Juergen Teller

While any Juergen Teller show is a significant event, his current exhibition “Ukraine” at Lehmann Maupin seems to have tiptoed into town. I was certainly late off the mark and missed an opening where the gallery had hired my favorite street food vendor, the Hallo Berlin food-cart, to dispense bratwurst. Darn! Anyway without any advance word I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went to see the show last week.

The surprise begins the moment you walk in the door where an installation of display cases dominate the space while just a few photographs dot the walls. The genesis of the show was a state commission to shoot images of the Ukraine for the Venice Bienniale, but as the press release notes: “In Teller’s Kiev the membrane between harsh economic reality and obtainable fantasy is surprisingly thin and these pictures represent a place where beautiful girls wait to be discovered in a place where the desire for luxury has reached a fever pitch.”

Mixed in with a diverse selection of recent work, the show is really just an update of what Teller has been up to, and it amply shows Teller’s greatest strength – the ability to make an arresting picture with little of the production support usually relied on by successful fashion photographers. He’s great at girls, he’s great at snapshots of the famous with a titillating edge, but there’s a sneer that’s been in his work since the beginning that’s in danger of getting out of hand.

That said, there are plenty of good pictures, the best of which I thought was a simple but arresting photograph of the model Lily Cole perched on a rock. I don’t know if Teller has ever seen the famous Maxfield Parrish it echoes, but I never thought I’d ever compare the schmaltzy populist American illustrator (whose work at one time hung in one out of every three homes in America) with the brazen and decadent favorite of the art-meets-fashion elite.

Important Moments in Blog History - Part I

This past Saturday the Blogfather (a.k.a. Jorg Colberg author of Conscientious) came to visit Danziger Projects and see The Sartorialist exhibition - now in its last week for anyone who has missed it so far. I tried to record the momentous event in a photographic tribute to Irving Penn's corner portraits and Sart's own trademark style!

Weekend Video - Ryan McGinley

I was an early supporter of Ryan McGinley’s snapshot/verite/street/ hippy/color style going so far as to suggest he join Magnum when I
was the director in 2003. But he’s done just fine on his own, thank you! At 24 Ryan McGinley was the youngest artist ever to have a solo show
at The Whitney. Then last year he was awarded ICP’s “Young Photographer of The Year” award.

Kathy Ryan, the New York Times Magazine’s picture editor, was another early supporter commissioning McGinley in 2004 to do a portfolio of photographs of the U.S. Olympic swim team. Quite naturally, McGinley shot them underwater. Since then he has been a regular for the magazine and last week they ran 28 pages of his pictures of Oscar nominees in their annual “Breakthrough Performances in Film” portfolio. (Where their unforced plein-air inventiveness put Vanity Fair's over-produced behemoth to shame.)

As with every portfolio, there were great pictures and some merely good ones, but the most intriguing thing in this multi-media age was the accompanying film clip from the Times’ website. It not only gives an interesting insight into McGinley’s process, but shows that he might just be as good a video artist and film-maker as he is a photographer.

Happy Valentine's Day

For me, the photograph that most fully expresses the idea of love is Harry Callahan’s double exposure of his wife Eleanor’s face over a field of roots and grasses (above). It signifies that Eleanor was everything to Harry and he won't let you forget this. The picture refuses to allow your eyes to sit still as you’re pulled deeper and deeper into its compositional web. The stems at the top of her head crackle like neural electricity. The flowery branch at bottom left becomes a bouquet. Motion and emotion intertwine.

If this image weren’t enough it is, of course, just one of hundreds and hundreds of pictures the photographer took of his wife starting in the late 1930s after Harry had taken a photography workshop with Ansel Adams. Harry had met Eleanor on a blind date in 1933, and three years later they were married. They both worked at Chrysler in Detroit where she was a 17 year old secretary and he worked in the parts department when he wasn’t busy with the company camera club.

For Harry, Eleanor was not so much a muse as she was a reflection of life. He thought like a writer and photographed what he knew. He learned from his own experiments. As Arthur Ollman pointed out in his essay “The Model Wife”:

Harry Callahan was a complex man who seemed to be a simple man. His apparent simplicity was engendered by reticence and frail verbal skills. He explained himself plainly: "In my life, being married was one powerful experience, photography by itself was a powerful experience, having a daughter was another experience, as well as living in Europe. I think these have all been very strong influences in my growing as a photographer."

One of the most surprising aspects of the Callahans work together was how little controversy they caused in their time. Harry’s pictures of Eleanor left no part of her anatomy unexamined and were reasonably widely seen. So what gave Eleanor the confidence to do something so unusual? I asked her the one time we met and she said “I thought they were poetry and I knew Harry would never do anything out of line!”

