let us now catalogue famous people

and they're all like lovingly exposed medium format pictures w gentle contrast etc.
just drives me up the wall

i feel like a lot of the recently seen eggleston stuff that's surfaced is cars, cadillacs and just full shots of car grills low against the road (this is a rewarding google image search, incidentally). stuff that didn't make his edit! i totally get the gravitation towards that sorta thing, bc 1) 'iconic', 2) weird chromy/decayed/super-tactile textures and surfaces (decayed anything is sorta hyponotising, paint-peeling-facades always tempting to photo) & 3) kinda sheer presence, but it's a pretty lazy/exhausted/nostalgic canard yeah.

i maybe meanly mentioned here a couple of days ago that i have a problem with the same MF treatment being extended to contemporary scenes as well, like it being just too deadpan to shoot a semi-urban scene like a car park or beachfront promenade or unpretty high street shopsign without any particular focus or detail (like it's always on flickr w/a super literal or moody one-word title with a full stop after it but okay i am being a hater here). it's hard to catch what stuff is like now, the language that makes sense of objects is so different - digital, diffuse, multifaceted.

harmony korine & william eggleston:

HK: So you didn't lament the passing of old America? You'd photograph a Kroger or a Piggly Wiggly [supermarkets], and I'm sure at the time they seemed common and maybe even architecturally bland. But now there's a beauty and a strangeness to the old Kroger.

WE: It was something new that was happening everywhere. You couldn't miss it. If you needed to go to the grocery you would go to the predecessors of the big supermarkets of today.

HK: Would you take photos of a Kroger today?

WE: Certainly.

HK: And do you think it would have that same effect looking at it 20 years from now?

WE: I think so.

HK: So you think time makes things more exotic?

WE: I don't think exotic is the word.

HK: So what do you think happens?

WE: Well, probably the best way to put it might be that at some time, not just in an instant, but over some period of time I became aware of the fact that I wanted to document examples like Kroger or Piggly Wiggly in the late '50s, early '60s. I had the attitude that I would work with this present-day material and do the best I could to describe it with photography, not intending to make any particular comment about whether it was good or bad or whether I liked it or not. It was just there, and I was interested in it. That's what I still do today.

huh, speaking of all this medium format talk, there is definitely some kind of deadpan-y alec soth-y, sorta documentary medium format aesthetic that is much emulated currently. and it's another one that kinda rubs me the wrong way, I think just due to the overly seriousness of it all. sooo deadpan and sober. not a lot of room for playfulness.

more than anything I'm feeling like a totally horrible grump now. I really do love a lot of photographs! and speaking of modern medium format aesthetics, I love Paul Graham's stuff. he's very heavily invested in medium format-looking depth of field conscious stuff, but it's just a bit looser and more playful and surprising. Shimmer of Possibility is especially great and actually *fun* to look at.

after my earlier so-daring street photography culture rant, and now my so-serious medium format photography rant, I've gotta start getting a little more positive I think. but at least it's good to know what you don't want to do, I guess.

xpost... that interview kinda gets at where I think the Eggleston and Shore worshipers who photograph old cars and 60's-70's era signage really miss the point.

yeah writing this stuff down makes me feel like an asshole. or it makes me feel like through self-preservation i've carved out a tenuous, idiosyncratic reason why my less proficient pictures get at something better or non-specifically more spirited & deep. but it reminds me of thomas mann - "Our capacity for disgust, let me observe, is in proportion to our desires; that is in proportion to the intensity of our attachment to the things of this world" - & i think it's okay so long as you still have things stacked in the enthusiastic positive column, & aren't just hating on everything. when we were talking about digital photography here, a while back, someone was saying they didn't like the way people thought digital pictures should look, & i feel like that's a lot of what it is, wondering what the photographic solution to depicting objects is; i know a MF photographer who takes these super gradienty portraits, which almost become examples of photography itself, of granular rendering technology & light processing & practically of dermatology, much more than they become evocative or even provocative renderings of people, objects. the problem with all of these conversations is that i inch closer and closer to coming up with the answer, by being like yeah i think really it is looking like digital is the thing, now or probably photos should have some kinetic sense of movement to express the fluid nature of our times or spitting absolutes. & that's stupid! because obviously there are a thousand ways to get at something real (i have the same argument with myself watching films, when i see tsai ming-liang and know that the answer to engineering empathy is that the camera should never move, & then see kieslowski, in which i know the camera should always move). but maybe that's just a plus of flickr, getting to hone your critical sense of what you should be taking a picture of, not just on the pictures of yours that you saw & learnt not to repeat but with everyone else's, too.

