Do you remember 1999 ? The year of Neo writhing about with Agent Smith on the subways, the Euro got launched, and plain old Alex Ferguson from Govan became Sir Alex Ferguson on the back of leading Man U to a famous treble. It wasn’t all good news though, Cliff Richard’s ‘Millennium Prayer’ topped the UK singles charts and the Russian and Japanese economies were in tatters as we all waited with baited breath for the turn of the new millennium that Cliff spouted out about in his own sickly manner. Meanwhile in amongst this mix of Matrix’s, new currencies, football legend making and anticipation of change, from Japan sprung a new book from photographic phenomenon and teen idol - Hiromix.
Not that I knew anything about it, I was slaving away on the groundbreaking ‘Management Applications of Complexity Theory’ :) thesis for my Masters and wasn’t the least interested in photography anyway. So where did this Hiromix Tokyo stuff come from? Well, about two years ago I wandered into the Tokyo Metropolitan Photography Museum and there was this large display which it turned out was the winner of some Canon sponsored award and it was a retrospective of Hiromix. This is interesting because, when I wandered around and looked at it, I had no idea that this was from the last millennium, I thought it had all been shot recently with an iPhone !!! This will give you some indication of what the subject of this weeks review is like, its to the best of my knowledge one of the originators of the selfie and ‘my life diaries’ trend that we now take so for-granted. To be honest, as I wandered around looking at the shots of selfie Hiromix in pyjamas, selfie Hiromix in no pyjamas, Hiromix’s breakfast cereal, Hiromix’s friends, Hiromix with no pyjamas again, I didn’t know quite what to make of it all. I had that niggling feeling that I hated this stuff but somehow it intrigued me so I walked around again (having developed a bit of a liking for Hiromix with no pyjamas) and I stopped hating the photography but I couldn’t say I liked it. Anyway, I made a subconscious mental note about this and every time I visit Tokyo I have a hunt around for one of her books, to date with no avail, however, a few weeks back I came across a ‘very good’ condition version of Hiromix Tokyo and decided to give it a go and it turned up this week, just in perfect time for this review.
Before I start giving my view on Hiromix Tokyo, a quick word about how to re-calibrate bookshop grading scales by using the ‘Steel comparitor’ The comparitor is unique in that its more truthful and gives a much better indication of actual condition and its so simple to apply. All you have to do is remove the word good and replace it with ‘worn’ and in inverse of what you would expect a ‘very good’ rating would become ‘very worn’ its as simple as that.
Ok, now that grump is out of the way, lets look at Hiromix and her photography. This is actually not as easy as it sounds because most people become wrapped up in the Hiromix, quirky, sexy, persona and hype and don’t actually give the book that much attention as a piece of photographic work and I am going to put my cards on the table right now and say that I think that is a real shame, this is very decent stuff.
I am betting that some of you reading this now that have been photographers for a long time will probably know a lot more about Hiromix than me, so I want to make it clear here that I am looking at this photo book as new, with a fresh set of eyes and for better or for worse, completely unaffected by all the hype that went with her around 20 years ago when she sprung on the photography scene after support from Araki. Its all to easy to contextualise Hiromix in 90’s Japan of economic woe, a strange new trend towards the spending power and increasing independence of young girls in the previously male dominated culture and a thirst for quirky new diversions. Forget this though, and even forget that this comes from Japan and flick the pages and there is a fun feel tinged with a little bit of uncertainty (much as you would expect from a teenager) Here is Hiromix’s own introduction to the book and I think it says it all:
YOUTH REFLECTS TRANSPARENCY AND BEAUTY.
DESPITE OUR LACK OF EXPERIENCE THE WORLD OFTEN CONFRONTS US WITH UNFORGIVABLE SITUATIONS.
WE BELIEVE MORE THAN ANYONE IN THINGS THAT CANNOT BE SEEN.
MANY UNKNOWN WORLDS ARE AWAITING US.
SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE AND THINGS WE LOVE.
WE SMILE CAREFREE SMILES.
IT WAS PERHAPS BECAUSE I WANTED TO KEEP A RECORD OF THIS THAT I TAKE PHOTOS OF MYSELF.
