From San Francisco

Map charting the three principal trips Robert Frank took from June 1955 to June 1956, shooting pictures for what was to become "The Americans".

At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I had the chance to catch up with the exhibition Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans” which originated at the National Gallery and now runs through August 23 in San Francisco before moving to The Met in New York.

As most of you know, Robert Franks groundbreaking book was published 50 years ago and pretty much changed the course of photography. With a sensitive and yet tough eye, Frank looked at America and saw a profound sense of sadness under the rah-rah facade. He noted the changing iconography of America and noted that cars, diners, gas stations, and even the road itself were the new symbols of contemporary life. He saw cracks and divisions between rich and poor, black and white, those with power and those without, and recorded his observations in a seemingly loose but obviously controlled manner – shocking the establishment with his blurred foregrounds, tilted horizons, and off-kilter compositions. Frank’s vision of America was a mix of jazz and blues to his friend and supporter Walker Evans’ classical symphonies and perhaps shockingly every picture holds up today.

It’s a fabulous show, presenting some of Frank’s work prior to "The Americans", showing how the book came together, and then plunging you into a breathtaking display of all 83 pictures from the book laid out in sequence. I obviously can’t show all that – and the book is readily available in it’s 50th anniversary edition – but here’s a special treat:

Right before you enter the first room, there’s a huge display of three enormous frames in which a selection of 11 x 14 inch prints are arranged according to Frank’s memory to simulate the way he pinned up pictures on his wall to edit the book. A number of the prints were ones that didn’t make the final cut and I don’t believe that I, or indeed many people have ever seen them before. So here they are. Enjoy!

From Carmel

Well, I couldn't leave out dogs could I? This is Edward Weston's grand-daughter Cara's dog examining me as I'm looking at Edward Weston photographs. My trip to Carmel was to look at the prints that belong to the family that were printed by Edwards' son Cole Weston (Cara's dad).

For a long time these prints were a common denominator of collectors and collections, but they're beautiful and increasingly rare, and I think it's past time for a revisionist approach. So the point of my visit was to work out the details of a show I have been planning with Cara. More on which later.

In the meantime I'll just post a few of the many pictures I'll be showing from the iconic to the less well known, which I've just had the pleasure of holding in my hands.

Shell, 1927

Nude, 1927

Clouds, 1936

Dunes, 1936

Rain Over Modoc Lava Beds, 1937

Going West

San Francisco

I'm on my way to San Francisco and Carmel for a few days of meetings with photographers, museums, and galleries. As there shouldn't be any lack of internet access I imagine I will post from the coast, but it might be a day or two.

Carmel

Horses

Rachel Alexandra, center, on her way to becoming the first filly to win the Preakness Stakes since 1924. Photo by Steve Helber. A.P.

It's been a great month for horse racing in America with the historic victory of Rachel Alexandra in the Preakness and the unpredictable win of the 50 to 1 long shot Mine That Bird in the Kentucky Derby. I'm not a big horse racing guy - it all happens too quickly for me - but I'm a huge fan of the backstory of the races and especially the photos that show up in the paper the next day, the best ones looking like great 19th century history paintings.

Surprisingly, no-one seems to have made much of a career of photographing racehorses or races while painters from Stubbs to Duffy to Sir Alfred Munnings made it their bread and butter. So there's an interesting idea or opportunity there.

In the meantime, three pictures by Matthew Stockman of Getty from this year's Kentucky Derby, below:

Aaah - America the beautiful!

And, below, an uncredited picture that came up from my Google Image search:

Weekend Video - Kutiman's YouTube mix

One of the felicitous results of my plea for more comments was the opportunity to visit so many of your blogs. So many in fact that I must apologize that I lost track of which blog I went to and saw this amazing edit of various YouTube music performances re-edited into one new and cohesive song. (I'll try to backtrack and figure it out.) However, the editor of this piece is "Kutiman" and all I can tell you is that he is 27 and from Israel. Shalom!

And Now Bunnies!

Hiroh Kikai. "A woman who lives alone with her pet." 1974

Sometimes it's just serendipity. I went over to 535 West 22nd to catch up with some of my favorite galleries and guess what? Bunnies!

First stop was the Yancey Richardson gallery where they were getting ready to hang their Hiroh Kikai show, opening later this week. I showed a couple of Kikai's pictures in my "Sander's Children" show and like many photo people was relatively new to the work of this Japanese photographer who has been making deadpan and slightly odd street portraits since the 1970s. You can read and see more about the show here. While it's not in any way typical, I really liked the picture above as well as its title. (All Kikai's titles have that slightly strange Japanese to English idiosyncrasy.)