so on a positive note i'm gonna check out paul graham

absorbing your post, but yes check out paul graham! good stuff. also he wrote this essay: http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/writings_by.html

stephen shore used large format, btw! ha ha ha

guess these guys are also cheaper then

I think maybe the real thing is, no matter what your fav type of photography is, there is probably a whole flickr group or five dedicated to it, and you will come to hate it

ha ha. i was browsing one of you guys' flickr streams a while ago & found a group called something like Dropped Stuff. it was simultaneously amazing & brutally embarrassing, having previously considered myself a photographic, outsider-art-style pioneer in the world of documenting haphazardly framed sidewalk objects. i mainly-only use flickr to check out film stocks so the kinda styles stuff bypasses me a lil.

absorbing your post, but yes check out paul graham! good stuff. also he wrote this essay: http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/writings_by.html

― lou reed scott walker monks niagra (chinavision!), Monday, 2 July 2012 16:53 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was really beautiful, btw, ty. The old houses? The new houses? Do I go to a war zone on the other side of the world, or just to the corner store, or not leave my room at all?

oh yeah, that second essay is amazing in the way it just makes you want to run out into the street (or walk into the kitchen, or stare in the mirror etc.) and make a million pictures. it makes you excited about the whole enterprise!

hey, ILP: I feel like this should maybe be a thread but it's the kind of thing that I would have to prop up with evidence, & I don't have any yet. I was thinking a little, about film photography & all of the Paul Grahamy stuff mentioned above about what one should depict & all, how to form the meaningless world into photographs, then form those photographs into a meaningful world. & I wondered if anyone wanted to try to suggest an example of what contemporary film photography 'looks like'. because historically, by decade, there's kind of a look to photography, right, whether it's the rise of that wave of isometric photography that caught a newly urbanised landscape, or walker evans' dark, contrasty subway citizenry, or whether it's nan goldin style intimate and distinctly colourful photography, or whether it's some kind of bold flashbulb-lit angular ninetiesism. & i wondered what everyone has for the twenty first century. what either captures or distinctly belongs to it, looks like it or tries to depict it. i have a couple of ideas - something orderly, i think, & 'democratic'. but does anyone want to put anything forward? holga-colourflashed pictures of young people? medium format photos of vintage cars, working like richard prince reappropriations of historical large format photos of contemporary cars?

obviously some of this would veer into digital, but i thought film would be interesting to look at just because of its obvious relationship with previous models and eras.

The model for contemporary film usage is Alec Soth, IMO. Deadpan, use of larger-than-35 formats, neutral in tone/saturation/finishing

maybe something like this? http://flakphoto.com/feed

although, I think a lot of the styles that you listed above are overlapping/simultaneous etc. like 90's flashbulb-lit angularism is at the same time as philip lorca di corcia stuff, or andreas gursky. and walker evans' dark contrasty subway citizenry is simultaneous with walker evans' clear and sober full-daylight pictures of buildings and vehicles. nan goldin 35mm color snapshots simultaneous with robert adams medium format b&w new topographics stuff, while simultaneously friedlander and winogrand are making b&w photos w/leicas and christenberry is making some low tech color photos of southern structures.

xpost agree about the soth thing. it's evident I think in a lot of stuff at the link I posted.