1998-7-15 HIROMIX
How cool is that? The voice of a generation…………
As you would perhaps expect of this period, the photos in this book were shot I believe with a simple point and shoot film camera and the prints have that nice very slightly washed out colour trademark of that period. This is of course one of the effects that people now strive for in their Instagram shots and that is one of the remarkable things that I find about the book, there are almost no clues that would make you think that this wasn’t shot with a phone yesterday, its as contemporary as that for me. I also like the full bleed printing and the sequencing, which although often predictable, is still fun and that aligns very well with the intent of the book as described by Hiromix herself.
As I said earlier, its all to easy to dismiss this as twee, but I think if you give it a fair chance you will appreciate that Hiromix is pretty accomplished at what she does and her skills (which I don’t think ever get acknowledged enough) are very much there and evident in many of the shots.
Where the book doesn’t work so well for me is that it lacks a certain hint of mystery, and if I can cast my mind back into the distant past to when I was that age, I don’t recall it all being such plain sailing as this (albeit that was in a shitty housing scheme in Glasgow’s South Side) and there was definitely a side to that time in life that is not touched on or even suggested here. I also think that the ‘selfies’ are overdone. Not that Hiromix is unpleasant to look at of course but it is an aspect that dominates to much for me and I find myself more interested when she shows me her thoughts on her environment than her face.
Given the above statement around my feeling that something is missing here, I recall an excellent Alan Yentob programme where he researched into the phenomenon of Japanese reclusive author Murakami and he discovered that to this day many teenage Japanese males enrol in the same university as portrayed in his classic ‘Norwegian Wood’ novel, apparently in the belief that they too would experience some of the drama that Murakami’s protagonist Watanabe came across as he struggled to emerge from his teenage years. This is the same feeling that I get here, there is some teenage idealism in here that is just not quite real and maybe that is part of the attraction for many of Hiromix’s book buying public. For what its worth by the way, I have no idea what Watanabe was thinking about hanging in there with the looney Naoko when ultra sexy Midori was there for the taking (just saying……)
Ok, so what is it to be, quirky, sexy but vacant Tokyo chick or serious photographer who has created a unique take on her world? Hmm, beginning to wish I hadn’t asked that question of myself but here goes anyway, I think this is a very likeable and possibly groundbreaking book that, despite my qualified reservations, is up there as a must have in anyones photo book collection. This style and concept has been replicated and is being reproduced every day now by the millions of people now shooting with phones but very few ever get near to this level of originality and honesty and I think it is this unselfconsciousness and simple beauty that lifts this book way above the rest.
Incidentally, I would love to hear what my Japanese friends have to say about Hiromix, what about it guys?
Free Art
Just before I move onto the zine section with Part 2 of Kitajima’s Photo Express Tokyo, it occurred to me that I talk all of the time about photo-books that I have bought when I also have a little side collection going that costs nothing at all. I have developed a habit of collecting promotional flyers from galleries that I visit and this is piling up to become quite substantial and I thought it might be nice to share a few pieces each week just as a reminder that we don’t always have to buy expensive photo books to enjoy printed art.
Pretty neat huh?
Kitajima’s Photo Express Tokyo Part 2
Here is part 2 of Kitajima’s ‘zine’s’ that we looked at last week and you will probably recall that its part of a box set of pamphlet style catalogues that were produced in support of his 1979 CAMP exhibitions in Tokyo. It goes without saying that these are a great contrast to Hiromix work that I looked at earlier and indeed it pre-dates her book by some 20 years. I never fail to be amazed at the creativity of Japanese photographers and much of what they did was rule-breaking and entirely original.
Something I forgot to mention last week was that there is actually a thirteenth zine in the boxed set and it gives a brief insight into the exhibition process and also has some incredible shots from the shows themselves, I will of course include this one at the end of the run on these zines. What is very interesting is that there is a brief explanation of how Kitajima created the shows and ultimately the work that you see here. It seems that this was almost done in real time with him taking shots, processing the films and making the prints using his hi-contrast method that apparently involved a fair bit of randomness that all added to the fun.