Photo by Laurel Nakadate

Photo by Laurel Nakadate

Next stop was Leslie Tonkonow and a new show of work by Laurel Nakadate. Mixing video and photography, I was particularly struck by
a pair of shadow pictures of which the above was one, as well as the coincidence of the bunny theme. There is also one extraordinary six minute video of the artist dancing in the desert to the strains of a Bruce Springsteen song. Beautifully filmed in the fading light of day, and with a sense that the artist is dancing herself into a trance, it has the visceral quality that makes good video/performance stand out from so much of the dreck that's foisted on us in the name of art.

Andrew Bush. From "Vector Portraits"

Sadly, no bunnies at Julie Saul where there is a strong new show of Andrew Bush's photos taken along Southern Californian highways in the 90s. I wrote about the work a while ago so you can read about it here.

And for a sneak preview of the Kikai show, here's a picture (below) of the work waiting to be hung. If you click on the picture you can just make out some of the images.

Thank You!

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - a lifelong supporter of photography. (For context read last paragraph below.)

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I truly appreciate the feedback as well as the opportunity to visit many of your blogs. And as you can see it was also a reminder to myself to leave more comments on other people’s blogs.

I’ve been a relatively early adopter of all things web (I started my first blog – so boring it put me to sleep - in 1999) but I’ve always felt that the blogosphere is one of the most genuine and creative forms of expression on the web. It's a community I'm happy to be part of and as I’ve mentioned before, what brought me back was a combination of getting to know The Sartorialist and the much lamented demise of the photographer Alec Soth’s terrific blog.

What I figured out between 1999 when I was doing a general cultural commentary and 2007 when I started to focus on photography was that nobody really cared what I thought about American Idol but they were interested in what I had to say about photography – my field of specialty. You have to speak from the core - at which point you can digress.

And so speaking of American Idol and digressing – this weekend I went to see “Every Little Step”, a documentary currently packing them in Manhattan, that follows the casting of the recent Broadway revival of “A Chorus Line” and interweaves the story of the creation of the original play with the actual winnowing down of the dancers hoping to be cast in the revival. It’s part American Idol goes to Broadway, part exploration of the emotional and physical toll of a dancer’s life, and part the backstory of what was clearly a seminal and transcendant work of American theater. Don’t miss it.

On another subject, if weekend shopping is anything to go by, the recession is roaring to a close. I went with my wife and daughter to buy one of her best friends a bat mitzvah present and wherever we went there were huge lines at the checkout desk. It’s also interesting to see how various stores use photography. Ralph Lauren was a pioneer in this. But the photograph above of Jackie Kennedy came from J. Crew. I only had my iPhone so I apologize for the poor quality snap. You just never know where a great picture is going to pop up!

Weekend Video - The Mentalists

Showing how much it's possible to do with an iPhone, British band
The Mentalists play "Kids" by MGMT on their iPhones and iPod Touches, using only apps downloaded from the Apple Store. (Apps used include Ocarina, Retro Synth, miniSynth, and DigiDrummer Lite.)

Listen Up!

From CuteOverload.com

Sorry, but I had to do something to get your attention!

The question is why are people not leaving comments these days? Or maybe the request is: please leave comments whenever you feel even the slightest bit moved to. They are really what keeps a blogger going. I would have thought that this week there would have been more than one comment on the Gursky photo or more than two comments on the amazing Narduzzi picture of the Byblos Art Hotel.

Maybe it's the weather...

Location

For decorum's sake I held off a week before writing about my new show, but it's one I'm very happy with. The idea for the show was inspired by the photograph above - the interior of The Byblos Art Hotel near Verona photographed by Alberto Narduzzi - which I saw in Wallpaper Magazine a number of years ago and had pinned up on my board ever since.

Frequent attempts to communicate with the photographer were fruitless and then about 6 months ago Narduzzi finally replied to an e-mail. The idea of "Location" had been floating around in my head for a while - the difference between a location photograph and a landscape, the degree to which what I defined as a location shot was a conceptual act - and I was quickly able to pull together pictures and specific sub-themes that seemed to make it work. I won't go on here, but for more details and to see the individual images you can click here to the Danziger Projects website.

There always seem to be points of serendipity in a show like this. In this case it turned out that Esteban Mauchi of Laumont (who made the Narduzzi print) had also printed the Vanessa Beecroft pictures that ring the top of the lobby interior!

Other than that, Melanie Schiff, who I'd been blogging about several times and who I'd met only recently, had just taken a series of pictures of a hidden skate pipe outside of Los Angeles so that gave us the perfect opportunity to do something together. And lastly, Susan Derges, who I once represented but hadn't seen for many years, just happened to be in town from England as we were getting ready to hang the show, and so we got a chance to catch up.

Other than the weather, it's been the perfect start to the month of May.

On the Block

Do you want something cool, chic, imposing, modern, prescient, and sexy? Do you have a spare $200,000 - $300,000? If the answers to both questions are yes, then this 53" x 90" Andreas Gursky, "Untitled IX. 1998", coming up at Phillips Contemporary Art Sale on May 14 might be for you!

