The Shooting Gallery

1973

Shooting yearly self-portraits is nothing new to photography, but a rather extraordinary series has just been discovered and published in The Netherlands in a book titled "Almost Every Picture #7". Starting in 1936, the then 16-year-old Ria van Dijk went into a shooting gallery - one of those fair booths where every time you hit the target it triggers a camera shutter and you win a portrait of yourself in firing pose.

This series documents almost every year of Van Dijk's life (there is a conspicuous pause from 1939 to 1945) up until present times. But at the age of 88, Ria van Dijk is still shooting!

1936. The picture that started it off.

1938

1949

1958

1967

1989

2006

Camera-less

It can't have escaped those of you who follow the photography scene that there's a lot going on in the"camera-less" photography world. Adam Fuss at Cheim and Read, Christopher Bucklow at my gallery with Garry Fabian Miller coming up next, and the major exhibition "Shadow Catchers" which just opened at The Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

One of the lesser known artists in the V&A show, but equally worthy of attention, is the German photographer Floris Neusüss. Neusüss was one of the first contemporary artists to return to camera-less photography, one of the medium’s earliest forms. In 1978, Neusüss created a piece that paid specific homage to William Henry Fox Talbot's 1835 image of a window in Lacock Abbey and last year he re-created the piece specifically for the V&A show.

As curator Martin Barnes explains: “Talbot’s Latticed Window anticipated the notion that photographs are often perceived as windows on the world. And yet, Talbot seems to have understood that it was rather the window itself – half way between interior and exterior – that was as beguiling as any view beyond.”

“This particular subject”, adds Neusüss “was, for us, not just a window in a building but an iconic window, a window on photography. Lacock’s discovery became a window on the world. Back in 1978, when we first photographed the window, that was the first time I worked outside of the studio, on location. It was the start of our adventures in making photograms of large objects in the places we found them".

As you'll see from these pictures, the piece that Neusüss made is extraordinarily beautiful and resonant, innovative, and chock full of ideas - a description that applies equally to the other artists in the show, So if you're in London, be sure not to miss the exhibition.

(All photographs via the London Daily Telegraph. Unfortunately no photographer's credit was attached.)

In collaboration with his wife Renate Heyne, also an artist, Neususs covered the interior of the window with photographic paper at night, before exposing the paper by shining a light from outside.

Some of the test prints are laid out on the floor of the abbey.

Floris Neusüss

The finished Neusüss piece.

Photogenic drawing negative by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877). Taken with the Camera Obscura, this photograph is the earliest camera negative in existence.

Weekend Video Face-off. Dance v.s. Story-telling.

Stiff competition in the family as my brother and daughter both submit videos for the "Weekend Video". I won't say who submitted which but please vote on your favorite by posting a comment.

Above a new concept of "Dancing in the Rain" featuring dancers, No Noize (red jacket), Man (back jacket), BJ (striped shirt), and Dreal (white shirt). Video directed and edited by Yoram Savion

Below a french fairy tale by the extraordinarily imaginative Capucine:

Fore- ctd.

To the astute observers who commented on one particular spectator in the background of the Tiger Woods photographs: you are not alone! While his identity is still not known, the man pictured wearing a ginger-coloured wig, fake moustache and chomping on a large Havana (in tribute to Spanish golfer Miguel Angel Jimenez) has become an internet sensation nicknamed "Cigar Guy". Below, a selection of some of the viral images that have begun to appear on the web!

Straight from the Heart

A new website that's a treasure trove for those who like vernacular photography and a good story - Pictures of My Mother.com posts pictures people have submitted of their mothers along with a story or recollection of the subject.

It's surprising how moving these little vignettes can be, but that's the power of words and pictures that come from the heart. Perhaps that's something that should be added to the rules I posted about what it takes to make it as a photographer!

Fore!

You can't plan these things! Photographer Mark Pain was on assignment for Britain's Daily Mail newspaper at the Ryder Cup when Tiger Woods attempted to chip his third shot on to the green. But Woods hit the ground behind the ball and duffed the shot straight at Pain who held his ground as the ball went straight for him, hit his camera, bounced on to his chest and came to rest at his feet.

