Laumont

A few years ago I saw the fantastic film War Photographer about James Nachtwey. One terrific scene shows Nachtwey working with a printer. He asks the printer to reprint his image over and over again. The printer dutifully nods and returns to the darkroom. The scene seemed as fantastical to me as the Wizard of Oz. Are there really printers out there who will work with you to find perfection? You must be kidding.

But a couple of years ago I discovered Laumont Labs in NYC. Laumont is a special place. Their clientele mostly consists of other artists. During today’s visit alone I met Bill Jacobsen, Scott Jackson and Ports Bishop – all fine folks (there is nothing like the comraderie among photographers at the lab).

But as much as I enjoy being in the presence of other artists, the reason I work at Laumont is to work with master printers like Alberto Blum. Just like Nachtwey’s wizard, Alberto never complains in his pursuit of the perfect print (though he might quietly fantasize about downing I glass of whiskey after I leave):

Along with Alberto, the office staff at Laumont is fantastic. Sarah Madsen is smart and funny and a damn fine photographer herself. (She also makes a good model):

Sarah, 2006. © Alec Soth

On the road

The blog will likely be quiet for the next week. I gotta’ bring home the artistic bacon.

studio

Curious about my studio. Have a look here.

*pictured are Phillip Carpenter, Eric William Carroll, Linda Dobosenski, Brian Lesteberg and Josh Grubbs.

On becoming a curmudgeon

The terrific photographer Bill Sullivan recently dropped me and email about the blog and complimented my “nice edgy cranky take” on things. While he said this with kindness, I became suddenly worried. Do I sound cranky? I hope not. In the three weeks I’ve worked on this blog, I’ve tried to share my enthusiasm for vastly different kinds of photography. One of the reasons I’m sensitive is that I’ve recently encountered (with disappointment) two examples of great photographers sounding pretty crabby.

“Who is Sidney Sherman?” by Duane Michals

In the recent issue of W Magazine, Duane Michals, 74, talks about his new book, Foto Follies: How Photography Lost Its Virginity on the Way to the Bank. The book includes photographic parodies of Cindy Sherman, Andreas Gursky and Wolfgang Tillmans. “These photographers all take the same picture and people pay $300,000 for it, just because it’s big and in color,” says Michals, “I find it all very funny.”

Does anyone else get the feeling he doesn’t find it that funny? Moreover, I don’t agree with Michals. Those are three incredibly different photographers. Michals is a treasure. His work has a special place in the history of photography. I hope he doesn’t end his career with bitterness because Cindy Sherman’s pictures sell for more money. Sherman has her place, Michals has his. The money doesn’t mean anything.

I read a more extreme example of bitterness in the interview I recently cited with Robert Adams. At the end of the interview, Adams is asked: “Where do the political calamities of the recent years lead you?… The invasion of Iraq, the U.S. administration’s endorsement of torture, its failure to engage the problem of global warming, the re-election – if that’s what it was – of the Bush administration…”

Adams answers, “Kerstin [Adams’ wife] and I have, like many, thought about leaving, and we continue to think about it, although our age is an obstacle. The question is where. Kerstin is from Sweden, and we admire many of the values there, so we consider it, but the language is a barrier for me. I had a Jewish teaching colleague who took the last train out of Germany. That’s cutting it too close.”

I’ve tried to shrug off this comment but I can’t stop thinking about it. The pessimism is so deep. One of the reasons I value Adams’ pictures so much is that he battles to find beauty in the broken landscape. In this interview it sounds like he has thoroughly lost the battle.

Maybe Adams was just having a bad day. Or maybe I’m misreading the interview. All I know is that I don’t want to come off as bitter. I’m too young to become a curmudgeon. Life is beautiful and photography can help us see the beauty. If I start to forget this, will someone please knock me upside the head.

FAQ: Do I take pictures every day

In my post asking for requests, Eric asks:

I’m curious about your photographic rhythms. Do you shoot every day with some kind of camera or do you go many days without touching a camera of any kind? If you take a break from your photography, do you find returning renews your energy and eye or slows you down while you try to recapture your rhythms?

I don’t come close to shooting every day. For better or worse, I don’t carry a camera with me everywhere I go. I liken my process to that of filmmaking. First I conceive of the idea. Then I do pre-production and fundraising. Then shooting. Then editing. Then distribution (books and galleries). As with most filmmakers, the shooting takes just a fraction of my time.

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Friday Poem

Filed under: poetry — alecsothblog @ 12:14 am

My wife and I just celebrated our tenth anniversary at the Dakota. While she was putting the baby to sleep I went online to look for a love poem. But then I got distracted and started writing something about aesthetic refinement. This led me to Bob Dylan’s new album Modern Times. Some people think Dylan stole lyrics from Henry Timrod (b.1828) – the ‘poet laurete of the Confederacy’. Suzanne Vega disagrees. I don’t really care. I was just happy to find a compilation of all of Timrod’s poem’s online, for free. I even found one that is perfect for my anniversary. Too bad my wife fell asleep two hours ago.

A Year’s Courtship
By Henry Timrod

I saw her, Harry, first, in March —
You know the street that leadeth down
By the old bridge’s crumbling arch? —
Just where it leaves the dusty town

A lonely house stands grim and dark —
You’ve seen it? then I need not say
How quaint the place is — did you mark
An ivied window? Well! one day,

I, chasing some forgotten dream,
And in a poet’s idlest mood,
Caught, as I passed, a white hand’s gleam —
A shutter opened — there she stood

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Surviving refinement

Filed under: aesthetics,artists — alecsothblog @ 12:13 am

In my post on Vik Muniz vs. Gabriel Orozco, Kathleen writes of Orozco: “For me, his photos are just….bad. They are sketches to a larger, more cohesive idea. (One where the end product is not a poorly shot/printed c-print).”