In the mid to late 1990s, Gursky turned his attention to the intersection of art and consumer culture with a series of huge color pictures of interior details of various Prada stores. Both Prada and Gursky were cresting waves of re-invention - Prada of its brand and Gursky of contemporary color photography - and the Gursky/Prada photographs are an observation and a commentary of the minimalist fetishism and artistic ambition of high fashion: underwear as expensive as jewelry being displayed like fine art in a store designed to look like a cutting edge museum.

At the time I didn't quite get the pictures - on one level they were a threat to the more classical school of photography I was associated with - but 10 years later, at which point they have already become period pieces, I think they're pretty impressive.

A few more Gursky Prada pictures below, but none as good to my mind as "Untitled IX":

Weekend Video

Like many of you, I loved the movie “Once” which introduced me to the music of Glen Hansard. NPR recently broadcast a concert of Hansard and his co-star and now girlfriend Marketa Iglova on their "Live from the Artists' Den" series and I happened to catch the last half including what I gather is a regular routine where they insert a segment of “Pure Imagination” from "Willy Wonka" into their song “Star Star”!

Unfortunately I couldn’t find that clip but my YouTube search did come up with this tribute performance by 7 year old Ethan as well as the Gene Wilder original and a visually shaky but audio clear Hansard concert clip from littlexwingx07. At 1:40 into the clip you will hear them break into “Pure Imagination”.

Bracketology ctd...

A great response to yesterday's post so here's the full bracket (click to see it full size) and the intro and comments I was asked to write. But please bear in mind that these brackets are more a starting point for debate than any definitive pronouncement. And for those who want more on brackets go to bracketsmackdown.com.

My intro:

Let’s start by saying American photography so dominates the medium as to make other countries’ contribution a footnote. So we’re really choosing the most iconic photograph of all times. And what are we looking for? A visceral image, one that is embedded in our cultural subconscious, one taken with the greatest skill by an artist whose entire body of work is capped by that one transcendent image that is totally unreplicable. One that you can close your eyes and it will come floating into the space between your mind and your eyelids with something between a shiver and a sigh of pleasure.

And comments:

Capa vs. Eisenstadt

Two indelible World War I images, one of war, one of peace, from transplanted European photographers who made their way to America to find fame. Capa’s picture was taken as bullets flew, Eisenstadt’s as confetti streamed down. Victory goes to the photographer who risked his life.

Link vs. Abbott

Two of the greatest night-time photographs ever taken, both technical tours de force. The Abbott is filled with the romance and promise of the big city, the Link with the romance of small-town America and wonder at man’s ingenuity. Link is schmaltzier, which means Abbott wins.

Lange vs. Leibovitz

Head to head go two female heavyweight contenders. Leibovitz’s photograph is not just about a famous couple but is the high-point of her sneakily conceptual imagery – pulling a theatrical gesture out of her famous subjects. Lange’s Great Depression image combining photojournalism and great portraiture has come to symbolize man’s dignity in the face of hardship. Lange by a whisker, if only because she came first.

Adams vs. Avedon

The uber-landscape against the uber-fashion photograph from two of the most controlled artists in American photography. Both pictures, while carefully set-up on large-format cameras, could have only been taken the split second they were taken. Both are perfect in every way. But such is the spirituality in Adams image that it even trumps a beautiful woman and an elephant.

Why Am I Showing This Picture?

My friend the super-agent Mark Reiter (he got Jack Welch $7 million for one book so I think that qualifies him as super) is in his spare time a master bracketologist. For those not in the loop, a bracketologist is a maker of lists of 32 items in a given category that go up against each other tournament-style to determine who is the champion of the field. Of course it helps if the list-maker has some credibility and so in his latest book “The Final Four of Everything” Reiter has everyone from film critic Manohla Dargis on the best Clint Eastwood films (Million Dollar Baby) to New York Times court reporter Adam Liptak on the best Supreme Court Decision (Brown v. Board of Ed). As a friend of the family I was asked to do "Iconic American Photographs" on which more later. But my advance copy of the book just arrived and I was pleased to see a number of other photo related lists.

The picture above, the famous shot of Raquel Welch from "One Million Years B.C." was the runner up to Rita Hayworth (below) in American Pinups as bracketed by Gregory Curtis, former editor of Texas Monthly.

Photo by Bob Landis.

Then there’s Celebrity Mugshots by Willie Geist – co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe – resulting in a showdown between Nick Nolte and James Brown.

While not included, this earlier mugshot of Brown from 1988 probably deserves an accolade for the most suave mugshot!

Anyway, back to my category – Iconic American Photographs. I’ll give you my final four and you can let me know which you would pick.