Apart from the shots that I have showcased here, I am not quite taken with this zine as I am with some of the others. The problem I mentioned last week around the content having to be really strong haunts a few of the shots in this one with the choice of weaker subject matter that then has to be forced through the high contrast effect and it doesn’t come off very well. I did also mention last week how close I find some of Kitajima’s work to Jacob Au Sobol’s in form and I know that Jacob spent some time in Japan and in fact produced the very wonderful I Tokyo book there. Have a look at this last shot and see what you think.
Fave Photo Lucas Foglia
I thought very long and hard about this one because its very popular and there are many reviews of his wonderful book Front Country so it didn’t seem to me that I could add much to what has already been said. I did have another shot by one of my favourite photographers already in here and I removed in favour of this one, simply on the basis that it is another nice contrast to the other work that I have shown today. The photo of the coyote shooter, as I mentioned, comes from Lucas ‘s marvellous Front Country book and this has received very wide acclaim and may even turn up in a few ‘best of 2014’ lists at the year end, and deservedly so. I have to say that I can’t attach any of the deeper meanings that I find in other fave shots to this one but it is without doubt a beautiful image, the strangeness, the balancing, the ‘what the heck is he doing?’ factor, the vista landscape and the fence and post all combine perfectly with the balancing shooter to create an intriguing and very nice photo that in many ways encapsulates much of what Lucas is about with the rest of his book. The book is shot in the American ranching heartlands and contrasts a change that is taking place between the traditional uses of the land for cattle and the new industries that have sprung up around mining. I won’t spoil the book for you and its a great piece of work so go have a look. The photo I choose from the book is a great example of what Lucas is capable of and his sensitive treatment of the tensions and balancing act that is going on between ranching and mining is I believe a classic and very representative of challenges that many people are facing between the steady pay check and the risks of perhaps doing something you love.
Well thats just about it for this week, just want to close by saying that I have found and ordered two Hiromix books (girls blue and Paris) from Martin Amis at photo bookstore uk and I must say I trust Martin much more than the random Amazon sellers so here is hoping, he has never let me down yet. These books are surprisingly tricky to track down so if you are in book buying mode, why not? Incidentally, if you like handmade Japanese photo books as much as I do why not check out Yumi Goto’s collection at Reminders Photography Stronghold?
See you next week and I will let Hiromix fittingly close this week……
Colin Steel, Sunday 5th October, Singapore
Sometimes you have to take chances on your instincts and I probably do that more than most when I am making decisions about things. Unfortunately, one of two outcomes then seems to happen, and they are at polar extremes - the choice either fails miserably or works surprisingly well. Both of these happened to me this week with photo book purchases which, I have to say, are often bought on instinct if I can’t actually see and handle the books, which is not always that easy in Singapore. On this occasion I was looking at some vimeo clips of books that instinctively interested me on my favourite online bookstore when I came across a book that somehow intrigued me despite not being the kind of book that I would normally buy. It was a self-published issue of only 100 personally inscribed and signed books and I am scarred with the memory of the last time I didn’t buy this kind of book when I had the chance (Carolyn Drake’s, Two Rivers) and I have regretted it ever since and now can’t find a copy anywhere at a reasonable price. With that uppermost in my mind, I switched into irrational buying mode and took the plunge and yesterday the mailman delivered the subject of this weeks review, the stunningly gorgeous Running to the Edge by Julia Borissova.