An American Tragedy

Any life derailed is a tragedy, but Britney's life - a life lived out as much in photographs as in her music - has been accelerating out of control at an unbelievable speed. Last week's paparazzi chase - or perhaps more accurately attack - may however, turn out to be a cultural as well as a legal turning point. Legislation is now pending in California to limit the proximity a paparazzi can have to their quarry. To anyone who saw the televised chopper shots of photographers descending on Spears as she was leaving the mental ward where she had been forcibly held under California's 5150 law, it seemed like this could not happen a minute too soon. Let's wait and see.

Helmut Newton - a remembrance

Self-portrait with wife and models. Vogue Studio, Paris, 1981.

I just moved all my photo related boxes to an airy storage space in Long Island so long-buried things are coming to light. Last week I was going through a box of old documents and came across this brief 2003 interview with Helmut Newton which was to run on a failed precursor of this blog when Helmut's sudden death made it seem opportunistic. Five years later, Helmut's vitality and humor are what stand out for me.


HEMUT NEWTON Q&A. 2003.

Your about to be published autobiography stops in 1982. What have the readers missed?

Nothing! People who reach their goals are very uninteresting. What could I have written about the last 20 years? I met a lot of awfully boring Hollywood bimbos. I earned a lot of money. I fly only first class.

You don’t make it sound like much fun.

It would have been fun to say I f***ed her and I f***ed her, but my wife June and I have an agreement not to talk about such subjects.

So there’s never any jealousy?

I am feminist! If I finish a job abroad early, I always call June from the airport. I never want to surprise her. This morning I asked June to go look for my glasses. She asked “May I go through your pockets?” I find this is proper - even after 54 years of marriage.

Are you saying you are sometimes tempted?

I look at models like a farmer looks at his potatoes.

In your book, you paint yourself as an unusual child.

I was sickly and fainted a lot and I masturbated like a world champion! My mother was always fearful of my health so I was driven to school by a uniformed chauffeur to avoid germs. I was not allowed to touch a railing or to handle money. I was spoiled, unbearable, and an awful coward.

When you were 18 you fled Nazi Germany on a ship to Singapore. Yet your recollection of that time in history is “I screwed through the Mediterranean. I stuck with married women around 30 years of age.”

You must understand that for the Jews that ship was an island paradise because finally no-one could hurt us. Every evening there was dancing, drinking, f***ing. But I always found 17 year old girls less exciting than older women who were glamorous, sophisticated, and had sex appeal!

When you arrived in Singapore you had five dollars to your name, which you immediately spent in a brothel.

My sound financial sense told me there was no difference between having five dollars and being completely broke.

You never really talk about the Holocaust.

I have no animosity against the Germans. I will never forget or forgive but I find the Germans are the only ones who are seriously confonting their past. When I was offered the Great Federal Order of Merit, June said “You can’t possible accept it!” So I asked Billy Wilder and he said “You’ve got to take it!” I preferred listening to Billy.

As you say in your book, you achieved all your goals long ago. What still gives you pleasure?

I am old hypochondriac crapper who has to take 13 pills a day, but I still love cars. I drove a white Porsche with red leather seats when I could not even pay my rent. I recently acquired a red Corvette which was specially made for me in Detroit. It has flaming tongues on it. A f***ing great car!

Weekend Video - Shelby Lynne

This one was a real bolt from out of the blue! I had been reading snippets about Shelby Lynne's Dusty Springfield tribute album but hadn't heard any tracks until I went on iTunes and downloaded five songs. It took me a few days to listen to the tracks, but once I did I
was hooked. This is one of those albums that becomes a whole new point of reference for your musical taste and knowledge.

In short, Shelby Lynne, who's been around for a while, is deeply rooted in country but with great range into other genres. Her first album was released in 1989 followed by albums on three different labels, so it was kind of an ironic joke when she won the Grammy for Best New Artist for her 1999 album "I Am Shelby Lynne".

Dusty Springfield was one of the first blue-eyed soul singers of the sixties whose hits included "I Only Want To Be With You", "Wishin' and Hopin'", "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me", and "Son of a Preacher Man:" She became one of the most influential singers in the business working with amongst others - Jimi Hendrix, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Elvis Costello, Sinead O' Connor, and the Pet Shop Boys. She died of cancer in 1999.

Shelby Lynne's Springfield album - "Just a Little Lovin'" - was produced by Phil Ramone who uncharacteristically strips down the music to the bare essentials, letting Lynne's voice and a slowed down jazz tempo bring new meaning, pathos, and focus to the lyrics. You get a good idea from this concert clip of "I Only Want To Be With You", but the title track on the album, given its relative obscurity in the pop archives, is the one that should really not be missed.

Lumix v.s. Leica

This doesn't look like a fair test, but bear with me....

After about three years of trusty use, my little Lumix FX9 broke. This is the camera I carry to art fairs and events and slip in my pocket whenever I need to snap something at better quality than my iPhone. It performed like a champ (in fact this was a camera Annie Leibovitz gave to all her friends when it first came out).

