This Week In Photography Books – Itai Doron

by Jonathan Blaustein

It’s late at night, and very dark. The street lamps around you are half-broken. You could be anywhere in Eastern Europe. Let’s say it’s Warsaw.

The rain comes down, cold and painful. It’s half-frozen; not quite snow. The worst. You feel the wet chill deep in your bones, and the slick cobblestones beneath your feet. The tread on your boots is worn, so you have to walk less quickly than you might like. Is this neighborhood dangerous?

Up ahead, a shadow takes form. Just a person, walking in your direction. Nothing to worry about. Two blocks becomes one, and suddenly you can make out some details. It’s a white dude with a nose that’s been broken. He’s big. 6’2″? His jangly leather jacket is tight, so you can see that his muscles are enormous.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Do you feel threatened? Are you afraid of getting mugged? Or is your blood flowing for another reason? Is he cute? Does he look like he wants to hook up? Wait, what’s going on here?

Exactly what I was wondering when I looked at “Fifteen Minutes With You,” a new small hard-cover book by Itai Doron, from Omoplata in Japan. The jacket image, of a muscly white guy taking off his wife-beater while staring threatening daggers at the camera…that’s the gist of it. (Honest to god, I just wrote Ass instead of All as the first word of the next sentence I was about to write. Freudian slip.)

The whole book is a series of thuggish, Eastern European-looking white men, mostly half-naked. They’re taking off items of clothes, holding weapons, or punching, while wearing boxing gloves. What? There’s little overt nudity, just one butt at the end of the book.

But what the f-ck is going on here? The guys look like they want to beat the shit out of the photographer most of the time, but sometimes like they want to make out. As the eroticism is not meant for me, I find it ironic and campy and intelligent. Like images from some 1981 KGB-Christmas-calender-gone-wrong that got its maker dropped in the gulag. Forever.

The pictures are ambiguous and strange. There is no text, no explanation of who these guys are, or where, or why this whole book was published, for starters. Just these weird, thug-porn-meets-MMA-fighter-pseudo-documentary photographs. Only at the end do we get a title sheet, with the names, locations and dates. (Of course it’s Eastern Europe.)

Meager context, but that’s what makes the thing fascinating for me. From the minute I opened the cover, I was constantly trying to figure out the puzzle, while also thinking about all the weird ways that masculinity can be symbologized in 2012. So next time you bump into Miroslav from Bulgaria, keep an open mind.

Bottom Line: Weird, compelling, homo-erotic Polaroids

To Purchase “Fifteen Minutes With You” 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.

 

I Love The Smell Of Sepia Tone In The Morning

Over the past couple of days, both of these services [Flickr and Facebook] have pulled a move straight out of 2010: they launched new versions of their mobile apps with — get this — filters. Filters! These guys have millions of dollars and thousands of employees at their disposal and this is the kind of innovation they’re dicking around with.

Look, I love filters just as much as the next San Franciscan that is currently rocking a beard and drinking a soy latte. Share a photo of a tree in sepia tone and I will totally like the shit out of it. I may even comment — but only if you haven’t overdone the HDR.

via TechCrunch.

TIME Picks the Top 10 Photos of 2012

Ten percent of all of the photographs made in the entire history of photography were made last year — an astounding figure. More than ever before, thanks in part to cell phone technology, the world is engaged with photography and communicating through pictures. Nonetheless, a great photograph will rise above all the others.

via Time-LightBox.

This sounded like a job for Tierney Gearon

She’s the fine-art photographer whose inventiveness, palette, charismatic way with her subjects and extemporaneous picture-making promised to whip up the magic.

(“I can get anybody to do anything, and most of the time they don’t even know they did it,” Gearon says.) O.K., kids, now climb into these colored Plexiglas boxes. (“I have thousands of creative thoughts and ideas sprouting through my head,” she says. “There is a whole city living in my head.”) This wouldn’t be her first time at the circus, as they say.

via Hollywood Heroines: Behind the Scenes – NYTimes.com.

No Amount Of Technology Will Turn A Mediocre Photographer Into A Great One

Nor, in conceptual terms, will it transform a bad idea into a good one. For that you would still need to possess a rare set of creative gifts that are still to do with seeing, with deep looking.

Whatever upheavals it has witnessed, photography has endured. It continues to do so, even as we drown in a sea of uploaded images whose sheer quantity mediates against their meaning. Photography, in more ways than one, thrives on a crisis. The instant endures.

via Art and design | The Guardian.

There’s so many talented people here, it’s a constant source of inspiration

I love NY. I’m in love with this place. I enjoy visiting LA, but I don’t miss it all. I have been there three times this year for jobs. Some of my best friends are in LA. I got tired of living there, it turned out to be a very easy life. I found myself slacking when I was there, I felt like I was getting out of touch. I came to NY and something happened here. I embraced this whole idea of networking in a healthy and respectable way, and loved the sense of community among artists and creatives here.

via SHAUN FENN in Conversation with Photographer JOAO CANZIANI | POP | Photographers on Photography.

There Is Something More Intimate About A Printed Portfolio

Sometimes it is really nice to sit and look at books.  Let’s be honest, images look different printed.  You can really get a sense of how an artist sees his/her images.  While we love the ease of searching for photographers and illustrators online and being able to send creatives links…there is just something more intimate about a printed portfolio.