No question about it in my mind, this is going to be the toughest review that I have ever tackled for a number of reasons, some technical, some irrational but mainly because at heart I am a romanticist and sometimes find it very hard to verbalise things that I love without sounding ridiculously over the top. And, I have fallen in love with this little book and its kodachromatic, beguiling but tempestuously intriguing images. Like many aspects of love in real life, there are many things about this book that I shouldn’t like, that are opposites to my normal thinking and come from the other side of town so to speak, but that have ultimately combined to seduce me with their innocent charms (see what I mean about going over the top) Let’s think about these aspects for a minute, its in vivid colour, it mixes old, found photographs with flowers, it combines the photos with hand written excerpts (in Russian) from a found diary and so on. If someone had described the book this way to me verbally and finished with ‘and by the way, it will cost you 56 quid plus postage’, I would have given a resounding, thanks, but no thanks. Well, thankfully that didn’t happen and I bought the book and it was love at first sight, as soon as I opened it and meandered through its pages I was instantly hooked, here’s why……
I think that Borissova has pulled off something extraordinarily beautiful by doing something incredibly simple, and to appreciate this I think you need to challenge yourself with what photography means to you personally. I guess people take and look at photographs for many and varied reasons and this becomes even more complicated when you introduce the photo book with its physical aspects of texture, shape, printing, paper etc. into the mix. Like when you do actually fall in love with someone though, I have been very puzzled as to what exactly the alluring pull of this book is and what is the nature of the hold that it has developed over my imagination. And therein lies part of the answer, for me this book creates a wonderful and somewhat magical new realm of realities and imaginative possibilities (see last weeks comment about being blessed/cursed with an overly fertile imagination) that were previously unavailable in the constituent parts; the paper, the binding, the found photos, the flowers, the diary letters and so on. As ever, my test is how often do I go back to these pictures and do I see different and more interesting things when I return, and the answer is a resounding yes. Don’t be deceived by the apparent simplicity of what Julia has done here, it takes a real artists touch to create what she has from these very simple elements and I only wish that I had the technical skills (and delivery media) to show you what these deliciously sexy prints look like in the flesh. They are simply stunning and the choice of papers and printing has combined to create a sumptuous 3-D effect as the flowers appear to be sitting on top of the photos and this is so important to the imaginative effect. Take the following shot as an example of what I mean. Look at how the arrangement of the petals creates a rhythm and flow to what was a very simple, flat and static photograph and suddenly it comes alive, has movement and carries its blinded inhabitants gracefully through time and takes them to a new dimension and reality long after they have died.
I must confess that I knew absolutely nothing about Julia prior to buying this book and, as I have said before, think that a photo book has to stand on its own two feet separate from the circumstance and context behind its creation. With that in mind I will continue the review with my initial thoughts and reactions to the book prior to reading about why and how Julia created the book this way. I sometimes have this terrible fear that maybe I am the only person that sees something this particular way and that its only my crazy imagination that is at work here. That, along with my burning desire to learn, is the main reason why I try so hard to explain what I feel about a book and its photographs. Having said that, Its all to easy to get carried away with imaginative theory and ‘dig up the apple tree roots’ instead of just enjoying the taste of the apple and some of these photos are, for me, just lovely to look at.
Again, and I am willing to admit that this might just be me, but I also find some of these images to be terribly poignant and they strike at something a little bit sad, almost as if the subjects in the original photos were in a perpetual state of bemusement as to their existence and what had or was about to happen to them. I find that to be an extremely powerful emotion and its a fundamental function of Julia’s artistic choices. Just try for a moment to imagine the following photograph without the petal, close your eyes and imagine it in black and white only. Now open your eyes and look at it again and marvel at the surrealistic dimension that the photo now has and the endless range of possibilities and emotional responses that suddenly open up. The best of Julia’s images have that incredible power that comes from creating an almost unresolvable tension between the black and white subjects and the new world that they enter through the simple overlaid placement of a piece of natures wonderful form and colour.
I think its time now to quote a little from Julia and give some insight into her creative ideas from the small, pull out text pamphlets that come printed in English inside the book itself.
I explore a way of creating content around the photos through their physical presence as objects, connecting them with natural elements, thus highlighting their temporality. These flowers and petals mark the present, but at the very same time they are a very powerful vanitas symbol. Black and white photographs mean a different era; they are a visual analogy of the idea of memory slipping away with time. The concept of this work is fragility and disappearance.
Yes, I had to look up ‘vanitas’ as well.
Here we go then and this is the crux of it for me as I don’t quite see it like that at all. Far from showing the certainty of death and transience of earthly pleasures I see a world given new life. I see flat and static people and objects propelled into a new reality through the simple creative application of a coloured flower. Just think about this for a moment, I know that in reality that flower will wither and die, that petal will shrivel and darken but through these photographs they are now permanent and will always display that vibrant beauty and be part of something new, perpetually locked into that beautiful form forever. Those gorgeous, nature designed shapes and colours will always interact now with these long gone people to unlock new imaginative possibilities for me, that is the mystery and the allure that has attracted me so strongly to this wonderful and soon to be very rare, little book.
