Milky Blacks

Dragon

2012-01-23T03:41:00.000-08:00

The Sufis. Lahore

2012-01-21T13:01:00.000-08:00

Kabul

2012-01-21T03:57:00.000-08:00

Amritsar

2012-01-19T07:37:00.000-08:00

Dublin: Rare Auld Times...

2012-01-16T09:46:00.000-08:00

Art...and like fame...and stuff.

2012-01-11T11:34:00.000-08:00

from The Real Cindy Sherman in Harpars Bazaar...

...Last spring, Sherman's Untitled #96 (above) sold for $3.9 million, then the highest price ever paid at auction for a photograph. She says she was gratified that a photograph of hers set an auction record but also not surprised. "I felt, well, it's about time," she says. "Not that I feel it's worth that much, but so much other photography by men has been hovering in that range. I have to say I'm competitive: 'Hey, what about me? I'm in that same realm of fame as those guys.'"

Rhein II by Andreas Gursky, now the most expensive photograph ever sold at $4.3m

from Why is Art so Damned Expensive? in Newsweek/TheDaily Beast...

...“If I can’t sell something, I just double the price.” That’s what Ernst Beyeler, the great Swiss dealer who helped found Art Basel, reportedly said. Some people actually prefer to pay more than makes sense. Zelizer explains that, in all walks of life, we treat the biggest sums differently, with special respect or even awe, than more everyday money. “I think very often the price paid for a work is the trophy itself,” says Arnold Glimcher an art dealer.

My Faraway One

2012-01-07T07:19:00.000-08:00

O'Keeffe & Stieglitz, ©Arnold Newman, 1944

Him:

"Stieglitz was temperamentally drawn to difficulty, both in the processes and the subjects of photography. Among his best-known early photographs are Manhattan street scenes under extreme visual conditions. He loved the melancholy of reflections caught in rainy streets at dusk."

Her:

"O’Keeffe joked that she came from the “tale end of the earth”; the charmingly misspelled word suggests that there was something legendary, like a fairy tale, about her upbringing."

Georgia O'Keeffe, ©Algred Stieglitz, 1918

A wonderful article in the New York Review of Books by Christopher Benfey on the publication of the correspondence between Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keefe entitled 'My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, Volume 1, 1915-1933' edited by Sarah Greenough.

I am always drawn to collections of correspondence from Van Gough to Hunter Thompson. Letters always seem to reveal huge depths about the individual's inner lives that perhaps are only present on the surface in their work proper. They're the reality TV of the artistic retrospective.

Benfey's article is a great read, Stieglitz, some 24 years older than his muse, seemed magnetically drawn to the burning talent of O'Keeffe, becoming, at the instant they met, both a dependent and a devotee of her work and of her body.

His possessiveness of all things 'Georgian' extended as far as his desire to be cremated with 'Blue Lines X', a work of hers that he felt represented their mutual being.

“In a way it’s criminal to ask you to have it accompany me beyond all Pain or Ecstasy—but I must take it with me.”

Blue Lines X, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1916

Magnum: Changing of a Myth

2012-01-05T06:03:00.000-08:00

Magnum Photos - The Changing of a Myth (1999)

Thanks ASX, the best photo site online...

Grogan's

2011-12-25T03:47:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas!

Bethlehem

2011-12-22T14:38:00.001-08:00

Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, 2010

If Walls Could Talk

2011-12-21T16:12:00.000-08:00

Black Mirror

2011-12-20T16:42:00.000-08:00

Black Mirror...4oD

Our Man in Sudan

2011-12-18T13:03:00.000-08:00

Confessional

2011-12-17T04:07:00.001-08:00

Up in the Air

2011-12-15T12:13:00.000-08:00

Just when we all thought Go-Pro was going to keep things moving on the camera front and break barriers for a long time, now the must have video tool is....your own helicopter.

Good times.

And just look at what we could all be doing with our DSLR rigs; some serious eye-candy from the guys at Freefly Cinema.

Ridley Scott eat your heart out.

It seems aerial has been in the ether this week as Time Magazine's essential photography portal Lightbox also reports on how military drone technology has been downsized (and down priced) for the consumer market. Check the article here

I know the shots look great with the Octocopter, I'm just wondering if anyone's using it to deliver sandwiches yet?

Top image ©Max Rossi - Reuters

A life in pictures...

2011-11-28T06:14:00.000-08:00

Nice stranger-than-fiction story on Richard Simpkin in the Guardian along with a video that are both worth checking out for their curiosity value alone.

It comes in advance of the gallery show "Richard & Famous" a collection of some 450 of Simpkin's self-portraits with celebrities he has taken since he popped his snapshot cherry with BROS as a teenager in Sydney in 1988.

Simpkin's archive is a strange and unique historical document that chronicles our celebrity saturated culture as well as one man, Simpkin himself, growing up awkwardly alongside some of the world's most famous faces.

Most interesting is that some of his most famous photos somehow take on a different meaning due to the death, divorce or disgrace of the picture's subjects, with Simpkin - his cheeky grin ever-present - seemingly innately understanding that if he just kept going, one day, someone might just ask if they could have their picture taken with him...

Remember Me, My Ghost

2011-11-08T03:40:00.000-08:00

This weekend I'll be presenting my new film Remember Me, My Ghost for it's world premiere at the 56th Corona Cork Film Festival this weekend. If you're in the area, pop by the Cork Opera House on Saturday afternoon...

Looking forward also to seeing new work by local heroes Lorcan Finnegan, Tom Burke and Darren Thornton in the same programme.

Nuru Project

2011-10-20T00:56:00.000-07:00

Delighted to be supporting the Nuru Project a really innovative idea by J.B. Reed to help raise money for good causes though photography print sales. Some fantastic work on the website and some really good causes to consider being a benefactor to. Everyones a winner...

Them Bones...

2011-10-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

BARE BONES WEBSITE

Legendary illustrator and loving father of the Bare Bones crew Harry Malt has gone and set up a website to represent his ever-loyal flock of miscreant creatives....

What's that Harry?

Take a drink of that Kool Aid??

No thanks mate...mine's a Stella.

Private Photography Review

2011-10-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

Private International Review of Photographs features some of my work from Turkana in their 54th issue titled 'Lost'. Stoked also to have the cover page with an image I made in a place called 'Kakong' in North-Western Kenya.

The village, in the marshy borderlands was besieged by the neighboring, more powerful, Pokot tribe. The name of the place itself means 'Eyes' in the local tongue, such was the frequency of armed livestock raids visited on the place.

I made this image while on 'patrol' with the tribesmen, lanky Turkanas wielding AK's; most of them with only one bullet apiece in their magazines. They laughed at me crawling around in the dusty earth with my Rollei and a macro lens while I should have been worried about getting shot at by the feared Pokots.

The ants seemed to sum up the harshness of the place.

The issue of Private is a gem with outstanding essays from all-time photo heroes Roger Ballen and Stephen DuPont, long-term crush Carolyn Drake and a slew of other outstanding photographers. Many thanks to Veronique and the crew.

Get a copy today...

A Lot More to be Seen

2011-10-01T14:52:00.000-07:00

David Hockney 'draws' from the video village. ©David Hockney

Great article in the Technology Review on David Hockney's latest series of motion collages captured using rigs of multiple DSLR's set up at different points of view. Long an innovator in the photographic medium and an astute commentator on the impact of lens based media on traditional painting and other art practices Hockney's contribution to photography is somehow still overlooked on university courses and by the photo establishment.

"A lot of people have told me," Hockney states, "that before they see these films they can't imagine what nine cameras could do that one can't. When they see them, they understand. It's showing a lot more; there's simply a lot more to see. It seems you can see almost more on these screens than if you were really there. Everything is in focus, so you're looking at something very complicated but with incredible clarity."

Image from the 18 screen video May 12th 2011 Rudston to Kilham Road ©David Hockney

Wattanabe-san

2011-09-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

He was a quiet man, the driver. Not that he didn't like to talk or anything, just in that way the Japanese are. Mannered and proud. Contemplative. His car, an aging minivan, was always polished to a high shine despite the places he was working in, his suit always impeccably clean. Each day he'd greet us with effusive handshakes, bows and smiles.

It's fair to say that we liked him immediately, Wattanabe-san.

A regular taxi driver in the quiet city of Sendai until the 11th March, his life had been irrevocably changed by the disaster in a different way than one would expect. Lucky to have escaped the earthquake and the tsunami unscathed; it was the influx of press and media who rushed to his corner of eastern Japan that changed his livelihood from daily city driving to becoming the kind of go-to guy that the media business survives on.

It had been a big leap. Suddenly his normal routine was gone and he found himself working in situations he never thought imaginable, witnessing the aftermath of a national tragedy first hand and learning how the news gets made.

We were no different, the crew of 'Snakedance', relying on his knowledge and his stories to help director Manu Riche and writer Patrick Marnham get a sense of what they might expect from different locations and what the context of each place was.

I felt compelled to take images of Wattanabe in our downtime, dressed as he was, for a funeral.

Always there, hands crossed, staring out at the devastation. He communicated to me in those moments of reflection about how deeply this disaster had affected the people of Japan. I wondered how many times he had visited places like Yuriage and Natori and the subtle differences he was observing in these landscapes as his countrymen began the mammoth clear up. I wondered too how he felt about working with the media and their need to pry into the lives of ordinary people.

I wondered about Wattanabe and almost didn't have the chance to ask him these questions. Finally on the last day in his car on our way back to Fukushima train station to catch the bullet train to Tokyo we had the chance to hear his thoughts.

In choosing the music for this short, editor Carter Gunn sent me this synopsis relating to the track he had chosen:

Sai-bara is a kind of gagaku song that is grew out of the folk songs of horsemen….basically the folk song of someone who owns a horse and sort of used the horse like a taxi cab (holding the reins while the rich person rode on the horse, because the rider is above the horse person in class)…

Sai-bara was eventually, during the 700′s, influenced by gagaku or entered the canon of gagaku and became more of a proper song.

Broomberg & Chanarin: The War Primer

2011-08-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

When Amsterdam based photographic institution Foam came up with the idea of launching a forum to stimulate dialogue around the theme 'What's Next?' in the world of photography it's no surprise that shape-shifting duo Broomberg & Chanarin were among the first on the list of people they would consult.

It's not only by virtue of their position as lecturers and educators but primarily by being prolific producers of work, exhibitions, films, books and collaborations with other artists, that Broomberg & Chanarin have been able to adopt a position in the photography world that floats them comfortably above the genres and constraints of image making that most of us seem happy to bind ourselves to.

Always somehow evading classification and definition, perhaps by virtue of being a kind of artistic odd-couple, they have developed their own language of terse and topical, yet playful photographic statements.

Methodically mining our understanding of how we as individuals view and read images and also how our understanding of the photographic image has been constructed for us is often the starting point of their photographic explorations.

This video of their 'What's Next?' presentation is a perfect example.

Notes from Juba

2011-07-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

Joia Magazine

2011-07-30T08:03:00.000-07:00

Fantastic interview with yours truly (si hables Espanol) this month in Latin American design bible Joia Magazine. Check it out.

Happy Birthday R.O.S.S.

2011-07-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

“YOU are free,” Deng says to me shortly after the Republic of South Sudan has become the world's 193rd and newest country. “You are free”, he repeats. “You go to your place, you bring your peoples... and your cats and you come to live here. In South Sudan”.

Perhaps he is referring to my cows - for Dinka wealth is in their livestock - but I'm sure what he really means is that his sense of place, his personal freedom, has been fulfilled. I feel no freer here than I have had the fortune to be anywhere else.

Deng is filled with pride. He has a nation he can call his own.

He trails off but his eyes remain fixed on me with stern intent. His huge hand clasps mine in the fluid, shifting handshake of the Dinka and then his face cracks into a massive smile. “We are so happy” he says to me before he walks off. My encounter with Deng is one oft repeated during my time in Juba. Their lands will finally belong to the peoples of South Sudan and they are eager to share it with the world.

After twenty five years of civil war against the Northern forces lead by Sudanese despot President Bashir, the loss of two and a half million people including their great leader and martyr Dr. John Garaang, being in the Southern Sudanese capital for the week leading up to independence is an invite to a party like no other.

The weight of war is finally being lifted and the mood is jubilant. Normally beady eyed SPLA soldiers pose for pictures with their Kalashnikov's, tribes from all over the country stage impromptu dance ceremonies in the middle of the street. Dinka men who look like they could jump over a building in a single leap perform to drum beats; ash painted women holding tree branches, babies swinging from their breasts, their tongues clicking from the roofs of their mouths as they sing and shout, slowly shuffle from shady tree to shady tree in endless harmony.

The streets are filled with cries of “South Sudan Oyee.”

Beyond the party though is the business of starting a new country from scratch. For me personally it's a bonus having the same name as Africa's 54th nation - I spend most of my time buying t-shirts and trinkets bearing my mantle - before realising that walking around wearing your own name emblazoned across your chest would feel somewhat ostentatious under normal circumstances.

For now though I am bonded by name to these people of the Republic of Southern Sudan. We are one.

For others, here in Juba, there is the serious task of nation building. The breakfast table at Nimole Logistics, Resort & Hotel is the place to go to rub shoulders with diplomats, Lebanese businessmen and clean cut Americans - whose task here is unclear - but whose chinos and golf shirts remain perfectly pressed despite the 40 degree heat and swirling red dust. By the pool or over instant coffee with powdered milk in the restaurant is where the action is.

Returning twenty somethings, the elite Juba set, lucky enough to have fled the war and have schooled in Melbourne, London or New York sit around in their Prada shades, sometimes discussing how they will build businesses in their homeland but mostly gossiping about who was spotted partying at D-Havana, Juba's hippest local club, the night before.

They are privileged to have escaped the atrocities of the past but hoping to bring their collective experiences to shape the future of their nation, to get their SPLA qualifications and their dual citizenship and, most of all, to be part of the moment.

It is here, under the fans, that deals are hacked out. The nitty gritty.

The future of R.O.S.S.

On it's birthday, July 9th, South Sudan also becomes one of the world's poorest countries, war still rages in the Nuba mountains, people fret the future political ramifications of tribal divisions that are deep set between the Dinka and Nuer tribes. In the villages a 16 year old girl in South Sudan will be more likely to die in childbirth than to finish school.