As someone who loves to buy new gadgets, this was an opportunity as well as a sadness, so off I went in search of the next great thing! As the FX9 has long been replaced by newer models, my criteria were that the camera had to slip into my back pocket and it had to take good pictures.

My first try was a little Sony which distorted straight lines so badly it went straight back to Best Buy. Next was the smallest Lumix which was just a little too small to handle easily and now lives happily in my wife’s handbag. I then tried the littlest Leica, the C-Lux 2 (also too small and noisy pictures) and the next size up in the Leica range, the D-Lux 3 (above) which is not only problematically large for a pocket camera but does just terribly in low light situations.

By this time I was properly mournful of my old camera and went on Amazon where to my surprise I found plenty of FX9s both new and used. So I ordered a barely used one for $149 and now I feel restored. Apart from revealing my psychosis, the whole point of all this is to recommend getting an FX9 while they’re still available. The "more pixels doesn’t necessarily mean better pictures" thing may not make sense logically but it does in practice.

P.S.
I’m aware that I didn’t try any Canons. Something about their design just didn’t work for me. But any comments or recommendations on the best pocket size digital camera are welcome.

Installations

The last few days have been full of entrances into rooms where the picture(s) hanging on the wall were particularly and surprisingly effective. It started off in the office of Kate Lewis, the managing editor of SELF magazine, where I found myself face to face with this rare Yasuhiro Ishimoto poster. I’ve always been a huge fan of Ishimoto’s and know this picture well, but something about the scale, the white space, and the Japanese type made it click for me in a way I’d never felt before.


A day later I was helping to install an unusual holiday gift. A brother and sister had given their mother a set of commissioned silhouette portraits by Katherine Wolkoff of her ten grandchildren. After scouting out the apartment we decided they should flank the tall living room window as they could be hung vertically. So this is how we did it. Now imagine the room without the pictures.


Later that evening, I was sitting in the kitchen thinking about how I would blog on installations when our dog Jenny took up one of her favorite spots - lying on the couch by the breakfast table underneath a surprise birthday present from my wife – an Elliott Erwitt portrait of Jenny that generously expanded to include our children. I don’t think she’s posing, but it’s nice when art and life intersect!


Then yesterday I was back at Conde Nast helping Allure put together an auction to benefit The Skin Cancer Foundation. It’s always interesting to see what's on the walls there, and the collage (above) in senior editor Patricia Tortoloni’s office (below) was a Bumble + Bumble promotion on bold hairstyles that would not have been out of place on Richard Prince’s inspiration board!

Jehad Nga

One of the most striking new bodies of work I’ve seen recently is a series of photographs made by the 30 year old photojournalist Jehad Nga. Taken in a Somalian café and lit only by a single shaft on sunlight, the images illuminate their subjects in the clandestine manner of Walker Evans’ subway pictures or Harry Callahan’s “Women Lost in Thought”.

Nga was born in Kansas, but moved soon after, first to Libya and then to London. In his early 20s he was living in Los Angeles and taking courses at UCLA, when he came across the book "Digital Diaries" by Natasha Merritt. The book, a collection of sexually intimate photos made with a digital point-and-shoot, convinced Nga that he could become a photographer. One year later he was traveling through the Middle East taking pictures.

After one of these pictures was published in The Village Voice he moved to New York where he enrolled in one course to become an emergency medical technician and a second course on photography sponsored by the Magnum photo agency. By early 2003 he was back in the Middle East shooting regularly for The New York Times.

The Somalia series was shown at the M+B Gallery in Los Angeles last year and will be featured in the Red Room at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York this summer. Look out for these sumptuously large and colorful prints.

Weekend Video - La Tropical

Going to see David and Peter Turnley’s show “McClellan Street” at the Leica Gallery in New York (on through February) reminds me to share what I have always said is the best film ever made by a photographer – David Turnley’s “La Tropical”.

Vibrantly filmed in black and white, “La Tropical” tells the story of Havana’s extraordinary open-air dance club – a club that on crowded nights pulls in more than ten thousand people! Exploring the lives of a handful of the clubs dancers and regulars, the film examines Cuba’s complex race situation – all while immersing us in the heat and rhythm of the music and dancing that is the lifeblood of the country’s culture.

The trailer (below) is somewhat misleading. The film is richer and deeper than just a dance film but a whole lot livelier than “The Buena Vista Social Club”. And while it previously could only be seen on the festival circuit, it just became available on DVD.

Tina Brown

Lunch at the Magazine Lifetime Achievement Awards where Tina Brown was inducted into the Hall of Fame. I was there having worked for Tina at Vanity Fair and the New Yorker and have always been a huge fan. The world of magazines seems so much duller without her. She has also always been a champion of photography, which is how we got together.