Zine of the Week Photo Express Tokyo
Okay, enough of all of this colour lark and delicate flower petals, time for a punky blast of extreme black and snow blindness inducing white with this weeks zine from Keizo Kitajima’s 1979 Photo Express.
I am sure that all of my Asian friends will know that this is not really a zine but part of a collection of a dozen small catalogues that were published in support of Kitajima’s 1979 CAMP exhibitions. Still, I consider it zine like and much of the inspiration for modern zines comes from these types of Japanese publications so thats validity enough for our purposes. As I mentioned, it comes from a collection of 12 that was recently re-published by Steidl as a pretty cool boxed set collection and I thought it might be nice to take a short look at one of these over each of the next twelve weeks. Lets get to it then, don your Ray-Ban’s and we will have a quick breeze through the first of these ultra hi-contrast zines and this is the January 1979 no. 1 issue and it went on sale for the princely sum of 200 Yen.
Did I say these were hi-contrast ? It was so cool to shoot the blog shots on my little GR set at B&W with a little contrast boost and not to worry if I had captured the tonality and delicacy of the images. Thats mainly because there is no delicacy in these shots, they are a harsh and brutal oil slick black and eye narrowing white. It will come as no surprise that Kitajima was a one time student of Moriyama’s and indeed Daido was also a collaborator in the CAMP gallery where he himself exhibited the delightfully titled ‘Whistle if you need me’ show. I am not at all knowledgable on Kitajima’s work other than this series and it seems to me that he tried to go to the furthest extreme of how you could create images using only black and white with no other tones. This initially sounds simple, but if you think about it enormous pressure then goes onto the form and content of the images if they are to succeed, and that is inevitably the challenge that Kitajima ran into and he didn’t always overcome it. Taken as a whole though the zines work and they are short, sharp and consistent, only occasionally does he fail to catch something of interest and, as I said in last weeks zine slot, its easier for artists to take more chances in these types of publications.
These photos don’t fire my imagination or create the kind of emotional experience that Borissova’s book did but I still like them very much. I am not sure if they were actually shot in post-punk 1979 or simply exhibited then, but they do have that 1977 rebellious energy in them and a careless disregard for the old school ways. When the photos fail for me its when he takes mediocre content and tries to force it to look interesting through the contrast effect and this is a recipe for disaster as the shots become pointless. While we are on it, its easy to draw comparison with Moriyama and its undeniably there but I think the differences are enough to separate their work. In fact I can see a fair spattering of Sobol in some of the zines to come. Back to the zine though and its hard to say too much on these other than that, if you like Japanese contemporary photography, this is for you and would make a nice and rewarding investment. Next week we will look at the second zine in the series and there are some significant variations that emerge as we go through the set.
Fave Photo Daido Moriyama
Just to finish off this week I am going to be a bit lazy. It might not look it but I had to put an incredible amount of thought into what I wrote about Julia’s lovely book and I am kind of running out of steam. I mentioned Moriyama in the zine section above and I thought I would finish with a somewhat unusual photo for him in that it comes from the very underrated ‘white and vinegar’ limited edition book that Moriyama shot with instant film from the Impossible Project. Each photo in the book is accompanied by some musing by Moriyama on photography, life and his contemporaries. The book itself is beautifully made and printed and would make a very worthwhile addition to anyone’s collection. I particularly like this photo and, rather than give my thoughts on why I like it, I will cop out and simply close with a quote (as printed and translated) by Daido from the book.
What is a trip?
What is to know something?
Actually I don’t even know but just happened to be stimulated by primitive thing.
They are unknowable things, invisible things and uncertain things with
my endless longing fear and challenge.
In the progress there is always feeling of death glimpsed but again revitalising
recognition and presence of life.
They seems to be the circle itself and impossible to cut off.
Such as expression formed to the work all these integrity should not be
immobilised in this circle.
In this circle and overall what I was trying to say is that a trip to me is
analogy of life and creation is just one of my method.
Colin Steel, Sunday 28th September 2014, Singapore
This week is a bit of a ‘back to my roots’ trip that was brought on by an enforced journey back to my home city of Glasgow. During the journey I thought that it might be interesting to look at my beginnings in serious photography and book collecting and also to throw in a nice little Glasgow Zine that I picked up on the trip.