Woods was furious, but neither he nor caddie Steve Williams objected to Pain's position. The shot from the rain-soaked rough, was just badly struck. Tiger and Stricker went on to win the match, but Pain got the best shot of the tournament!

For camera buffs, Pain was using a Nikon D3S camera, with a 24-70 mm lens and a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second.

Weekend Video

For the return of the Weekend Video, the music video for OK Go's new single, 'White Knuckles' , directed by Trish Sie and OK Go.

Tokyo Snaps

Looking at Andy Warhol polaroids.

It should be pretty clear that I'm crazy about Tokyo. Unfortunately this last trip was nearly all work, but here a few snaps of some of the things and people who caught my eye.

Burberry baby.

Louise Bourgeois sculpture at the Mori plaza.

Yoshioka Tokujin installation at the Mori Museum. The artist uses technology to recreate natural phenomena such as the snowstorm pictured here.

Murakami dolls in the museum shop.

Mika Ninagawa books and merchandise.

The pool and whirlpool at the Grand Hyatt.

My last breakfast at the hotel.

Meet Lloyd Ziff

In what is fast becoming a "Meet the Legendary Art Directors" series, tonight we are having a book signing for Lloyd Ziff. The former art director of magazines including Vanity Fair, House & Garden, and Travel & Leisure, Ziff has always been a keen snapper and his new book "Near North" presents a collection of photographs shot in Alaska and the Yukon. Not surprisingly, Ziff brings his graphic sense to the remote and vast wilderness, along with a strong sense of the strangeness and uniqueness of the place.

The book signing is from 6 to 8 p.m..

A Few Pictures That Caught My Eye

Like any art fair, Tokyo Photo has a real mix. Many of the big international names are being shown - Eggleston, Friedlander,
Cartier-Bresson, Chris Bucklow - but what interests me are things that seem uniquely Japanese in an original way. And you have to hunt for those. Nevertheless, here are a few things that caught my eye. Above "Form #1" by Miwa Nishimura. Click on the image to see the wigs that have been digitally added to each seagull.

Below: From Sohei Nishino's ongoing series of dioramas done in cities all over the world. It's a painstaking process where he spends weeks photographing the city from many hundreds of different vantage points. Then back in the studio he begins to assemble the individual frames from the contact strips into a collage that takes several months to create. The collage is then photographed and editioned into three sizes.

London Diorama by Sohei Nishino.

Detail from the above diorama.

Two prints from Haruko Nakamura's 19 print series "The Gift from the Sea".

What's selling is sex. Misato Kuroda's series "Sawako".

And last but not least - an early Chicago picture by the master photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto.

How Cool Is This?

Yesterday, my new friend Mr. Masanori Hashimoto was kind enough to give me the latest version of the Ricoh GR Digital camera. It's a camera with a cult following based on it's lightness, speed, and quality. I've just started to try it out and it seems great, but the coolest thing of all (to me) is a function called "Skew Correct Mode". Turn it on to this mode, take a picture, and the camera looks for an object with four corners which it will then correct the perspective on. If you don't like the four corners it has selected press an arrow and it goes to the next option of a four cornered object. Select "O.K." and the camera instantaneously processes the image to crop and straighten the perspective. For a blogger like me this is heaven!

Here's an example, below. This photograph is on the wall of my hotel room. In "skew" mode it can pick out the whole triptych or just one part. I selected just the middle. Hit the button - and voila! I'm now saying the GR stands for "Gallery Robot". Very Japanese.

The straight shot.

What the camera did to the above shot in "skew" mode!

My new best friend, Masanori Hashimoto of Ricoh.

Tokyo Lecture - The Rules

As a preface to my talk at Tokyo Photo (see below) I articulated four rules that I thought were essential for any young photographer trying to survive.

Here are the rules:

1. Have talent. (Talent is not when your friends tell you they love your work, but when people who don't like you have to admit it's good.)

2. Understand how the world works. (Not just globally, but on a macro level. Understand what people need and don't need. Understand when to approach people and when not to. Develop social skills.)

3. Choose good friends. (There's nothing like an effective network.)

4. Be modern. (Don't do anything that looks like it's someone else's work. Stay on top of technology. Engage on multiple platforms.)

Tokyo Photo - The List

I have been asked by the organizers of Tokyo Photo to engage in a discussion with the famous editor and art director Masanobu Sugatsuke on the subject "How to survive as a photographer on 2010s".

