All you have to do is reproduce the effect that a scratch on the lens would have created in a photo, and purist jurors will praise the photographer for not having gone too far with enhancement, Palmisano says with a chuckle.
via Enhanced Reality: Exploring the Boundaries of Photo Editing – ABC News.
Dr. Neal Krawetz of Hacker Factor Solutions specializes in non-classical computer forensics, online profiling and computer security. On Sunday he wrote a blog post titled “Unbelievable” that claims the World Press Photo Award winning image taken by Paul Hansen is significantly altered. Many people questioned the image’s veracity when the winner was announced (as is the case with most PJ contest winners), but most of the negative commentary focussed on the obvious enhancements made to the image and not any allegations of serious alteration.
Dr. Krawetz proof of alteration (read the full post here):
his conclustion:
Hansen’s picture is a composite. This year’s “World Press Photo Award” wasn’t given for a photograph. It was awarded to a digital composite that was significantly reworked. According to the contest site, the World Press Photo organizes the leading international contest in visual journalism. However, the modifications made by Hansen fail to adhere to the acceptable journalism standards used by Reuters, Associated Press, Getty Images, National Press Photographer’s Association, and other media outlets.
I have to say that his evidence is not entirely damning. Taken with a grain of salt it merely points to all the enhancements people were carping about previously and not some new smoking gun. I have heard but cannot verify that the RAW image has not been seen by the jury and I do not know Dr. Krawetz beyond a cursory google search, so I’m sure we’ll find out more if news outlets decide to investigate his claims further or World Press does something (a site called extremetech.com is taking the splicing allegation and running with it). If anything this is a great opportunity for those contests and media outlets featuring photojournalism to check what protocols are in place for when questions arise. And how about some guidelines for what you think is acceptable, so there’s clear rules to follow. Given how far the old masters pushed reality in the darkroom there’s no reason to think the digital darkroom will be any different.
thx for the tip Ellis.
UPDATE 1: Paul Hansen speaking exclusively to news.com.au:
Hansen said the “photograph is certainly not a composite or a fake”.
“I have never had a photograph more thoroughly examined, by four experts and different photo-juries all over the world,” he said.The story in extremetech.com said that Hansen “took a series of photos – and then later, realizing that his most dramatically situated photo was too dark and shadowy, decided to splice a bunch of images together and apply a liberal amount of dodging (brightening) to the shadowy regions”.
But Hansen said he had done nothing of the sort. Here’s what he told us:
“In the post-process toning and balancing of the uneven light in the alleyway, I developed the raw file with different density to use the natural light instead of dodging and burning. In effect to recreate what the eye sees and get a larger dynamic range.
“To put it simply, it’s the same file – developed over itself – the same thing you did with negatives when you scanned them.”
UPDATE 2: According to Huffington Post UK, World Press is investigating:
“However, in order to curtail further speculation – and with full cooperation by Paul Hansen – we have asked two independent experts to carry out a forensic investigation of the image file. The results will be announced as soon as they become available.”
UPDATE 3: World Press Photo has independent forensics experts review the image and they concluded that “we find no evidence of significant photo manipulation or compositing. Furthermore, the analysis purporting photo manipulation is deeply flawed” and “I can indeed see that there has been a fair amount of post-production, in the sense that some areas have been made lighter and others darker. But regarding the positions of each pixel, all of them are exactly in the same place in the JPEG (the prizewinning image) as they are in the RAW file. I would therefore rule out any question of a composite image.”
UPDATE 4: Dr. Neal Krawetz of Hacker Factor Solutions claims vindication after his post goes viral:
While writing this blog entry, the photographer made a statement. He explained how he made the picture. Specifically, he is quoted as saying:
“In the post-process toning and balancing of the uneven light in the alleyway, I developed the raw file with different density to use the natural light instead of dodging and burning. In effect to recreate what the eye sees and get a larger dynamic range.
“To put it simply, it’s the same file – developed over itself – the same thing you did with negatives when you scanned them.”
This is exactly what I have been saying. It is a composite. It is more than a simple color adjustment or burning. He made it using variations of the same picture. This even appeared in the metadata as multiple as multiple records from Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 7.1. I did add that I could not rule out separate pictures. However, I definitely detected the layers and edits.