When the nation enters the UN some days after independence it will do so at or near the bottom of the World Development Index.

It is not a pretty picture but these statistics seem far from the mind at breakfast in Juba. Like any post-conflict society the capital is a boom town. Cash flows and construction is everywhere. The nation's infrastructure and gilt edged government contracts are up for grabs.

Seventy Harley Davidsons are imported for the Independence celebrations for a nation that has just over a hundred kilometers of paved roads. A new hospital is promised for Wau district. Warehouses on the outskirts of Juba will store everything from frozen chickens to military uniforms. The new currency is chatted about. The banks have frozen the distribution of precious US hundred dollar bills in preparation. Cash flow will be an issue. It may not go smoothly.

Journalists pretend to be engrossed in their laptops but they are here at Nimole to people watch and glean information that will get them behind the facade of flag-raising ceremonies and to handshakes with the people who have jumped the gun and set up shop in Juba to quadruple their investments. There is, surely, a story in that.

For the most part I have little cynicism about this new country. Any fledgling economy is open to exploitation but how else will South Sudan maintain any momentum in it's development without presenting a modern face to the world first and foremost. This is Africa after all. My gut however tells me that Juba in five years will be a pretty decent place to be. Interesting at least. My naïve optimism is not met by most however.

These days I am drifting between the airport chasing lost luggage, the press centre chasing accreditation and Dan Eiffe's place. A former Catholic priest who fought with the SPLA, ran arms and married a beautiful Sudanese woman, Dan was here when all but a handful fled.

The writer I am with calls him Sudan's Oskar Schindler. He talks effusively about his twenty something years fighting and living in South Sudan. This is a moment of immense pride for him. A moment he thought he would never see. He will get a South Sudanese passport after independence and live out his days in a land alien to his Irish past that he has given his whole career to be part of. Dan can't move through Juba without impossibly tall Dinka's hugging him. “I've no idea who most of them are” he tells me, until they say “you were with us in the bush, in 1992, you saved my father's life”. “Yes!” Dan says, “I remember now, another Garaang. Tell him I said hello”. “Yes Commander Dan, I will” the Dinkas reply. Dan has seen it all, in Juba he is a true VIP, not just here for a token celebration.

One night over a Jameson he tells me that he weeps for these people. There is no hyperbole or artifice in his voice for he is one of them.

The luggage arrives, as does the press pass. The 9th is here and I have no idea what I am doing. It's fun and the Tusker is cold but as a photographer on the ground the work is hard. The press pack is in full effect and access to stories has been swallowed up by the big media organisations with producers and most importantly with budgets. At this point I am here with a camera like everyone else, trying to get a Kodak moment or two.

We arrive for the independence celebration at the Dr. John Garaang Mausoleum at seven am and the media quickly become as much a part of the event as the crowd of two hundred thousand or so. We sit on the sweltering tarmac for hours waiting and slowly dehydrating. Photographers eyeball each other. Some slip from the security cordon that is intent on blocking our view to get closer to the VIP area where the dignitaries are arriving for their moment on the red carpet. I decide that the time is now but my timing is poor. I get caught in mid-dash towards the podium, the promised land, where the successful have already crossed. The guard has spotted me by the soaked t-shirt I have tied around my head, du-rag style, to ward off the sun. He hauls me unceremoniously back to the press pack.

I get an ironic round of applause for my efforts.

A Sudanese Rick James and his cohorts perform an impromptu pop track on the tarmac. Everyone else is irrate.

Eventually I cross to the sacred other side, where the real photographers are, my head beginning to thump, my left eye half-closed from the soup of sunscreen and sweat that has slow-cooked my retina all morning. The Army parade begins and Salva Kiir, the new President of the Republic of South Sudan is sworn in. The new Constitution is read.

The flag of Sudan is lowered and placed in a glass case as the new flag of R.O.S.S. is raised somewhere in the distance beyond my lens. I lower my camera and sit for a while just watching.

I am here. That much I am sure of. It is history. Right now that's good enough.

I drink the last of my precious water and see the Red Cross pull another unconscious new citizen from the masses. The heat has taken me over too and the stage management, pomp and ceremony has gazumped my desire to carve out any kind of personal perspective on the event. There is no image for me now that I could not sit at home and watch on television. I am ok with it.

I take a break for a couple of hours and return to the Mausoleum in the evening and photograph the aftermath of the great moment. The crowd has mostly dispersed, to careen around town in flag waving convoys or to make their way home

Some remain though and it is far more satisfying to see the locals invade the VIP podium, sitting in the leather armchairs where the new President sat only hours before and stand at the lectern from which He spoke. A sea of South Sudanese flags litters the ground as the rain begins to fall. The pressure has been broken; both in the atmosphere and in the hearts of South Sudan. We catch a glimpse of the big man, Salva, but his security are once again intent on denying us a picture. A party is brewing in the backstage, Colin Powell flies past in a motorcade.

We wrap up the day as the sun breathes it's last breath, fittingly, photographing those coming to pay respects at the actual grave of Garaang, the man who had a vision for his people, a man who, like all great martyrs fought and died for a cause he believed in.

Surreal and already now memorable as a great occasion, the day has gone well for the South Sudanese and all of the preparation, the build up and anticipation are in the past.

A nation has been born.

My time here however is not over. The following days are a blur of encounters and whimsical vignettes, of sitting on building sites and watching laborers construct the new South Sudan, of seeing Hummers fly through the streets and eating salty, roasted goat meat and sipping Ethopian coffee. Of hanging out with Dan telling stories.

It has been a wholly confusing time and I try to figure out how to rescue the week in images that somehow capture the things I have seen. It is a search for a shortcut, for work that other photographers and journalists have put months and years of effort into realising at this moment in time. But really there is no shortcut for me and I resign myself to the fact that this was a wonderful week and this is a wonderful place, photography can wait in the face of bigger, more important things.

Finally I go to the airport on the back of a little motorbike with a trailer on the back. My usual driver doesn't show up and I'm in real danger of missing my flight.

I wave the guy down on the street and promise him ten Sudanese pounds to take me there right now. The jumble of huge ice blocks he is delivering somewhere are melting away in the sun but this Kawaja, me, needs help and the driver seems happy I have chosen him to ride on the back of his little vehicle and not in one of the many Land Cruisers that ferry the foreigners and dignitaries around Juba.

I'm going to make it on time.

The wind and dust from the dirt road blow in my face. I sway and bounce along in the trailer and I realise that Deng might just have been right, I am free.

Juba International Airport, South Sudan

2011-07-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

Juba, South Sudan

2011-07-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace

2011-06-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

The Adam Curtis appreciation continues with a tip that the full length versions of his latest BBC series 'All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace' are all available on Youtube.

Part 1 above. Parts 2 & 3 here & here

William Klein

2011-06-21T03:28:00.000-07:00

Exclusion Zone, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

2011-06-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

Yuriage, Japan

2011-06-06T03:51:00.000-07:00

Liptovský Trnovec, Slovakia

2011-05-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

Taryn Simon on The Guardian

2011-05-24T14:54:00.000-07:00

Braille Edition of Playboy © Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon discussing her upcoming show at Tate Modern for the Guardian. While "An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar" may be perhaps the finest body of photographic work to emerge from the noughties, it remains to see whether her latest series "Contraband" and "A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters" represent a progression in her practice or a step too far into belabored photographic inquiry.

Grillo on El Equipo

2011-05-17T01:09:00.000-07:00

Former Brighton rude bwoy turned investigative journalist on the frontline of Mexico's drug war, father and all round good skin, Ioan Grillo continues his fantastic reporting south of the border with an interesting piece in Time magazine this week. Check it out here.

Paddy Englishman, Paddy Irishman, Paddy Afghan?

2011-05-08T04:21:00.000-07:00

Fantastic video on Simon Norfolk's re-imagining of Irish explorer John Burke's images of Afghanistan from the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Norfolk has hit the nail on the head with his insights into the effects the seemingly endless cycle of conflict has had on the fabric of the nation.

Enrique 'El Nino' Metinides, Lightbox by Time

2011-05-06T07:17:00.001-07:00

Shout out to the good folks over at Time magazine's fantastic new photography portal Lightbox for publishing my video homage to the incredible Mexican photographer Enrique Metinides. It seems they're as fascinated by his work as I am.

Props also to the enigma Ross Killeen of Event Junkies for the edit and to Eunice Adorno for generously letting us use her wonderful portraits of the man.

Notes from the Crime Beat: The Presentation

2011-03-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

The crime beat, early in the week in Mexico City, can be a bit more tranquilo than the siren filled dramas of the weekend. As with any metropolis Monday and Tuesday nights sees less activity on the streets in general and in the 'D.F.' it's no different.

The street walking hookers on Calle Sullivan are less than half in numbers than the boomtime of Fridays and Saturdays, when their pyrex heels cause a hungry traffic jam of customers with paychecks in their pockets, although paradoxically, early weeknights seem to make no difference to their transsexual counterparts, a block or so away, who continue to gather in numbers, chatting in their broken voices and swinging, one-armed, around lampposts in man-sized hot pants.

The cacophony of freelance Mariachis that normally pack the sidewalk at Garibaldi is no longer present. The gold stitching of an outlandish costume glints briefly from the darkness, caught in the sweep of passing headlights. An unused guitar case topped by a sombrero leans against the wall with a sense of abandonment but there is none of the usual madness here, not this early in the week.

There are less car crashes and incidents of random violence these nights too but that's not to say that it's not without event. Mondays and Tuesdays often bring a different and unexpected type of drama to proceedings on the crime beat: La Presentación.

Crime rates, one supposes in most cities, spike over the weekend and Mexico City is no different. Saturdays and Sundays may well be the normal punter's time to let their hair down but they are also days of rest, the courts and higher offices of the police department being closed over the weekend.

The result of this is that people arrested on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday, los detenidos, often have to wait until a Monday or Tuesday to be moved to the courthouse for their hearings. It is usually at this time that reporters have the opportunity to photograph and interview those detained; being obliged to report on the circumstances of their arrest and the alleged nature of their crimes.

This is especially the case if the crime is newsworthy but oftentimes if there is nothing more pressing on the agenda, as is often the scenario early in the week, these minor criminals can become the focus of the 'sunguns' of the tv news cameras and the flashbulbs of La Nota Roja.

It's a kind of impromptu trial by media, maybe motivated by boredom, maybe by bad timing that sometimes can take place on the street, outside the police station or in the back of a van.

These incidents kind of remind me of the sentiments so interestingly expressed in Donald Weber's photo essay 'Interrogations' in the range and complexity of emotions expressed by those detained. It's kind of a classic crime drama played out in real life.

Some use the opportunity to plead their innocence. Some cry and wail without shame. Some say it was a fair cop. Some hide their faces and spit swearwords at the photographers. Some say they were working at the behest of others...and got hung out to dry.

Some say they are sixteen and scared.

The guns and drugs, if there are any, are laid out by the police as evidence, we jumble to gather our footage, panning and tilting across the neatly arranged displays.

I imagine a Mexican newscaster relaying the amounts, places and the names in a crisply edited voiceover.

The detained are whisked away to the station.

Debates ensue shortly afterwards about these incidents and I glean what information I can, sometimes shocked by the allegations that stand against these detenidos, sometimes merely amused.

Kidnappings, embezzlement and drug deals. Middle class professors ripping off their employers. The crimes are often more serious than you appreciate when you're in the moment, when you think about it later. The character judgements can be too, whether the person is a liar, a coward, a hero...or merely a pendejo. Everything about the individual, this detenido, can be judged on this brief encounter.

My sense of sympathy at this very public airing of dirty laundry often dissipates at this moment; regardless of the emotion expressed and the niceness of someone's face, they have veered off their paths somewhere, crossed the line and unfortunately, for them, got caught. Whether they're a good person or bad, guilty or innocent doesn't really matter anymore, they're now on a journey into the Mexican justice system of which La Presentación is only the first stage.

You wish them good luck.

Ssssshhhh! I'm Taking a Thoughtograph...

2011-02-26T15:27:00.000-08:00

Fascinating article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about Ted Serios, a Chicago bellhop who, whether true or false, produced 'psychic' photographs or so called 'thoughtographs' during the 1960's and thereby, perhaps, taking photography to the next level.

The article states that Ted produced his images 'by holding a Polaroid camera and focusing on the lens very intently, producing dreamlike pictures of his thoughts on the film'.

Now that I'd like to see...

Images © Ted Serios

There's an exhibition entitled 'Psychic Projections/Photographic Impressions: Paranormal Photographs from the Jule Eisenbud Collection on Ted Serios' at the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County for anyone who's nearby...

Wired

2011-02-24T17:02:00.000-08:00

Photo © Nick Wilson 2011

Articles such as 'The Long Tail' and 'Why the Future Doesn't Need Us' are regarded as landmarks of Wired magazine's long history of trailblazing articles and this month's cover story, rather worryingly titled 'Your Life Torn Open: Sharing is a Trap' further adds to that canon. Wired has something of an uncanny ability to distill our collective consciousness into something succinct and readable and Andrew Keen's article is a perfect example.

Keen's story is at times a scary, dystopian vision of social networking, comparing the loss of privacy that comes with our Facebook profiles to Josef K's nightmare in Kafka's 'The Trial'. At other times however, he sees the social media boom as relvelatory, claiming these times we are living in are akin to the Renaissance or other 'game changing' eras in the history of man:

"While social media," he writes "for all its superhuman ability to see through walls, might not quite guarantee immortality, its impact is certainly of immense historical significance, equal, in its own way, to the early industrial revolution."

More relevant perhaps, and more timely certainly, is a quote he pulls from Katie Roiphe who states that "Facebook is the novel we are all writing" and I would like to extend that by claiming it's not only 'the novel we're all writing' but also the film we are all making and the photos we're all taking.

Wired's cover story could not be more timely.

As "The Social Network" presses for Oscar glory in a couple of days, cinemas host the slightly creepy "Catfish", making viewers rush to set their Facebook profiles to private and the furore over Michael Wolf's World Press Photo Winning images continues to rage, it seems the impact of our socially media-ized society is beginning to feel it's way into our cultural discourse.