Ok, this is where it all began for me three years ago in the wonderful, but sadly now gone, ESPAS photo bookstore in Istanbul where I bought my first ever photo book, the very, very beautiful Wonderland by Jason Eskenazi.
I had been to Huseyin Yilmaz’s Espas bookstore near the Galata Tower in Istanbul a few times to buy some of the marvellous back copies of iZ magazine that he had on sale at ridiculously cheap prices. On this particular day though he showed me Wonderland and gushed about what a beautiful book it was while telling me that Jason was in fact sitting in his back office at that very moment working on curating the Bursa photo festival. After one quick glance through the book I couldn’t believe my eyes and immediately asked if he would mind if Jason signed a copy for me at which point Huseyin invited me to tea with Jason and him on the lovely little balcony behind his office. When I look back on this I could kick myself for not asking Jason more about the book and his thinking as a photographer but I was really at the beginning of my own journey in photography and, as this was the first serious photo book I had ever bought, I lacked the insight to form sensible questions. Nevertheless Jason took some time with me to explain the framework of the book, how it came into being, and later that evening at an unforgettable dinner under the Galata bridge, a little about his philosophy on photography. Lets look then at what makes Wonderland such a special book to me and I will do my very best to try to explain what are sometimes intangible and abstract thoughts that I have about the book and Eskenazi himself as an artist that deserves to be much better known and acclaimed for this incredible work.
Wonderland, a Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith
When I had my all to short cup of tea with Jason on Huseyin’s balcony he explained to me that he had constructed the book loosely around a ‘fairy tale’ structure. In other words, child gets lost from parent(s), ends up with guardians that don’t treat her well and so on, anyone that has ever seen a Dinsney movie will know the storyline well. Having said that, the book does have an unstructured feel to the flow of the photos and I think that is a result of Eskenazi sequencing the photographs rather than trying to fit them into the fairy tale structure too rigidly.
Like some other books that I have I didn’t really want to review this one for the simple reason that you really have to look through this book again and again to enjoy it. If you manage to do so you will be rewarded by one of the highest quality set of images that you can find anywhere, for my money this blows many of the best selling photo books out of the water with its out and out consistency.
Believe me, I have shown this to many friends and they are astonished as they turn the pages and stunning image after stunning image leaps out at them. Just when you think you must have passed the best ones the next page turn will surprise and delight again. So what is it that is so magical about these images?
Well, firstly, and this is not uncommon with the best books that I review here, it was shot over a long period of time, around ten years I believe and that has given Eskenazi real depth in his material and an earned understanding of his subject matter that shows through in the quality of the book. Secondly, Eskenazi is THE master composer. Many of his photographs are beautifully layered and there is nothing but nothing is in these photographs that doesn’t play a part in the overall structure and intent of the shot.
I made a statement in the last review of SIgal’s White Road about everything in the frame playing its part and justifying its inclusion while it only takes one distracting element to ruin a shot. This is where Eskenazi shines. This is very important to me though, I don’t think that its enough to have complex layered shots if they don’t have an emotional soul. There are a number of very well known photographers who excel at complex, layered framing however I find many of their shots to be formulaic and emotionally void. Not so with Eskenazi, please take the time to study the above photograph or better still, find superior copies than mine and just admire the poetry of the composition and emotional validity of his often poignant photography. Everything in this marvellous photograph is important, from the position of the girls hand in the lower left right across to the female face on the far right (my image has cropped it a little to tightly compared to the original) that pushes you back into the incredible set of stories in the image.
Although the book is nicely varied in its thoughtful sequencing, I want to show a few of these multi-layered shots together and out of sequence because, for me, they exemplify what elevates Eskenazi’s work above the norm.
The thing is that, although the shots are complex, they appear economical and flow in a very poetic rhythm. It is my personal belief that this comes in part from having a huge depth of material so that you can afford to pick only the very best images without having to resort to fillers.
Eskenazi is far from being a one trick pony though and the book is sprinkled with these wonderfully quirky shots that catch you a bit by surprise every so often.