At minimum, Hansen appears to have combined multiple versions of the same photo with different intensity mappings in order to emphasize harsh brutality in 2012 and grief in 2013. But that’s just the minimum. I still cannot rule out splicing between similar images. (This doesn’t mean it happened, it just means that I cannot rule it out with the given data.)
and
Frankly, it doesn’t surprise me that World Press Photo would award a manually altered picture their highest honor. World Press Photo claims to feature the best in photo journalism and claims to strive for ethical integrity. But I’m just not seeing it. World Press Photo and I seem to have differing opinions regarding what is ethical and what is acceptable manipulation. And they can run their contest however they want.
Last week Adobe announced a sudden shift to subscription only on future releases of Photoshop. This seems inevitable as the whole software industry has moved away from major releases in favor of incremental improvements. An article in Mashable has Adobe explaining the reasoning behind the move from perpetual licensing to subscription:
With the traditional perpetual model, product updates had to happen on a certain cycle. If the Photoshop team wanted to push out a new feature or update, it had to stay on the same cadence as the updates for other apps in the suite. The product life cycle was roughly 18 months, which meant that it would take at least that long for new features to make their way to the final product.
That’s fine for some applications but it meant that Adobe couldn’t be on the cutting-edge with its support for the latest web standards and technologies. To fill in the gaps, Adobe introduced its Edge tools and services as as a way of giving users access to tools developed on a more agile basis.
What Adobe found with its Edge apps was that customers really liked getting new features in their apps more quickly. Adobe could roll out the updates to users automatically and add support for new standards and features outside of the confines of a standard product cycle.
With Adobe CS6, the company started a dual-track for its development, focusing on a core set of features at launch for the product and then adding subscriber-only features for Creative Cloud members. Some of those features — including support for high-resolution displays such as the MacBook Pro with Retina — were rolled out to all users, but the team was basically on a dual-path.
That’s not sustainable and so, moving forward, Adobe CC products will continue to see enhancements and updates throughout the year. Major releases will likely still have some general cadence but the product teams will no longer need to wait to release new features for an app.
The issue for photographers as explained in this photographyreview.com article and comments is the $20 a month you must pay to access your photoshop files. If you don’t pay, your files are “digital trash.”
At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 14,000 people and was worth $28 billion. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people.
via Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class – Salon.com.
Have you ever been to Walmart? It’s a fair question. If you live in a major American city, or elsewhere in the world, you might not have had the experience. (Spoiler alert: you’re not missing much.)
I avoid Walmart whenever possible. Sometimes, though, I have no choice. Here in the sticks, if you need something specific, immediately, you might have to succumb to the unctuous undertow. I try to find an alternative if I can, because I’m so tired of being “Walmarted.” Yes, my wife and I use the noun as a verb.
To be “Walmarted” means to go into the store looking for a particular, inexpensive item which, invariably, they’re out of. Then, as you try to navigate the chunky aisles, in which things are sometimes moved around to confuse, you end up grabbing other goods; stuffing your basket with unnecessary trinkets made in China. Finally, you find yourself in a long, slow queue, wasting time. After five minutes of waiting, you realize you aren’t actually buying the thing you came in for. Fed up, you put down your basket, and walk out of the store.
Classy.
If I were asked, by some time-traveling Americans from the future, to codify the signs of our collective decline, Walmart would be a pretty good place to start. It has its defenders, who focus on its ability to deliver low-cost goods, but the Arkansas-based mega-conglomerate has many sins for which to repent. Chief among them, the corporation has done much to hollow out America’s once-thriving Middle-Class. (Look here, and let me distract you with super-cheap garbage that will break in a few weeks time, while I run your Mom-and-Pop establishments out of business.)
Yes, Walmart would be my answer, if queried by these imaginary Americans from the future. What if, however, they asked me to show them what America looked like in the past? Perhaps they were curious about depictions of the United States the last time we were mired in a period of deep stagnation?
“You want a sense of what things were like during the Great Depression, future people? That’s easy,” I’d say. “No worries. Here’s a copy of the 75th Anniversary edition of ‘American Photographs,’ by Walker Evans, recently re-issued by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “Have a seat, take a look,” I’d say. “By the way, do you guys have flying cars yet? Because that would be righteous, future dudes.”
This book needs no actual introduction, so I fabricated one, as I’m wont to do. It’s just that good. Clinical, poetic, formal, intelligent, political photographs line up for your perusal. All you have to do is turn the page, and stare.
