Kohei Yoshiyuki (and nine other reasons I love Yossi)

from the series The Park, 1973, by Kohei Yoshiyuki

I’ve made a point of not writing about the art business on this blog. But I have to make an exception for Yossi Milo. Here are just ten of the reasons I love Yossi:

1. Because he shows one of my favorite established photographers: Nicolas Nixon.
2. Because he shows one of my favorite young photographers: Allesandra Sanguinetti
3. Because he doesn’t care about labels. For all of his success with Loretta Lux and Simen Johan, he still shows documentary work.
4. Because on October 25 he’ll be debuting Taj Forer’s sweet and understated photographs.
5. Because he included one of my pictures in his June Bride exhibition
6. Because he’s always good to the Minneagraphers (Katherine Turczan, David Goldes)
7. Because he shows my friends Lise Sarfati and Eirik Johnson.
8. Because he is just so sweet.
9. Did I mention he shows Nicolas Nixon?
10. Because he keeps unearthing great stuff. The latest is the work of Kohei Yoshiyuki. Taken with infrared film and flash in various Tokyo parks, these pictures show people gathering for furtive sexual encounters, both heterosexual and homosexual. More strange than the sex are the spectators:

from the series The Park, 1973, by Kohei Yoshiyuki

Along with exhibiting Yoshiyuki’s work (September 6 – October 20), Yossi will be publishing his book, The Park, this fall. The original version of the book, Document Park, was published in 1980 with an introduction by Nobuyoshi Araki:

In The Photobook, A History, Vol. II, Parr and Badger write that Document Park “is a brilliant piece of social documentation, catching perfectly the loneliness, sadness and desperation that so often accompany sexual or human relationships in a big, hard metropolis like Tokyo.”

That 70’s Show

Joerg Colberg emailed to ask if I agree with Joel Meyerowitz’s assertion that many contemporary photographers, “burdened as they are with Photoshop additions and market driven ideas, and fake ‘reality’,” are making work that is “flimsy, empty, trendy.”

Yes, probably, but I think this has always been the case. I’ve recently been looking at Szarkowski’s book Mirrors and Windows. In the introduction, he writes that most arguments about contemporary photography “revolve around the distinction between ‘straight’ photography, in which the fundamental character of the picture is defined within the camera during the moment of exposure, and ‘synthetic’ (or manipulated) photography, in which the camera image is radically revised by darkroom manipulation, multiple printing, collage, added color, drawing, and other similarly frank and autographic modifications.”

Szarkowski included a large selection of this ‘synthetic’ photography in the book. But anyone looking at this work now, 28 years after its publication, will likely agree that much of it appears ‘flimsy’ and dated. All of that solarization just looks silly. (Read this post last September). But now and then some of the synthetic photography looks quite good. I particularly like Robert Cumming’s diptych:

Academic Shading Exercise, 1974 by Robert Cumming

And I’ve always had a soft spot (or is it a jaded spot?) for Leslie Krim’s staged photography:

Pregnant woman making large soap bubble, 1969 by Les Krims

Someday we’ll look back and see another list of names. Take the photographers chosen for the recent book, Vitamin PH. Whatever process they employ (synthetic, staged, straight, stupid) – how many of these artists will look worthwhile in thirty years?:

Armando Andrade Tudela, Alexander Apostól, Miriam Bäckström, Yto Barrada, Erica Baum, Valérie Belin, Walead Beshty, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Frank Breuer, Olaf Breuning, Gerard Byrne, Elinor Carucci, David Claerbout, Anne Collier, Phil Collins, Kelli Connell, Eduardo Consuegra, Sharon Core, Rochelle Costi, Gregory Crewdson, Nancy Davenport, Tim Davis, Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Hans Eijkelboom, JH Engström, Lalla Essaydi, Roe Ethridge, Peter Fraser, Yang Fudong, Anna Gaskell, Simryn Gill, Anthony Goicolea, Geert Goiris, David Goldblatt, Katy Grannan, AES+F group, The Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Mauricio Guillen, Jitka Hanzlová, Anne Hardy, Rachel Harrison, Jonathan Hernández, Sarah Hobbs, Emily Jacir, Valérie Jouve, Yeondoo Jung, Rinko Kawauchi, Annette Kelm, Idris Khan, Joachim Koester, Panos Kokkinias, Luisa Lambri, An-My Lê, Tim Lee, Nikki S Lee, Zoe Leonard, Armin Linke, Sharon Lockhart, Vera Lutter, Florian Maier-Aichen, Malerie Marder, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Gareth McConnell, Scott McFarland, Ryan McGinley, Trish Morrissey, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Zanele Muholi, Oliver Musovik, Kelly Nipper, Nils Norman, Catherine Opie, Esteban Pastorino Díaz, Paul Pfeiffer, Sarah Pickering, Peter Piller, Rosângela Rennó, Mauro Restiffe, Robin Rhode, Sophy Rickett, Noguchi Rika, Andrea Robbins/Max Becher, Ricarda Roggan, Anri Sala, Dean Sameshima, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Markus Schinwald, Gregor Schneider, Collier Schorr, Josef Schulz, Paul Shambroom, Ahlam Shibli, Yinka Shonibare, Efrat Shvily, Santiago Sierra, Paul Sietsema, Alex Slade, Sean Snyder, Alec Soth, Heidi Specker, Hannah Starkey, Simon Starling, John Stezaker, Clare Strand, Darren Sylvester, Guy Tillim, Nazif Topçuoglu, Danny Treacy, Fatimah Tuggar, Céline van Balen, Annika von Hausswolff, Bettina von Zwehl, Deborah Willis, Sharon Ya`ari, Catherine Yass, Shizuka Yokomizo, Amir Zaki, Liu Zheng, Tobias Zielony

File under S

Magnum voted in three new nominees this year. I couldn’t be happier with the excellence and diversity of this group:

Alessandra Sanguinetti
Born in New York, 1968. Currently lives and works in New York. Sanguinetti is a recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and a Hasselblad Foundation grant. Her photographs are in major public and private collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her monograph, “On the Sixth Day”, was published by Nazraeli Press in January 2006.

Jacob Aue Sobol
Jacob Aue Sobol studied photography at the European Film College in Denmark and the Danish School of Photographic Visual Art. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Photography and the Fototrienniale of Odense, the Harbourfront Center, Toronto, and the Faulconer Gallery, Iowa, amongst others. He has won the 2006 World Press Photo Prize in the category of Daily Life Stories.

Mikhael Subotzky
Mikhael Subotzky was born on 15 September 1981, in Cape Town, South Africa. He graduated with a distinction, from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art), 2004.

Yossi Milo & Alessandra Sanguinetti

©Alessandra Sanguinetti

With this trip to New York I only had time to visit one gallery. But it wasn’t hard to make a choice. Nobody has better photography than Yossi Milo. In the back room Yossi showed me some drop dead work that he is preparing for the the next season. But you don’t have to wait to see great pictures. The current show by Alessandra Sanguinetti, On the Sixth Day, is fantastic. Sanguinetti is the real deal. The prints (by Alberto Blum at Laumont), are killers. See this show.