(from) Nickla by Armand Quetsch

**
(copyright - Armand Quetsch)

"The photographic approach presumes a distance, a highly particular space time. The photographer carries out an inventory with technical equipment that is both cold and direct. Yet through his gaze what ought to have been a mere recording becomes a quest for time, for the past... for a person."

Exhibited at Centre national de l'audiovisuel (CNA), Luxembourg.

Russkie #24 by Anastasia Khoroshilova

*(copyright - Anastasia Khoroshilova)

"Anastasia Khoroshilova's vision as a photographer is characterised by the immediacy of her creative path. This path is indivisible from her personal life, from the drama of her biography, which is connected to the socio-cultural "wanderings" of the artist. Anastasia Khoroshilova encounters the people, things and landscapes in her photography at eye level. She never takes recourse to unusual perspectives, shooting from above or below. Khoroshilova shows us people at eye level, but she does not unmask them; she never gets too close."

Exhibited at Moscow Museum of Modern Art.

geveldetail by Ellen Korth

(copyright - Ellen Korth) 

"In her detailed research with her camera, the photograph artist Ellen Korth has detected in the buildings of Herman Bessels traces of the relationship, capturing them in excerpts that nevertheless represent the whole. This book bears no claim to documentary or biography, but makes a theme of the interplay of two closely-interwoven art forms.

It is largely the outer shells of the buildings, which mirror the striving for function, form and shape. And likewise, these are the intentions of the artist, who desires a view behind the façade of human appearance in her photographs."

Les Vitrines #6 by Annette Kisling

(copyright - Annette Kisling)

“Annette Kisling photographs unintelligible things with utmost lucidity. In her current b/w series, "les vitrines", these are the shop windows of the early 21st century, embedded in the bourgeois facades of Paris's inner boroughs-commodity stages arranged for optimal visibility. In Annette Kisling's work, however, their purpose is lost. Here the gaze expands to capture both the interior and the exterior, that which lies behind the windowpane and that which it mirrors: cars, trees, sky, building facades, street alignments. Everything stands side-by-side and simultaneously permeates everything else. This is necessarily so, yet the principle underlying this order is difficult to name. Annette Kisling calls this principle "layering", and by this she refers also to an intertwining of history and the present.”

Exhibited in Galerie Kamm, Berlin.

Elvis by Erik Steffensen

(copyright - Erik Steffensen)

“Erik Steffensen investigates art history and its theoretical perspectives as well as current popular culture. His photos offer a reflection of the significance of our common cultural references and the fascination that they hold, through an exploration of places and phenomena that are part of the contemporary mythology. His work deals with fears of nothingness and with solitude, yet it never lacks humour and irony.

In Tarkovsky's 'Stalker' two men are guided through 'the zone' by a third, the Stalker, in search of a nearly unreachable place called 'the room' where a person's innermost dreams and desires are said to come true. In the film as in the work of Erik Steffensen the journey in itself is paramount compared to its objective.”

Truck stop by Mark Kimber

(copyright by Mark Kimber)

"Kimber is compelled to find "situations where the play of light, form and landscape converge in time and space to create an elusive and ephemeral piece of theatre." To produce EDGELAND he changed cameras, this time using a high definition model and shooting at dusk, the edge of the day. The intense colour of the twilight sky mixes with the artificial lights of the night. The car parks, containers and buildings become poetic summaries of themselves. The street and building lights that proliferate in his scenes are like beacons, calling our attention to details, which we would, in the bright light of day, disregard. Despite the lack of human actors, the lights suggest a stage waiting for the performers to return, with the sun."

Exhibited at the Stills Gallery, Sydney.

1978 by Elizabeth Gordon

(copyright - Elizabeth Gordon)

"(she) … celebrates sobriety with anonymous portraits of women, titled with the year they stopped drinking. This represents just a tiny slice of the many, many women worldwide who have recovered from what feels like such a hopeless and desperate situation."

Elizabeth Gordon won the (UK) Channel 4 'Picture This' photography competition programme in 2008.

BMW by Jacqueline Hassink

(copyright - Jacqueline Hassink)

“Jacqueline Hassink (The Netherlands, 1966). Since 1993 Hassink has created photographic series about the global economy in collaboration with multinational corporations. Projects such as The Table of Power (1993-1995) or Arab Domains (2005-2006) explore the force of economic power. Hassink has given classes at Harvard University and the International Center of Photography in New York.” (PhotoEspaña/Campus PHE)

Rekha by Fazal Sheikh

(copyright - Fazal Sheikh)

“Fazal Sheikh (b. 1965, USA) has been nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2008 for his publication Ladli, published by Steidl, Germany (2007). Sheikh is an artist-activist who uses photography to create sustained portraits of different communities around the world.”

Introduction

There’s some great news and street photography. And there’s some glorious contemporary and art photography.

But not on this site.

Melissa De Witt, Editor - HotShoe ('Fresh Perspectives on Contemporary Photography’) writes, in the December/January 2008 issue, “When it comes to photography, even more than with painting or sculpture, I often hear something along the lines of “I could have done that”. But of course, they didn’t”.

Although surely the question is - would we want to?

There are a lot of photographers that don’t care whether what they take is good or not - they photograph for fun.

But there are a lot of acclaimed photographers who take their photos very seriously, despite some of their photos being seriously awful.

You know the type of photos I mean. They get featured over several pages in the hippest New York or Amsterdam photo magazines. They are exhibited at ‘Paris Photo’. They hang as overlarge prints in London’s ‘Photographers’ Gallery’.

They may be technically perfect but the content - washed out photos of waves; staged shots of somnolent streets; posed pix of facially paralysed people; boring images of insipid interactions; red and green and nothing else or just grey - means these shots should have been deleted, not distributed.

You look at this photography and you think - that’s paltry photography.

And the text written to accompany the exhibition or publication of these photos usually only heightens the hubris.

De Witt is partially right when she goes on. “And the reason they didn’t is often, because, in actuality, they couldn’t. Sure anyone can press a button, but not everyone can do the crucial bit”.

Others may not be able to take these photos because they don’t have the very expensive cameras that are needed to make the (de rigueur) very large prints. Others may not be able to talk the ‘talk’ of star photographers (‘But don’t you know - kitsch is kool?’ It's retro-chic!).


Criticism of these images is not about being philistine. It’s good to be experimental. I like photos that push boundaries, take risks and sometimes fail. Some of these photos are just meant to be part of series or may be meant to be just a straight documentary shot - but if so, why promote them as works of art?

Where did it all go wrong? 

I don't know but I can often see echoes of New Topographics, a 1975 photo exhibition, in many of the shots. The languid photos exhibited here - that you may often think are an accidental shot taken whilst the camera was being clumsily held, or look like a background in want of a picture - are usually the opposite of the dramatic, or eye-catching, images that often make the best photos.

And the dictatorship of themes. 'The development of the Civil War in the Congo' - yes. 'The role of the paperclip as a metaphor for relationships - no.

And what section in the 'Law of Photography' bans selections of just good, although unrelated, images or even a single excellent shot for display in venues that take photography 'seriously'?

The images (and accompanying text) on this website are, or were, in recent exhibitions or publications.

But soon they’ll be looking just as risible as those 60s images featured in Martin Parr’s “Boring Postcards” books.