While I rarely mention price, this book is not expensive, so it belongs in any good collection. (Hint, hint. Buy it.) It begs repeated viewing, as the details are so compelling. Even photos you’ve seen before feel fresh and modern, like the “Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer Wife,” from 1936. Another, “Interior Detail, West Virginia Coal Miner’s House,” from 1935, is another I’d seen before. This time, though, the humor of the situation jumped out at me. Who on Earth would use those cheesy adverts to decorate a living room? This guy, apparently.
Structurally, the book is broken down into two sections. The first deals with people and signage, predominantly, and the latter focuses on American Architecture. Both are stellar, and show Mr. Evans’ range. There is a sequence of structures in Part 2, a few ramshackle churches, interspersed with a Greek-Style stone facade, that indubitably influenced the Becher style, decades later. Brilliant.
Finally, I must give a shout out to the incredibly-well-written and somehow timely essay by Lincoln Kirstein, which follows the plates. (From the original publication in 1938.) It’s the rare bit of intellectual prose that holds one’s attention with its severe intelligence, and I found myself shocked by the contemporary relevance. (“A batch of younger photographers, usually their dark-room assistants, is always just around the corner, ready to do the new jobs for less cash. Just as with automobiles, the style-turnover is rapid and the old dogs can’t seem to learn new tricks.”)
Two closing statements, by the curator Sarah Hermanson Meister, give a clue as to how much work goes into re-producing a book like this. She also offers us an inside look at how seriously those MoMA folks take their jobs. Obsession and attention to detail are a given, I suppose.
Those of you who pay attention might just have realized that I foreshadowed this review in last week’s column. I, too, take my work seriously, even if that only means keeping it fresh from time to time. This book, by a master, as promised, is one to own. No questions asked.
Bottom Line: A re-issued masterpiece. Buy it.
To Purchase “American Photographs” Visit Photo-Eye
Full Disclosure: Books are provided by Photo-Eye in exchange for links back for purchase.
Books are found in the bookstore and submissions are not accepted.
We emailed Art Buyers and Art Producers around the world asking them to submit names of established photographers who were keeping it fresh and up-and-comers who they are keeping their eye on. If you are an Art Buyer/Producer or an Art Director at an agency and want to submit a photographer anonymously for this column email: Suzanne.sease@verizon.net
Anonymous Art Producer: I nominate Mark Lund
How many years have you been in business?
I’ve been shooting professionally for 15 years. I started in San Francisco shooting home brands like Pottery Barn and Design Within Reach then moved to New York expanding on the “home” idea shooting family situations for editorial and advertising clients. I’ve always been interested in the idea of “americana” and “home” and the evolving meanings we give those concepts. Over the years it’s given me the opportunity to shoot for a lot of the big brands in the U.S. whose advertising by default represent american culture. As a culture we’ve moved on from Norman Rockwell americana but we still feel connected to that world. Like it or not, electronics and gadgets are a big part of most peoples lives now – our society is obsessed with electronic devices like the iPhone. I love finding visual ways to redefine contemporary americana – creating a visual “mash-up” where Norman Rockwell meets the Jetsons.
Are you self-taught or photography school taught?
At University of Wisconsin-Madison I majored in both engineering and fine art but strangely never took any photography classes. In hindsight all of the math and science fed the technical side of photo while classical drawing, painting and printmaking fed the creative.
As a teenager I always had a camera in my hand. My family moved to a new house when I was starting high school and I set up a darkroom in the basement and read a bunch of how-to photo books to teach myself how to print. Honestly, in the beginning I was mostly just interested in taking pictures of pretty girls but then I realized if I could master color printing I could make fake-IDs for myself and my friends. My mom couldn’t figure out why I was suddenly spending so many hours in my darkroom. I made a couple lame fake IDs before she busted me, but through the process I became pretty good at color printmaking. The next summer I used my new skills to get a job at a one-hour print lab where I worked for a couple years, then in college I got a part-time job at the local pro photo shop where I got to tinker with all of the newest camera technology and also met professional photographers.
My sophomore year a photographer came into the store looking for an assistant to work with him shooting a fashion catalog for Harley Davidson. It was a three-week job with minimal pay and I was a full-time student and it was right before final exams but it meant getting to work on a fashion shoot in California. Of course I leapt at the opportunity. We shot up and down Highway One at a bunch of amazing locations and I got to make film runs to the lab on a brand new Harley – the whole experience had me hooked.
Who was your greatest influence that inspired you to get into this business?