We can only imagine that this will only become the way of the future for filmmakers and photographers; projects that are directly integrated with the way we live our lives: no doubt we will begin to see a plethora of projects that contain nothing more than movies of our mornings and exhibitions of our afternoons.

Keen observes this current 'tipping point' as a time when our "data-driven 'links' economy is being replaced by Facebook's people-powered 'likes'."

In the world of the visual arts only time will tell how many of these types of projects continue to make it beyond the realm which they were created for and into the box office and onto the photo contest podium but for now it's a great indicator of where the film business and the world of the image maker are heading and - at least - a must read article.

More:

Guardian: Why The Social Network Should Win
DVAfoto on Michael Wolf
Michael Wolf
Facebook

Irish Eyes: Alen MacWeeney

2011-02-18T07:04:00.000-08:00

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.
That the topless towers be burnt
And men recall that face,
Move most gently if move you must
In this lonely place.
She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,
That nobody looks; her feet
Practise a tinker shuffle
Picked up on a street.
From 'Long-Legged Fly' W.B. Yeats, 1938

Introduction

It's been a while since the last installment of the 'Irish Eyes' interview series here on the blog and no better way to kick off the new year (-ish) with the opportunity to catch up with Alen MacWeeney, photographer of what is, to my mind, a towering body of documentary work that rests at the top of the pile in the canon of modern Irish photography.

MacWeeney's 'Irish Travellers: Tinkers No More' appeared to me at a time when frustration and a lack of inspiration were dominant in my photographic world. My usual tricks of poring over 'Dorchester Days' or 'East 100th Street' for motivation had begun to fail me and the short days and harsh, dwindling light of Irish winters were only adding to my laziness and my yearning for the photographic exotic; somewhere, anywhere else.

And then I found it, this exotic, in the most unlikely source, close to home. So close to home in fact I wondered how I had never seen these amazing pictures. It was true that the great American photographers had been here to snap pictures of the Irish Gypsies: Dorothea Lange and Mary Ellen Mark among others, but MacWeeney's images were something different, filled with pathos and intimacy.

Not only was the photo book laden with heartbreaking images but also a series of recordings of the Irish Travellers from Cherry Orchard and other 'gyspy' campsites that Alen had gathered during his time photographing 'Tinkers No More', documenting perhaps the most important thing about this unique culture: it's oral history. Songs and conversations, poems and voices spoke from inside caravans from an era long since disappeared. Romantic Ireland was indeed dead and gone.

In essence what Alen managed to capture was a certain interior migration that fundamentally changed the Irish Traveller culture and experience forever, something that does not exist in history books, anthropological studies or any other documents. An essential piece of work by any standards, it's a great pleasure to be able to hear Alen discuss the project in his own words...

'Child with Cellophane, Cherry Orchard.' by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1965

First off, I’d love to get a bit of background to ‘Tinkers No More’. You were living in the US at the time and starting your career as a photographer. What was it like returning to Ireland with a camera in your hand? Things have changed so much there, can you give us your impressions of ‘going home’…

Before my involvement with Travellers, going back in time after a year of assisting Richard Avedon in New York in ’62, I returned to Ireland with an idea of making portraits of the men and women of the Catholic Church, the priests, the nuns, and the church leaders who control the church in Ireland.

But, I failed to find support, or indeed have the wherewithal myself at 22 years of age to manage the underpinnings needed to gain both access and recommendations for the project. At that time there was no hint of scandal attached to the church.

So, I put my Hasselblad aside, bought a Leica, and went out into the streets to photograph for the best part of the next two years in Dublin.

Unlike portrait photographs, which involve choosing and directing not only the subject, but the situation and everything else; I chose street photography which is dependent seeing an image in a myriad of moving parts. And, in essence requires synthesizing a confluence of elements, to make an image in a moment.

I returned to New York in 1964 as a place to find work and where photography found a more supportive audience in a country of limitless possibility. The centenary of the poet W.B. Yeats was in 1965. Harpers Bazaar magazine promised me some pages based on my proposal of a photo essay about the poet and his sources: of the kinds of people, places and things in his poems. With the help of others, I left New York for a year long stay in Ireland to begin this project.

'Woman in a White Dress, Dublin.' by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1965

'Watching: A Dublin Street Scene' by by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1965

'Glowing White Pony, Ballinasloe Horse Fair' by by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1965

Did you know that working with the Traveller community was something you wanted to do or like all great photo essays was it something you just stumbled upon?

I was out one day looking for a Tinker woman to photograph as part of the Yeats essay, and by accident (as I am convinced is the best way to begin anything) I came across a big sprawling field that was a Traveller’s campsite on the scruffy outskirts of Dublin, opposite Cherry Orchard fever hospital.

I went through a gap in the hedge and into a hut and met with Joe Donaghue there, the self styled leader of the camp. We talked (or rather he talked and I listened) and he gave me a well rehearsed monologue over the next few hours of the injustices the Travellers had been subjected to by the authorities in Dublin and aided by the church. After our initial meeting, I brought up a tape recorder the next day, which became my passport, it lent an air of seriousness and purpose to the interviews. The tape recorder was my ally and helped me to interview many other Travellers in the years ahead.

'Joe Donoghue and Olivene, Cherry Orchard.' by by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1965

What I found there in Cherry Orchard would occupy me for the next five years was a deep well of a hidden Irish culture. The Travellers went to Dublin to collect the dole; before ’63 there was none. They could now send their children to school, and due to an increase in motor traffic and restrictions to camping along the roadsides it was difficult for them to maintain that older way of life. By accident, I coincided with the exodus of Travellers from the country into the city.

'Building a hut, Cherry Orchard.' by by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1965

'The Ward Family, Cherry Orchard.' by by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1965

Now that Traveller culture is set to hit a kind of vogue with the success of the documentary 'Knuckle' and other projects, can you give us an insight into the community at the time you were shooting ‘Tinkers No More’?

I was alone, with a camera and tape recorder, there were no other photographers about, nor were there tape recorders or radios among the Travellers in Dublin then. With the advantage of being able to play back the recordings of the music and songs which began spontaneously one evening and quickly evolved into dense gatherings of children, women and men, singing ballads, playing the tin whistle and telling stories in Joe Donahue’s hut for all the nights I was there that year. The excitement of course centered on the Travellers hearing the recordings of themselves played back for the first time.

As a photographer my presence was welcomed as an unexpected explorer might land in a new world in another era from another place. After a few weeks I began photographing and was treated with little suspicion and accepted into a world completely unknown to me, but gripping. The Smithsonian magazine noted: I “became the first amateur anthropologist of Traveller culture, - by accident.” Accepted and treated as familiarly as another family member, or better. I returned to Ireland in 1999, to co-direct a feature length documentary film, (Little Bird Productions), that was about what happened to the lives of the people in the photographs that I had taken 35 years earlier. Many of my Traveller friends had died or moved away, but others reacted as though I’d only gone to the corner for a bottle of milk. Our friendships have endured and always will.

Your images seem like something from the era of the Farm Security Administration era but you were working at the time with Richard Avedon, presumably not in the field of documentary photography. Did you feel like you were making something original for Irish photography at the time?

I am aware of the Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans quality to the photographs, which may find an answer in that the Travellers were not all that different from the tenant farmers of the American depression, - being also poor, white and dispossessed.

I thought the Travellers were breathtakingly beautiful, with remarkable features; a raw dignity and a fearlessness about them. Of course their raggedy clothes framed and only emphasized their features. And, yes I did feel I was making something original. Irish photography did not exist at that time in my opinion, except for anonymous work.

'Bridget and Paddy Furey with their children, Loughrea.' by by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1965

'Julia and Bernie McDonagh, Cherry Orchard' by by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1965

'Tommy Hutchenson and girl, Cherry Orchard.' by by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1965

What happened to the series after you had finished working in Cherry Orchard, did you maintain contact with the families who lived there? How were the images received?

I have maintained friendship with many families. And yes, the photographs I can only describe as being received as treasured items. That was in 1966 and 1971. I’m sure it is different now, but so many Travellers could not read then and the photograph was an essential link to a family’s past.

Were you tempted to pursue a career in documentary photography and take a more photojournalistic course with your work?

That was my intention, but the failure to find a project of such personal discovery as the Travellers made me feel like an ill fitting hand in the glove of magazines that assigned reportage photography then, and their subsequent decline caused an unexpected adjustment of my future direction.

How do you feel about Ireland today, do you feel this series captured something essential about Irish culture that is now gone, especially regarding the ‘Tinkers’?

The Travellers represented an older way of life to me, as they were connected by a tight family bond. They are adventurous, resourceful and with a wealth of oral traditions they shared with me so willingly. My debt is to them for all of that.

'Ginger Navins (Paddy Rourke), Rathfarnam.' by by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1967

Title Image: Bill Cassidey and Kathleen Connors, Saggart' by by Alen MacWeeney. Copyright 1967

The Edge of Dreaming at Rubin Museum

2011-02-16T06:41:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure of meeting Amy Hardie, director of the documentary 'The Edge of Dreaming' some time way back in 2010 while she was charming festival audiences with her wonderful movie. I also managed to see the film while I should really have been having breakfast and despite being surrounded by what felt more like a casting session for 'The Golden Girls' than your average movie crowd, it was worth getting out of bed early for...

A review in today's New York Times also tells me that the film is opening at one of my favorite places in the city, the Rubin Museum of Art. It's well worth checking out for those loitering in the cold and looking for something to do and a seems like a perfect venue for the film with the Rubin's incredible collection of Buddhist art and preoccupation with all things spiritually esoteric.

Amy's film is one of those films that is personal and diaristic and makes you glad that someone had the courage to put themselves on camera and be a voice for the kind of gnawing thoughts that we have probably all had at one time or another. A unique film that I really loved. More links below...

PBS
Film Site

Joyrider hits the New York Times.

2011-02-15T04:12:00.000-08:00

It's true that readers of the New York Times may be becoming accustomed to seeing burning cars in the pages of their newspapers. After 18 days of riots in Cairo and the Middle East continuing to rupture; are photos of things getting trashed becoming passe?

Never!

Check out the great slideshow of my Joyrider series on the seminal NYT 'LENS' blog or click on the photo.

Many thanks to Dawn Lim, James Estrin and B.P. LaMotte for putting it together.

Sierra Blanca, TX.

2011-02-05T16:31:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year...China.

2011-02-02T07:59:00.000-08:00

Notes from the Crime Beat: El Camino de la Luz

2011-01-28T10:24:00.000-08:00

'El Camino de la Luz' or 'The Way of the Light', Mexico City 2011

"The Mexican", writes Octavio Paz in his Nobel prize winning 'Labyrinth of Solitude', "is familiar with death. He jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love.”

I'm not quite sure whether this rings true or not, certainly death is not something to be enjoyed but there is certainly a strange interplay of life and death here in Mexico that mixes faith, magic and history in a unique way. Stanley Brandes in his anthropological history of the Day of the Dead in Mexico 'Skulls for the Living, Bread for the Dead' recounts in the book's introduction how, on one of his first trips to Mexico in rural Oaxaca, he was invited to a funeral. Rather than stand as a passive spectator he was shocked that the family members and friends invited him forward to the coffin to take pictures of the corpse. The family wanted to remember this moment in the person's life as much as they wanted to remember him alive and smiling for snapshots...and so began Brandes' fascination with these cultures and customs in Mexico.

Contrary to my expectations and while different to many of our own experiences, this Mexican affiliation with death is not borne from a lack of respect or some kind of thin bloodlust. True, it's up front and laid bare for all to see but one of the greatest indicators of a deep feeling and sensitivity for the dead is the custom of 'El Camino de la Luz' or 'The Way of the Light'.

While working on the crime beat and photographing what the night throws at you naturally it can be highly charged at times but for the most part there is often an eerie calm and quiet to be observed in the faces of the spectators and the movements of the emergency services and police who deal with these things in the course of their daily work. There is a strange silence to the spectacle of the event.

Often, one of the first things you notice is a small white candle laid in proximity to the body. This practice is done in much haste and as soon after the person has lost their life according to the Mexican tradition. The candle is lit, people tell me to provide a pathway of light, 'El Camino de la Luz' for the angels, so that they may come quickly and retrieve the soul of the deceased and provide it safe passage to heaven.

La vela, or the candle seems to provide a kind of instant shrine at the scenes of these incidents that somehow helps you understand and appreciate this affiliation with death in Mexico. People gather around and watch the proceedings, the scenes are documented and discussed but everyone pays heed in these first moments as the candle burns.

While not exactly magical - I have yet to have visions of angels descending from heaven - 'El Camino de la Luz' somehow provides a sense of peace and detracts from the horror of the incidents. As time passes and people begin to disperse, as the bodies are moved into Coroners vehicles, often times an anonymous person steps forward to extinguish the candle, satisfied that the person has gone to a better place. This act is never met with disagreement and it's a kind of instant closure that, whether religious or not, brings solstice and a broader sense of compassion to otherwise tragic things.

Colony DVD Release

2011-01-26T10:20:00.000-08:00

Colony is officially on DVD release, get your copy today!

Available from all major stockists, Mexican flea markets, Chinese bootleggers and be-speckled Bit-Torrenters...

Links: Amazon Netflix

Conscientious-ly

2011-01-25T19:44:00.000-08:00

Shout out to the doyen of photo-bloggers J.M. Colberg for featuring one of my favorite snaps from my eternally uncompleted body of work currently titled 'The Afghans'. Joerg also recently featured the work of Irish photographer Kenneth O'Halloran whose large format series on Irish horse fairs has been knocking 'em dead in this heady season of photo-awards. Some epic images of the unique faces of the Irish Travelers who come to buy and sell ponies all over Ireland that are well worth checking out.

In other Traveler related news meanwhile, Ian Palmer's 12 year documentary odyssey on feuding gyspy boxers 'Knuckle' which I wrote about here has been blazing a trail this week at the Sundance Film Festival. G'wan Ian.

