You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2010.
This time last year, I talked about the torture of Iraqis by the UK Army. The issue at hand then was specifically the death of Baha Mousa.
As part of court proceedings against the British Army into Mousa’s death, hundreds of films from the British interrogation centre in Basra have been released.
The Guardian has this report. [Warning: Content may be disturbing to some viewers.]
Only last week, I also noted the late to surface reports of US complicity in Iraqi upon Iraqi torture in Samarra.
It seems now we are starting to “see” a more varied picture of violence in Iraq. This is not the images of violence through the lenses of embedded journalists or through the sights of military aircraft, but images/footage of bullying; personalised verbal and physical abuse of men behind closed doors.
Without doubt, the most indelible images of the Iraq war are those from Abu Ghraib; they are the images the world remembers, will always remember.
Likewise, these videos of interrogation and of the uninhibited darker side of standard operations are key to understanding the facts of the Iraq War.
Also read: British troops use torture – even if it is by another name
Sergei Vasiliev‘s photographs of Russian Criminal Tattoos are part of a three part encyclopaedia/archive on the subject. Vasiliev photographed between 1989 and 1993 in prisons and reform settlements across Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Perm and St. Petersburg.
Vasiliev’s portraits are accompanied by over 3,000 tattoo drawings made by Danzig Baldaev during his time as a prison guard between 1948 and 1986. Baldaev had supported of the KGB who used his illustrations to develop intelligence on the convict class.
Three volumes of the encyclopaedia have since been published by FUEL Designs:
” [The documentation of] Tattoos were Baldaev‘s gateway into a secret world in which he acted as ethnographer, recording the rituals of a closed society. The icons and tribal languages he documented are artful, distasteful, sexually explicit and provocative, reflecting as they do the lives and traditions of convicts.”
“The accompanying photographs by Sergei Vasiliev act as an important counterpart to Baldaev’s drawings, providing photographic evidence of their authenticity. […] In these images the nameless bodies of criminals act as both a text and mirror, reflecting and preserving the ever-changing folklore of the Russian criminal underworld.”
Baldaev’s drawings and Vasiliev’s portraits are currently being exhibited at 4 Wilkes Street, London E1 6QF (30 October to 28 November 2010).
The Guardian has this review of the book/exhibition. More about Baldaev in particular at Design Observer.
RESOURCES
Image gallery.
From FUEL Publishing are three video shorts [1], [2], [3] of the drawings and photographs.
More can be found on Vasiliev‘s work at Michael Hoppen Gallery, Saatchi online (images) and the PhotoEye book review.
Found via Eight:48.com
PREVIOUSLY ON PRISON PHOTOGRAPHY
I’ve posted before about prison tattoos:
Prison Tattoos and the Photographers’ Intrigue
Klaus Pichler: Central European Prison Tattoos, Taxidermy and Beguiling Portraits of Odessans
Detached, formaldehyde-soaked, preserved, studied: The tattooed skin of Polish prisoners
Bob Gumpert on Foto8, on Prison Tattoo Codes
BIO
Sergei Vasiliev was born in 1937 in Chelyabinsk, Russia. After graduating from the MVD Academy, Moscow, he became a staff photographer for the newspaper ‘Vecherny Chelyabinsk’, where he has worked for the past thirty years. he has received many honours including International Master of Press Photography from the International Organization of Photo Journalists (Prague, 1985), Honoured Worker of Arts of Russia, and the Golden Eye Prize. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in numerous museums’ collections. He is author of more than twenty books, including ‘Russian Beauty’, (1996) and ‘Zonen’, (1994).
The pile is my system. Sort and pile. Sort and pile. Until the piles have disappeared.
– Kristan Horton
Orbit (doorknob), 2009. Digital colour photograph, Ed. 5. 134.5 x 101.5cm/ 53 x 40in. © Kristan Horton
Well, I guess this announcement saves me the review I was going to post … er, in a way. Kristan Horton has won the Grange Prize.
Earlier this week, I spent a couple of hours looking over the four shortlisted artists and watching the Grange Prize directed videos on youtube. I also had a listen to this slightly unsatisfying panel discussion among the artists.
Alongside Moyra Davey, Horton was my joint favourite. Josh Brand will make some important work with his photogram experiments but his time is yet to come. Leslie Hewitt‘s photography was not personal enough for me – her statements on history were far more expansive than Horton’s more personal musings about time. I think that subtle difference may endeared Horton to the voting public.
Oh, by the way, what should we think of a $50,000 prize for photography voted for entirely by the public?
Back to Horton. I dig his nervous energy, I dig the fact he’s not a “trained” photographer, and quite simply I like the composite-prints he has made of piles of stuff in his studio. I think they are nice objects.