I’ve always been looking at what other photographers and directors are doing in both the fine art and the commercial worlds. I just finished three days of judging for the Society of Publication Designers’ 2013 Magazine of the Year awards where I got to review some amazing work. It was a fascinating experience looking at the micro and macro world of brand and photography.
I assisted a few different photographers in San Francisco when I was first out of school in the 90s and picked up different techniques and ideas from each. Shaun Sullivan taught me a ton about lighting. He had an easy demeanor and infinite patience and made really complex lighting look really easy. Stan Musilek taught me a lot about the business side of photography – managing a big crew and juggling a lot of projects at once.
How do you find your inspiration to be so fresh, push the envelope, stay true to yourself so that creative folks are noticing you and hiring you?
I’m lucky I get to shoot a lot of different types of work. Half of my work is studio tabletop and food and the other half is environmental lifestyle shot on location. In smaller markets there are a lot of photographer’s who work this way out of necessity but it’s pretty unusual for New York. The industry demands specialization and once clients get to know you as one type of photographer they are reluctant to see you in any other way. The challenge for visual artists is that once you’ve been pegged, you’re stuck. A photographer who shoots jewelry and just jewelry will inevitably get really good at shooting jewelry. He’s going to dial in his lighting and master composition and figure out all of the tricks for making amazing jewelry pictures. But if that’s all he does year in and year out, same thing every day, he’s going to get set in his ways and it will become more and more difficult to see things in a “different light”. It’s a dilemma faced by almost all visual artists.
I’m constantly shooting and I find that the two styles inform each other and keep me fresh. The lighting I use shooting a food story one day might give me an idea the next day for how to light a living room full of people. Photographing kids running around a backyard in Malibu with gorgeous morning light streaming through the trees can plant a seed for me to try a different approach lighting washers and dryers on a studio set the following week.
I still have my own “look” for all of the work I shoot which definitely helps me land jobs where often there’s a range of visual content needed to illustrate one story or one ad.
And of course I shoot a ton of personal work. I have a couple on-going projects that a lot of creatives tell me they are fans of – all of this helps to keep me on the radar.
Do you find that some creatives love your work but the client holds you back?
A lot of my work involves some complicated productions – big set builds or location scouting for specific room styles in homes and then huge talent castings, etc. Working collaboratively with clients / art directors / photo editors keeping a bunch of plates in the air can be challenging. I really enjoy all of the aspects of these productions and if we get into areas that are new to a client I’m always happy to help buyer educate client as needed.
On set we always design our productions to run efficiently, but there’s often still an urge on the client side to want more and more content, especially with kids. I’m a parent with two kids of my own and am often complimented on the great rapport I have with kids on-set. Realistic expectations for a bit of time required to get a young kid warmed up on set are important and managing client expectations by finding the right balance is key to making great images.
What are you doing to get your vision out to the buying audience?
I believe in momentum so I’m always shooting – it’s essential to staying relevant. I shoot a couple of my own projects every month that I share with clients and a few times each year I’ll do a reach-out via email but I always keep it personal.
My agency Bernstein & Andriulli has developed some great themed look books that they send out and they also do a big printed journal once or twice a year which they mail to thousands of industry creatives. We also do LeBook every year in New York and L.A.
What is your advice for those who are showing what they think the buyers want to see?
I think most art buyers are pretty well informed so are looking for something new and different. If you look to other media – what are trends in the art world, what are visual trends on primetime TV or in other popular programming, what is big in movies or in other genres of photography. If you can wrap your head around a new aesthetic, process it and then figure out a personal way to express it in your own work – that’s going to resonate with everyone who sees your work.
Are you shooting for yourself and creating new work to keep your artistic talent true to you?
For about a year and a half I’ve been working on a project about kids and their living room forts. It started as a personal project but evolved into a bigger concept where people started sending in pictures of their own kids’ living room forts. The website is called livingroomfort.com.
I had been shooting exquisitely designed interiors for years – typically these spaces are shown with everything in the room perfectly placed. I always thought it would be great to let a kid go wild building up a fort in the room and shoot it in context. It just seemed refreshing to show pictures of these decorator designed interiors with a hot mess of kid stuff piled up in the middle of the room.