As part of this, I made up a list of 10 different photographers whose careers I felt offered some guidance. Each are relatively new (or at least particularly modern and original) to the photo scene and each have developed incredibly successful careers. So for easy reference, I wanted to post a list on the blog so people could easily reference the names.

In no particular order they are:

Ryan McGinley

The Sartorialist

Massimo Vitali

Juergen Teller

Alec Soth

Richard Learoyd

Idris Khan

Tim Walker

Sze Tsung Leong

Susan Derges

Tokyo Photo 2010

On my way to Tokyo to participate in the second Tokyo Photo fair where I'm sure there will be much to blog about. In the meantime, this is my favorite of the pictures I took on my visit last year. Just some unknown hipster at a little nightclub mesmerized by the light show and his own shadow. Love the purple!

Tomorrow's the Night!

I'm back!

And tomorrow (Friday) we open our show of Christopher Bucklow's photographs. 6 to 8 p.m. for those who would like to attend the opening.

Bucklow's work is one of the pillars of the British "cameraless" photography movement which you'll be hearing a lot about this fall. It's at once luminous, spiritual, scientific, and metaphysical. And did I say gorgeous?

Bucklow's other-worldly photographs of radiant men and women set against grounds of color are made through a multi-step process that is both complex and laborious. Bucklow begins by projecting the shadow of his sitter on a large sheet of aluminum foil and tracing its outline. He then makes about twenty thousand small pinholes in the foil silhouette (one for each day of the average human lifespan). Using a contraption of his own device that places the foil over a large sheet of photographic paper, Bucklow wheels his homemade "camera" out into daylight and pulls the "shutter" to briefly expose the paper to direct sunlight. Thus each finished picture becomes a kind of photogram silhouette composed of thousands of pinhole photographs of the sun. The intensity of light on a given day and the length of exposure create unique color variations on how the resulting piece appears.

Following the artist's particular ground rules, and connecting Bucklow to the mystical tradition of British artists, in particular to the work of William Blake, Bucklow does not picture anyone he has not dreamed of. In this way, the works connect more deeply to both the artist's unconscious and the unknown. Part quantum physics (in particular the light bending phenomenon of the double slit experiment) and part zen philosophy, the thousands of suns not only shine out from the paper but are a window into the soul or anima of both subject and artist, and an appreciation of the individuality and preciousness of each day.

Bucklow's explorations into avoiding the negative are both literal and figurative, connecting light and art, with the Other. We may not readily associate photography and the mystical or spiritual, but Bucklow's work asks us to start by appreciating the surface and then to dig down into all the layers that lie underneath. It's a journey worth taking.

Christopher Bucklow's show mid-installation.

Celebrating the Chainsaw

Sugimoto by Brown

One more show to point out before I take a real summer break. It’s a show I saw in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and was incredibly impressed with. And it’s up until the end of the month.

Showing at the Robert Berman gallery in Santa Monica, it’s the work of Hugh Brown – an artist, and as you’ll see an obsessive chainsaw collector and aficionado. The show is comprised entirely of Brown’s appropriation of famous artworks into which Brown has inserted a variety of chainsaw references from the obvious to the subtle.

So we have Brown’s version of photographs by such heavy hitters as Diane Arbus, Harold Edgerton, Walker Evans, and Robert Mapplethorpe and painters like Matisse, Ed Ruscha, Jackson Pollack and dozens more. The works are so convincing that many mistook them for authentic pieces when shown last year at the California State University Fullerton Grand Central Art Center.

While the images stand on their own, there is humor and wit and intelligence behind every image. Take Brown’s Hiroshi Sugimoto piece entitled “Vista Theater (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2)”. For this image Brown rented out the theatre and used a large format camera and an extremely long exposure to capture the entire film, just as Sugimoto did in his photographs of old American movie palaces and drive-ins.

A photographer, printmaker and assemblage artist for over 35 years, Brown has exhibited widely on the west coast, but claims his standout achievement was his prize in the “Design a Chair for Barbie” competition – not because of the second place finish but because the entry caused a fist fight amongst the judges!



Ruscha by Brown

Hockney by Brown

Arbus by Brown

Edgerton by Brown