Nan Goldin – Variety

Photographs copyright Nan Goldin 2009 Courtesy Skira Rizzoli New York and photo-eye

Bette Gordon’s famous, perhaps infamous, 1983 independent film Variety evolved from an earlier series of cinematic narrative photographs created by Nan Goldin. A few of the photographs from Goldin’s Variety were incorporated in her earlier opus, The Ballard of Sexual Dependency. This photobook is the first cohesive publication of the entire Variety project.

This staged storyline is not too complex by today’s standard, but for the early 1980’s, it incorporates a dark and sexually risqué theme, challenging the current morals. The story portrays a young woman, Christine, who ventures into the world of pornography, and eventually seeking sexual satisfaction with anonymous partners. It questions the definition of appropriateness of behavior, female sexuality and the accepted norms for a man being equally acceptable for a woman.

The story progresses serially, with Goldin continually shifting the viewer’s orientation, disorienting the frame of reference. We are initially the voyeur, watching as the story unfolds with tight framing, becoming intimately part of the story. Then the frame of reference shifts and we become Christine, seeing through her eyes the shared looks, glances, being observed while assertively observing, being “sized up” and “checked out”. It leaves us unsure if we are the spider or the fly. A quick shift and we are back to observing Christine, then back to being Christine once again. The story finishes with the reader as voyeur and with more questions than answers.

Frequently the lighting within the photographs is low, with deep and mysterious shadows or bathed the in reddish hues of the peep shows, sex shops and porn theaters, a hot and almost liquid, exotic light. These lighting conditions create a level of sexual tension amongst the characters, with some photographs just out of focus or slightly blurred which enhances the feelings of discomfort.

Variety is a bumpy and uneven cinematic narrative, but one that allows for many alternatives. It is not always clear as to how this story is progressing and what the ending might be.

The essay by James Crump’s provides a wonderful external context to frame Goldin’s project in the turmoil of NYC’s Lower East Side and the female “sex wars” evolving in the early 80’s. The embossed hardcover book has a dust cover, and is printed in Singapore.

by Douglas Stockdale

  

Chris McCaw – Sunburn

Copyright Chris McGaw 2009 courtesy Cavallo Point Resort

I enjoy McCaw’s frankness in how his project Sunburn came about, the effects of “whisky” and not being conscious to close the shutter of his camera after a night long exposure. Rather than trash the results of the night, he decided to follow serendipity and chance to investigate the results. And there was something that awaken his inner spirit to further pursue this random act of creativity.

Whereas most of us have been repeatedly told not to focus our camera’s lens on the sun, which could ruin the film, the shutter and who knows what. McCaw found himself running counter-initiative to this sage advice, because in fact he wants to sear, burn, destroy, deteriorate, degrade and otherwise trash his film or enlarging paper when loaded in his film holders. The name of his project, Sunburn, is very descriptive of his creative intent.

Incidentally, this book has brought back memories as a kid, wondering around trying to create havoc with my little handy-dandy plastic magnifying glass, later upgrading to a glass, an even more destructive model. Melting crayons, frying ants and trying to start little fires, the things very young guys seem to be attracted to. I was fascinated with what this simple little device could perform in conjunction with sunlight and a little skill and dexterity in focusing it into a small little intense point of light. Oh, yes, and I quickly learned not to focus that bright sun-spot anywhere on my skin or clothes.

I also wonder if there is some subconscious link back to McCaw’s youth and what little fires he has started from time to time. So in one sense, this body of work has a playful, but sinister quality, to its conception and creative inquiry.

McCasw creates one of kind photographic objects with indelible marks on paper and film substrates. This series can be segmented into two genres; minimalist abstract marks on paper/film or photogram light-drawings. Both employ various burning patterns and processes, not an entirely controllable process. The results are born both of experience and serendipity, couched in mystery.

His marks made on film usually have hard edges, appearing like glowing orbs, molten balls, with a white stark center and a dark circular ring. Occasionally these orbs are a little thicker on the bottom edge, adding weight and creating a non symmetrical circular design. His marks on paper generally have softer edges. The circular patterns, orbs and streaks are cerebral, vague gestures, employing random patterns, frequently created by multi-exposures.