I shot most of them with just one assistant or even just solo. We typically arranged something with the parents, often when the folks were off at work and the kids were home with a nanny. We would walk in with our camera and start a dialogue with the kids about forts and then do just one thing to the room – maybe flip their parents fancy sofa on it’s side and dump the pillows on the ground. The kids would sort of look at us in disbelief for a second but then quickly get on board and start dragging all of their stuff out of their room and piling it up in the fort. I could just suggest something like “you probably are going to need books to read in your fort, right?” and they would get a gleam in their eye and then make like 12 trips back and forth from their room with every one of their favorite books stacked in their arms. The same would go for stuffed animals, snacks, whatever. Depending on the age of the kids we helped them with something tricky like tying a knot in a curtain, but the older kids would run with it and do it entirely on their own.
Every kid loves this kind of thing – it’s like it’s programmed into their genetic makeup. A self-made fort is like the ultimate expression of “home” for a kid.
They rig together some kind of private space out of blankets or couch cushions or whatever and surround themselves with all of their most precious things, then hunker down and fantasize about being an astronaut or a truck driver or something. We would lock a camera down and just shoot the chaos, usually choosing something in the middle as a final image, since the end result was always way over the top. We even turned a few of them into stop motion videos to show the process. I think some of the families thought I was a bit crazy but they went along with it. The kids always had a blast and would beg their parents to let them keep it up forever.
We’ve been in discussion with a couple organizations about doing a gallery event with big prints of the final series, maybe even with a big kid fort in the middle of the room. We’ll see what comes but with the right kid sponsor we would love to turn it into a charity event.
How often are you shooting new work?
I’m a photographer. I shoot every day of my life.
Mark’s bio and contact:
Mark Lund’s formally composed modern interiors are regularly featured in home lifestyle stories for Real Simple, Glamour, and InStyle. With a knack for problem solving that has evolved from his education in structural engineering and fine art, he continues to create compelling images for clients. Mark’s website can be viewed at www.lundphoto.com.
Mark is also the director of photography for Homeroom Studio in New York, leading a staff of associate photographers and producers that take pride in approaching each new project with efficiency and professionalism. Please visit www.homeroomstudio.com for more information.
Mark lives in New York with his wife and daughter.
Mark Lund Photography.
http://www.lundphoto.com
mark@lundphoto.com
Represented by Edward Buerger at Bernstein & Andriulli
http://www.ba-reps.com
edwardb@ba-reps.com
212.682.1490
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s, after founding the art buying department at The Martin Agency then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies. She has a new Twitter fed with helpful marketing information. Follow her@SuzanneSease.
There’s always someone better than you. Unless you’re Lebron James or Warren Buffett, you wake up each morning knowing you’re not the best at what you do. For most of us, that’s not a tragedy. It’s just the way things are.
I’ve always believed I had what it takes to get to the top of my profession. Deep down, I felt I could be among the very best artists in the world. While I was still in my 20’s, an influential curator at the Brooklyn Museum told me she thought I had the talent and intelligence to be as good as Andy Warhol, if I played my cards right. In hindsight, that was really bad advice.
With my innate drive, I took her advice to heart. Work hard enough, or push the right buttons in my head, and I could be an Art Star. For years, though, one mistake or another would hold me back. I’ve made some good work over the last fifteen years, and thankfully received some nice accolades, but no one would confuse me with Jeff Wall, or Robert Adams, or (insert your favorite photographer here.)
My failure to make it to the top of the mountain by the time I was (almost) 40 burned deep in my psyche, creating a sense of insecurity that I strove to overcome. I’ll get there, I’ll get there, the voice said. (Sometimes.) Other times, it said I was a pile of sh-t for not getting there already. Never, though, did the voice question whether the goal itself was the problem.
Back in March, I confronted the limits of my abilities. I came face to face with genius, and found myself wanting. At first, the psychic pain was immense. Slowly, though, it got better, and then the liberation was grand. Where, you ask? Who reduced me to mental rubble? Good question.
The Mike Kelley retrospective at the newly re-opened Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam was an ode to genius and misery. It was among the most impressive art exhibitions I’ve ever seen; certainly the one that most impacted me, in the moment. I saw it twice, on consecutive afternoons. The first time, I came straight from hanging out with the Rembrandts, Frans Hals, and Vermeers in the not-yet-then-totally-re-opened Rijksmuseum. (No wonder my self-esteem took a hit.)
It’s hard to explain what the Kelley exhibition was like, simply because the scope, scale and breadth of his work created such an overwhelming experience. The artist made objects in every medium imaginable: paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, tapestries, posters, photographs, videos, animation, appropriations, sound pieces and music. There was, seemingly, nothing he couldn’t do.
