Recently in Weblogs Category

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.

There is going to be a re-design of this blog coming up, so I won't be updating the side links until then (the re-design will involve organizing the whole links section away from a simple alphabetical list). Since today is dedicated to photo books, have a look at the blog The PhotoBooK, with lots of reviews.

"Art magazines and art blogs are the journalistic equivalent of studio art, while an art review in a newspaper is like public art. Anyone from any background might happen upon it. Where I write now does not exist in a generalized public sphere. A street sweeper on coffee break will not happen upon a leftover copy of this blog and be drawn into a review. A woman getting her heels buffed won't find it on the empty seat beside her and be motivated to see an exhibit of which she might otherwise not have heard. For an art critic, the death of newspapers is the death of potential connection to wider worlds. Everyone who reads this blog has a preexisting condition, otherwise known as an interest in art. On the other hand, there are notable benefits. Where I'm writing now, nobody tells me what to do and nobody derides my blog just because it's a blog." - Regina Hackett

You can certainly wonder whether blogs should really be called blogs, but they are here to stay. To a large extent, this is due to the efforts of a few truly outstanding individuals whose blogs have become beacons of quality. People like Josh Marshall come to mind, or Ed Winkleman, and, of course, there is Geoff Manaugh and his blog BLDGBLOG.

I mentioned a few days ago that there will be a redesign of this blog coming up, part of which aims at making the archives more easily accessible and at making it easier to browse the list of links. The current list contains what I had before the crash and is already missing some stuff. Given the upcoming redesign I will refrain from updating it. One blog/photography site that needs to be pointed out, though, is Fabiano Busdraghi's Camera Obscura. Fabiano wrote me that the "idea of the site is avoid simple quotation and link to other blogs or sites, but always produce original and detailed content."

I don't even know why I didn't realize this earlier, but most blogs (at least those similar to Conscientious) are being organized in a temporal way - new posts are sorted by when they were published - but, in fact, their contents usually is not temporal at all! I do post one photographer per day, but the reason why I post one is so that people have enough time to look, so that the photographer's work is done justice. This might make it look like yesterday's photographer is "old news", but that's just because the blogging software makes it look that way. I mean I could post thirty photographer at the beginning of every month and then remain quiet for the rest of the month - but that would obviously reduce the experience of seeing the work. I guess what this really comes down to is a need for a better way to organizes the "archives"... (thinking out loud) But it's good for people to realize this: The fact that you here see one photographer after the other, day after day, has reasons that have little to do with showing something new every day.

Before I started compiling this blog, I was reading other people's blogs for a while, and the one blog that inspired me the most was James Luckett's consumptive. Since then, consumptive changed shape occasionally; and now James has a Blurb book out.

Paddy is having a year-end fundraiser over at Art Fag City, so have a peek and think about contributing. As she notes "Considering how traditional media is currently gutting arts coverage, sites such as my own are not only important, but essential to the field of art criticism."

Reading this blog will make you smarter.

Time to update the old blogroll again, with new additions bildwerk3 (a German blog, German language only [of course!], though), fugitive vision, american suburb x, andrew phelps' buffet; and then there's wassenaar, a new online photography magazine.

I set up a Google group called "Conscientious" for discussions about posts seen here and about photography in general - so if you want to comment on anything you can do it there. There are various reasons for a Google group (some of the mundanely technical). The most important one might is that I am interested in a spirited and civil discussion, and that simply excludes both anonymity and members with generic first names only ("Joe" or "Jill") or non-names ("aphotographer"). Anyone can view the group; but if you want to post, you'll have to ask me for an invite (simply email me). Anyone will get an invite from me - provided there's a real full name and a valid email address - with no other restrictions. There's no moderation of posts. So, again, email me if you want to become a member, and you'll get the invite. As of right now, there are 54 66 76 91 members with some very discussions already happening. Oh, and I'll also post items at the group that for whatever reason would not show up here, incl. something I'm calling "Impressions". (Updated post)

It's hard to keep up with all the new photo blogs that have been started recently (It seems photo blogs have become a bit of a craze in the commercial/editorial photography sector now). Many of you might already know these following two, but since I haven't mentioned them here it's about time: My friend Mark Tucker just started his own blog, and I wish it was me egging him on for a couple of years that finally did it. But alas... In any case, I hope he'll publish some of the observations concerning contemporary photography he has shared with me via email over the past four years. Plus, Vincent Laforet just started his blog - I'm sure you've all seen his photography from the Olympics in Beijing.

Cara Phillips' Ground Glass is one of my favourite blogs, and I was so certain it that I had added it to the blogroll a long time ago that it never occured to me that in fact it was still missing! That's nuts (and proof that I really am getting old)! So check out Ground Glass if you haven't done so already!

It's time to update the 'blogroll' again. The latest two additions are Chas Bowie's eloquently written that's a negative and the blog of 1000 words photography magazine, which I mentioned here earlier.