let us now catalogue famous people

deal with it.gif shades move but with sleep mask provided by airline

michael wolf:

http://i.imgur.com/jUGMll.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/FEsujl.jpg

http://m.imgur.com/a/wrIds

h8 michael wolf generally but that's a good series

ha why do you hate MW? don't you wanna look at hong kong buildings?

resentful jealousy!

no but seriously... the main themes of his work, the intersection of east asian hyperdensity and futurism (afaict he's never done an india series), it's a... good one but the (and here i may be talking out of my ass, because i know nothing about contemporary german photography) becher approach of repetition checkered out to the point of bruteness seems the most obvious way to interface with that twining and somehow that makes it the least interesting. iirc one of the original insights of the bechers was that even among all these structures that were built to occupy the same rote space in the industrial landscape, one would find variation, inexplicable points of departure that belied the pure perfunctoriness of the objects. i don't know if wolf allows the subjects of his tesselates that same space to breathe. in fact, i think he might intend to converge at the opposite point - to emphasize sameness. somehow it feels like a gloss, the eye of a man outside who is fundamentally unaccepting.

it also feels like he's saturated the market. here are his works that i can recall off the top of my head from just running into them so frequently in bookstores: traditional shrines in hong kong shops, hong kong shophouses, portraits of every single resident in a hong kong public housing estate, pictures of hong kong housing estates, images of people blown up from big megapixel pictures of east asian office buildings, extreme crops of passenger heads pressed against subway windows....

ha. thank you for this, i enjoyed it & i feel you. it makes me feel the presence of otherliness more acutely in having appreciated them. i think there are sets that do what you mention - like the corner houses, which i think are specifically trying to illustrate variation - but then kind of clustering these pictures into sets always ends up making their material kind of lifeless, i think, or at least smothers a viewer's opportunity to make anything out of it that isn't prescribed, the similarity between each shot suggesting its theme. but yeah that all makes sense.

jan groover,

http://media.mutualart.com/Images/2012_10/03/15/150150672/aa1df478-809f-473e-9eb0-1a776f3e62d3_570.Jpeg

http://media.mutualart.com/Images/2010_06/20/0012/866834/129204892250096698_860660eb-8109-4c16-a975-ead43bc9dc6d_100052_570.Jpeg

http://mocoloco.com/art/archives/groover_pear_feb_06.jpg

http://31.media.tumblr.com/1c76073443245dc6c8d3629219d81878/tumblr_mk2yd2qyyT1rqnpq1o1_500.jpg

http://media.mutualart.com/Images/2010_10/19/0021/989592/129318046017353051_6ed86f66-7937-4f22-9a6c-0b69881e82fe_206907_570.Jpeg

damn i want to learn how to do that

thought those were paintings at first

the last thing i posted was meant to be my favourite of the things i found,

http://www.fstopmagazine.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/1-Jan-Groover-Untitled-1978-15x19-inches-C-print-ed.3_3-courtesy-galerie-paul-freches.jpg

her book has an intro by szark, it is coming to me from the library. without seeming to underplay her artistry i think some of what is happening here is just the attention, & constellation, & application of pressure to these objects, right? fascinated to see what the pictures actually look like not-online but they're arresting for just their construction as much as anything i think.

great photos! though i was reminded of some call-to-arms about photography i read, maybe about winogrand, that was like - can you believe that what was winning plaudits were pictures of forks and knives when winogrand or w/e swm photographer was out there photographing life. idk. maybe it was one of those dudes that said it.

anyway all of a sudden reminded today that i went to photoville and found an exhibit by nick zinner from the YYYs, who apparently studied photography at bard before becoming very famous. (i think this is a detail that may only be interesting to cv)

http://pdnphotooftheday.com/2013/09/22459

the ones in the link actually are not that great, he had better ones on display

huh, that's weird. had no idea. wonder if stephen shore was the photo head at bard at that time?
also you're right. those pictures aren't too good.

undergrad vs. mfa at bard are two very different programs. I'm guessing nick must have been undergrad. not sure if the mfa program has even been around that long really.