yeah that's a good call. so:

http://alecsoth.com/photography/wp-content/gallery/sleeping-by-the-mississippi/thumbs/thumbs_Luxora.jpg
http://www.ahornmagazine.com/issue_2/review4_gust_soth/alec_soth_006.jpg
http://alecsoth.com/photography/wp-content/gallery/sleeping-by-the-mississippi/thumbs/thumbs_Cemetery.jpg
http://alecsoth.com/photography/wp-content/gallery/sleeping-by-the-mississippi/thumbs/thumbs_Joshua.jpg
xp

yup! the aforementioned "deadpan-y alec soth-y, sorta documentary medium format aesthetic" in action

although, I think a lot of the styles that you listed above are overlapping/simultaneous etc. like 90's flashbulb-lit angularism is at the same time as philip lorca di corcia stuff, or andreas gursky. and walker evans' dark contrasty subway citizenry is simultaneous with walker evans' clear and sober full-daylight pictures of buildings and vehicles. nan goldin 35mm color snapshots simultaneous with robert adams medium format b&w new topographics stuff, while simultaneously friedlander and winogrand are making b&w photos w/leicas and christenberry is making some low tech color photos of southern structures.

no, sure. & i'm both being reductive & lacking a good art-historical knowledge of what was happening (ty for the ref for 'new topographics', is what i was shooting for by 'isometric', confusedly). there's that book which goes through the twentieth century with art in years, rather than eras, to allow for the simultaneous development and existence of style and trends. but even so, to get an idea of the various strands that are kinda current or distinct from previous strands, even just in their prominence or use if not technical innovation or w/e.

how about the fully saturated rinka
new Japanese egg lesson stuff?

??

I just feel eggleston copying is much more new 00s film photog than soth is

haha, kinda ^^ (google image search mainly turns up porn). wasn't 100% sure to what this was referring. (xp)
i wondered if it was those very clear, soft medium format photos, with radiant blues, that i maybe remember dayo invoking eggleston for - they were very simple linear details of plants & stuff. the reference point in my head for it is things that look like nagisa ni te album covers (this, this), but i didn't really have a reference i could look up. feel like some were on that white and orange japanese photography blog.

anyway if they are the thing i am thinking of then yes, otm!

mainly I'm just thinking about the eggleston revival and all the indie rock album covers that have used eggleston pics

i am open to reframing the debate using trends in indierock sleeve design as a metric, sure

if the question is, what is moving needles in the art world/high priced photography world, well yeah it's soth, and gursky (what film work he did) and it all traces back to evans, doesn't it?

paul graham is definitely on that art world radar too. and of course a lot of old-timers who do staged photos in the same way they've been doing for a decade or two (di corcia, wall, sherman, etc.). but now that I think of it maybe that's not what we're thinking of re: current, since those last three have been making stuff that looks the same for 20-30 years at least.
this post ended up less helpful than I had initially planned.

I mean, for me it's

->new era of digital photography = color photography becomes, even more so than before, the dominant mode
->we need to discover its ~roots~
->eggleston revival, stephen shore and christenberry latches on by the coattails, meyerowitz at the edges
->while we're venerating heroes, let's give a shoutout to evans, hcb, frank
->everybody calls it a day

somehow the above chain radiates out onto flickr

alex webb seems to be a really good name to say

how does the jeff wall sonic youth cover figure into this

http://www.culturebully.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/sonic-youth-the-destroyed-room-b-sides-and-rarities.jpg

->new era of digital photography = color photography becomes, even more so than before, the dominant mode
->we need to discover its ~roots~
->eggleston revival, stephen shore and christenberry latches on by the coattails, meyerowitz at the edges
->while we're venerating heroes, let's give a shoutout to evans, hcb, frank
->everybody calls it a day

i wonder if maybe we should not be excluding digital from this discussion after all. because i want to stop the chain before we get to its roots; i'm more inclined to zip back to eggleston when i see an alec soth than if i am looking at a mary manning, his seeming to have obvious precedent & hers not-necessarily-not having precedent but existing very currently. & maybe that's the thing i was wondering about. one dimension of this is what will record our time - when in 2045 we look at the start of this century, which renderings will seem valid & evocative (which: maybe). & with that i'm more inclined to wonder if it might be harsher digital stuff that more immediately & literally resembles what's real now. & then the other aspect is how do we portray ourselves right now, about which soth seems right, yeah.

also someone answer this dylannn q, think this is interesting.

i might try to round up some flickr stuff to flesh out the vague idea of style i have in my head. may include some of those horrific fever dream shots where the sky is three different billowing blues & each building is perfectly illuminated, just as a historical oddity, like drum machines or witchburnings.

may include some of those horrific fever dream shots where the sky is three different billowing blues & each building is perfectly illuminated, just as a historical oddity, like drum machines or witchburnings.

