500 submissions edited down to the final 20 for this new print publication of contemporary photographers. See the finalists (here).

Worth a visit becuase the work is outstanding.

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18 Comments

  1. @1

    Just click the link, then on any one of the names of the people who “made it.”

    Don’t bother though, just imagine that the old guard hates digital, and only promotes things shot on film, or look like they were shot on film and you might get a general idea.

    Yes Mr. Editor, I think you are one of them.

  2. This is possibly the worst collection of photos I have ever seen.

  3. Is that *really* necessary? So, you won’t be buying a book then? Care to explain why?

  4. Almost all of this work has a nostalgic feel. A general feeling of remembrance and longing. I wonder if this kind of work, which seems very prevalent right now, is a direct reflection of our feeling as a society (I’m not thinking of any particular geographical location BTW).

    I know it sounds like I reverting back to art school but I wonder if this attempt at nostalgia is a need to escape back to a time or instance when things were better. Because right now things could be better. But not in the desperate escapism during/after WWII. That was more high glamour Hollywood and Dali. This is more wistful and youth centered.

    I feel kinda stuck because young and wistful just isn’t my bag o’ tea. I’ve always been more of a total escapist or realist depending on the hour. This sort of work is in between. It leaves me feeling not happy but not sad and very vague, which may very well be the point.

    I just wish there were a bit more variety in the awarded and published imagery. There’s room for more than just a few styles. Maybe I’ll get into publishing. Maybe I’ve just had tooo much coffee.

    Cheers,
    Michelle

  5. Hmm…interesting. Seriously, I don’t know how anyone would be able to select only 20 contemporary photographers. I thought a lot of the work is interesting, but no more so than the work of about 2000 other photographers. My photography “favorites” in my FireFox bookmarks easily numbers in the thousands (and I’ve just kind of stopped bookmarking sites because it’s out of control).

    I don’t know, but I think it’s just another book to sell to photographers who can put it with all of their other contemporary photography books. Maybe I’ll buy, though I have too many contemporary photography books that resemble each other already.

    Oh well, to each his own…

  6. I think the “don’t bother” was possibly is little harsh in my first comment. I think people should bother to form their own opinions on anything that interests them.

    I guess I was just put off by the fact that the term “contemporary” seems to have been hijacked and twisted by a certain set of people in the photographic world. Instead of cutting edge, “contemporary” appears to be used for those photographers that are willing to ape (pun intended) a minimalist style that appears to appeal to some editors, curators and critics, yet does not appear to require much technical or conceptual thinking. Nor does this style appear to appeal to people who I see as cutting edge photographers themselves.

    The big difference now is that the big media outlets no longer have the monopoly on “contemporary”. Instead of dissing someone else’s choice, I can work to promote my sense of what is “contemporary” instead of re-enforcing the old guard by contributing page views to those sites that have hijacked “contemporary”.

    My own anti-film bias was a little off, since I find the work at chromogenic.net much more contemporary then the linked article, and it’s 100% film.

  7. Well, Rob. I usually find it possible to see merit even in work I don’t especially like or find interesting, but this lot – with a few exceptions – seems like a brazen catwalk strut of the emperor’s new clothes. It is mostly so slight, banale and cliched, it could have been taken by the same 2nd yr student photographer.

    If it is a survey of contemporary photography, it’s an oddly sullen, cramped and homogenous view. There is much better and more varied work about than this, as your own recent Flickr showreel proves.

    I even wondered whether you were being mischievously ironic describing them as ‘outstanding’. Just to make sure I looked at quite a lot of them twice, and the more I looked the (even) less there was.

    Then when I came across this masterpiece of gratuitous pretence accompanying some unspeakably trite snapshots…

    ‘My investigation, iconoclastic and sacrilegious, scrutinizes the “surrealizing” incongruity of darkrooms and throws the spotlight on the bric-à-brac of plumbing and electricity, the ventilation-system engines, the posted iconography, the weirdness of “planets” envisioned at the bottom of chemical trays, the splattering of silver salts, the wear of equipment and the countdown of timers that defies the disappearance of the panchromatic spectre.’