i have a lot of time and willingness to forgive for chinese street photography

http://edge.neocha.com/posts/hefei-street-photographer-liu-taos-new-work/
http://edge.neocha.com/photography/some-new-photography-works-from-hefei-based-street-photographer-liu-tao/
http://edge.neocha.com/posts/scenes-from-hefei-based-street-photographer-liu-tao/

eggleston signing in nyc 2nite: http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/william-eggleston--october-26-2013

haha i bet that's going to be a shitshow

i checked out rinko kawauchi's ametsuchi today @ aperture, very nice. only jpgs i can find online do justice to the admonition to see works in print, these were gorgeous printed large and in person:

http://i.imgur.com/grzeI4l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Ekjsod9.png

http://payload159.cargocollective.com/1/6/216498/5484982/AEW_DP_web-23_o.jpg

http://payload76.cargocollective.com/1/6/216498/3831770/7_o.jpg

http://payload76.cargocollective.com/1/6/216498/3831770/19_o.JPG

http://payload37.cargocollective.com/1/6/216498/3053105/1_o.jpg

ashley e walters

it's funny i find myself not super hyped by rinko kawauchi, like i have pigeonholed her aesthetic as something i felt like i just kinda got buying some nagisa ni te records a million years ago, but i totally believe this could dissipate seeing actual prints. i've never been to aperture. i like the magazine.

oh & she takes pictures of mattresses, too, swoon,

http://31.media.tumblr.com/7f1a7e22b69276e44200ece4bd1407c6/tumblr_mq39rg15MP1rhy16go1_500.jpg

haha there is a zoe strauss exhibition at ICP right now, famous for, you know, the mattress photo:

http://i.imgur.com/Tdntv77.jpg

yeah i can def see what you mean about rinko. ametsuchi is a departure from her normal work, for one, it's not in a square format! she does a lot more in preserving space and environment, these are clearly landscapes. i'm actually not super big on seeing prints in person, i find that books can be almost as good, web shots too if they're not just scans or snapshots of actual prints.

rinko herself, i dunno, it's very much a let's put a square around this, that, see what we get. i was never really comfortable with the label of her as a 'japanese eggleston.' i'd say, maybe a more compassionate martin parr, and just as playful. i like that she overexposes everything. i'll probably pick up 'illuminance' at some point.

i should start a tumblr that only reblogs the pictures i like from IH

http://i.imgur.com/7qO9gIT.jpg

this thread is that blog

&, re: i'm actually not super big on seeing prints in person, i find that books can be almost as good, web shots too if they're not just scans or snapshots of actual prints., sure. there was that nice judeo-plaxican post here awhile ago about seeing the work of a photographer v concerned with light whose name i am blanking on projected, in class, & it being appropriate. like seeing a photo you cellphone photo you took displayed on the screen, where it belongs. i decided recently the sky looks better shot digitally & i wondered if it was because the sky is this big layer of colour with a light behind it & that is what looking at it on a screen is like.

also i am going to continue using this thread as an appendix to my thesis, alec soth is a cornball

http://24.media.tumblr.com/686718a59afe0fd50b1d42ddce1c3077/tumblr_mn3xtb9hPY1rpri2zo1_500.jpg

ugh alec soth

I think he's my nemisis

although I think that image is alright!

i think a cool alec soth image would be a billboard on the side of the highway, & the billboard says YES in big yellow writing, but it has got all ripped & old, & a car has crashed into one of the legs of the billboard, & a cowboy has got out of the car, & in the accident his dog has died, & he is just glassily staring anomically in the dog's direction, & also it is windy & maybe the cowboy is a lil overweight

actually maybe underweight.

i think soth is kinda double-edgedly the nemesis cause he is doing p good stuff in the sentimental film ballpark & is printing nicer, better captured photographs than I will evertake, but it's sorta frustrating to see how straightforward & unchallenging they are given how much time has passed since other people first did that stuff. photo above is p bad in a lot of different ways I think, most obviously in just being interchangeable with a post-it note saying [some old american shit &c] without any alteration in its effect

haha cv, alec soth is like the epitome of that soft, bland, evenly weighted & nothing blaring medium or large format aesthetic that you've been so passionate against

i don't really care one way or another about alec soth though his success is a little puzzling. i think i'm probably mad that that picture of the guy with the model RC airplane sold for so much.

once i saw alec soth signing books at PS1 MOMA. i was like, holy shit that's alec soth! but nobody else was excited. i think this is one of the perils of our hobby.

there was also a bryan schutmaat exhibition at aperture, shunted off into a room on the side. the aperture portfolio winner of 2013. okay stuff, i liked these two, but it was mostly portraiture and [some old american shit &c].

http://i.imgur.com/cPn2Nuf.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/kE5nHaJ.jpg

maybe something's changed inside of me but now i'm the guy in photography class who looks at a picture and says "well, that's just a take on [hallowed and untouchable photographer.]" like, here, i saw this and immediately though "wow, rare unearthed walker evans shot in color?"

http://i.imgur.com/3JybE4U.jpg

the ashley walter is great btw, i really like the subtle traces of violence harnessed for survival, impromptu abattoirs, remnants of the cull saved as pelts and bones.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/euthman/1843060455/in/set-72157625930584642

http://i.imgur.com/dhsqnBX.jpg

This was one of the first photos I shot on campus, and it remains my favorite. I have a poster print of it hanging on the wall at home.