His abstract minimalist photographs are monotone fields with a series of marks. His designs vary from wide open expanse, populated by of streaks and intermittent orbs, to a field of marks, much like a shot-up sign you might find in the deserts of Nevada. He employs a multitude of designs, searing strokes, pinpoints or soft radiant spheres. The resulting damage to the film and paper creates subtle color changes, but occasionally with sooty black edges, evidence where the material has been burned and deeply scared.

When McCaw repeatedly decomposes the camera, he creates random and abstract pattern of marks that have varying intensity, with a slight change in modulating colors. Depending on the intensity and duration of the exposure on each type of medium, his marks can have either hard edges or soft edges. A single mark may have an interesting combination of both hard and soft tonalities blending together, simulating a meditative state of being here, while not being here.

The shape of the spheres are much like the sun itself; and are portraits of the sun and indirectly sunshine. When allowing the sun to continuously track through one frame, the effect is a monotone rainbow, gently arching across the pictorial frame. The marks are also a form of “light” writings, a vague language that McCaw has developed.

The other series of photographs is related to the photograms, the earliest of photographic processes first developed by Henry Fox Talbot. A photogram, meaning light drawing, is a latent image created by a long exposure of a subject retained on photo-sensitive paper, a creative process still utilized by photographs, such as the late Jerry Burchfield. A disorienting aspect of photograms is that they are negative images, with a reverse tonality.

The subjects in a photogram are usually not sharply defined, but provide vague shapes and mass that allow some contextual recognition, contrasting with a sharply defined sun-burn. It creates a yin-yang set of opposites, creating dark and mysterious images.

Some of the resulting photograms capture what appears to be a meteor streaking through the sky. Or perhaps documents the landing of alien space craft, or something from the fourth dimension. Multiple images of the sun-burns crossing a dark sky, much like the work of Mark Klett and Michael Lundgren, symbolize the passing of time. There is something vague and elusive, but yet familiar with these photograms.  There is a faint definition of shapes and mass that begins to anchor our memories, but disconnected enough to leave us adrift, wondering what is this mysterious place. The sunburns weave through this stange landscape or create a searing pattern across the reflecting waters below.

Although this creative process could result from playfulness, it is also an act of violence, that relates to anger, frustration and fear. These images are indicative of a love/hate relationship. At a personal level, I sense his love of photography and working in this medium, while the physical mayhem of his medium strongly hints at a deep frustration, perhaps with the process, it’s limitations, control or resulting economic conditions as an artist or other personal issues. These images have a strong emotional content, like a torn and shredded canvas that has been hacked at by the painter.

Attacking his film and paper can also be construed as an attack on the esthetics of traditionalist and modern photography, where a pristine and perfect print is revered. There is no pristine print left in the traditional sense. But the creation of a one of a kind photographic object is the antithesis of postmodernism, which denies the idea of the individual artist. So McCaw is working within that in-between place of Modernism and Postmodernism, and I think the evidence will eventually show him to be more in the Postmodern side of this equation.

In yet another sense,  I find McCaw’s photographs reflect an environmental concern with global warming. The patterns and searing marks are symbolic of the possible effects by a sun that is not modulated by a protective outer atmosphere. A tome to what could be resulting conditions for mankind with a sun that burns, sears, and subsequently destroys, and that mankind is indeed playing with fire.

In the end, it is in the act of destroying his medium that McCaw is creating something new and unique. Perhaps like the seeds of species of tree that requires fire and heat to germinate and grow anew. From the ashes of destruction, Hope has been found.

Consistent with the other books in the Cavallo Point series, this is a small hardbound book with nice printing but the usually issues with a print-on-demand glued in binding, although I would not let that hinder a purchase of this interesting and provocative book.

By Douglas Stockdale

Holiday photo-book sales – more opportunities

Just a note that I continue to add more Holdiay photo-book deals and links on the 2009 Holiday Photo-book page, here.

Sales and discount opportunities are still available at Aperture, photo-eye, Radius Books, AbeBooks, Fotovision and U. of Chicago Press.