In alphabetical order:

Ansel Adams – Moonrise, Hernandez.

Diane Arbus – Twins

Richard Avedon – Dovima with Elephants

Dorothea Lange – Migrant Mother.

The book comes out next week at which point you can join the debate over Best American Wine, Best Political One Liners, Best Motherly Advice, Best Celebrity Baby Name, and 146 other bests (or worsts).

Anon.

Robert Flynn Johnson is the Curator Emeritus of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. He is also the author of two of the best books on anonymous photography - "Anonymous: Enigmatic Images from Unknown Photographers" (published a few years ago) - and now "The Face in the Lens: Anonymous Photographs" (due for release next week). Together this pair of books make him the John Szarkowski of vernacular photography, the sultan of snaps.

The pleasure of great anonymous photographs lies not only in how they reflect well known images and concepts, but in the freshness and surprise they provide. Take the photo above from Johnson's new book. It is truly a masterpiece . It has humor, a Sander/Arbus/Avedon flair, a surrealist edge, perfect composition, and a wonderful sense of period in the hatted garb of the background figures. Everything about it seems perfect. (Take out the Flatiron looking building in the center background, for example, and it doesn't work as well compositionally.) And this is just one of dozens of great pictures in Johnson's extraordinary collections as you can see from the covers below.

Weekend Video - Gucci Flora

This just released ad for Gucci’s Flora perfume was shot by film director and video artist Chris Cunningham. Known for both his art and commercial work, Cunningham’s best known video, Björk's "All Is Full of Love" won multiple awards, including an MTV Music Award for Breakthrough Video and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video.

The Gucci film, starring Australian model Abbey Lee, was shot in Latvia over a four day period and the flower field was comprised of more than 20,000 fake flowers. The music is a strange new version of the disco classic “I Feel Love” specially re-recorded for the ad by Donna Summer.

And here's a bonus making of video:

Where Content is King

What photos do I buy for myself? The most recent photograph I bought was a large (50 x 60 inch) print of this image of Paris by Sze Tsung Leong. I actually had no intention of buying any such picture, but I walked into the Yossi Milo Gallery a few weeks ago and it just leapt of the wall at me. (Bear in mind that the j-peg can’t do justice to the actual print which is breath-taking, but please click on the image to see it larger).

I have no special affection for Paris, no empty space looking for a picture this big, but when something really clicks at first sight and holds up on a second viewing, and you can scrape together the money,
I say buy it! (In today’s world it has to be a much safer bet than any stock.)

Sze Tsung Leong came into prominence with his series of horizon pictures taken all over the world. The horizons very specifically lined up in the same place in every picture so you could mix and match them into any length you wanted, and while they sold like hotcakes, it all seemed a little obvious to me. Leong’s earlier works, however, black and white circular pictures of the Yangtze River, and his slightly later architectural pictures of Chinese structures - showed a promising new talent.

Leong’s newest and ongoing series, from which the Paris picture is just one, is simply called “Cities” and follows the seriality of the Horizon series without so scrupulously following the rigorously identical composition. They’re all taken from high vantage points but here content trumps format. Which is probably as good a definition of what I tend to like as any.

Black and White

"Victory Kiss at Times Square ", Nov.4, 2008. Photograph by Anthony Almeida.

Usually when someone comes up to you at an at fair and tries to present their work, it's at the least bad timing and at the worst a presumptuous intrusion. The point of a fair is so clearly for dealers to sell work that it's obviously inappropriate. Sometimes, however, someone comes up to you in a nice way - as did Anthony Almeida - who said he enjoyed my blog and gallery and had one picture he thought I might like.

Well, he'd certainly done his homework because this is absolutely a kind of picture I like. It's visceral, engaging, romantic, historic, well composed, and the 8x10 inch print he gave me was sharp as a tack. I asked for further information and got this reply:

Hi James,

This photo was taken at Times Square, on Election Night, Nov. 4, 2008, during the four second interval of "the kiss". At about eleven o'clock, when the crowd realized that Obama was victorious, a roar, like rolling thunder ensued. Soon after, my vantage point allowed me to capture the jubilation of the crowd on the bleachers in the foreground, as well as the historical event unfolding on the jumbotron. After reflecting on the image of the kiss, which lasted only a few seconds, framed by transient bill boards, I somehow felt it had somehow sealed a far reaching event long in the making.

I've been an active photographer and teacher of photography for almost 40 years. I originally studied with Lisette Model; although much of my work is quite diversified, most of it deals with humanistic themes. "Circles of the Heart"is a thirty five year photo essay which celebrates the beauty and diversity reflected by individuals from all cultures. The new spirit of humanism ushered in by Barack Obama's Presidency is, in a sense, a validation of so much of what my work has been striving to achieve.

He shoots and writes from the heart. You've got to love this guy!