In response, Alexandre writes: “Do we still need “good” pictures? It’s true that shots/prints of Orozco are poor, as poor as his sculptures in fact…What makes Orozco a genius is his incredible sense of the uncanny, the bizarre, the poetic poverty.”

This got me thinking about lo-fi aesthetics. William Wegman (who reminds me of Muniz) began his career by producing raw and hysterical videos.

Over time he rifined his technical skills:

His work grew up but lost some of its charm. But what was he to do? I suppose he had the option of recreating the lo-fi look by continuing to produce faux-naïve videos forever. But that seems equally unsatisfying. How do you build a career on the armature of aesthetic rawness? There has to be something else at the root of the work. There has to be a subject with depth. The problem with Wegman is that this subject is, well, dogs. The roots don’t go deep enough to survive the transition from raw to refined.

One example of someone who has survived this transition is Annie Leibovitz. Her primary subject, celebrity, isn’t much deeper than dogs. But Leibovitz has often been able to sink in her teeth and pull out some great pictures. One of her best sub-genres has been American music. Here is a raw and outrageous picture of Keith Moon in 1976:

During the eighties, Leiovitz took on lighting, props, color and a bigger negative. The pictures lost their edge and became all about artifice:

But Leibovitz worked through this. Since the nineties she has been producing incredibly refined images that nonetheless have a genuine soulfulness. Here is an image of Brian Willson in 2000 from her book American Music:

In some ways Leibovitz’s work resembles that of the musicans she’s photographed. Look at the recent revival of Bob Dylan. Sure, he did a Victoria Secret ad a couple of years ago. But he’s also mastered his craft, battled the storms and come out the other end with something both refined and rich.

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September 19, 2006

More on photographing sculpture

Filed under: sculpture — alecsothblog @ 9:23 pm

You might be wondering why I’m spending a lot of energy writing about sculpture. The truth is that in addition to being a failed painter (my first love), I’m also a failed sculpter. I never got under the influence of the European land artists (Long, Goldsworthy, Fulton, Nash). Here is a sculpture I made in college (1991 or so):

I still have a great fondness for this kind of work. In 2004 I had the pleasure to meet and photograph Andy Goldsworthy.

What is beautiful, of couse, is the impermance. I think this has a lot in common with photography. I’m reminded of a quote* by Henri Cartier-Bresson:

Actually, I’m not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I’m not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren’t cooks.

Photography, for me, is about the process. It is about wandering. Looking. Digging. The product is fine. It does its job stopping time. But mostly it is a charming reminder of the hunt.

I’ve pretty much given up the idea of making sculpture. But now and then I still get an itch. A couple of years ago I balanced a stack of farmhouse rubbish and took this picture:

Later I realized it looks like the superior images of Peter Fischli and David Weiss. I guess I should just stick to taking pictures.

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Vik Muniz vs. Gabriel Orozco

Filed under: sculpture — alecsothblog @ 9:21 pm

Muniz and Orozco should probably never meet in the ring. While both mix photography and sculpture, most people consider Muniz (b.1961) a heavyweight and Orozco (b.1962) a featherweight. Muniz is fun to watch (kids and grandparents love him), but swings too hard:

Vik Muniz, Self Portrait (Golden Boy) 2004, C-Print 100 x 80 cm

After awhile his work starts to feel like those corny digital photomosaics:

For me Gabriel Orozco is the champion. He floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee:

GABRIEL OROZCO, Cats and Watermelons, 1992, Cibachrome, 16 x 20″

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LA POUPÉE

Filed under: books,sculpture — alecsothblog @ 9:14 pm

I lust after this book by Hans Bellmer. It is being sold by Andrew Cahan.

Bellmer, Hans. LA POUPÉE. Traduit par Robert Valencay. Paris: GLM, 1936. Small 4to., (13) pp., with two illustrations from drawings by the artist and ten mounted silver gelatin photographs. Original printed wrappers, with a small tear to the paper wrappers at the spine, expertly restored. Housed in a newly made clamshell box of cloth and morocco, with paper labels of the spine and upper cover. A fine copy with the photographs showing full and rich tonal quality, and measuring approximately 31/8 x 4 5/8 inches, or the reverse. This copy is number thirty-seven of eighty copies with the text printed on rose paper, from a total edition of one hundred and five copies. This copy bears a contemporary ownership signature in pencil on the front blank endpaper dated 1937, Paris. One of the landmark Surrealist books, and one of the very few to be illustrated with original silver gelatin photographs. This is considered Bellmer’s most important and influential work. Therese Lichtenstein, (guest curator for the International Center for Photography 2001 exhibition “Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer”) writes: “Although Bellmer is generally classified as a Surrealist, he actually initiated his doll project with a specific political purpose: to oppose the fascism of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party in Germany in the 1930s. After the rise to power of the Nazi Party in 1933, Bellmer, an established painter and graphic designer, declared that he would make no work that would support the German state. The unconventional or “degenerate” poses of his dolls were directed specifically at the cult of the perfect body then prominent in Germany. The dolls are represented in a constant state of mutation, multiplication, and recombination, often appearing contorted or bound, and occasionally lacking body parts or sprouting extra sets of limbs. These permutations echo autoerotic sensations rooted in the body. Bellmer’s work was also an attempt to destabilize representations of gender being widely circulated in contemporary mass culture.” $55,000.00

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