Already with precious international distribution secured, Ian's film has gone one step further with Indiewire reporting today that the team that brought us 'Eastbound and Down', namely Danny McBride, David Gordon Green and Jody Hill are hoping to turn 'Knuckle' into a TV series for HBO.

Only time will tell, but can the public handle the idea of an Irish Kenny Powers?

Notes from the Crime Beat: Meeting Metinides

2011-01-16T21:34:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you get the impression that life really does imitate art and listening to the story of photographer Enrique Metinides, the Godfather of 'La Nota Roja' was one of those times. This week I had the privilege of meeting the man sometimes referred to as the Mexican Weegee at his home in Mexico City; where he told me how he got the nickname 'El Nino'.

A little older now but his tiny frame still buzzing with energy, he begins to show me his collection of DVD's recounting how, in the early 40's he was obsessed with the movies of Al Capone and the noirs and gangster flicks that filled Mexico City cinemas during his youth. This formative time in the boy Metinides' life coincided with his father closing up his city centre camera store to open a restaurant and gifting his son an old Brownie camera and a bag of film to keep him out of trouble. At the age of 10, while helping out in his Dad's new place, Enrique began chatting with the local cops who came in to chow down, popping around to the local police station to snap pictures of corpses and criminals they would drag into the precinct.

By the tender age of 11, Enrique had secured himself a job as a sidekick to one of the photographers from Mexico City's largest daily 'La Prensa' and so began the fifty year career of 'El Nino', the youngest crime photographer in history, a career spent riding around on the top of firetrucks, listening to the police and emergency radio frequencies for news of car crashes, murders and crimes of passion and, in time, photographing perhaps more 'muertos' than even Weegee 'the famous' himself.

As Enrique recounted his - by now well told story - I couldn't help but get the feeling he has managed to live out a real life fantasy that was borne in his early youth watching hard-boiled gangster films of the 1940's. For half a century Metinides endlessly placed himself right at the heart of these horrific scenes as 'that guy with the camera', rendering his images with a cinematic flair that seems a world away from mere tabloid sensationalism. It is something he himself appreciates, the proximity with which he worked, the details and panoramas he captured, the fact his images were used, at times, to solve crimes as much as to seduce the imaginations of a public that devoured the huge photo layouts that filled the papers of the day.

His images defy logic and reason as much as his amazing life does, his photographs, although filled with horrible tragedies have such artistry that for some reason we feel romanticized by them rather than repulsed.

Planes nose dive from the sky, a crashed train zig-zags it's way towards the horizon like a fissure in the ground from an earthquake, an actress lies party suspended, crushed on a lamppost from a car crash only minutes after leaving a beauty salon, her stunning, perfectly made-up eyes frozen in time. Forever.

David La Chapelle couldn't even dream of it. And yet Metinides lived it.

Like other photographers who plied their trade with passion, conviction and sometimes madness in far flung parts of the world only to be discovered by the art world later in their life: Miroslav Tichy, Seidou Keita and Li Zhensheng to name but a few, Metinides has had mixed experiences.

It hasn't really made him rich but his work is appreciated by admirers and collectors around the world. He regaled me with stories of German television crews walking through the same little rooms in his house as I was, the famous collection of 3500 toy firetrucks and other emergency services toys and paraphernalia, press clippings from the exhibition that he had in a former Nazi bunker in Poland, the television sets where he watches action movies, disaster stories and historical documentaries and I couldn't help but get the feeling that even today, long after he put his camera down as the greatest 'Nota Roja' photographer there ever was, the life of 'El Nino' continues to imitate art.

Images Copyright Enrique Metinides

Links:

New York Times
Vice

Notes From the Crime Beat: Zeta Uno

2011-01-06T10:31:00.000-08:00

Two radio handsets, perched on top of a city trash can at the base of the Monumento de la Revolucion, bleep and squawk muffled and garbled information and codes, punctuated by screeching sirens, incoherent speech and interference. These bursts from the scanners monitoring the police and emergency frequencies are urgent and dramatic...and usually followed by complete silence.

It's about ten o'clock on a Sunday night and I just arrived at ‘El Monu’, the de-facto operations base for the members of La Nota Roja, the Mexico City crime photographers I am working with. It’s not the most attractive place to spend eight hours of your life and in the wee hours of the night but it’s central and the media hawks from the local papers, television and radio stations can quickly scramble to most parts of the city as nocturnal events in Mexico City’s underworld unfold.

'El Monu'

I feel double-lost in translation on these cold nights.

For one I’m straining my ears trying to decipher the incessant static firing out of the police scanners. Things sometimes sound dramatic and urgent, rapid fire speech and howling noise belches from the handset but mostly 'La Nota Roja', Luis, Jaime, Alex, Gabriel and all remain calm and go back to chatting, leaning against their cars, smoking and hanging out. When the prospect of a news event dissipates with the lowering of the volume on the radio, I’m forced to switch back to trying to figure out the rhythm and cadence of the speech of 'La Nota Roja' themselves. This at times proves more frustrating than trying to understand the police scanners.

Their patter is fast and laden with Mexican street slang and my ears only pick up several words and phrases. I spend my time trying to string things together often with little success. The word ‘El Verde’ was being used so much for the first few days I worked with 'La Nota Roja' I was convinced it was a swear word, only to find out that ‘The Green’ was the nickname of Jaime, one of La Prensa’s photographers and a fatherly figure among the group. ‘Pinche Verde' or 'Fucking Verde’ they would mutter joking amongst themselves.

'El Verde'

Mostly I’m lost between two worlds of double talk but Alex gives me a dig out and begins to explain the significance of the police codes.

If the radio squawks ZETA UNO (Z1), he says, it means there’s been a murder. ZETA DOS, a shooting but the subject is still living. He goes on through the list detailing the litany of grizzly circumstances which make up the bread and butter of La Nota Roja.

DOS BRAVO, EQUIS TRES (X3), ‘Un Catorce’, the romantic sounding ‘Apperitivo’ and so on. Car crashes, police raids, drug busts, the dead, wounded and mutilated, it’s a grim list of codes that I was probably better off oblivious to. But now I know.

I’m a little tired of the night shift. I bring less equipment than normal after a dead quiet week and show up a little late to the ‘Monu’, where for the last seven nights or so I have been eating tacos and sleeping in the back of whoever’s car has a spare seat.

'Es la Navidad’ Jacobo told me earlier, ‘Los Sicarios van a vaccaciones'

Ca-Qua, a radio journalist from the radio station Cadena Tres has two radio’s in his hand, he adjusts the volume to a minimum and catches up on the scandals from the various Christmas parties that have been going on all week.

Luis or 'El Virgo', a photographer from Universal and my main point of contact with the group arrives even later than me and we all shake hands. Luis has taught me that things can happen at any moment in this type of work and often do.

Sometimes it’s not necessarily a good thing to get what you wish for and it’s not long since Luis has rolled up in his massive old red Ford that our quiet week is to be transformed.

Ca-Qua has turned his radio up to full and the TV Azteca guys are scrambling to check their equipment. Something is happening somewhere in the city. I turn to Luis, slinging my backpack over my shoulder and making for the car. ‘Zeta Uno’ he tells me, ‘a man killed in the Barrio Buenas Aires’ but he doesn’t elaborate any further. Everyone is rushing for their cars, phones begin to ring and engines are started.

'El Virgo'

The calm and tranquility from what seemed to be a lazy Sunday evening is gone. Luis urges Gabriel to speed up as we pull out of the ‘Monu’ and hit the accelerator. Checking the side streets with a glance before shouting clear as we punch through a succession of red lights. Luis’ Nextel bleeps as he receives and relays information as to the location and nature of the incident. The line goes quiet for a minute drops the phone his ear and checks his flash is working.

I’m mostly oblivious to the communications, my body tensing as we hurtle over Mexico City’s potholed and speedbumped streets.

III

In ten minutes we arrive at the Barrio Buenas Aires, the corner of Dr. Vertes and Morones Prieto and the scene is a Kaleidoscope of red and blue flashing sirens. As Gabo finds a place to park the car, Luis has the door open, ready to jump out.

I hit the street running behind Luis and it is immediately apparent that this incident is still unfolding. At first sight I can see a plethora of police arriving and people are moving in all directions. To my left I can see that they are fleeing a nightclub, streaming through the door and scattering past the arriving policemen.

In front of the nightclub door lies the body, unattended, fallen between two parked cars. It is later revealed that the body belonged to one Ricardo Tovar Leyva, 45, commonly know as ‘El Charro’ or The Cowboy, who has recently suffered a shotgun wound to his head.

'El Charro' is not going anywhere for now and after a preliminary few photographs, Luis is off down the street following the action as it unfolds. It is difficult to decipher what is actually happening amid the confusion. Police scurry after the fleeing nightclub patrons, grabbing some and holding them for quick questioning. A man is dragged into a squad car kicking. He puts his head down as the media begin to assemble around the car, his face caught in freeze frames of red and blue light.

A Federal Police man in full flak jacked and helmet marches past me, short and impossibly squat, he looks like the Sandman from Fantastic Four. In a cordon of police cars, other officers brandish what I assume to be the murder weapon in the car headlights, a destructive looking thing that they twist and turn in curious examination.

The situation is highly charged. I spot the TV Azteca guys nearby and finally my eyes catch Luis’s long red Tampa Bay Buccaneers jacket as gunshots, three in quick succession, cackle from around the corner.

The tempo leaps again as Luis urges me to get down low. I do and find it hard to run as police begin to stream past me, pointing their weapons into a building site on the corner.

I crouch for a minute with Luis and Alex. I photograph the cops as they storm over the temporary chain link fence, evidently where the shots came from. Alex follows the police over, his large frame tumbling over the collapsed fence, his tiny HD camera still glued to his right hand. TV camera lights and flashguns illuminate the scene as the police surround the building site Portakabin.

The voices of the officers rise above everything, ordering whoever is inside to emerge with their hands up. Policemen have their guns aimed at the little site office as the door opens slowly. A heavy set, middle aged couple, scared out of their wits stand in the white light as police move to them. They are unarmed and although certainly not the culprits are most likely witnesses to the shooting, who, for their own safety may not want to give information to the authorities. I fleetingly wonder how they managed to climb into the building site so quickly as the man is dragged back across the fence in a hail of flashes and thrust into a police car.

Two more shots ring out, this time on the opposite corner and everyone scrambles again. I run across with the police officers and take up a spot behind a parked bus, crouching down as a line of cops take up positions facing the building, everyone screaming and shouting. I poke my head around as cops point to various windows and towards the roof. Two cops begin to scale the façade of the building.

Federales in heavy body armor line up across the street, other cops lean against a cruiser with their guns cocked, movie shootout style, three in a row. A helicopter begins to circle the building, descending low enough to kick up a cyclone of dust and leaves, whipping it across the street and into the faces of all assembled. The spotlight rakes across the building scanning it for activity. I’m shooting video and scrunching up my eyes against the dust and leaves.

Luis is on the corner and he is the only one of La Nota Roja I can see. On the other side of the bus, another man is dragged down the street and into a police car but I can’t tell if he was hiding out in the building or was the one firing at the cops. I shoot a picture through the dark window of the cop car but it is all black.

Luis, leaning against a lamppost, watching the proceedings, looking cool as you like. Instead of church and a few hours on the couch of a Sunday it seems he can be found at hanging out at the odd police shootout. Just another day at the office.

The helicopter zips off to another part of the city, the thwack of it’s rotar blades fading into the night.

I ask Luis what the fuck just happened but he kind of shrugs and I pass him by to see what has become of El Charro.

Order is being restored to the crime scene, police begin to stretch their hot pink ‘Peligro’ tape in a wide cordon around the body, pulling it tighter as it waves and flaps in the wind.

The body, obviously, has not moved. Dry winter leaves swirl gently in a pool of dark, crimson blood and a shock of bright red brain matter that left Tovar Leyva’s head with the force of the shotgun blast, a .30 caliber.

People begin to gather to look at the body and the restored order is once again punctuated as a small group, maybe friends or relatives arrive at the scene. Two women are distraught, screaming and crying and trying to push their way closer to the body past the police cordon only to be restrained and comforted by a female cop. They push their way along the cordon to get closer.

Another relative arrives, she twirls and spins, wailing, distraught and overwhelmed. She feints in the street, flat on her back, her arms flayed out beside her. Bystanders look on as the closest to her aid her to her feet, all the while the continuum of red and blue flashing police lights pulsing across the scene.

I’m roaming now, watching people watching the dead guy. A man holds a toy dog inside his jacket, both watch on with curiosity. Mothers arrive with prams and their youngsters, youths adjust their sportswear and toy with their mobile phones, comparing their knowledge of weapons, bullet trajectories and cars: Barrio Buenas Aires is a well known neighborhood for chop shops and the auto-mechanic underworld and the dispute between El Charro and his assassin is likely over stolen cars.

Traffic, long since blocked off from the busy intersection once again begins to move along one side of the street in deathly slow single file. A giant red Coca-Cola truck passes by and my mind drifts to memories of tv commercials; a scene of snow covered countryside and a caravan of rosy red trucks with jolly, illuminated Santa Clauses on the side, chiming their way along in the half light. I remember that it’s Christmas.

The forensics van arrives and the detail work begins. Two men place little yellow signs with numbers around the corpse, near the white BMW alongside which the deceased lies and at other areas of interest. It’s a curious sight, these men in white coats moving back and forth around the scene like curious tourists, taking photographs with utmost attention to detail and leaving their little markers like sightseeing spots ticked off their map.

Luis and Alex are smoking cigarettes and snapping the occasional picture. They already have everything they need for their story and have witnessed scenes like this many times. They’re ready to leave and head back to the ‘Monu’.

The white chalk lines are drawn and I’m still curious to see the scene through, to see the street empty out after the body has been lifted and to feel calm return to the Barrio Buenas Aries but the guys want to leave.

I make a few final frames, long exposures, of the forensics guys tending to the body of El Charro and make my way back to the car.

Gabriel clips his radio back to the sun visor above the drivers seat. I’m back to being lost in translation but Gabriel and Luis’ chatter is all about the scene we all just witnessed and I feel a little more involved. ‘Bien Cabron’ remarks Gabo. ‘Si Guey’, ‘yeah man’ confirms Luis as we pull away from the scene. ‘Una chinga madre’ is all I can muster by way of remark about the night's events so far.