    … I’m afraid I lost my temper and manners. My apologies. But anyone who feels the need to write b*ll*cks like that needs a slap.

  8. why is all “new” photography the same photos that were made 30 years ago (or more)? I had high hopes for this publication when it came out. but it seems that the creators (photo students themselves?) gave into mostly derivative works that are totally boring and hackneyed to death.
    all of it (generally based on the websites… not knowing what has actually been selected, this may be unfair) is the same regurgitated photos we’ve all seen over and over and over and over and over and over. i will say that it isn’t bad work by any means. is it just taste on my part? am i just not down with the current wave of photography? i doubt it that much, but it’s possible. i suppose i am just looking for work that is interesting or fresh.
    ps those have to be a collection of some of the worst websites ever. why did i go to all of them?
    pps maybe i’m in a grumpy mood

  9. and just now read the previous post to mine…
    tony, not that i disagree with you at all, but you do realize that this photo: http://www.alixetgagne.com/client/campeau/pages/Darkroom/galerie/pages/CRW_1244.htm
    was the cover of Aperture a couple issues ago…. i wasn’t a huge fan of the work in the magazine. it was interesting to see as a lover of the darkroom (oh right, another gripe of the selection… no black and white???), but when i read what you quoted, i instantly hated it. and it’s taken with a digital camera as well?
    yikes

  10. Outstanding?

    Is this some sort of APE joke?

    Are these the sorts of images that rise to the top?

    I see a clear disconnect between what I would call better than good photography and these images (that I find less than better than good).

    Based on the previous comments, I’m not the only one who feels that way.

    I find these images as a group empty, void of passion, drama, beauty, unique ugliness, or even abstract curiosity.

    In fact the only thing I find of interest about the images as a group is the consistency with which they maintain this void of elements I search for in a top caliber photograph.

  11. just to offer something of a countepoint, i looked through every website aswell. not everything was to my taste (why should it be?) – but i really enjoyed the work of mark mcknight, raimond wouda, nicholas haggard and yann orhan. so there.

  12. I looked at some of them and liked some of them (including Yann Orhan and Raimond Wouda, though I read it as Raimonda Woud and assumed he was a she) and remembered all the times I’ve heard that photographers can’t edit their work and are their own worst enemies, when I looked at the others.
    But yes, a lot of the selection did have a definite look, it was a bit monotonous, it did scream Art Photography. This happens. It’s how you can tell what decade you’re in. If you can manage not to imitate the trend you’re either out in the cold ploughing your lonely furrow or just possibly onto a winner.

  13. I have to agree with Tony. What an unispiring and pretentious collection of images, with very little artifice.

  14. the comment by Amy about dating art just came up for me this weekend at the met. the painting by bridget riley is what made me think of it. you see it and the first thing you think is the op/art dated paintings rather than the canvas (that was one of a few example we came across). it is probably easier to have that happen with photography, but why let it happen?

  15. Love the splash page shot of the gingers in Sunset Park. Fantastic.

  16. without even looking at the selection my impression is that one of the curators, Shane, is very young.

    there are other projects on the web maintained by similarly youngish however heavily committed artists so this speaks to a group and not to an individual:

    what do you expect?

    It takes a long time of making work and looking at work to develop a sense of what is good that is educated. What I like today is very different from when I was starting out, and that is as it should be.

    the problem if you can call it that, is that the gatekeeping function is now split open, essentially there is no gatekeeping anymore. this is good and bad, but obviously bad at times.

    it wouldn’t matter much except that the general pace in photography has accelerated and we expect good work to come from someone directly out of a BFA. I don’t know that we would expect that from a writer, for example. there is maturity and then there is mastery, and it just takes a long time, with a few meteoric exceptions allowed.


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