We like to take our time and talk about each book and about the individual images.  We discuss the pagination, composition, consistency, palette, last night’s date, weekend plans, printing quality…you get the idea.

via art buyers are people too.

Could Selling A Used Book Become Illegal?

“If the Court rules in favor of Wiley, libraries may be unable to lend books, individuals could be restricted from donating items to charities, and businesses and consumers could be prevented from selling a variety of products, from electronics, to books, to jewelry, to used cars.”

via Huffington Post.

Photographer Docs Make The Cut for Sundance and Possibly Oscars

I noticed two photographer documentaries making the cut for the Academy Awards (shortlisted… so not quite there) and Sundance:

Shortlisted for the Academy Awards:

Chasing Ice (Directed and Produced by JEFF ORLOWSKI)
In the spring of 2005, acclaimed environmental photographer James Balog headed to the Arctic on a tricky assignment for National Geographic: to capture images to help tell the story of the Earth’s changing climate. Even with a scientific upbringing, Balog had been a skeptic about climate change. But that first trip north opened his eyes to the biggest story in human history and sparked a challenge within him that would put his career and his very well-being at risk.

Premiering at Sundance:

Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington (Director: Sebastian Junger)
Shortly after the release of his documentary “Restrepo,” the photographer Tim Hetherington was killed in Libya. His colleague Sebastian Junger traces Hetherington’s work across the world’s battlefields to reveal how he transcended the boundaries of image-making to become a luminary in his profession.

Supreme Court decides it’s not a crime to record cops

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday left in place a lower court ruling that prevented Illinois from prosecuting people under its Eavesdropping Act if they recorded police officers. A federal appeals court ruled the statute “likely violates” First Amendment rights.

via Poynter..

Eyeist Looks To Disrupt The Traditional Portfolio Review

Eyeist is the first Web-based photography review service founded by Allegra Wilde, a Consultant to the Photography Industry; Micah and Jesse Diamond, both veteran professional photographers; that launched in October. I’m involved with the company as an advisor (full disclosure) and if you visit the site you will see me quoted and featured in a video they made, but really all I ever did was say “that’s awesome,” they came up with the idea and built it.

I don’t gain anything from sending people there except I hope to correct what I think has become a horrible trend in photography: photo contests. Not all are bad, but I’ve judged a few recently and several things are quite alarming. The amount of people entering is staggering and a significant chunk of entries are mediocre to not-good-at-all compared to the “ringers” who enter and clean house. Which means people are spending lots of money on photography contests and getting nothing out of it. No feedback, just throwing the money into someone’s pocket. And, really what I believe most people are seeking is feedback in some way. The longshot of winning a photo contest offers the possibility that you will be told an image you took is great or worthy of consideration in some way. This seems like an incredible waste of money. If it’s feedback you seek then a portfolio review is your best bet and Eyeist is a fairly inexpensive and very slick piece of software for doing this. Like any disruptive company it’s the software that makes things more efficient and lowers the cost for everyone involved. You and the reviewer don’t have to travel. The review is recorded for reference and the software makes it easy to sequence and talk about the images. Your allotted time is spent reviewing the work not pulling portfolios out and chatting with your reviewer.

While Eyeist is certainly a portfolio review service, I don’t think it will disrupt the traditional portfolio review. I hope it disrupts photo contests, the vast majority of which don’t do much except offer the winners a nice marketing vehicle to reach out to prospects with. It can also serve as a way for people to test the portfolio review waters to see if they are ready for the investment of time and money on a traditional review. I know many people are disgusted with the commercialization of the portfolio review space, but there are still altruistic events that offer exposure and support to photographers where the reviewers and event organizers are equally invested in the process. Like many industries effected by the internet, Eyeist uses software to disrupt and make the review process more efficient and inexpensive. That’s a great development for everyone.

Iconic Photographer Ken Regan Dies of Cancer

He said, “Listen, thank you for sending me the magazine. It looked great. You’re the first photographer on his own to send me photographs. I can’t tell you how nice that was, what a gesture it was on your part. Anytime you wanna come back to the Fillmore East, you call me. Here’s my private number. No matter who the act is, you call me.” For the rest of my career, Bill became my surrogate brother and opened up doors to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, whoever I wanted to photograph.

more at GQ: Interview with Ken Regan on Rock Photography.

Report On Copyright Reform Is Published Then Retracted

Late on Friday November 16th, the Republican Study Committee, which is the caucus for the House Republicans, released a document debunking various myths about copyright law and suggesting key reforms. By Saturday it was taken down after, according to Tech Dirt, Hollywood and the recording industry got wind of it and hit the phones.

It’s worth reading to better understand the position of those who want serious reform. Certainly, since the creation of the internet and all these devices for storing and viewing copyrighted work, some reform is in order. The battle to come is over the amount of protection the creator receives vs the public’s ability to use the work. It’s a fine line and in my opinion too much shift in the public direction will have serious consequences for content creators.

rsc_policy_brief_–_three_myths_about_copyright_law_and_where_to_start_to_fix_it_–_november_16_2012

Full Tech Dirt story is here.