Best regards, Douglas

Update: Just added powerHouse and Pond Press sales to the list.

Arnoud Bakker – Atropa bella donna

Copyright Arnoud Bakker, 2009, courtesy Stichting Fotografie Noorderlicht

To be in love, or perhaps in lust, is to experience a kind of narcosis and paralysis, with an inability to focus, while the heart rate becomes erratic. There are other symptoms of which there may be a lack of awareness in the moment; dilated pupils, blurred vision, loss of balance & staggering, slurred speech, confusion, hallucinations and delirium.

Coincidently, these effects are the same for ingesting parts of the very toxic deadly nightshade, a perennial plant found in Europe, especially the species Atropa belladonna. The Atropa belladonna name is derived from Greek and Italian, an admonition, meaning “do not betray a beautiful lady”, a very wise piece of wisdom.

Han Schoonhaven in his essay for Arnoud Bakker’s Atropa bella donna writes:

“Love is a neurosis, a chemical reaction to sustain human kind, but what a fine madness it is! Paul Van Ostaijen wrote about Feats of Fear and Pain, but I cannot imagine having gone though my youth with the fear, pain, euphoria and little death that are inevitably connected with love.”

The subject of Bakker’s book recently published by Noorderlicht, both directly and indirectly, is the portrait of women, attempting to reveal their inner natural beauty. The photographer also attempts to not betray them in the process, revealing a complex interrelationship of photographer and subject. Implied in Schoonhaven’s essay, Bakker is attempting to “create golden girls on paper… and that girls love cameras and they want to be seen…potentially by as many people as possible….and a woman who is prepared to be recorded, presents herself”.

Bakker is also interested in bringing other types of photographic experimentation into this process working with a tradition large format camera both with Polaroid positive/negative film/print and placing long spans of 35mm negative film across the film holder or using stereo-graphic equipment. There is additional element of serendipity to this analog process, as the outcome is not fully realized until later in the darkroom.

As the women interacts with the photographer’s process, an unknown element is the extent of her revelations, both her surface contours and her internal beauty. This is a complex relationship, one that Bakker likens to the complexity and unpredictability of nature itself. I find that portraits that can capture internal beauty are elusive, a factor that is as much as in the eye of the beholder as the person in front of the lens. The photographer is the medium, choosing the environmental conditions and having sensitivity as to when to make the exposure, and what is extracted in the ensuing image. Another form of natural chemistry that is difficult to analyze and quantify, only approximate and qualify at best.

A question of this body of work, does it indeed create the Atropa belladonna’s bizarre delirium and hallucinations?  I don’t think that these images are necessarily “bizarre”, but they are creative with some unusual book layouts, perhaps may not create a delirium, but might create some hallucinations. Like the berries from the plant, these images pose a danger as they are attractive and slightly sweet. There is rawness and coyness, women explicitly revealing themselves in abandon like a wild night-club stripper, or demurely like a blushing first encounter. I found that these photographs illustrate the potential emotional swings of a romantic encounter, aggression and passiveness.

We do not know if a woman who is photographed half dressed is the in the process of undressing, re-dressing or pausing in mid-thought. Photographed partially undressed, her face cloaked and hidden form view, but her form and contours visible. She temporarily exists between the states of fully revealing and disguising herself, to want to show herself, but yet not be identifiable, a world of fantasy and mystery, lewdness and modesty, a state of narcosis and paralysis.

For the woman being photographed, knowing what is reveled in the studio may become publicly available for all to indulge might be part of the fantasy. Wondering at the moment of the click of the shutter, if eventually someone will pause at this intimate and personal image? And what might the reader be thinking as they pause to study this image? Can they know and understand the thoughts, dreams, passion, nightmares and hopes for the future? That is part of the mystery, for the women who reveal themselves, the photographer who photographs and eventually for us to try to decipher.

Some of the resulting images are sharply focused and well defined, while others are soft and blurry impressions, and many are somewhere in between. The later creates an impression of a hallucination, dreamlike and having a lack of being able to focus clearly, a disruption to the cognitive capacities

This is a relatively small case-bound book, consistent in size with most of the books published by Noorderlicht. The book binding does not allow the book to lay-flat, which can be a nuisance if you want to allow a pair of images to be on display over a longer duration. The essay is by Han Schoonhavon with the text in Dutch and English, and the book is printed in Groningen, The Netherlands.