The record he's listening to is Yes' self-titled debut album from 1969, a couple of years before Yes had its first big hit, "Roundabout." I myself did not become a Yes fan until 1975, when my med school roommate, Tom Grabenstein, played the cassette tape in his VW Beetle during a vacation trip we took to to Black Mesa State Park in far west Oklahoma. Since then, I have been a rabid fan of the group in its many incarnations.

In 2010, this photo was used in the onstage video that accompanied the performance of the song "Jazz Man" by Carole King in her "Troubadour Reunion" tour with James Taylor. Even though the photo was in the Creative Commons, the production team courteously asked me for permission to use it, which of course I enthusiastically agreed to.

http://www.themorningnews.org/gallery/my-harassers

http://i.imgur.com/h1P4jkC.jpg

damn forgot all about this one

the alec soth above, with the workshirts, I like not for the workshirts or the name tag (I wish it wasn't there), but just for the patterns and for the bunching of the shirts and shadows that travels down in a diagonal.

I want to be sure I'm clear on that.

nuh uh, china. you're just like wow ... the fifties

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hm4azWF4fUg/Uj34egsX8LI/AAAAAAAAJXE/TO9x_FXJHVc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-09-20+at+12.57.47+PM.png

http://www.anambitiousprojectcollapsing.com/2013/09/blog-post.html

especially FAO gr8080 and chinavision

RAVING 89

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_FcK7EMX3A

i feel like this book would be your cups of tea. my friend has a copy and it is great fun.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_F4E3K6giM0U/TUrVdaxnybI/AAAAAAAAAJk/q606w-fGvn0/s1600/Raving89%2B2.jpg
http://gravitysra1nbow.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/raving89-011.jpg

video is blocked in USA but i am v v interested.

http://i.imgur.com/ibb3eWv.jpg

BORGES by ARBUS

http://www.alex-buono.com/how-we-did-it-snl-the-midnight-coterie-of-sinister-intruders/

man i wanna become a cinematographer so bad

lol: http://i.imgur.com/JiBc5Q0.jpg

also:

What’s the point of shooting anamorphic instead of just shooting with normal lenses and letterboxing the image? First of all, there are some major optical differences in the image. An anamorphic lens gives you the horizontal angle of view of a spherical lens that is half the focal length, yet retains its optical compression and depth of field. So a 40mm anamorphic gives you the same horizontal angle as a 20mm spherical, yet with the compression and depth of field of a 40mm spherical – which looks dramatically different.

neat

times publishing some really excellent photo essays recently

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/checking-in-to-a-new-life-in-america/?_r=0

asssssignmmmmmmmentttttttttttttttt

oh wow feeling gabriele stabile

http://www.gabrielestabile.com/upload/sites/3/1517/files/015_gs_cumbia_villera_008.jpg
http://www.gabrielestabile.com/upload/sites/3/1517/files/018_gs_cumbia_villera_038.jpg
http://www.gabrielestabile.com/upload/sites/3/1517/files/008_46gaz.jpg

http://www.gabrielestabile.com/

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/beauty-in-the-everyday/?_r=0

fyi everybody there's a saul leiter doc and i'm not gonna be able tos ee it tomorrow which means you should in my stead

for those interested in self publishing

http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2013/11/lesley-martin-aperture/

http://i.imgur.com/f9qkIlK.jpg

that leiter doc looks great. i wanna housesit for saul leiter. the pic in the trailer of the cropped red umbrella in the snow - ugh.

i saw the vivian maier doc yesterday, also. it's good. a lot of people in it are pretty annoying because they are just people. like photography? watch 90 minutes of interviews with auction hounds & the grown charges of a reclusive nanny. but meyerowitz is good in it & the work is just unreal & some of the 8mm she shot is arresting & the narrative is still so crazy. it made me feel like i am shitty at taking photographs, which is a bummer.

ps michael wolf lol, that's perfect