So, you may ask, why isn’t this book more popular and Eskenazi not better known? Well, thats a tough one but I did have the courage to ask Jason this self same question and he answered simply and unassumingly that he didn’t crave popularity and in fact preferred to ‘stay off the radar’ Hmmm, I have nothing but the highest admiration for someone that can say something like that in the photography world, especially when they can deliver the goods while meandering around with a beat up old Olympus around their neck. Many of you reading this will know of the fact that he worked as a security guard at MOMA in New York during the Robert Frank ‘looking into The Americans’ exhibition to pay the bills, and, I am sure I read somewhere that he learned a lot about not giving away the whole story with too much detail from a Vermeer exhibition there. I think its fair to say that, like many other photographers, Jason is a quiet and pretty shy person who thinks only about his art and everything else seems peripheral and unimportant to him as a result.
Its incredible to think that this was Jason’s first book and that the only other book of his photography that I could find was a collaboration of portraits called Title Nation. I would dearly love to see the cutting room floor from the editing of Wonderland, I am sure that there will be some absolute gems that he couldn’t fit in here for whatever reason.
Just returning to the fairy tale structure for a moment, I seem to recall that his overall message was that the story revolved around the loss of youth and the hard lesson of independence. You will find a little clip of Jason on YouTube if you search where he explains the following somewhat iconic photo that for him summed up the old guard leaving the Kremlin in the form of the hatted and somewhat sinister man moving off in the bus window. This is a somewhat less complex photo in structure but extremely powerful in content.
I guess that you will know by now just how much I love and am inspired by this book. I discovered a while ago that I personally lack the ability to compose complex frames like Eskenazi’s but that doesn’t stop me admiring what he does and I read this book so much that I am now getting worried about wearing it down and its out of print and getting horrendously expensive to replace so if you come across a copy don’t hesitate to buy it (and one for me while you are at it:) When I left Jason in Istanbul he told me that he was working to finish off his latest project which was called the Black Garden and made the move up from Fairy Tale to Mythology, I don’t know about you but I can’t wait to see this book and I hope that he is close to publishing it.
Goose Flesh Zine, Volume 3
As I mentioned at the start, I picked up this little zine on my recent trip to Glasgow so I wanted to mention it here and have a quick look at it. Firstly though I want to quote the marvellous intro by Scottish author Kirsty Logan:
Goose flesh is a vestigial reflex from our long-ago days of heavy body hair. Sea otters bristle; porcupines raise their quills. They are animals, and once upon a time we were animals too. Our goose flesh proves it. But not now. Now we’re civilised. Now we buy photography journals and sip espresso and purse our lips and say, “yes, intriguing”. The world is ours to own. We capture it in images and then we share it in images. The world is so small we can fit it on a single page.
And so we sit, the clever ex-animals that we are, and we purse our lips to our rapidly-cooling espresso and we open a little set of images of our little world. The pages turn and the images flash; we see red, we see the wet innards of sex and the aftermath of car-crashes, we see danger and lust, we’re hungry and angry. Our flesh raises into bumps. It raises like we’re animals but we know we’re not because look, it’s not the real world, it’s only an image. And we’re not animals, so despite the red we don’t immediately scream or fuck or rage.
We look at the image, and we turn the page.
We see blue, and sleep swells in our chests.
We see yellow, and daylight prickles our eyelids.
Green, and the scent of grass fills our mouths.
We see flames and flowers and rain; sex and death and celebration.
Our bodies react, but we do not. We sit. We look.
With our eyes we capture the world, make it tiny so that whenever we choose, we can close the covers on it, tidy it neatly away - but our bodies cannot be tidy. Our flesh betrays us. Our gaze makes us human, but our flesh is animal.
Jesus, if thats not worth the 5 quid entry money what is? And this is before we even see a photo !!!
I don’t know about you but I find photo zines fascinating and consider them to be the lifeblood of printed photography. They are unassuming but usually highly creative and photographers generally take risks in them that they wouldn’t dare to in a full blown book. Obviously, it is also a way for artists to showcase their work and have a bit of fun at the same time. Given that I only became really serious about photography in the last two or three years when I already lived in Singapore, I know almost nothing about the photography scene in Scotland and was delighted to be given this as a gift following a visit to the streetlevelphotoworks gallery in Glasgow’s Trongate. The zine seems to me to feature young Scottish talent and its great to see something like this from my home city.