Best regards, Douglas Stockdale

Lukas Felzmann – Waters in Between

Copyright Lukas Felzmann 2009 Courtsey Lars Muller Publishers

Water is an elusive essential to both man-kind and nature, without it you will certainly wither away and perish, and if by chance there is too much, you may drown. People have tried to control, manage and harness water, to force it to do what they feel is needed. We ultimately understand how little we know and can accomplish when we become aware of the futility of the task at hand when faced with drought or flooding. Felzmann looks obliquely at a place in an attempt to understand this subject. This place of his choice is fairly non-descript, an agricultural region inhabited by people who have strived, perhaps in vain, to harness the power and sustainability of water.

Similar to the awareness of the human presence with confronting the interior of a building, there is a palpable presence of water, whether it is the heavy humidity of a fog bank, lush grasses, looming rain clouds, flying waterfowl or a small boat hanging from a crane. The direct presence of draining dirty water, dark places throughout a calm mash, a partial lake view, flooded road, water puddles amongst the mud is easier to comprehend. Even an arid landscape, a dry wash or burning brush, conjures the thought of water even in its absence.

Over time, water can creates it own form, flowing to move mountains, change paths, randomly redirect itself and overcoming almost anything in its way. It has a plastic quality that becomes evident with longer exposures of film. Over a long enough time, water wears away a rock and can deteriorate metal, rotting vegetation and wood, wear away paint and in combination with sunlight, can eventually destroy plastic. The sun is another uncontrollable variable in the constantly changing the balance of water in nature, as it can evaporate what water that might remain.

Water can overflow the banks of a river and overtake, erode and flood all that is adjacent to it. Some who have misunderstand the flow of water and what force it is capable of having. Ask a fly fisherman who is standing in relatively shallow water of a strong flowing creek, how it can suddenly take your feet out from underneath you.

Likewise, water can also renew, refresh and revitalize both people and nature. It can cleanse and wash, taking away the surface grim. We observe that with the new green growth as well as the overflowing spring run off, a duality that can be daunting to try to control.

In one sequence, Felzmann photographs swirling water, with the flow of surface bubbles looking very familiar to the heavens above. Or the swirling current as it darts down a drain, appearing like a solar system drawn into a black hole. At first glance, it appears that he has captured the stars, planets and solar systems above. It gives cause to think that if in this small river a similar design of the universe is evident, what other universal patters are also surrounding us? I am left with awe and wonder in the possibilities.

A quote from the publisher provides these clarifying thoughts:

The photographer Lukas Felzmann was fascinated by the very thing that some driving past would find boring, flat, and disconsolate: the vast Sacramento Valley, located just a hundred miles from San Francisco. Felzmann discovers with his camera the hidden charms of that seeming nonplace. For him, exploring a place means both walking around and lingering quietly, until the valley opens up like a book, with stories that cry out to be read and discovered. With his camera he traces how time, determined here by the growth of the plants, slows on the plane, and how the horizontality of the surface becomes a reassuring balance to the hectic city of millions nearby. The photographs show the diversity of the plane: the original landscape in its natural state, the large swaths put to agricultural use, the modern provincial towns, and the transitional areas in between. Photographs of water in all its facets run through the book, just as water runs through and forms a valley.

In talking about this body of work, Felzmann states:

My intention has not been to produce an inclusive documentation, but to construct an empirical archive, to weave a story out of fragments, a sort of poetry of ruins. Transitory zones have been important in this collection because they reveal something about the essence of a place but can also point outside themselves. Whether looking for the geological edges of the valley, places that indicate the control of water, or photographing the luminous breaking edge of a fog bank, I was searching for structures that speak about nature and cultural conditions.