This is a terrific encapsulation of HDR!

Hellish Dream Rendering

This run down body shop and old rusty Dodge van made the perfect composition for a 7 frame HDR photo.

I think people should have their Nikon D4s confiscated by the authorities if they do things like that with them. Maybe their computers too.

(I am a terrible man for a radical LR preset though, so I can't talk, seeing as I deal in cliché too.)

lol: http://blakeandrews.blogspot.com/2009/07/william-egglestons-album-cover-guide.html

lotta sad crops and dull typography there :(
big star, joanna newsom, and the paramount pictures 90th anniversary comp (!!) stand out (typography aside on that paramount one).

stand out in a good way I mean

Phone makes it hard to respond in detail, but Egglestonia seems more a digital thing than film IMO - a lot of Eggleston rips won't work and digital makes it easier to experiment in that vein.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/06/24/sunday-review/24CAMP.html#1

the house, of that first portrait-in-front-of-house shot, is really sad. his homemade tripod, though, "repurposed" from latrine fixtures & scrap wood.

those donna ferrato pictures on lens are really something, too

http://southerndocumentaryfund.org/uploads/images/private-violence-janice.jpg

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/leaving-abuse-behind

love this shot from another series flagged up on lens, also:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/Lens/2009/09/20090907-Showcase-Ferrato/20090907-Showcase-Ferrato-190px.jpg

http://goodephotography.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/koda-7.jpg

sweet story about roadtripping to Dwayne's Photo before the Kodachropocalypse. (the nicest shots are all Portra, just try to ignore that). I'm so mad I never shot any.

http://www.rosegallery.net/data/photos/5370_1eastersunday.jpg

http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images/911/134159.jpg

from Gary Stricherz' Americans in Kodachrome

getting lost in this vivien maier:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZuFDqW1rxxM/TZS0IVeQsiI/AAAAAAAABzA/VAlPXBTvWjU/s1600/y_ee71a4f6.jpg

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/a-different-approach-to-civil-rights-images/

i feel like i am just reposting these, because some of his stuff was on here a while back, but i hadn't seen most of these early colour saul leiter images before, & they're v nicely laid out:

http://www.gungallery.se/#/saulleiter/images

oops, http://www.gungallery.se/#/saulleiter/images

http://www.johnsypal.com/assets/images/johnsypal.com/injapan/medium/1f8c2dd2b2f85d666.jpg

http://www.johnsypal.com/assets/images/johnsypal.com/straight/medium/d6cb9d9a41e3e9a0c.jpg

good street photographer-guy, John Sypal

i feel like i either posted these a while back, or didn't post them, because i think they were on Photo Booth & so maybe on the radar of some ilxors, but i just came back to some of the Kiana Hayeri photos that got some attention a while back. her portraits, which i think i like as much as any portraiture of its kind-

http://www.kianahayeri.com/veilphaseii/06Mina.jpg

& then her other, storyish series (choose 'Projects'), a bunch of which are Iran. they're so subtle & well observed. i'm kinda posting them as an addendum to the thing about a ~look~ of contemporary photography

http://www.kianahayeri.com/maygodedit2/Hayeri13.jpg
http://www.kianahayeri.com/maygodedit2/Hayeri15.jpg
http://www.kianahayeri.com/maygodedit2/Hayeri04.jpg

like sometimes in trying to gauge the success of some of my photos I find myself wondering if I've created some kind of noble excuse for them, in not having achieved this very technical quality that would make them similar to the street photographer guy i posted above's photos - very immediate & aesthetically upfront, & of a tradition (ie they're quite Robert Frank-y) in the way they look. but Kiana's are at a tangent to that style, i think, relying on semi-naturalistic camera functions, like the non-defined upfront blurring of characters or use of reflective surfaces, things that code as real and familiar or slightly exagerrated variations on those feelings, more than they come across as clever or novel metaphors or depictions. i've included the pretty blue-ish ~excellent colour photo~ one above, but they're subtler & more interesting than that one, i think, & do a really good job as understanding how things look.