Our greatest coup was the famous 1985 Vanity Fair cover of the Reagans dancing - a cover credited (by others) as saving Vanity Fair when the sharks were circling and advertisers were scarce. It gave the magazine credibility and buzz and went on to become one of the most famous magazine covers as well as a cultural touchstone. So here's the inside story....

At my previous job as picture editor of the London Sunday Times Magazine, I had become friendly with Michael Evans - a talented photojournalist who became the chief White House photographer for Ronald Reagan. I had put together a special issue on Michael's most intimate White House pictures that got picked up around the world. So two years later when Tina came up with idea of a story about how the Reagans loved to dance my connections got us 60 seconds with the first couple as they left their private quarters en route to a formal White House dinner. I chose Harry Benson as the photographer because there's no-one better in a sticky situation. Tina was there to report the story.

I knew the Reagans were friends of Frank Sinatra and so the night before the shoot, I made a tape of Sinatra singing "Nancy with the Laughing Face" and smuggled a Walkman and a miniature set of speakers into Harry Benson's bag. The pirate sound system made it through security and when the Reagans stopped in front of Benson's backdrop I hit play. The Secret Service looked stunned but dared not interrupt as Ron and Nancy spontaneously broke into dance for the whole song (cover!) and ended with a heartfelt smooch (double page spread!).

It was the kind of collaboration that makes magazine work so exciting. Or as Tina said in her speech, "Sometimes you have to be lucky, and sometimes you have to be prepared to be lucky!"

Sandmen

It never occurred to me how prevalent the subject (or backdrop) of sand is in photography until I was riffling through Christies catalog for their February 20th New York sale of photographs. There was sand everywhere! The above photograph by Wynn Bullock (estimated at $3,000 - $5,000) is of course a reference to the justly more celebrated Edward Weston image (below) which even printed posthumously is estimated at $7,000 - $9,000. There are sand pictures by Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, Michael Kenna, Herbert Matter, Anna Mendieta, the Westons - Edward and Brett, and Gary Winogrand. (I'm disqualifying Lucien Clergue because anyone who makes a living photographing women on the beach with wet sand up their bum does not deserve to be in this particular hall of fame.)



Anyway ... I happen to own several of Weston's "Nude on the Dunes" pictures (very dry sand) and as well as being some of my favorite pictures, they hang in the hallway between my bedroom and my childrens' rooms. I'm very careful about what art gets hung in my own home but these pictures are so brilliantly conceived and the figure so integrated in to the ground of sand that neither my children or any of the many children who have passed through our house on play-dates have ever given it a second thought. I remember a house featured in a magazine not so long ago where the most provocative, graphic, and X-rated art was hanging on the wall and the couple's young children were pictured romping around in decorative magazine fashion, and I thought there has to be some kind of line, doesn't there?


Anyway back to sand. Aside from Weston's dunes one of the greatest sand pictures is the Australian photographer Max Dupain's "The Sunbaker" (above) taken in 1937, the year after Weston's pictures.


Last in the round-up of sand pictures is Richard Ehrlich (above and below) whose extraordinary pictures taken in 2003 of the Namibian ghost town of Kolmanskop I just recently discovered. In brief, Kolmanskop sprang up in 1908 after diamonds were discovered in the desert sand. By 1920 Kolmanskop was a booming mining town with 300 German expatriates and their families - a hospital, gymnasium, casino, bowling alley, and power station. Houses were built and decorated in beautiful colors with great artistic sensibility, presumably to offset the lonely existence in the middle of the desert. By 1928, however, the diamond deposits dried up and the town was abandoned to the elements. The skeletal remains of the houses are now left to sand and time, with every room constantly shifting and re-emerging as the wind shifts. Wow - talk about earth art!

Fish Tales

It won't be my usual practice to post runway shots, but every time I see pictures from Jean-Paul Gaultier’s collections they seem as much art as fashion. In particular the amazing mermaid outfit (above) from last week’s Spring 2008 collection gave me a real jolt! Adding to the theatrics of the show, when the euphoniously named model Coco Rocha first appeared on the runway, she was in full mermaid tail and walking on two coral crutches! She then unzipped her fin and undulated down the catwalk, her bustier recalling the famous cone bra Gaultier originally created for Madonna (for whom he still designs).

With the exception of the intentional outrageousness of this costume, the rest of the collection looked beautiful, wearable, and unlike the valentine song - quite photographable. When people complain about how fashion photography is in the doldrums (a very common complaint) perhaps some of the fault lies in the lack of photogenic-ness of many of today’s clothes.

This is never something Gaultier could be accused of. Having now passed through the “bad boy” phase he was invariably called out for in the early Madonna era – he now stands as the heir apparent to Yves St. Laurent in terms of his position in French culture. In addition to his own label, he is now also the creative director of Hermes, but he still likes to have fun as his own website amply demonstrates if you care to fish around!