What intrigued me about this prize was that the shortlisted artists were all gentle thinkers and their work was quite solitary. Maybe the humour in Horton’s sugar lump and popcorn models for Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Strangelove also swayed my preference?
All in all, the shortlisted works by the four artists were quite inaccessible required a lot of digestion (which, isn’t really a criticism). The videos and the audio also proved to me that sometimes artists are not the best people to speak about their work. They are so close they see and speak every nuance which can get in the way of immediate appreciation.
Sometimes objects can speak for themselves, which I think Horton’s do.
Left: According to photographer D.K. Langford, this is the Texas vehicle inspection sticker designed from his photograph. Right: This photograph is exhibit A in Langford’s suit vs. the Department of Public Safety and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. (Source)
At last. I’ve been waiting for one of these legal disputes to have a prison angle! From the My San Antonio News:
“A photographer is suing the state over roughly 4.5 million vehicle inspection stickers that appear to incorporate, without his authorization, an image of a saddle-toting cowboy he created in 1984. Plaintiff David K. Langford wants the court to block the Department of Public Safety from further use or issuance of the stickers, the design of which he says is based on his copyrighted photo, Days End 2.”
“The stickers were produced by state prison inmates under a Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) contract with the DPS. […] The suit says Langford’s photo was illegally appropriated by an inmate who scanned it from a copy of Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine in 1998.” [My bolding.]
Langford, the photographer, seems quite tenacious here. He argues simply that the State of Texas should be more careful about how it sources its images.
I want to avoid the lazy joke about a prisoner “stealing”. It’s just a shame that when prisoners working for the Texas Correctional Industries which is, for some, a form of modern slave labor (I withhold comment), the products of their work are at the centre of a substantial lawsuit.
This story was brought to my attention by Bob, who says, “I guess Texas is always full of unintended ironies.”
The TDCJ refused to comment, and of course there’s no response from the prisoner. I would want to hear from the prison-artist who originally ripped Langford’s image. He ended up producing a nice piece of graphic design!
With 4.5 million stickers in circulation, the prisoner has quite the visible profile. There’s more of a story here. Texas journalists! Get on it.
Joan Fontcuberta describes his work as “anti-authoritarian.” He is a self-taught artist and former journalist who has adopted the tricks and issues of media manipulation/propaganda into his work.
Fontcuberta’s Googlegrams are “large, colorful photo-mosaics that construct a metaphor for the internet-era’s liaisons between mass media and our collective consciousness. Using Google to blindly cull images from the internet by controlling only the search engine criteria, Fontcuberta then assembles them by another computer program into a larger photomosaic image of Fontcuberta’s choosing.” (Source)
Fontcuberta’s an iconoclast, a philosopher and doesn’t trust the image. He encourages people to distrust, but ultimately recognises that people must believe: “people need information.” (Which may relate to the necessary reinsertion into – and commitment to – the image Joerg’s calling for.)
It’s all about healthy skepticism and filtering. He’s the furthest thing from a pessimist; he teaches photographic history and adores the medium. But he is not a sap.
Fontcuberta’s work deliberately fictionalises and questions. Jim Casper’s well-metred audio interview and VICE‘s interview flesh out his approach and motives.
What I admire about Fontcuberta is that having abandoned the urge to fight against the crimes of photoshop, advertising and image politics, he plays them at their own game. His ideas are uninhibited; it doesn’t matter if the lost Japanese soldiers of WWII in the Philippines jungle that he went in search of exist or not. Fontcuberta puts the exploration of an idea before the pressure to produce an end product. “The look of my work is not important,” he says.
Fontcuberta is playful and really jolly. I’d love to see him take on a cryptozoology expedition!
BIO
Joan Fontcuberta was born in 1955 in Barcelona, where he continues to live and work. He has exhibited extensively at museums and galleries in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, and has been associated with Zabriskie Gallery since 1981. His work is in numerous institutions, including the New York Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He contributes regularly to scholarly journals and has published many books, including Fauna, Sputnik and Miracles and Co.
Tumbling competition, San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library
Earlier this morning I pointed out the riches of the Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, in the Marin County Free Library Archives. The San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet 1930 Album deserves it own post.
Any sack race that has contestants cocooned up to their necks is a serious affair (image 2). Any tumble would hurt.
The tug-of-war (image 3) is fought on a remarkably complex purpose-built platform. It unfortunately looks like a rack.
I have no idea what narrative the parade (image 4) carries, but African American inmates donning hessian sacks painted to mimic “primitive” costume and carrying a whiter-than-whiter mustachioed swan-king is particularly discomforting.
Pole vault without a 60 inch crash-mat beneath the bar?