As you would expect, the zine is a bit hit and miss but I think it would be entirely wrong to look at this kind of thing with the same critical eye as an expensive photo-book but here are a few images from the book and a couple of thoughts that entered my head when I look at it.
First thought is about the lovely humour of the cover shot and I am sure this is not just the famous Glaswegian wry humour at work because look at how well it is sequenced inside the zine, this is my favourite pair of shots. The zine is somewhat unusually for these kind of publications printed in full colour, and it works.
Some of the shots didn’t work quite so well for me but I think thats because the photographer tackled an extremely difficult context in shooting portraits of people in the street. I think that what makes this so hard is the need to remove camera awareness and, while its fine for the subjects to look at the camera, I couldn’t get rid of the sense that there was a camera there and a photograph being taken. Also, with the odd exception, I don’t think the subjects were interesting enough in their own right. Maybe being hypercritical here given the spirit of the zine, but I prefer to be honest where possible.
Back to my overall thoughts though and I think that the mix of styles and colours in the sequencing really works and full marks to Sarah who edited the zine. I even spotted a couple of shots that looked like they were taken in what is now more familiar territory to me than my home city :)
Anyway, I hope that this was a nice diversion. I certainly enjoyed this little zine very much and I will be looking out for volume 4, well done to Sarah for the creative drive behind this.
Todd Hido
I was tempted to use an Eskenazi shot for the fave photo slot this week, and believe me I could have chosen from many, however, I enjoyed the diversity of styles and subject matter over the last few weeks and wanted to continue that, so this weeks shot is a portrait by Todd Hido from his Between the Two book.
Hido has become a pretty popular ‘name’ now in the photographic world with his beautifully presented, large photo books by Nazraeli Press, and man they do a nice job. Hido’s books always have a lovely, strange but familiar feel to them and, as I understand it, they are based around his search for his childhood environment and days of his youth. I don’t consider it important to know why he shoots what he shoots in the way that he does, but he somehow gets at that David Lynch type feeling of all sorts of weirdness and endless stories behind the most bland and normal people and scenes and that is one of the reasons I chose this particular photo. Hido’s books largely comprise somehow unsettling and intriguing shots of houses at night, people-empty landscapes (often shot through rain smeared windows) and hotel/motel room female encounters. This all combines to create a gnawing feeling of familiarity ( I am fascinated to know if female photographers feel the same way, please leave a comment if you have anything to say on this) and a fleeting sense of the tension of encounters. Sometimes the room photos have too staged a feeling for me and I get a sense of the camera at work and a model posing, this is particularly so in the more explicit shots but not so at all for me in the shot that I have chosen here. A few weeks back I showed a photograph of the old lady from Ernesto Bazan’s Al Campo and praised its universitality, and this photo has exactly that same characteristic. The photo is so simple yet it allows your imagination to run riot as you trawl through your memory banks to try in futility to resolve how you know this situation and person. It might be that I have been cursed/gifted by an overly fertile imagination but that gaze, the knowingness, the weariness, the clothing, the hairstyle, the colour tone, the slight tilt of the head and the ambiguity of the setting all create that David Lynch paradox of familiarity but uneasiness that you can sense that this could all go horribly wrong if it goes any further.
Like many photo books that I like, I think Hido’s work is best treated as a whole to allow him to build his atmosphere however, this is a photo that I go back to a lot when I look at his work and I hope I am not alone in enjoying its mystery and evocative feel.
Well that’s it for this week but I wanted to close with a little footnote on Wonderland. After I wrote the first few paragraphs of this article I decided that I should get a back up copy that I could read so that I can preserve my signed original. Hmmmm, when I went onto Amazon to have a look a new copy is selling for around S$5000 and a used one for S$2000 !!!! Yikes, I never expected that however it does signal that there is enough demand to re-publish this classic and I have a very fond wish that Jason can get Mack or someone to publish this and give it the kind of printing and promotion it so richly deserves.
Colin Steel, Sunday 21st September 2014, Singapore