Generally I find Felzmann’s photographs to be somber with a hint of sadness and melancholy. He is drawn to decaying refrigerators, broken windshields, swampy and unlikable water, broken, barren and fallen trees, overcast and moody skies, abandoned and collapsing buildings. There are very few people within the photographs. The effect is further enhanced within the black and white images by a heavy amount of grayness in the tonality, creating somber tones. This may also be due the flat overcast lighting that he frequently chooses (or was available at the time). There are some exceptions, but overall I am left with a sense of concern and seriousness about the subject, to be wary and on guard and not take water for granted.

The book encompasses several general themed sections that require personal investigation; marsh, ghostpile, currents, machines, food, house, road, animals and crossing. Each theme requires your imagination to piece together the general connotations, with the section titles providing tantalizing hints. Although a terrible metaphor, nevertheless this book is truly like an onion, there are many layers of meaning that continue to revel themselves over time.

The book is unpaged and with a minimum of text, the individual photographs are without captions, with the exception of chapter headings. The photographer’s implied intent is  for you to experience of the body of work with only a few hints and draw your own conclusions. There are a few short excerpts and essays by John Berger accompanying quotes from Angelus Silesius, a doctor of philosophy (1624-1677). The color and black & white photographs are frequently printed with a full bleed to the edges or provided with a minimum border. The effect is to imply that reality is extended beyond the limits of the edges of the page. Double page spreads loose little content as the lay-flat binding, allowing he book to fully open and divulge its contents, minimizes any image loss in the gutter. The book is case bound and has the unusually appearance of a text book.

Felzmann’s book is working its way up my list of favorites for 2009.

By Douglas Stockdale

   

Duane Michals – 50

Copyright Duane Michals 2009, courtesy Edizioni Siz and photo-eye

Spending time with the recent Duane Michals book, 50, a fifty year retrospective by the Italian publisher Siz, was essentially re-experiencing much of my own photographic life, having come of photographic age with his somnambulist period. His fascination with dreams, dreamlike states and dream-walking precedes our current interest with making connections to memories. Michals is whimsical, elusive, sensitive, cerebral, witty, caustic, introspective, challenging and seemly always on the move, pushing boundaries along a zigzag course of his own making.

The book ostensibly sets out to describe the broad spectrum of Michals career, which it does very well, but excludes his combination photographic/painting that were not received to wide acclaim in the 1980’s. This retrospective begins with his earliest portraits, which paved the way into his commercial career. Michals’s multiple exposure portraits of the famous painter Rene Magritte, pair of photographs below, foretold of his well-known “Sequences” of the late 60s and 70s. In the use of the double exposures, Michals weaves in other trademark elements of Magritte’s paintings in this iconic portrait. 

In his Sequences he fully delves into the world of the Somnambulist, the dream walker, utilizing sequential images, multiple exposures and eventually hand-written narrations that developed into raw poetic verse, declarations, statements and always questions. Most, if not all, of Michals’s Sequences are contained with this retrospective, which provides an opportunity to study this important, and arguably his most critical, body of work.

Subsequent to the Sequences, his sarcastic wit was fully revealed with his “About Contemporary Art” series; probably best know for ribbing Cindy Sherman with the title “Who is Sidney Sherman?” and mocking post-modern art in general. This series is somewhat ironic in that Michals double exposures, sequences and hand written narratives challenged the modernistic norm of the 1960s and 70s. 

One weakness of the book is that the supporting essays, including his interview with Enrica Vigano, is in Italian. Overall, lacking an English translation in the book does not diminish an appreciation of Michals first fifty years and provides me with wonder on what still may be yet to come. Additionally, his hand written narratives in English included within many of his photographic projects provides a layer of supporting contextual information. 

by Douglas Stockdale

2009 Holiday Photo-Book sales

One nice thing about the Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Years Holidays here in the US are the various photobook sales & discounts that become available. So follow the links to some great deals.

Rather than a series of postings each time I become aware of a Holiday photobook sale, I am going to just keep updating this post, so check back here from time to time to see if something wonderful becomes very attractive, that may cause you to dip into your wallet. nice.

Aperture Foundation’s Annual Holiday Sale (Publisher) (until January 5 2010): 30% off books  is valid for online orders only and can not be combined with other offers. The cavaet: Some limited edition, signed or curated editions may not be included, so you will have to go through the purchase process to see if the 30% discount is applied. Aperture also has a Special book holiday deal for three Japanese books (Eikoh Hosoe, Takashi Homma, & Japanese Photobooks of the 60s & 70s).

