Category: Photography
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Syllabus, by Lynda Barry
I just finished reading Lynda Barry’s book Syllabus (Amazon), which documents the work she did through her creative arts course at University of Wisconsinin the 2010s and packages it up as a kind of self-serve course in comics/art/creative practice. It’s a book with a highly unusual format.
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Art as a political project
People disagree on whether the practice of art is, could or should be a political act. Hey, I disagree with myself on this question. But I’m noting down this idea in the ‘no, that’s a mistake’ column: I personally don’t believe that it’s art’s job to make the world a better place. That’s our job.…
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Noticing door knobs
“I photographed every door or drawer knob, handle, or latch I touched from the time I awoke on Thursday, June 3rd, until I went to bed on Friday, June 4th, 1999.” Allen Bukoff Fluxus Research: Opening and Closing Doors and Drawers Fluxus is an approach to art (dull people insist it was a historical art…
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John Gossage on metaphor and directness
I enjoyed this conversation with John Gossage on the ever-excellent Magic Hour podcast (recorded back in 2016). He talks about representation in photography in two different ways that might seem contradictory, or at least pull apart in an interesting tension. The episode opens with this line from Gossage, (which we don’t hear in context in the…
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Larry Sultan on the institution of family
Larry Sultan has made one of the most well-known photobooks about family, Pictures From Home (Amazon). It’s deeply personal work, and involved the intimate collaboration of his parents in making images that might otherwise appear somewhat exploitative. In this short interview, he talks about the work through a different lens – the family as an…
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Rato, Tesoura, Pistola – Pedro Guimarães, with Nuno and Emma-Sofie Engstrøm Guimarães
Lovely project, and I also found lots to think about in this reference to an Italo Calvino story: In Italo Calvino’s short story The Adventure of a Photographer, written in 1983, the protagonist Antonino Paraggi embarks on a solitary, philosophical journey into what is described as the “madness” of photography. Wryly observing the photographic obsessions…
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Siblings – Wendy Stone
https://www.lensculture.com/articles/wendy-stone-siblings Documenting the lively adventures of her son and the family’s two beloved dogs, Wendy Stone reframes the bond between siblings through an animal lens.
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Returning to the scene
I recently saw the Jem Southam exhibition at the Royal West Academy, in which he returns to the same stretch of river to rephotograph it repeatedly over a period of 5 years. A Bend in the River displays a series of the same name structured in two parts representing arrival (at dusk) and departure (at dawn).…
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What you think is boring now may be interesting in the future
This is a note to myself, as I consider what to crop and how to frame the domestic pictures that make up most of my photographic work at the moment.
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Chauncey Hare – Quitting Your Day Job
Spoiler alert: I really enjoyed this account of Chauncey Hare’s work by Robert Slifkin, which I encountered after I saw him talking about Hare with great enthusiasm in this video:
Andrew Sleigh 