him whether he would be willing to talk about his work.
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Andrew Moore’s Russia is quite an impressive book (see my review). When I asked Andrew whether he would be willing to talk about it, much to my delight he agreed immediately.
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I have long been fascinated by the photography of David Maisel. Often, when people who don’t know much about fine-art photography joke around about what they think it is (can you guess?), I show them David’s website. Once they’re hooked to the beauty of the images, I tell them what they’re really looking at, and that never fails to work. However, I have always felt a little bit uncomfortable about admiring beautiful images of things that are quite disastrous, so I asked David whether he would talk about this with me.
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When I looked at Sarah Martin’s photography and at her statements, which provide the background, a whole set of questions popped up in my head, and I asked Sarah whether she was willing to talk about her work. I was thrilled to learn that she was.
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A while ago, Timothy Archibald’s book Sex Machines was released (see my review here), and since then I had been quite curious about how the book had been perceived and what Timothy’s experiences might have been. At the end of last year, Timothy wrote me a end-of-the-year email, and since he hinted at some unforeseen developments (I’m just going to call it that lest I spoil the following) I could not contain my curiosity any longer and asked him whether he was willing to talk about the project. I’m very glad to learn that he was.
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Richard Renaldi’s Figure and Ground is one of my favourite photo books from this year. I immediately hoped to be able to talk to Richard about his work, and I was very excited when he agreed to do so.
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Paul Shambroom’s portfolio contains a series of projects that, on the surface, seem disconnected. But there is an underlying common theme. I talked with Paul about the connections and about the individual projects.
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Blogs are not a new phenomenon. But I think in the photo world they have really only taken off this year, with a remarkably large number of new blogs appearing (if I tried to provide a list it would end up being incomplete). What is interesting is that more and more established photographers now have a blog presence. Alec Soth’s (relatively) new blog might have made the biggest splash recently, and since Alec and I have been talking about aspect of blogging occasionally, I thought we might as well talk about blogs and their impact in public.
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I’ve always found Todd Deutsch’s work quite intriguing, especially his series Family Days. For a large variety of reasons I personally would never be able to produce a body of work like that; and I finally asked Todd whether he’d be willing to talk about his work and some of the background. I’m very glad he agreed to participate.
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There are few things that are subtle in Juliana Beasley’s photography. But then, the fact that you don’t get to see stuff like that too often in our somewhat sanitized culture doesn’t mean that you’re looking at the fringes (as much as many people would like to believe that). I talked with Juliana about her work.
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Amy Elkins is a young photographer whose portraits I quite like. Given my ongoing quest to ask photographers about their portraits I asked Amy whether she’d want to talk about them, and I’m glad that she agreed to do it.
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Just a little while ago, Chris Jordan’s book In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster was published. The book contains images taken in the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and given the contents of Chris’ earlier work I asked him for an interview.
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After reading Bill Sullivan’s description of his series “3 Situations” and after looking at the images, I got intrigued and asked him whether he would be willing to talk about the ideas behind his work in more detail. I was quite excited to learn that he was happy to do that.
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Michael Wolf’s work first caught my attention when I discovered his Real Toy Story project - a depiction of under which conditions the toys found in Western toy stores are assembled. Just a little while later, Michael published Architecture of Density - large-scale photos of some of those humongous apartment buildings in Hong Kong. Given his continued output of interesting work, showing different aspects of life in Hong Kong, I asked him whether he would be available for an interview, and I was delighted to learn that he was.
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A few years back, Alec Soth’s Sleeping By the Mississippi took the photo world by storm. The book became one of those rare instant classics and a fine example of what contemporary photography can be about. With his next book, Niagara, published earlier this year, Alec managed to surprise a lot of people because of the subject matter. Just like “Mississippi”, “Niagara” contains an interesting mix of portraits, landscapes, interiors of buildings, and still lifes. Being a fan of his work, I was delighted when Alec agreed to talk with me about his work.
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When I saw Shen Wei’s portraits for the first time, I was struck by their expressiveness, which - invariably - had me thinking again about how photographic portraits can be approached - as a photographer, as a mere observer, and also as a subject. It was for that reason that I approached Shen Wei and asked him to talk about his work a little.
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If there is any kind of photography that I have my problems with it is photojournalistic photography from war zones. I usually refer to it as “war pornography”, and by that I mean that photos of dead or maimed soldiers or civilians are often just used for a cheap thrill, not unlike the sexual equivalent. Needless to say, this point of view is not all that fair. People usually tell me that photos from wars have the power to change our perception of wars; and I think a large part of my repulsion stems from me simply not seeing much evidence for that to be true. You just have to think back a few years, back when the Iraq war was not a very unpopular war that nobody really wanted, but a war that was necessary, with good reasons - I’m sure you will remember the jingoism. It was almost like those images from Vietnam, say, or the absolutely gruesome images from the earlier Gulf War. I will admit that some images have had an impact on the public’s perception of an ongoing war, but in all cases that I can think of, the war had already gone on for many - too many - years. Following one of my posts about some war photography, Roger Richards emailed me, and we had a brief exchange of emails about various topics. I was absolutely thrilled to be able to talk to somebody who had actually worked as a photojournalist during a war - Roger spent a long time in Bosnia during and after the war there. I think if there is any insight to be gained into the topic of what this kind of photojournalism can achieve and how it might have to be done, then that insight will not come from people who are writing articles (or silly blogs) from the comforts of their middle-class existences, but from people who have actually experienced the conditions, which produced the images we get to see. I was thus very happy to learn that Roger agreed to participate in one of my conversations with photographers.
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Consumption and shopping are such integral parts of what we like to call our culture that very often, we do not realize the full extent of the whole complex any longer. But what does this fact really lead to? I first noticed the importance of shopping when I told American friends that on Sundays German shops are closed (or rather used to be closed since things are changing there). The standard question “But what do people do on a Sunday?” was accompanied by either bewildered or outright horrified facial expressions. Brian Ulrich’s photography is centered on consumption and shopping, with him covering both shopping malls - maybe the most American of all experiences somebody could ever have - and thrift stores - places that I personally have been immensely fascinated with. I talked with Brian about the different aspects of his work.
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(This is the first of what I hope will be many conversations with photographers about their photography. I’ve always wanted to do this, and I hope this is going to become a regular feature here. My thanks to Jay Parkinson for agreeing to be the first person to be interviewed for this blog.) When I saw Jay Parkinson’s shots of aspiring models for the first time, I got quite interested in them. To start with, it is quite an interesting project to do since - at least from what I know - there is quite a bit more to the modeling world than those famous fashion models on cat walks. I have no idea how you become a model. Do you make a decision? And how do you decide to become a specialized model, say for hands or bondage or whatever else there is?
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