AbeBooks (used books): (now through December 10th, 2009) Coupon code NVRV2 for 10% discount, maximum of $15.00 (USD) off the book price. Using the AbeBooks portal, you can also search BookFever.com which has discounted its prices by 20% plus free shipping, but you need to check their inventory for photobook deals, and BookFever discount ends December 31st, 2009.

University of Chicago Press: up to 85%  off, internet promo code AD9256, and includes two photobooks; Ashley Gilbertson’s Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and Laura Letinsky’s Venus Inferred. From Alan Thomas; Gilbertson’s book deserves special notice because it is arguably the best photography book to come out of the Iraq war.

Fotovision: All books on their website are on sale at 10% off until Christmas (December 25, 2009); Fotovision nutures social documentary photographers and storytelling through education, dialogue and community.

Radius Books: (Publisher) (until December 25, 2009) 30% off on all of their books, including limited editions from their on-line store with their super secret check out discount code of  SALE09, which Radius publisher Darius Himes states, “It doesn’t get any better than that…”

photo-eye (book store) An alternative for some Holiday photo-book purchases is check-out the deep discount page at photo-eye’s deep discount website.

powerHouse (publisher) (Dec 4 – Jan 4, 2010) For those passing through the Dumbo district in Brooklyn or getting near NYC, powerHouse has books on sale at their Arena, a non-internet sales opportunity, but could find deals up to 95% off!

Pond Press (Publisher) (Dec 7 – 21) Holiday Sale with 20% off the Limited Editions and 50% off all of their other titles. So do not forget to check their backlist as well.

And of course, if you become aware of a Holiday book sale and it is not on this list, shoot me a quick note with the link!

Happy Holidays & Warmest regards, Douglas

Swann Photo Literature auction – December 8th

I just recevied a brief overviewof the photographic literature that will be available at the Swann Auction Galleries December 8th, 2009 in NYC, which is in conjunction with their auction of photographic prints. Some of the photobook hightlights include:

Among the earliest examples of photographic literature in the sale are Francis Frith’s Egypt Nubia and Ethiopia, with 100 albumen stereo views, London, 1862 ($7,000 to $10,000);  and Camera Work #20, with 10 photogravures, three by Alfred Stieglitz, New York, 1907 ($5,000 to $6,000).

From the 1920s and ’30s are August Sander’s Antlitz der Zeit,  Munich, 1929 ($2,000 to $3,000);  Roger Parry and Fabian Loris’s Banalité, signed by both, with 16 photogravures, Paris, 1930 ($3,000 to $4,500); Italia Imperiale, edited by Manilo Morgagni, Milan 1937 ($4,000 to $6,000);  Brassaï’s Paris de Nuit, Paris, 1933 ($2,500 to $3,500); and Walker Evans’s American Photographs, signed and with an original photograph, New York, 1938  ($4,000 to $6,000).

Later works of note are a signed copy of David Heath’s A Dialogue with Solitude, New York, 1965 ($3,000 to $4,500);  Robert Frank’s The Lines of My Hand, Tokyo, 1972, and Flower Is . . . , Tokyo, 1987  ($3,500 to $4,500 and $4,000 to $6,000 respectively); Edward Ruscha’s Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, 1967 ($2,200 to $2,800);   Lewis Baltz’s The Tract Houses, The Prototype Works, The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, issued with a print, each volume signed by Baltz, New York and Germany, 2005 ($2,500 to $3,500);  Todd Hido’s One Picture Book #06: Taft Street, four volumes, Tucson, 2001 ($2,000 to $3,000); and Visionaire issue number 18, the Fashion Special, in a leather Louis Vuitton portfolio case, New York, 1996 ($1,400 to $1,800).

