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Screengrab. ‘James Nachtwey, a portrait of the artist’ (9 minutes). © Asa Mader
Get past the fact that Asa Mader is repeating Bill Viola’s tricks, my response to this installation video is that James Nachtwey is serious, and he is silent, and there’s some stuff falling to the ground around him.
The original photo of Ren Shichen's work.
Zhang Ziping's revised photo of Ren Shichen's work.
Zhang Ziping, the winner of the 2010 “Human and Water” international photography competition was stripped of his title after he plagiarised the work of Ren Shichen.
“I never entered the competition, how could my work get the top award?” Ren was astonished to see the photo he took three years ago in Gansu’s Zhengning County listed among the winning photos on the Internet. “He (Zhang Ziping) downloaded my work from the Internet and changed it with image processing software.” (Story)
Crude, but it makes you wonder how often – across the globe – these types of antics occur!?
Joce, Ottawa, 2010 © Tony Fouhse.
Despite being four years deep in his project USER, Tony Fouhse is more confused than ever by what it all means.
I recommend you read his latest blog post. Fouhse talks about beginning his fourth and final year on the project, subjects who have died, and the gratitude of one of his subjects now she is clean.
The post is a reflection and it is as much for him as it is for us.
USER
I hope that you are all aware of his work photographing the crack addicts in Ottawa – not forgetting the interviews, the coverage, the love and the controversy that follows any project such as this that positions addicts as the subject of fine art.
So, I want to say a few things.
– Tony has been very open to discussion and criticism of his work. He will also defend his work with vigour, as often criticism leveled at his work is – in some guise – puritan criticism of photography in general.
– Tony’s subjects love his work; many go to the USER exhibition openings. Dawn was one of Tony’s subjects; her letter is included in Tony’s latest blog post: “I would like the picture so I can remind myself that I do not want to look that horrible or be that desperate again. I really do appreciate your work and all that you do. I have followed your work since I got clean. Please let me know if you have a copy of the picture.”
– Tony has shown real commitment to his process and the subjects. Yes, he is trying to construct a meaningful “complex sequence”, but that doesn’t mean he is manipulating his subjects, dropping in and out of their difficult lives. The best illustration of this is the map below. Every portrait over the past four years he has shot on this same corner. He knows all these men and women.
Portfolio at his website: http://tonyfoto.com
I am toying with the idea of listing my 100 favourite (online) digital photography archives, but museums, universities, historical societies and Flickr keep moving the goal posts. I see a new archive virtually every week.
If I stop to think what all this digitsation means, I suspect I’ll miss the boat on just enjoying the documents of times past.
The National Library of Scotland has just joined Flickr Commons, and this set of Edinburgh’s South Side probably pushes out one of the entries on a Flickr Commons top-ten article I penned last year.
It’s good that the drive toward digitisation and the “competition” (as I’ve defined it) is ongoing among these archives.
THE SKINNY
“The National Library of Scotland joined the Flickr Commons on July 13, 2010, with over 2,000 photographs, focusing on a collection of official British photography from the First World War. A smaller but equally rich set is chosen from a survey of the South Side of Edinburgh in 1929, photographed by Alfred Henry Rushbrook. And along with the letter ordering the massacre at Glencoe, is the last letter of Mary, Queen of Scots.”
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The Tenement Museum now has its photography archive online. What a treat! Go on, lose yourself …
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© Thomas Hawk
Thomas Hawk’s images are being used by police to pursue Oakland looters:
“I recognized several of the photographs that the Oakland PD had released as my own photos that I’d taken the night of the riots and had posted to my own Flickr account. I was never contacted by the Oakland PD regarding their use or distribution by Oakland PD. It’s interesting to see law enforcement taking photos by citizen media and using them this way.”
Under Creative Commons (which these images were) there is no problem with anyone, including police, “to copy, distribute and transmit the work” provided they attach attribution. Unfortunately, the Oakland Police Department didn’t name Hawk as the photographer, seemingly passing the images off as their own.
Here’s the San Francisco Chronicle article in which Hawk found his photographs.
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2009 winner, Nadav Kander is on the jury for this years Prix Pictet.
That means two of the eight jurors I knew of. The other six are new to me:
The Prix Pictet Growth will judged by an internationally recognised panel of experts led by Professor Sir David King, Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at the University of Oxford. Other members of the judging panel include Shahidul Alam, Photographer, Curator and Founder of the Drik Agency in Bangladesh; Peter Aspden, Arts Writer for the Financial Times; Michael Fried, Art Historian and Critic; Loa Haagen Pictet, Pictet & Cie’s art consultant; Nadav Kander, Winner of the second Prix Pictet; Christine Loh, CEO of Civic Exchange, Hong Kong; and Fumio Nanjo, Director of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.
I’ll be honest and say I was surprised when I saw Hamburger Eyes and Fotovision team up for an annual fundraiser.
Hamburger Eyes specialises in the grubby, PBR-stained, punk-inertia of San Francisco. High-brow by comparison, Fotovision flies the flag for photojournalism as crucial art in our cynical times. It’s like a teenage kid having a joint birthday party with their sensible aunt?
But, what the feck do I know? The line up is astounding:
Prints by: Larry Fink, Dorothea Lange, Nick Waplington, Bill Owens, Herb Ritts, Michelle Vignes, Colin Finlay, Marcus Bleasdale, Tim Hetherington, Ami Vitale, James Whitlow Delano, Camille Seaman, Kim Stringfellow, Ian Martin, Doug Menuez, Matt Herron, George Ballis, Richard Gordon, Darcy Padilla, Michael Rauner, Chris McCaw, Ernest Lowe, Jack Picone, and Antonin Kratochvil.
Signed collectible books by: Susan Meiselas, Sebastião Salgado, Alec Soth, Alex Webb, Ken Light, Amy Arbus, Chris Killip, and Danny Lyon.
Hamburger Eyes offerings include: Jim Goldberg, Ray Potes, Michael Jang, John Harding, Bill Burke, Ari Marcopouos, Peter Sutherland, Barry McGee, Ted Pushinsky, Oscar Mendoza, and Elena Carrasco.
The auction opens TODAY. Go to Hamburger Eyes’ eBay auction or Fotovision’s online listings. Then go to a big party on the 25th July from 5:30 – 9pm at the Fotovision Office at 5515 Doyle St, Emeryville, CA 94608.
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Prison Photography 