That I had heard almost nothing about him before entering the show probably had something to do with the power of its impact. (And is also something I’m embarrassed to admit.) One minute, I didn’t know who this guy was, and the next, I was put firmly in my place. I’ve written here that I like to see photography contextualized alongside other media, but never did I imagine one artist could do it so well, by himself. (Of course, by the end of his career, he had an army of assistants, so I’m not sure if one person really could.)
On my first visit, my friend Hugo and I arrived at the museum shortly before it closed. By the time we sprinted through the permanent collection, we arrived at the special exhibition space minutes before it shut. The guards tried to shoo us away before we even made it down the escalator, but Hugo has the type of confidence that knows how to breeze past objections.
My head spun in every direction, trying to take it in, as I didn’t know at the time I’d be able to return the next day. Manic, I thought. This guy was manic. And crazy. The amount of output was intimidating, like a bad haircut from a barber with sharp razors, but so was the content. Think R. Crumb tossed with Baldessari, mashed up with Quentin Tarantino, with a touch of Francis Bacon thrown in. Then add some steroids, and a lot of fecal matter. Got it?
We sprinted around the space, just trying to put our eyes over everything. There was no possibility to absorb information, other than the overall subtext. This was a tortured guy, with voices in his head I’d wish on no one. When we left, fifteen minutes later, Hugo pulled out his Blackberry for a little research. Mr. Kelley had committed suicide last year; slashed his wrists in the bathtub as his major career retrospective approached.
I was not surprised.
The museum was kind enough to let me back in to see the show the next day, as I was now dying to revisit the work, knowing how the story ended. Initially, I could only think, “I’ll never be this good. It would have happened by now. Face it. I suck.” As a photographer, my basic attempts to play with sculpture and drawing over the last couple of years felt revolutionary to me. But seeing this exhibition, I went to a dark place, lashing myself for foolishly thinking I matched up.
Day two, though, allowed me to read deeper into the work. Among the photographic projects was a series of portraits of stuffed animal sculptures that were cute and fluffy. Mixed in was a self-portrait of the artist, with slicked back hair and some very bad acne. He looked as though he wanted to look tough, but was really just a sensitive, Mid-Western guy that didn’t stand a chance in cutthroat LA. He was raised in Motown, among the makers of proud, massive cars and funky, earnest music. Hollywood didn’t seem like the best of landing spots.
Another photo project that jumped out was a diptych of black and white gelatin silver prints. A man, naked, had poop running out of his butt, and a stuffed animal was below him, eating it. Next to him, a naked woman straddled another stuffed animal, who was busy pleasuring her nether regions. Gross, trippy, absurd, offensive, you name it. Other telling works: a tapestry that claimed the artist to be a proud pants sh-tter, or the self-portrait drawings with his face melting off.
Strangely, a third photo project was just really damn good, and surprisingly straight. It was called “Photo Show Portrays the Familiar,” from 2001. Twenty-six gelatin silver prints were matted and framed, conservatively. The pictures, well-executed, could have been on the wall of any traditional gallery, and none would question it. An abandoned house, a ship wake in a river, a cul-de-sac with winter trees, a brick tower smokestack, Detroit sky scrapers, and lots of sculptures in museums. Here, amongst the chaos, it was downright shocking, in its quiet simplicity.
Up a separate escalator, there was a large gallery filled with video installations. (One had to pass the swastika art and shrieking digital-cartoon-pieces just to gain entry.) The noise was head-ache-inducing; the visual stimuli overwhelming. Devils and angels were everywhere, screens flickered, and anyone with any sense would want out of that room as soon as possible. The work was recent, and seemed like a massive cry for help. (Though the symbology was a bit simplistic.)
Walking through to the next room, it was clear the end was near. The artist’s last bit of work was massively slick and commercial. It was more in the “I have 50 assistants and someone else is making the work for me now” style. All the objects were extremely compelling, but the DIY, dark desperation was missing. An “Odalisque,” from 2010, showed a giant, black, styrofoam chess piece, lying in state, like a corpse with a wig on an autopsy table. One could feel his psyche about to break.
As you’ll know by now, if you read my articles on a regular basis, I love to read directly into objects and images, and see what they have to say. The end of the Mike Kelley exhibition was not ambiguous, and I’m sure I’m not the only one to get the message.