Japanese highlights include Yoshikazu Suzuki’s Ginza Kaiwai, Ginza Haccho, two volumes, Tokyo, 1954 ($4,000 to $6,000);  Shomei Tomatsu’s Nagasaki 11:02, Tokyo, 1966 ($3,000 to $4,500);  Yutaka Takanashi’s Toshi-e [Towards the City], two volumes, Tokyo, 1974 ($3,000 to $4,000); and Hirsoshi Sugimoto’s Theaters, with a signed photogravure, New York, 2000 ($1,500 to $2,500).

The auction will begin at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday,  December 8 with Photographic Literature, and will continue at 2:30 p.m. with Fine Photographs.

The photographs and books will be on public exhibition at Swann Galleries Thursday, December 3, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Friday, December 4, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday, December 5, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and Monday, December 7, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

An illustrated catalogue with information on bidding by mail or fax, is available for $35 from Swann Galleries, Inc., 104 East 25^th Street, New York, NY 10010, or online at www.swanngalleries.com.

Best regards & happy bidding, Douglas Stockdale

Dorothea Lange – A Life Beyond Limits

Copyright Linda Gordon & estate of Dorothea Lange, 2009, courtesy of W.W. Norton & Company

I had been aware of Dorothea Lange’s immense photographic body of work during the FSA (Farm Security Agency) in the 1930’s, primarily her iconic images of Migrant Mother, White Angel Breadline, which I thought was a FSA photograph (it is not) and Plantation Overseer. When I had an opportunity to quickly thumb through Linda Gordon’s recent biography of Lange at a bookstore, I realized that there was a lot more that I did not know about her and her body of work, thus I decided to acquire this book. And I am glad I did.

Linda Gordon had earlier written an account of Dorothea Lange’s previously unpublished photographs stemming from her government commissioned photographs to document the Japanese-American Interment at the beginning of World War II in 1942. Lange’s photographs were buried in government archives until Gordon with Gary Okihiro published their book Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (published by W.W. Norton) in 2006. Fortunately, Lange’s work from this project is summarized in one chapter of the current book, but it was Gordon’s work on Impounded which later evolved into this larger and more extensive biography. What resulted was an “unfamiliar story about a familiar person”.

Gordon is a social historian, not a biographer, and of the ten previous books she has published this is the first complete biography of a person. Gordon is neither a photographer nor a writer about photography, which provides her with a wonderful outside perspective on the world of documentary and fine art photography. As a historian, Gordon weaves a complex tapestry that results in a rich contextual framework that attempts to describe Lange’s cultural, sociological, economic, political and family relationships.

This book has a strong sense of objectivity, revealing sources that may have a bias, which Gordon freely discusses. Gordon recognizes that as an historian, she is also like most photographers and has a subjection point of view. I think that Lange’s social consciousness, environmental empathy, liberal attitude and what she accomplished as a woman in this time period appeals to Gordon are some of the underlying reasons that Gordon chose to write her first biography about Lange.

Lange has become revered for her stamina, environmentalism, democratic vision, balanced viewpoint of man-kind, high standard for what constitutes a documentary photographic endeavor, humanity, all in the face of social and cultural bias. Lange was also human and had her flaws and weaknesses, which Gordon reveals with balance and sensitivity. As to Lange, we begin to understand some of her physical hardships (polio at age seven that resulted in a bad leg), emotional hardships (thought that her father had abandoned her mother, resulting in Dorothea rejecting her last name of Nutzhorn and adopting her mothers maiden name of Lange), cultural hardships (male bias against women, perhaps even more so for an assertive professional woman; expected to be full time housewives and sole responsibility for caring for the children) and relationship hardships (could be very demanding, controlling and assertive).

And yet Lange had the tenacity and fortitude to create a professional career with a successful professional portrait studio in San Francisco for 15 years, government photographer from 1935 – 1945 whom in the process established a high standard for documentary work, and finally a freelance documentary photographer until her death in 1965 from cancer stemming from a polio relapse. Meanwhile she juggled a large and expanding family, two sons from her first marriage to the artist Maynard Dixon and three step children from her second marriage to the economist Paul Taylor. Lange created an immense body of photographic work while both of her husbands were seemingly totally deferential to her for the care and raising of the children as well as the maintenance of the household. A conflicted life for a self-professed bohemian in the late 1920’s, though in retrospect, may have been one of the original role model’s for the future super-mom syndrome.