Lots to be said about cross-dressing and gender-bending in prisons, but not to be superimposed upon these 80 year old photographs. Two fascinating images.
And we just had Halloween. Who knew pie-eating contests (last image) produced zombies?
Sack race, San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library.
Tug-of-war competition with officials looking on, San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library
Prisoners in costume parading at the San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library.
"Fifty-yard crawl" race, San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library.
High-jump competition, San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library.
Pole vault competition, San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library.
Long-jump competition, San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library.
Clown performance featuring a duck, San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library.
Stage entertainment with four male dancers in female dress, San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library.
Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library.
Pie-eating contest showing three participants, San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library.
Pie-eating contest (close-up of one participant), San Quentin Little Olympics Field Meet, 1930. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, Marin County Free Library
The caption to this photo reads, ‘A woman prisoner at San Quentin in her room. The decorations are all made from fancy paper and spoons.’ Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room, Marin County Free Library.
This image from the San Quentin Photography Album from the Marin County Free Library really struck me. Dedicated decoration. The San Quentin Photography Album was compiled by Richard M. Smith & Genevieve Smith.
The Anne T. Kent California Reading Room, Marin County Free Library Archives are great. Don’t miss:
Views of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco by W.J. Street.
Golden Gate Bridge Photo Album (Construction images).
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Marin County Civic Center Photo Album, showing the construction of one of FLW’s few West coast buildings. It was later used as the set for Star Trek: Next Generation.
All of these things within just a few miles of one another. Browse the full archive listing.
Administration Building Construction. South end of the Administration Building looking North. Photograph by John Trimble. Harold Stockstad Slide Collection. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room, Marin County Free Library.
View of the Golden Gate way with the Palace of Fine Arts in the foreground; circa March 9, 1935. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room, Marin County Free Library.
Francis Nielson as Isaac in Abraham & Isaac, the first Mountain Play, performed in 1913. Courtesy Anne T. Kent California Room, Marin County Free Library.
Former Vietnam veteran, prison inmate and junkie (“once the needle goes in it never comes out”), Clark has a kind of coiled, unpredictable energy.
– Tobias Grey (‘Photographer Larry Clark’s muses’, Financial Times, Oct. 30, 2010)
Billy Mann 1963. © Larry Clark/Luhring Augustine, New York and Simon Lee Gallery, London.
Printed on the salmon-pink pages of the FT (the global leader in financial news), Larry Clark‘s latest interview about his counterculture subjects and his casual anti-commercial philosophy carries some irony.
Then again, perhaps not. Clark’s refusal to market and remarket his books and prints has led to scarcity – the result? Prices have been driven up:
“Clark refused to let either of his most famous books, the harrowing and explicit Tulsa and Teenage Lust, be republished. He finally did a couple of print-runs with Tulsa 10 years ago, but Teenage Lust is still out of circulation and as such a valuable collector’s item. Earlier this year, at an auction at Sotheby’s in London, a single print from Teenage Lust sold for £7,800.”
In his fifties, Clark learnt to skate to keep up with his cast for Kids. He believes that to photograph a youth culture you have to be in it. It must be difficult for Clark to have the city hall in Paris ban under-18s from entry to Kiss the Past Hello, his exhibition at Musée d’Art Moderne, “I think it’s just the stupidest thing in the world,” says Clark. “I think it’s an attack on youth and on teenagers in general.”
It’s difficult to argue against Clark’s indelible mark on American visual culture. Every hipster, skater, urban-wannabee and romantic sees their lives through the American-Apparel-Levi’s-Ryan-McGinley-Dash-Snow-Hamburger-Eyes-Zoolander-Derelicte images that advertisers, Polaroid & film enthusiasts create as facsimiles to Clark’s seductive and brutal works.
Again, irony reigns as advertisers define a slightly mucky but not diseased world in which they can place their products; a world that looks like Clark’s but is some distance from it. With that in mind, I think Tobias Grey‘s point has some weight:
“As a contemporary and admirer of Diane Arbus and W Eugene Smith, Clark is perhaps the last survivor to bridge the classic era of black-and-white photography and the present.”
Clark has ran and defined the continuum.
Read the article. Clark’s closing empathy for childhood movie stars is surprising and honest; he made collages to honor them.
‘Kiss the Past Hello’, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, until January 2 2011.
PHOTOGRAPHY COVERAGE IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES
Like last weeks FT article on Leibowitz’s interaction with the market, this portrayal of Clark and his motives is well-written, even endearing. The FT Weekend has had articles on Martin Parr and Cameraless Photography in recent weeks too.
It was a mandatory choice of an airmiles-earned printed daily that brought the FT to my door, but I’ll admit I’m looking forward to my Saturday morning reads more and more.
Prison Photography 