The artist was both blue-collar in his work ethic, and troubled by the visions inside his head. Coming from a working-class background, and city known for fashioning steel, one could see how the valiant effort to draw, sculpt, paint and photograph the ideas out of his head worked well, for a while. Once global capitalism got a hold of him, though, the prices went up, the ass-kissing got more time-consuming, the process of making things was removed from his hands, and the pressure to produce more and more was greater than ever, it was all too much for Mr. Kelley.
That’s what the show said to me, anyway.
Which is why its impact was so tremendous. Before I got to Amsterdam, I would have given anything to be that good. To be that famous, and wealthy. To be the best. I thought myself the tortured genius too. Wrongly, it turns out.
I’m a guy with an amazing family, who gets to live in one of the coolest places on Earth. I have a lot of good friends, and take pleasure out of, and am (mostly) respected for my work. There are many, many artists out there better than I am. For once, I’m OK with that. If the alternative is lonely suicide, or the relentless and humiliating hustle of the urban, moneyed world, I’ll pass.
Maybe in thirty years, if I keep growing, I’ll have a body of work worth talking about. Maybe not. But I try to no longer judge myself by other people’s success, nor do I measure my own by how many people tell me I’m special. As long as my wife and kids think I’m great, I’m doing all right.
I wish Mr. Kelley could have found some middle ground, some peace, to enjoy the fruits of his labor. But then he wouldn’t have been him. That wasn’t his path, obviously. He was a titan of the art world, a chronicler of the murky-yet-almost-beautiful misery of the human condition, and the Stedelijk retrospective was proof of that.
The exhibition has closed by now, so I can’t send you storming the doors to see for yourself. Fortunately, it’s meant to travel to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, MoMA PS1 in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. I could not recommend more highly that you go, if you have the chance. It might not change your life, as it has mine, but it will inevitably give you something to think about. I promise.
I’ve got a couple of young assistants in my studio, and I say look, you’re future is very vibrant…a lot of people are saying doomsday stuff right now, but I think the future is vibrant, it’s just going to be very different from mine. Talk about multitasking! They have to be good on the web, they are going to have to know video, audio, all that stuff. They’ll have to be kind of their own multifaceted entertainment-information package. They are going to have to bring lots of skills to the party. We learned how to do one thing well, and that was how to tell a good story with a camera in our hands.
–Joe McNally
Print designer Sabrina Chun of San Francisco has raised $66,000 for a kickstarter campaign (here) where she takes photographs off the web, changes them to black and white and prints them on 80lb card stock with a matte finish. When the campaign was published on the autoblog in early April someone noticed the Shelby image comes from well known car photographer Bruno Ratensperger (autoblog here). The kickstarter campaign was taken down after someone filed a copyright dispute, but it’s back and the Shelby image has been modified a bit (probably found another one that doesn’t belong to a working photographer).
Is this what the judges envisioned when they overturned the case against Richard Prince? People everywhere suddenly have photographs at their disposal as raw material for their artwork. A few modifications later and the meaning is changed! Ok, I’m being a bit facetious here, because I don’t believe that’s actually the case. Clearly Sabrina has not changed the meaning and would lose a lawsuit brought against her. It’s too bad so many people think the opposite including kickstarter.
Original image:
Original kickstarter image:
Modified kickstarter image:
Need a photo of some wallspace for your prints? No problem here’s one:
thanks for the tip Jake.
Tuesday: 5.7.13These films that MediaStorm created for the ICP Infinity Awards this year are simply fantastic. Do yourself a favor and take some time today or this week to watch and appreciate the emotion and power of photography in the world.
Since 1985, the International Center of Photography has recognized outstanding achievements in photography with its prestigious Infinity Awards. The awards ceremony is also ICP’s primary fundraising benefit, with its revenues assisting the center’s various programs.
ICP commissioned MediaStorm to create a short film about each of the recipients to screen at the awards ceremony and to later remain online. The films serve as an introduction of the recipients to the audience as well as a showcase of their work, highlighting the motivations for honoring them with Infinity Awards.
After 25 years, the enthusiasm and excitement are still palpable when Rosenheim discusses his latest exhibition, and the future of the field. “I think we’re going to continue to have breakthroughs and new bodies of work,” he says. “I think there are photographers who are right before our eyes who we don’t even know about yet.”
— Jeff L. Rosenheim, curator of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
via photographmag.com.