Gordon provides vignettes of many well known photographers whose lives intersected Lange’s, including Arnold Genthe, Ansel Adams, Marion Post Wolcott, Margaret Bourke-White, John Collier, Alfred Stieglitz, Roger Sturtevant, Willard Van Dyke, Lewis Hine, Rondal Partridge, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Clarence White, Jack Delano, Paul Strand, and Walker Evans as well as few non-photographers who have had an impact on photography, such as Nancy and Beaumont Newhall, Roy Styker, and John Steinbeck. Although Lange’s experience with the FSA is the most extensively described, there are also the other events in her life, including the famous S.F. Bay area f/64 group (but not a member), Life magazine assignments (two of the four were published), Guggenheim fellowship (interrupted by WW II and never completed), the suppression of her documentation of the Japanese American internment in 1942 and the MoMA solo exhibition that she helped design but passed away just prior to the exhibition opening in 1965.

As Gordon concludes;

Yet her photographs have had an extraordinary impact even in the most prosperous of times; they may well live forever. There will always be a need to be reminded that beauty can be found in unlikely places, that we must learn to see beyond the limits of the conventional and the expected. Such indelible images mean more, not less, if we understand how they came to exist. They were produced not by a faultless genius who could remain about the wounds, failings and sins that afflict the rest of us, but by a fallible and hardworking woman. They were produced also by historical times she lived in, times optimistic and pessimistic, times that honored generous, compassionate, and respectful impulses of Americans and time that encouraged the closed, fearful, and intolerant. Lange’s photographs will always evoke the best of American democracy.

This book is elegantly written, barely bordering on scholarly, sometimes slightly obscure, but still easily read and moves at a nice pace. The book is a chronological description of the Lange’s life, career, relationships, with snippets that glace forward to provide clarity and maintain a line of thinking to a conclusive point.

The interior photographic plates provide a nice representation of her photographs, while the remaining illustrative photographs within the text printed on the standard pages are marginal. The photographic selection is a broad mix of the classic iconic photographs with those that are not as well known. As a extensive biographical book, it contains Lange’s photographic captions, footnotes and references, listing of photographic sources and a detailed index.

If you enjoy a good biography, photographer or not, you will probably appreciate Gordon’s retelling of Lange’s life.

by Douglas Stockdale

Deanna Templeton – 17 Days

Copyright Deanna Templeton 2008, self-published, courtesy photo-eye

There is something amiss with Deanna Templeton’s self published book, 17 Days, the photo documentary she created while accompanying a product promotional tour through Europe in 2008. I am bedeviled by all that bothers me, and I think that it is best described as an overall unevenness in the body of work, maybe best described as a Flickr download of vacation snapshots. And that may be its best appeal

The book has the appearance of being carefully designed, from the selection, sequencing and pairing of the photographs. There are some truly delightful and humorous pairings across the page spreads. An example is a photograph of an old woman sleeping on the window sill, while on the facing page, two girls appear to be holding back their laughter, perhaps as much as interacting with Templeton as they appear to be reacting to the sleeping old woman they share the page spread with. The book is a canopy of page design and layouts, although at times it is not apparent why, the effect creates a sense of constant motion and energy.

Because of the nature of the products being promoted on this tour, Deanne has access to the youth who were attracted by and participated in the promotional activities, such as using markers to quickly create temporary tattoos. She could observe them on the edges as they interacted amongst them selves, playing spin the bottle, popping gum, hanging out with their skateboards, sharing secrets and sharing intimate moments. Many of her subjects are photographed up close, aware of Templeton’s presence, and providing direct eye contact. Frequently she catches them acting out their youthful innocence, whether flashing a finger sign, showing off a tongue piercing, or exposing them selves for the camera.

Templeton is at her best when taking candid street photographs of the youth. When she documents the urban culture that she was moving through and subsequently attempts to create a context within the book, it lacks the same energy and insight. Her urban photographs, although with some wonderfully amusing exceptions, appears too forced and unsettlingly in their inclusion, which subsequently dilutes the books overall impact.

by Douglas Stockdale