A real motherfucker.

The radio bursts out another siren howl and the voice of a police man or an ambulance driver somewhere in the city. I look at the guys to see what’s happening, raising my eyes inquisitively. 'Zeta Siete' they say and I’m back in the world of codes and double talk. Gabriel presses the accelerator and Luis reaches into his bag to pull out his flashgun and we’re off again, I sit back in the seat and watch the city flying by, waiting to see what’s going on in Colonia Centro.

500 Club

2011-01-03T12:56:00.000-08:00

Shout out to Pieter Wisse from the wonderful 500 Photographers blog who featured my work this past week. Check it out here

Chiapas

2010-12-27T20:20:00.000-08:00

Barrio Norte

2010-12-19T12:18:00.000-08:00

Guadalupe

2010-12-12T23:31:00.000-08:00

Notes from the Crime Beat: A Message From Los Zetas

2010-12-12T14:10:00.000-08:00

Like an image from the Godfather, 'un puerco' left out side the police station with a warning note from the infamous Zetas ended up being a moment of some light relief. Serious, macabre and ominous it certainly is but not such a raw indicator of Mexico's spiraling gang violence as initially expected.

There was much apprehension and stomach churning tension when the radio call came in that there was 'una cabeza' left in the barrio of Bosques de Gana in Mexico City on Thursday night.

Driving through the night time streets, searching block by block as the Nextel relayed details of a potentially grimy crime scene awaiting 'La Nota Roja', the Mexican crime photographers who trawl the city for the aftermath of bloody incidents, the tension only grew, the streets empty, the stores shuttered and the lights off.

Eventually a police officer gave us an indication that 'la cabeza' was waiting on the ground outside the local police station. We drove the final few streets, the photographers preparing their flash guns and long lenses and arrived to find the local police standing in a circle snapping pictures on their mobile phones at the ground. I got out of the car and crossed the street, ready to assess the situation and switch into the mode of making images, taking footage and switching off the reality of the scene that awaited me.

We approached the blanket on the ground, everyone slightly relieved to find not the scene we initially expected.

'Puerco o Puerca?' commented one of the present media by way of a joke, breaking the tension and letting everyone go about their business, documenting this scene, criticizing the grammar of the culprits and chatting with the other police officers and photographers, all night owls for whom these kind of scenes are their daily bread.

The note was a warning for the police and their families to stop interfering with the business of Los Zetas in Mexico City or suffer the dire consequences. Most likely written by young gang members, it's was a reminder that drug cartels appear to be present in all parts of the country now, places previously run and operated by local gangs are being taken over by bigger, more powerful operations.

Ten minutes later we were back in the car, cruising the streets, ignoring the traffic lights and off to wait and see what else the night had in store...

Tepito, D.F.

2010-12-04T17:22:00.000-08:00

Ciudad Mier: Casulty of Mexico's Drug War

2010-12-04T16:13:00.000-08:00

Deserted Main St. in Ciudad Mier, site of a battle between rival cartels © Ross McDonnell

The full Associated Press report on Ciudad Mier, a pretty "Puebla Mexicana" town abandoned by it's some 6000 residents after suffering some nine months of explosive violence between rival drug cartels begins something like this:

CIUDAD MIER, Mexico — Shell casings carpet the road outside a bullet-riddled subdivision on the outskirts of this colonial town on the Rio Grande Valley, abandoned by most of the 6,000 inhabitants following a nine-month battle by warring drug cartels.

Nobody lives in the 65 one-story white houses across the border from Roma, Texas, except the abandoned pets that roam the streets of the Casas Geo development. Like 90 percent of those who once lived in Mier, they have fled to a shelter in the nearby city of Miguel Aleman, Mexico's first such haven for people displaced by drug violence.

While Mexicans increasingly have fled border towns up and down the Rio Grande Valley, Ciudad Mier is the most dramatic example so far of the increasing ferocity of war between rival drug cartels, and the government's failure to fight back.

The state and federal governments say it's safe to go back and that people are returning. One official even invited tourists to return. The scenes witnessed by The Associated Press say something else.

Even during daylight hours, a Mexican army squad patrols the town nervously.

About half the houses in Ciudad Mier have bullet holes. The Casas Geo subdivision seems frozen in time; most residents left in the summer, and it was empty by early November. The houses show how people lived when the battle reached its height: armoires and wooden wardrobes pushed up against the windows, in a vain bid to stop the bullets.

Gaping holes in walls, windows and doors where high-powered ammunition made impact. On the entrance to the subdivision, someone daubed in paint "CDG" and a heart, a reference to the Gulf Cartel.

The empty gun cabinet in Ciudad Mier's destroyed police station.

Ciudad Mier's destroyed police station.

Army patrols guard the main square of Ciudad Mier.

Mexican army checkpoint at the entrance to Ciudad Mier.

The abandoned Casas Geo residential estate in Ciudad Mier.

Ciudad Mier's church reflected in a bullet scarred store window.

Sundance 2011: Knuckle, Hell and Back, Let There Be Light

2010-12-02T11:58:00.000-08:00

Delighted to see the Ian Palmer's 'Knuckle' made into this year's World Documentary Competition at Sundance. Described as "An epic 12-year journey into the brutal and secretive world of Irish Traveler bare-knuckle fighting, this film follows a history of violent feuding between rival clans" it's a film I've been hearing about with some anticipation for ages.

Congrats to Ian for dedication beyond the call of duty and ditto to Danfung Dennis on his film 'Hell and Back Again' which grabbed our attention with the incredible original footage first used in the PBS Frontline series Obama's War'.

I'm glad Danfung has added something different and unique to the already platinum standard of films about the Afghanistan war, most notably 'Restrepo' and Danish feature 'Armadillo' by focusing on the battle soldiers face when returning from war, something not seen to great effect since legendary director John Huston's post-WWII documentary masterpiece 'Let There be Light' which you can watch in it's entirety below...

Bowie, TX

2010-12-02T10:46:00.000-08:00

Austin, TX.

2010-12-01T09:34:00.000-08:00

Somewhere near Dallas...

2010-11-30T11:10:00.000-08:00

...sinister billboards with G.W Bush and the phrase 'Miss Me Yet?' are appearing along the freeway.

After the novelty wore off I had to ask myself the hard question and the answer I came up with was yes...

I guess I kind of do miss him...

Da Jeffe...

2010-11-25T09:36:00.001-08:00

Ayer en Juarez

2010-11-23T23:13:00.000-08:00

The Relative Size of Things...

2010-11-21T19:53:00.000-08:00

Bolivian Deforestation

Looking at both the incredible imagery from the recently released US Geological Survey images from the Landsat 7 and Terra satellites and the 2010 Nikon Small World microscope photography competition winning images has led me to do a little compare and contrast in homage to Charles & Ray Eames, makers of one of my favorite short films "Powers of Ten"

Fruit Fly Intestine, (800X magnification) © Paul Appleton

Two forms of scientific photography that take us from the outer space to the inner, yet remain eerily similar at times, both sets of images are beguiling on every level. From Karmen vortices on Alexander Selkirk Island to highly magnified pictures of soy sauce they both manage to show us the building blocks that bind our fragile world together. The best ones, such as the above image of Bolivian deforestation can transcend into a kind of social commentary, as documentary evidence. The caption reads: "Once a vast carpet of healthy vegetation and virgin forest, the Amazon rain forest is changing rapidly. This image of Bolivia shows dramatic deforestation in the Amazon Basin. Loggers have cut long paths into the forest, while ranchers have cleared large blocks for their herds. Fanning out from these clear-cut areas are settlements built in radial arrangements of fields and farms. Healthy vegetation appears bright red."

Desptie that, it's still nice to hear this Guardian article quote the USGS boffins in charge of the Landsat 7 say they decided to start collecting these images "for their aesthetic beauty rather than any scientific value".

Penicillin 60X magnification, © Thomas Deernick

Karman Vortices Alexander Selkirk Island in the southern Pacific Ocean.

Wasps Nest 10X magnification, © Riccardo Taiariol

The Chinese Himalaya

What's even better is that as with all NASA related imagery, it's rights free and you can download all of the poster size images in hi-res formats.

Here's some examples and a link for their "Earth as Art" collections.

And of course 'Powers of Ten"

Borderland...

2010-11-19T08:55:00.000-08:00

The Hotness hits Twin

2010-11-19T07:36:00.000-08:00

Chuffed to see the bespoke UK fashion bible Twin has featured some of my Coney Island coming-of-age photos from way back in July when the sun was blazing and the Coney was overflowing with people, trash and mid-summer hormones. Good times.

The selection of images ran with a short short story from Karley Sciortino, author of the ever popular psuedo-porn blog Slutever.
Buy Twin here...

Mrs. Muerte

2010-11-11T18:16:00.000-08:00

Bienvenidos!

2010-11-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

Living in the WalMart Carpark, Pueblo, Colorado

2010-10-26T14:15:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just can't help but fall down the photographic rabbit hole that is Americana. No matter how much it's 'done', there's no denying that there's an enduring complicity between the myth of America and the photographic process that continues to lure you in.

Perhaps it has something to do with the openness of the American people and their sense of pride no matter what the circumstances.

And none more so than these forgotten images of a guy I photographed living in the car park of a WalMart on the outskirts of Pueblo that was lingering on my hard drive from a working trip to Colorado back in July.

Initially I was attracted from a distance by the shortening light, the giant Cadillac neatly framed against the backdrop of a set of Golden Arches, another endlessly repeated scene of the new America, beige beige and more beige. Strip mall after strip mall...

I got a bit closer and noticed that the back of the car was completely stuffed with clothing and possessions and it was then that I noticed a man sitting staring at me. His name is written down in a notebook somewhere with a suitably wistful commentary on the scene but it escapes me for now.

I asked if he minded me taking his picture and we struck up a conversation.

Caught in a moment I walked up to the window to chat and was again caught by surprise when I peered into the car only to find his mother, very elderly and sitting in the driving seat. They were from Oklahoma he said, lost their home and were heading west. She seemed to be ill and nodded vaguely as I recounted my flimsy reasons for also being in the WalMart car park in Pueblo, Colorado.

It was a strange moment of transition; a scene of quiet Americana, of signs and icons had suddenly become a scene of genuine human struggle. The packed interior of the car which I first thought quirky, abandoned at the bottom of a mammoth car park, was suddenly transformed into somewhere where this odd couple, a family really, had chosen to settle for however long they planned on being there.

It was then that I realised, as photography so often allows, that this couple, for that moment, were happy to have the company, for someone to have taken a genuine interest even for that slightly uncomfortable moment while I clicked the shutter. They weren't embarrassed by their situation, nor was I interested in their story as some kind of journalistic insight, it just was.

I wished them well and went back to WalMart.

God bless America.

Bare Bones Films Vol 1

2010-10-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

BARE BONES Films vol. 1 from Bare Bones on Vimeo.

The Art of the Title Sequence

2010-10-02T09:13:00.000-07:00

The Art of the Title Sequence was not just set up to let you watch the title sequence for Se7en over and over again.

In their own words it exists to "honor the artists who design excellent title sequences, to discuss and display their work with a desire to foster more of it, via stills and video links, interviews, creator notes, and user comments."

Hours of fun.

Limited Edition: Monthly Print Offer

2010-09-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

'Joyrider' 17"x11" Archival Inkjet print, Edition of 5.

Beautifully printed by D.M. Packer on Hahnemühle 350 gsm photo rag paper, comes in an edition of 5 prints.

Worldwide shipping available. Print price $500. Please contact me for info or to purchase via Paypal.

Convergence

2010-09-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

As Puma and the Channel 4 Britdoc Foundation announce a major financing partnership for independent documentary production, I thought it would be interesting to comment a little on the shifting balance of power and the level of convergence between the commercial and the more indy or artistically driven world's of visual storytelling. Like any agreement between art and commerce it can have both it's harmonious marriages and it's complicated relationships, some of which I hope to touch on here.

Harmony Korine's latest short film 'Act Da Fool' commissioned by fashion house Proenza Schouler is, along with Spike Jonze's 'I am Here', a perfect example of how brands and advertisers are more and more investing in directors, photographers and musicians to create standalone projects that associate their products with an already successful creative brand: the talent itself.

As the nature of film financing for independent projects seems in continual flux, advertisers are increasingly keen to fill this gap in the market by investing in projects that can capitalize on the brand strength of the creatives themselves or to create campaigns that tap into hot social issues and activist agendas.

This NY Times article on the subject harks back to the original BMW 'The Hire' series of short films that was among the first to let auteur filmmakers such as Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Ang Lee and John Woo step outside of the traditional constraints of the thirty second TV spot or the Hollywood system and produce works that followed their unique visions.

Korine himself in conversation with Boards magazine states that this financial investment in his creative output is something of a no-brainer:

"When I was young, when I first started making movies, I would sometimes get asked to do spots but I was more focused on making movies, really. Time passed, films take so long to make and also because I write my movies, the actual process just takes a long time. I enjoy making things and so I like the idea of beginning and finishing a project and having that immediacy."

'Act Da Fool' sees Korine at his idiosyncratic best, choosing as his location for this piece:

"The projects of Nashville. A school for the blind. A school for kleptomaniacs."

Perfect.

I personally think that both Korine's film and Jonze's are unequivocal successes and feel that the brands involved in these respective campaigns have positioned themselves perfectly within these two projects; almost as modern day Medici's for the Youtube generation. These projects are fun and the end result is good enough that the idea of being sold a product isn't at the forefront of my mind while I'm watching the film. It's a win win.

I'm slightly more concerned when brands try to take this approach into the realm of documentary and by extension into people's real lives. Whether Puma will be happy to fund documentary projects that are political, overtly controversial or chose to play it safe in their venture with Channel 4 remains to be seen but it's interesting that the initial excitement about the recent, Malick inspired Levis 'Go Forth' campaign has begun to wane as some dissenting voices are emerging towards Levi's efforts to be agents of social change in the community where the ad was shot, Braddock, PA.

While the Times reports that 'Levi Strauss executives plan to put their money where their pants are, donating more than a million dollars over a two-year period to assist Braddock in renovating a community center and further developing an urban farming program', the official 'Go Forth' website has published page simply entitled 'The Facts' that would appear to attempt to clarify the fine line that Levi's have chosen to tread between championing a cause and selling a product.

From what I can see the denim manufacturer has a good level of transparency about it's community activities in the town and their intentions seem to be genuine, one simply hopes that when next season's campaign rolls around the 'Pioneers' of Braddock, PA won't be making the trip to hip New York vintage stores to trade their free designer work wear in for some hard cash.

Either way it's a cool project and it makes for interesting times and offering fantastic funding opportunities for perennially struggling artists to flex their muscles in a variety of storytelling media can only be a good thing.

Russian Esquire: Holla!

2010-09-17T13:11:00.001-07:00

Sam Rockwell may be looking distinctly unexcited about being on the cover of this month's Russian edition of Esquire but I'm completely stoked on the fantastic twelve page spread they ran on my Joyrider series. The magazine is a slightly edgier version of it's US and UK counterparts with lots of great contemporary photo spreads. Their blog is also one to watch for some nice visual content even if your Russian isn't quite up to speed.

Big shout out to Ekaterina Furceva for the great layout and savvy edit.

Spasiba!

Werner Herzog: Doesn't Eat His Shoe

2010-09-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

Roger Ebert's report on a meeting of the two giants of documentary filmmaking Errol Morris and the legend Werner Herzog earlier this week at the Toronto International Film Festival included some cheerful reminiscing of the pair's history together.

Thankfully this time, older and perhaps wiser, no footwear was consumed on stage....

Werner Herzog and Errol Morris have been friends for a very long time, from the days in the 1970s when Morris saw Herzog's first films at the Univ. of Wisconsin and decided to become a filmmaker. Errol told Herzog of a film he wanted to shoot, but kept delaying. Herzog told him he needed more self-discipline. He added: "If you make this film, I'll eat my shoe." That led to a famous evening at the Pacific Film archive in Berkeley, at which Herzog sat on the stage and did indeed eat his shoe. He was assisted in its preparation by the famous chef Alice Waters -- perhaps suggesting that you can find everything you don't want at Alice's Restaurant. The meal was the subject of a famous documentary by Les Blank titled "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe."

On Sept. 13, 2010, Morris and Herzog both premiered their new films at the Toronto International Film Festival: Herzog's "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," a 3D documentary about cave paintings 32,000 years old; and Morris' "Tabloid," about the UK tabloid sensation "The Case of the Manacled Mormom." Earlier in the day, they held a conversation at TIFF's new Bell Lightbox. Herzog questioned Morris' slow process of post-production, Morris suggested you could find strangeness as easily in Van Nuys as at the ends of the earth, they discussed a book of letters written to a dead dog, and then talked about their own voracious reading.

They discussed single shots in detail: A shot repeated five times in "Tabloid" of the heroine repeating the same thing, and a shot in "Grizzly Man" when the hero disappeared into some grasses and wasn't seen for an extended period. Morris realized their favorite shots had both been photographed by their subjects themselves. Yes, said Herzog, but the secret is to recognize them. He found his shot discarded by a subeditor.

Herzog's advice to a young would-be director: "Read, read, read, read, read, read. Read." As for Morris, he offered no advice and cheerfully implied he doesn't have a clue what it takes.

Mixed Emotions

2010-09-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

Irish Eyes: Richard Mosse

2010-09-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

Image from the series 'Nada Que Declarar' by Richard Mosse Copyright 2010

The latest in the series of interviews with Irish photographers sees us catch up with the globetrotting photographer and filmmaker Richard Mosse. Only two years since finishing his MFA at Yale and already an emerging international name in the photography world, Mosse has been vigorously producing work that manages to combine the political and intellectual subject matters that he is interested in while managing to make his work a visual feast, a rare feat by any standards.

His photography is a divergent mix of large format projects with each of body of work not quite a photojournalistic photo essay and not quite a fine art series but inhabiting a space in between these crumbling genre boundaries of the contemporary photography world.

Producing images that deal the legacies of conflict, the geopolitics of space and the pliable nature of history, Mosse’s work has it’s roots with contemporary image makers such as Paul Seawright, Simon Norfolk, Luc Delahaye and Edward Burtynsky.

Image from the series 'Breach' by Richard Mosse Copyright 2010

Image from the series 'Nomads' by Richard Mosse Copyright 2010

For me his images differ from what has come before him as Richard seems happy to revel in the practice of the photographic act of devilish suggestion. Fact and fiction are merged at a level where straight-faced truth is normally the order of the day. Whether it’s in war zones, at the sites of natural disasters or in lonely airplane crash sites, the viewer of Mosse's work is never quite able to orient himself in his world but is able to recognize it as something that normally infers grave seriousness.

Image from the series 'The Fall' by Richard Mosse Copyright 2010

With Richard’s work however, we are left to make our own conclusions about what the seriousness of these ‘situations’ is, rather than being told what to think by a newscaster, a narrative or the cliches of Hollywood soundtracks that inevitably open their war stories to the tune of helicopter blades whooshing and the sound of a Muezzin's daily call to prayer.

Memories of images that never existed dance through our unconscious like a kind of photographic déjà vu that calls to mind our own experience as consumers of and subscribers to the 24 hour news cycle, pop culture and the silver screen.

After Kanye West felt the need to big up the work from Richard’s latest series from the Congo on his blog it was clearly time to put him on the spot. Our focus was on this same body of work.

Image from the series 'Infra' by Richard Mosse Copyright 2010

Tell us a little bit about your latest body of work from the Democratic Republic of Congo?

Infra is a photographic foray examining the conflict in Eastern Congo using colour infrared film, a technology originally developed for military reconnaissance.

The images seem to focus on one particular event the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) rebel group’s integration into the FARDC (Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo). Was this series intended to be a kind of interpretation of a single ‘news’ event or is it part of a larger body of work?

I wanted to find a new strategy to represent Congo’s intangible conflict. Though some of the subjects that interest me often appear on the ‘The News’ my work is not intended as a commentary or critique of journalism. It’s simply that I tend to arrive at some of the same destinations as photojournalists. What we notice while we’re out there tends to be extremely divergent.

Image from the series 'Infra' by Richard Mosse Copyright 2010

Tell us a little about your approach to this series, specifically with the use of infrared film. Was there a motivation behind it? The pink is lovely but I’m wondering if there’s a meaning to it all.

I was first turned on to colour infrared photography by Florian Maier-Aichen, a German artist working in California. He has produced some extraordinary photographs of the American west. I’m not sure how they’re made (I’ve heard that he composites them in Photoshop rather than using infrared film). But when I first saw them, I fell in love with the form and wondered how it would operate, exported to a more volatile and loaded landscape.

While I was in the Congo, in early 2010, Kodak announced the discontinuation of this infrared film. I was dealing with an abandoned media which I wanted to use reflexively, to employ this military technology against itself in the hopes of revealing something about how photography represents a place like Congo, a place so deeply buried beneath its representations.

I was especially interested in how Aerochrome perceives and reveals an invisible spectrum of light. In almost all of my work I have to struggle with the challenge of representing abstract or contingent phenomena that are virtually impossible to see, or at least very difficult to put before a camera lens. This is especially the case in Eastern Congo, where my subject was inherently hidden.

The rebel fighters that I hoped to photograph are hunted by the Congolese Army, by rival rebel groups and by the local Mai Mai. They emerge from the jungle to loot and slaughter – this is how they survive – disappearing into the foliage just as quickly. Because it’s possible to exhaust the civilian populations that they prey upon, these groups circulate nomadically in the region. They live by bivouac, constantly moving.

Many of these groups have recently been integrated into the Congolese army – becoming legitimized and uniformed. These killers have simply evaporated, becoming immanent and entrenched.

Where fighting has occurred, it’s trace can be difficult to perceive. Instead of bricks and mortar, Eastern Congo has provisional shacks and a rapacious vegetation that swallows history. Instead of hellfire missiles and military barracks, there are “white” weapons, machetes that kill silently, and rebel militias concealed not by concrete and camouflage, but by the jungle itself.

The decision to use colour infrared film forms a dialogue with these specifics. The poetic associations carried by the pink and red palette are a by-product of this conceptual framework, but a very fertile one. It’s an allegorical landscape – La Vie En Rose – steeped in a kind of magical realism.

Image from the series 'Infra' by Richard Mosse Copyright 2010

There’s a perception in my mind and perhaps for others too that the Congo, the country itself and its history has these powerful cultural connotations of madness attached to it. From ‘Heart of Darkness’ to modern representations of it’s ongoing conflict and the recent saga of General Nkunda, there’s a dark insanity to the whole place more so than perhaps anywhere else.

Do you feel your images are in some way playing into that cultural dialogue or are they commenting on it in some way?

I was deeply affected by Congo’s literary and cultural baggage, by what the name evokes in Western minds which are largely ignorant of the place. This made my journey in Congo extremely stimulating, placing my imagination ‘in the zone’, so to speak. Almost nothing seemed banal to me in the DRC because of these popular mythic associations. My work there couldn’t help but be a product of these cultural undertones.

While making the work, I was acutely aware of the fact that infrared light is invisible, so I was literally photographing blind. The whole process seemed preposterous. I felt like the protagonist in Gogol’s Dead Souls, quantifying an absence using a meticulous scientific method while engaged in a picaresque trajectory through an impossible land.

Does ‘Infra’ represent part of a larger theme you’re trying to address with your work or does each project represent a standalone series?

It’s all related. I am generally drawn to disparate sites around the world that show how the past is constructed by the present, how history is in a constant state of rewriting – rather like the hard disk in your laptop, constantly spinning. I am fascinated by spectacle, myth and monumentality when they relate to politics. I’m also drawn to the limits of representation, to the problems of revealing.

You seem to be working at a frantic pace just now, tell us about how your photographic work has been developing over the last couple of years?

I suppose that’s a result of the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship which Robert Storr awarded me upon graduation from Yale in 2008. This two year fellowship comes with so much cash that it is a real stimulant for producing, as well as being a huge pressure to produce. The Yale Photography MFA was also a bit of a helter skelter in terms of production, so I’ve had four years riding shotgun, making work aggressively.

Image from the series 'Airside' by Richard Mosse Copyright 2010

There seems to be a burgeoning group of photographers working in the spaces between art, photojournalism and documentary photography. Are these definitions redundant? Or do we need to have some kind of genres in photography to help audiences identify with the context of the work?

I don’t think we make genres. Genres are made in the same way that pathways are beaten into the landscape, they are an unconscious result of collective usage.

I feel that there's nothing new about photographers working in the interstices between these fields. What's new is the divergence between the disciplines and the insidious sense that art photography has to look a certain way and photojournalism has to look a certain way, and the twain shall never meet. It's a pointless stratification of the medium. Paul Graham wrote eloquently about this in his seminal essay, 'The Unreasonable Apple'.

I sometimes become confused when my work gets too close to photojournalism. When this happens I try to see what I'm doing as a writer would, imagining my work reflected in a literary mirror. I try to think that instead of taking pictures, I'm writing a novel or a short story or a poem in a place where foreign correspondents hard-boil the facts into succinct dispatches to send down the wire. These are wildly different enterprises, but for some bizarre reason it's hard for us to perceive that difference when it occurs in photographs.

Your images always have a great power to them that connect with viewers. What drew you to the photographic process rather than following your initial interests as a writer?

Writing is an endless lonely journey into the darkness of your own ego. Photography is an endless lonely journey into the darkness of your own ego with air miles.

Luwero, Uganda

2010-09-06T15:54:00.001-07:00

Karamoja, Uganda

2010-09-06T14:49:00.001-07:00

Panganara, Uganda

2010-09-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

Eastern Girls, Western Mags

2010-08-16T07:54:00.000-07:00

Images from left: Steve McCurry, Magnum & Jodi Bieber, Institute

It's probably a little late to chime in on the debate surrounding the recent Time magazine cover featuring 'Bibi Aisha', a young Afghan girl whose nose was severed, apparently by the Taliban, but the cover is interesting on so many levels that it deserves a second look.

As carefully constructed as an election campaign and timed so meticulously to counter the release of the Wikileaks 'Afghan Papers' that it has left many with a sour taste in the mouth over Time's approach to how the magazine represents it's editorial content.

The controversy has centred mostly on Time's use of Aisha as some kind of portent of the future of Afghanistan without the continuing presence of the American 'occupation' there. It has been read, quite obviously as an endorsement of the need for the US to continue it's fight there and to quote the great George W. Bush, to stay in country until the Americans can 'get the job done'.

The general public and champions of the American campaign in Afghanistan will no doubt heed the rallying call, shocked by the brutal image of an otherwise beautiful young woman mutilated almost beyond recognition by a radical, unseen enemy whose value system is barbaric and less than human and re-ignite their waning support for the war effort.

The detractors of America's campaign in Central Asia may however, read it as a wry image; perversely representing America's futile engagement after nine years fighting an unwinnable war. As futile a pursuit as cutting off your nose to spite your face perhaps.

What struck me most about the cover however was it's similarity to what many term the most memorable image in history, Steve McCurry's 'Afghan Girl' and Time magazine's obvious nod to this particular image in it's portrayal of Aisha.

The current incantation of the 'Afghan Girl' has been variously described as 'emotional blackmail' and 'war porn' and one is forced to wonder whether it is the cultural legacy of McCurry's photograph rather than the shocking image of Aisha itself that makes us feel so strongly opposed to Time's photographic gambit.

It was this thinking that led me to revisit Roland Barthes and his seminal look at the emotional draw of the photographic process in his book 'Camera Lucida'. In this work, Barthes draws a line between the types of images that we can engage on a base level with, those he terms Punctum and other images that rely on the technical proficiency of the photographer to seduce us: those he refers to as Studium.

Of the Punctum he states:

"Your eyes attach themselves to the surface of the photo, examining every film grain and rouge hair. Despite your efforts to pay attention to the entire photo, your mind returns again and again to the women’s ring. Something indescribable… maybe it’s the light playing off of it’s edge…or maybe it reminds you of your grandmother’s…whatever it is, something has happened. The people begin to feel alive, you become interested in their lives and their fate. This is the punctum."

In contrast, the Studium in Barthes eyes, is an image that relies on it's technical execution, in essence it's polished surface to entice the viewer. The Studium is less an emotional proposition as it seeks to seduce the viewer and their relationship to lifestyle, personal interest or simply just the technical content of the image to draw us in.

"Barthes makes the suggestion that when a photograph tries too hard to be political, it fails. It’s when it is subtle it has a tendency to haunt, therefore permeating the subconscious and achieving its goal in a much less radical but much more lasting manner. “Hence the photograph whose meaning (I am not saying its effect, but its meaning) is too impressive is quickly deflated; we consume it aesthetically, not politically.”

In the original 'Afghan Girl' it is clear that McCurry had not intended to capture the imagination of the world with his photograph, that the young girl, Sharbat Gula, that he found in a refugee camp near Peshawar would likely be ooohed and aaahed over at dinner parties twenty years later in civilized corners of the world with the epithet "...and those amazing eyes"..."simply haunting".

Barthes' distinction is one that helps us maybe understand the subtle differences in the nature of image making for the mass market and why McCurry's image will continue to stay with us while Beiber's, although shrouded in controversy just now, may remain just a little bit too media-managed, too gratuitous and ultimately too political to become such a potent symbol of this latest chapter western perceptions of Afghanistan's tumultuous history.

Sharbat Gula 17 years on: Still got it.

Quotation: Speaking of Art

Wisdom: Eric Stephanian

2010-08-10T15:35:00.000-07:00

REMEMBER

"Stop thinking in category of limitations. Remember that you are nobody. Remember that you are not a body. Remember that you are not a brain. Remember that you are not your senses. After try to find your being. It is big. Big as a "Universe". You're still searching for something there on Mars but you forgot that the "Universe" is inside you. You forgot that the "Universe" is YOU." - Eric Stephanian

Coast to Coast: Shameless Self-Promotion

2010-08-09T15:33:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK: AUGUST 13

Colony launches at the IFC Center. Come along and support the film!

LA: AUGUST 14

Scion Gallery

Ah Eastern Europe...

2010-08-08T06:18:00.000-07:00

Where people still accept that smoking is sexy.

The Void

2010-08-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

It may be true that the first thing to suffer when you are busy doing other things is the act of blogging. Why would you bother telling the world what you're up to when you're enjoying just doing it. This is the first post of August however and I promise to be more diligent in future. Something's better than nothing right?

First off a huge shout out to Howard Feinstein, critic, film fan and benevolent father figure for having Colony included in his outstanding 'Panorama' section at the Sarajevo Film Festival last week. Great city and some great movies.

Among the stand out efforts that I managed to catch at this Balkan cinema extravaganza were Simon Brumley's smart, lean and brilliantly executed hipster shocker 'Red, White & Blue'. Someone and by someone I mean you Harvey Weinstein should give Simon a three picture deal asap.

A scathing look at the nature of American laziness and the culture of violence that seeps from within it's greasy, Budweiser drinking, flag flying heartlands, Red, White & Blue was not for the feint hearted or the weak stomached.

Needless to say neither were the check golfing pants that Simon selected to wear at his Q&A.

He's a true original all the way and I have no doubt that great things await Simon as a writer/director and horror meister supreme.

Here's actress Amanda Fuller discussing the film. Nice to finally see her with some clothes on...

Next up was 'The Temptation of St. Tony' by Estonian auteur Veiko Õunpuu.

An existential black comedy that I would happily tout as the Estonian 'Big Lebowski', this was a film to be seen on the big screen. Shot in mindblowingly beautiful black and white, 'Temptation' is one that audiences will either love or hate.

Structured in chapters rather than following a traditional linear plot it reminded me of being a kid and turning on the television late at night and seeing a film with subtitles in black and white and people...just talking.

It's only now, as an adult, that I feel able to embrace these things that I may not quite understand and enjoy what I'm seeing...rather than changing the channel to watch 'Tango & Cash'.

I loved this film and Veiko's admission that after the success of his sophomore effort 'Autumn Ball' his discomfort at being touted as 'the savior of Estonian film' prompted him to make this movie as 'a big Fuck You to all of those people' was typical of the bone dry humor that fills the movie.

Full of self-deprecating comments, Veiko claimed to have stolen many of the films shots from masters such as Pasolini and Tarkovsky but I just think he was being modest. It's fair to say that movies like this just aren't being made anymore and it was wonderful to see something with a true love of cinema, philosophy and comedy up there on the big screen.

It's such a beautiful film that I'm just not sure why this youtube clip is so rubbish: there's enough moments of transcendental black and white cinematography in this film to make a year's worth of car commercials out of.

Here's a taster none the less:

Among other films that I managed to see were mischievous Columbian helmer Oscar Ruiz Navia's 'Crab Trap', Canne Palm D'Or winner 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives' and finally I got a look at Lixin Fan's doc masterpiece 'Last Train Home'. Thank you to Lixin for one of the most incredible films I have seen this year. Having met the guy it's hard to imagine a more earnest person, full of integrity and talent. It's truly an amazing documentary film.

Taking the cake however was the long awaited 'Enter the Void' by perennial 'enfant terrible' Gaspar Noe. Introducing the film and saying it was inspired by his drug experiences kind of put me off and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat for a while before the film started. There's perhaps nothing sadder in my mind than some geezer in his early forties asking where you can score a few 'E's and talking up his love for the odd acid trip but in the end all credit is due as the film absolutely blew me away.

Inspired in part by innovative first-person perspective 1940s noir 'Lady in the Lake', 'Enter the Void' impressed me so much firstly because it completely eschews any of the kind of cinematic shoe gazing bullshit that is so prevalent in the 'auteur' filmmaking that fills festival schedules these days.

From the first frame it drops you straight in to a kaleidoscopic world that is part dream, part nightmare beginning at a million miles an hour with this Manga fueled title sequence scored by old techno supremo Thomas Bangalter. Classic stuff.

Noe is one of the most honest directors working today for my money and that's why I enjoy his films so much. Although 'Irreversible' remains nothing more than a video nasty for some, I still maintain it's the film 'Eyes Wide Shut' just didn't have the guts to be.

In many ways perhaps 'Enter the Void' is Noe's '2001'. Full of beautifully rendered visual effects, wild, dimension bending camera moves, flashing neon, dreamy sex and a healthy preoccupation with death, 'Void' may perhaps be on the verge of ruining the French film industry but I loved every minute. Well...almost every minute.

Props to all at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Greetings from Sarajevo!

2010-07-30T03:37:00.000-07:00

Hurry Up and Win!

2010-07-27T14:36:00.001-07:00

Last minute notice for the 3rd Ward Open Call for a bursary award for their Summer show.

A residency and $5000 dollars to spend on overpriced coffee in Williamsburg await the lucky winner....

As well as the golden elevator to art stardom of course.

Go forth and conquer art people!

Wisdom: Louis Faurer

2010-07-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

"My eyes search for people who are grateful for life, people who forgive and whose doubts have been removed, who understand the truth, whose enduring spirit is bathed by such piercing white light as to provide their present and future with hope." - Louis Faurer

Oooooo...Dedication's What you need...

2010-07-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

It must be five years since I last got in contact with the enigma that is Boogie. When I started making pictures and finding my feet as a street snapper, I would pore over his influential Artcoup website/blog, amazed at the access and intimacy he was achieving with his photography just a few blocks away from my Brooklyn base in the heart of Bushwick, photographing the lives of those ruined by crack and heroin addiction.

Long before Tumblr, Facebook and even the mass popularization of blogging, there was Boogie, posting pictures everyday, logging, categorizing, sharing his stream of consciousness with the world.

I wrote to him in 2005 to share my appreciation for what he was doing. "You should join Magnum" I said to him, "or get a big agency to represent your stuff" I suggested. "Yeah, I'm kinda in a fuck everybody kind of place right now" the reply came back "Thanks for your email though". Five years and five published books later and Boogie is still pushing himself and his style to the max, steadily maturing and adding new dimensions to his approach and his work.

Photo District News has a piece on the work from his latest show on their Photo of the Day post today where Boogie talks about this process:

“When the Carmichael Gallery contacted me about doing a show, they were at first surprised by my initial selection … it didn’t include any of the images that people are used to seeing from me, like gangs, drugs and other hardcore stuff. It was a selection of totally new work mostly of normal day-to-day life, and much of it in color. After years and years of shooting only b&w film, I started seeing images in color some time last year, and it opened up a whole new world for me. After going back and forth with the gallery, we came up with a final selection which we called The Uncovering. It’s a pretty apocalyptic series, but I think it really represents the new me.”

Everybody's Talking About...

2010-07-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

Jon Rafman's 'Google Street Views'. And well they should be too. Somewhere in last interview with the late Dennis Hopper published by Vanity Fair he stated something along the lines of 'it being the artist's duty to document his own time'. Never a truer word could be spoken and Rafman's work is a perfect example.

Requiem for a Picture

2010-07-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

The Observer's 'New Review' has a video of 'The Month in Photography' which carried me away with it's haunting music (that I can't identify) and beautiful and oddly moving imagery. It got me thinking about the life and death of photography (definitely the music).

Filled with classic images from the likes of Salgado, Mary Ellen Mark, Steve McCurry and Sally Mann and modern classics from photographers such as Tim Hetherington, Nadav Kandar and David Monteleone it seems that the public's knowledge and thirst for photography has never been greater just as the level of complaining about the 'end of photography' and the 'death of photojounalism' has also never been more ubiquitous.

To my mind these arguments run the gamut from the proverbial sublime to the ridiculous. Globalization, the proliferation of digital photography, the internet and of course...the internet have all been blamed for what I've genuinely heard called "the death of still photography".

Such is the frequency of these articles it sometimes seems commentary on the topic has almost become and industry in itself.

Personally the quest for new projects, insights and the constant stream of photo-based brain chatter keep me busy enough to even form an opinion on the matter. Sure it's true that photojournalists weigh in 189th out of 200 on the Best and Worst Jobs 2010 list but no-one ever said it was gonna be easy. As the ever wise D. Timmons would calmly state:

"If you've got good shit, you've got good shit".

Never a truer word spoken.

None the less for interested parties, here's some of the links past and present on the topic and a picture by the sage-like and ever spot-on David Burnett that made me smile:

LA Times: "When it Paid to Photograph Hard Truth"
Lens Blog with Tim Hetherington
JM Colberg: 1 2 3
Dispatches
Stephen Mayes on World Press Photo
Digital Journalist: "The Death of Photojournalism Ten Years On"

Image copyright David Burnett

The Hotness: 4th July

2010-07-08T19:29:00.000-07:00

All this crazy sunshine makes me want to get out there and shoot.

4th July at Coney Island was a perfect example. Wild with heat, every inch of sand swarmed with people and trash, there was a classic picture to be had in every direction. There was something sultry and seedy in the air too that ultimately drew me in and helped me find a rhythm in my images that day, something to focus on in a mire of thirty thousand people. It was encapsulated by this image of young Puerto Rican charges and their knowing muse.

They were Bushwick kids in the throes of hormonal mania, spending their day throwing themselves off the pier in dazzling displays of mating behavior, their brains all hopped up on blunts and bravado.

It was a kind of primary coloured Martin Parr mind-trip that made me want to get cracking on a new summer project: "The Hotness"...

Inshallah...

Stay Tuned.

Space is the Place

2010-07-08T19:26:00.001-07:00

Apologies for the lack of blogging on Milky Blacks of late. I have been boldly going to NASA on a film shoot. Here's a snap from the Space Center at Houston.

Bare Bones show: Wild Crazy Madness

2010-07-01T07:55:00.001-07:00

The Bare Bones show lit up the Lower East Side on Tuesday night and was a great success for the terrible trio Harry Malt, Niall O'Brien and Matt Lambert. Once the suits and nihilistic trendies were out of the way bondage punk acts Juggle Nut and Giggle Fits took over the proceedings adding their own distinct flavor to the event....

Big up to the Bare Bones crew.

Balazs Gardi - Facing Water Crisis

2010-06-25T09:26:00.000-07:00

Great to see Balazs Gardi taking it upon himself to become a one-man media machine. Without doubt one of the finest photographers of his generation, Balazs has, for the last number of years, been filtering his global vision through the prism of drought, the availability of clean water and it's consequences with his project 'Facing Water Crisis'.

An epic tome that combines the worlds of traditional photojournalism, new media and Balazs' own expressionistic eye, the project highlights what is a basic and fundamental global issue that we never quite bring our full attention to. Everyday however billions of people around the world face health issues, failing crops and the prospect of forced migration due to lack of clean, available water.

The project is reminiscent of the mammoth works 'Workers' and 'Migrations' undertaken by the great Sebastiao Salgado that inspired so many, let's hope Balazs' work is revered in the same circles.

Here he is on Russian television recently discussing the project...

Retratos Pintados at Yossi Milo

2010-06-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

Glad to see Yossi Milo getting on the vernacular photography bandwagon with their upcoming show Retratos Pintados.

I happened on a lovely young employee at the gallery a couple of weeks back carefully handling and cataloging over a hundred of these amazing hand painted prints, some printed on bits of cardboard, some curled over with time, all of them feeling like they were sliced from a sun-soaked and colorful but crumbling wall somewhere in Brazil. A really unique and amazing collection.

Needless to say I'm looking forward to the show, opening tomorrow night.

Reminiscent of the collection found by Thomas Dworzak in a Kandahar photo store and published as 'Taliban' there's something that really speaks to me with these hand painted images that's bordering on an obsession.

I first saw them on my travels in India and tried to buy a bunch from an old, beautiful wood fitted photography shop in Kashmir; pictures of Dal lake splashed with bold watercolour, blue skies for daytime and bright oranges for sunset. Painted portraits of young Indians with that same, timeless studio flash and painted faces; trapped in another age.

The owner, an old man surrounded by dusty old SLR's and a faded Kodak logo waved me away like I had indeed tried to steal his soul and I've continued my search for hand painted happiness ever since...

Here's the blurb for the show:

Yossi Milo Gallery is pleased to announce Retratos Pintados, an exhibition of hand-painted vernacular photographs from Brazil. The exhibition will open on June 24 and close on September 18. This will be the premiere presentation of these one-of-a-kind photographs.

Since the late 19th century through the 1990s, hand-painted photographic portraits were a common feature in homes in the rural areas of the northeastern Brazilian states. At a time when black-and-white photographs were not considered dramatic enough, the retratos pintados (“painted portraits”) glamorized and idealized their subjects. Black-and-white family photos were enlarged and painted, conferring status on members of the family and portraying them as icons or saints. Using oil washes and other techniques specific to the region, local artisans embellished clothing with pattern and color, smoothed wrinkles, added jewelry or resurrected deceased relatives, illustrating the fantasies and desires of their customers.

Due to advances in technology over the past 25 years, hand-painted photographs have become a rarity in the region, and the tradition of analogue portrait-making is being lost. Most portraits are now computer-generated, eliminating the charm and distinctiveness of each artist’s individual style. The exhibition will include approximately 150 unique, vintage painted portraits ranging in size from 8” x 10” to 16” x 20”. The photographs were selected from those collected by Titus Riedl, a European who has lived in the region for 15 years. Fit into simple frames and hung together in clusters, the exhibition reflects the way family photos might be displayed in the home.

Bare Bones NYC

2010-06-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

Bare Bones takes NY.

Oh Yeah...

Irish Eyes: Martin Cregg

2010-06-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

Image from the series 'Home' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

Martin Cregg’s photography has something quite unique in it’s approach, something that he has been honing and refining over his relatively short career as a photographic artist. His first book 'Midlands' charted the construction of the Irish midlands from the height of the Irish economic boom in the early part of the decade, to the economic insecurities and uncertainties of recession times. It was shown in Dublin's Gallery of Photography in 2008. His subsequent bodies of work, 'Home' and 'Course' have furthered and refined this approach.

Documenting what one might be tempted to label “autobiographical landscapes” if you care about the idea of photographic genres, Martin’s images, at first sparse and minimal, somehow stay with you and grow and develop in your mind, revealing a more personal experience of Martin's world and the environment around him.

His images seem to be concerned with his ‘present’ where he is at that particular time and how that relates to his life and his own personal narrative. In this vein he has created long term projects on both his rural upbringing entitled ‘Home’ and is now working on a project entitled ‘Course’ documenting the space and the minutiae of his environment as a lecturer of a photographic course in St. Kevin's College Dublin.

This approach is kind of curious to me, his images at first seeming quite detached, then somewhat self-reflexive but ultimately personally revealing.

I asked Martin to tell me a little about his series and his process and his work

Image from the series 'Home' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

Your photography has obviously evolved over a long period of time. Can you give us a little bit of background to you and your work?

I am still relatively new to photography. I bought my first SLR (Pentax) just over 10 years ago. I studied photography as part of a Video Production course in Galway and, somehow, got accepted, along with my best friend, into IADT (Institute for Art, Technology & Design) in Dublin in 2000 (on a faux pas, we think!). It was, and still is, a fantastic environment to nurture and cultivate a love of photography.

I was lucky enough to be in a really energetic and close-knit group of diverse and interesting photographers who constantly talked about photography, helped each-other through projects and exhibited as a group when and where we could around Dublin.

Photography for me, in a way, became a riddle that needed to be solved. It’s a difficult one to explain. But, I really felt around my second or third year that though I was not the most promising or gifted or technically proficient photographer, I could use the medium to explore the world I knew and to articulate something about who I was and the time I lived in. Photography transformed the way I saw and understood the world. I feel that it awakened something inside me. I found it, and still find it, a liberating, therapeutic and energizing practice.

Image from the series 'Home' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

I feel that photography has given me a way of grasping the intangible meaning of the world, the ambiguities of life and the labors of society to organize and articulate a meaningful world. The act of photographing, in a way, attempts to make these sensations tangible. It encourages and permits a quiet comprehensive musing over even the most seemingly banal and ordinary of things and offers an invitation to scrutinize, to ponder, to connect with whatever piece of life it privileges. Photography, for me, became a way to assert and express the way I saw the world – a subjective comprehension and impression which I could never communicate or articulate with words. Once I started to feel a real impulse to use photography, I found that my entire behavior, my world view and everything about me changed. My first, lets say, ‘serious’ project started with my own roots – in rural Roscommon - looking with a more critical eye on what was happening in my own hometown. This was, kind of, the beginnings of my Midlands project. Though, looking back at it now, it was pretty messy. Thankfully I have improved a little since then.

Image from the series 'Home' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

You also work as an educator in the Photography field. Can you talk about how these two sides to your life inform each other?

I teach History and Theory of Photography, Critical Studies and Practical Studies in Dublin. One thing I have learned is that teachers can teach more by what they are than by what they say. I feel that my love and passion for photography translates through my teaching of it. I would feel like a fraud if I wasn’t a practicing photographer.

'Untitled' Image by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

I try, rightly or wrongly, to suggest to my students that I too am still a student of photography: I struggle with trying to understand the complexities of the medium, I too try to overcome my inadequacies and my insecurities to continuously better myself as an artist and, well, as a person. I love the craft of teaching and dealing with people day after day. In my area of education where there are so many limitations placed on us, so little space and so little money that there is a lot more to my job than simply imparting knowledge about photography. Its an all encompassing experience, which is as enriching as it is destroying. I sincerely care about teaching standards and about my students, so I put everything I have into my job. But the flip side of that coin is the fact that I tend to put so much energy into other people that it certainly has its effects – I find myself at certain points of each term just emotionally, physically and mentally drained. And it absolutely takes that energy away from the development of my own work. But, to answer your question in a positive way – yes, they undoubtedly inform each other. I talk about photography and art and ideas day after day, and this ongoing interchange always keeps me alert to possible projects and possible ways of solving that ‘riddle’ that is photography.

Image from the series 'Course' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

Image from the series 'Course' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

Your work seems to be very much about process, both in the kind of analytical way you approach your subjects and in the images themselves. Can you tell us about how you come about your subject matter?

I have no real methods of finding work. I just go out and photograph, with a clear head and something will fall from this. I have learned to trust my impulses and my instincts. Usually, there is a little surprise in a contact sheet that I wouldn’t have seen or understood while photographing. The ‘optical unconscious’, as Walter Benjamin termed it, at work.

Project-wise, I like to take subjects which will be challenging and maybe force me to renegotiate the way in know and use photography. I have no real style, I think. I adapt styles and approaches to suit a subject matter. Though I like to feel that I am forcing my vision through any subject I take onboard. I like to be confronted with complexities of photography and tend to spend a lot of time thinking my way through projects. Lately, true, I have added elements of the ‘during the process’ stage of my work into my work. Some artists I have spoken to suggest that it makes me ‘vulnerable’. I understand this, but to me vulnerabilities are part of the creative process, so why hide them. I feel it can make my work more wholesome. I write a blog, which is my visual diary, containing my thoughts, my ideas, my notes and scribbles, my test shots. I decided to use them in the finished piece. It works for some subjects and not for others. For the ongoing ‘Course’ work, it is necessary, because that work is ‘about’ making work, about teaching and churning out photographic discourse and, maybe, an awareness that I am physically changing an educational environment through doing this (talking photography, and being a photography teacher). Ok, that is confusing. I still am grappling with it! Get back to me about that one some other time.

Image from the series 'Course' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

In your most recent body of work ‘Course’ you describe it as a self-reflexive project. I personally think it’s a great body of work that must have taken a huge amount of discipline to put together. Can you talk about this series a little?

With ‘Course’, the discipline comes from making sure that there is time to do something for myself in the context of a working day. I usually find time between classes, at lunch time, or before and after my working day. I remember reading a little of Neil Youngs biography ‘Shakey’ in an airport once, where he described his father's working methodology – he was a writer.

He suggests that he used to force himself to write ‘something’ each night. Some nights, he remembers, it seemed like sado-masochism – working through the pain of frustration until suddenly finding ‘that place’ where there is clarity and freedom of expression. Sometimes you need to force yourself to find expression, its not a given. And even when you find expression and inspiration, its not enough! You have to force further aspects through by spending time with your work, conceptualizing it, editing it, finding a rhythm or re-enforcing a context. There are so many things to consider when doing a project - it needs to consume you.

Image from the series 'Course' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

Image from the series 'Course' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

Maybe the self reflexive notion comes from not necessarily wanting to hide the fact that I am photographing something. Maybe its that simple. Sontag once said that photography ‘hides more than it reveals’. I am at the stage where I want to reveal more about the processes of being a photographer – to show the construction of the work in the finished piece. Maybe I am realizing that my photography is always about the relationship between myself and the surface world anyway. Though, this approach doesn’t suit every project. For 'Course' and especially for my ‘Sketches From Home’ it is totally necessary. 'Course' is a complex series to digest right now. I am still working through it.

Your work is documentary but photographically eschews the narrative and portraiture elements that traditionally spring to mind when we think of documentary photography. You still maintain a sense of personal image making. How did you develop this approach?

I think that I generally add a bit of a conceptual element to my documentary approach. It always throws the question at me: well, what is documentary photography? I like the fact that there is no answer, there are just boundaries which need to be confronted and re-imagined. Photography is constantly evolving. I don’t think traditional labels are relevant anymore. While there is a narrative of sorts in ‘Midlands’ – it charted the development of areas of the region at the beginning of the housing boom to the uncertainty of abandonment – it just took on a more conceptual and minimalist approach which suited my ever-changing relationship to an ever-changing landscape. Recently one French curator I met commented that he liked the idea that my work was documentary which went in abstract directions as far as it could go and still remained documentary. This is something I try to work towards. In regards to personal image-making, every documentary is to a degree personal and subjective. No matter how objective it pretends to be. There are always levels of determination behind documentary images.

Image from the series 'Home' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

I always find Ireland a difficult place to photograph but you seem to be able to find a way to make projects here. Is it an inspiring place for you?

I think Ireland is really visually interesting. Ireland is full of potential projects. I feel that my work needs to be, at some level, culturally specific or it is not an honest vision. I want to reflect something about the place I know and the times I live in. I am challenged by, for instance, the Irish landscapes that I photograph. I feel I have an attachment to landscape, probably due to my own cultural background in rural Ireland. In midlands for instance, I really felt that sense of change happening in the early 21st century – especially in rural areas. Most of the places I photographed I had known well since I was a child. And there was something undeniably poignant for me to explore within these landscapes which were changing so rapidly at the time.

Image from the series 'Midlands' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

Photographers seem to be really delving into the History of Photography just now for inspiration into how to approach creating bodies of work. Is that something you're aware of as a lecturer?

Through teaching history of photography I always find interesting figures and bodies of work. For instance Lewis Hine is someone who I feel is a fascinating figure, he's maybe not spoken of in the same canonical breath as Walker Evans, but none-the less his work is more complex than he is given credit for. August Sander, of course, is someone who I just love teaching classes on seems to understand a definite sense of purpose for photography. Paul Strand and Evans, of course, I love. For me I find that I am informed by the work of the American ‘New Topographics’ in the 1970s, maybe what we know as the ‘Dusseldorf’ tradition – The Bechers, Ruff, Struth, etc. I love the work of what you might call American Social Landscape photographers such as Lee Freidlander, Bill Eaggleston, Stephan Shore, etc. Contemporary photographers I admire include Paul Graham, Edgar Martins, Alex Soth; artists Sophie Calle and Laurel Nakadate. I love projects that just have a visceral edge - Kohei Yoshiyukis ‘The Park’ comes to mind as something that just really stimulated my mind. As did Jason Lazarus’ recent works - the ‘Nirvana’ project (simple but so poignant for me). I really like Jitka Hanslova, Naoya Hatakeyama; Todd Hidos recent work is really poetic. Yao Lu’s recent images, which were part of the Prix Pictet, were pretty amazing. I know it may be a bit fashionable but I like the energy in the work of Ryan McGinlay, Wolfgang Tillmanns and Phil Collins. Angela Strassheim’s recent work ‘evidence’ is interesting, as is the work of Beate Gutschow. Japanese street photographer Osamu Nemura is great. Alexander Gronsky’s work ‘The Edge of Moscow’ I really like. I could go on - there is so much out there!

Image from the series 'Home' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

Recently I was inducted into the International Reflexions Masterclass – a forum for debate and practice held in various cities throughout the course of two years. Each year 10 photographers from all over the world are chosen to join the Forum along with established guests (curators, publishers, philosophers, practitioners, etc). This year there are photographers from Egypt, Korea, Italy, Russia, Canada, Peru, etc each with unique perspectives and uses of photography; each trying, like I am, to force their own vision through. Working with photographers from diverse cultures has been so stimulating and energizing and has helped to open even more perspectives and possibilities within the practice of photography and offered new ways of thinking about the medium which I have never considered before.

Image from the series 'Home' by Martin Cregg Copyright 2010

Tying it Together: Brooklyn Gang, Bruce Davidson, Book Signing

2010-06-21T10:15:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles, 1964, Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

Sean O'Hagan continues his ability to read my mind for what I like in the photography world over on his Guardian blog with a great piece about Bruce Davidson's "Brooklyn Gang"

Davidson, whose image on the "Beastie Boys: Ill Communication" album cover inadvertently led me to becoming a photographer myself has long been a huge hero of mine and am always delighted when his classic images are talked about and discussed.

O'Hagan mentions that first edition copies of "Brooklyn Gang" are retailing for about $800 a pop: probably double that if Bruce gets the pen out on Wedenesday during the Magnum Book Signing at Milk Studios.

Monthly Print Offer: 'Limited Editions'

2010-06-15T10:35:00.000-07:00

'Joyrider' 17"x11" Archival Inkjet print, Edition of 5.

Hopefully the first of a monthly print sale here, the online store is in the process, promise. Small editions, unique print sizes, images from the archives and by request.

A couple of these prints are exhibition bound but a couple remain for sale.

'Joyrider', 17"x11" Archival Inket print, Edition of 5.

I can confirm that the prints are gorgeous and this edition is limited to 5 so get them while they're hot...

Worldwide shipping included they are $500. Please contact me for info or to purchase via Paypal.