Oh man, I feel so frustrated this week. I attended a talk by Klavdij Sluban at the Singapore Photography Festival and only around twenty of Singapore’s five million inhabitants could be bothered to turn out to listen to him. Had anyone with a genuine interest in photography and art turned up, they, like me, would have been treated to a precious hour with someone who really understands what its all about and has the eloquence to verbalise his thinking in a meaningful way. I mention this because I had no idea who Klavdij was prior to this event but I have been blessed with extraordinary good luck in my intuition about these things in recent years and listening to Klavdij and looking at his very beautiful photographs reminded me of something very important that was being diluted in my head. My intuition, sparked by my very good friends, Brindusa, Monica and Anja led to my first introduction with Ernesto Bazan in Sicily a few years back and it was a browse through Bazan Cuba that convinced me to go and spend some time working with him in the place of his birth. It was the start of a very special relationship and friendship for me that has completely altered the course of my thinking and in many ways my life.

What Klavdij reminded me of was twofold: firstly, that very little comes fast in art and it often takes a very long time to mature or refine something with real depth; secondly, and most importantly, that the best photography that I love personally is completely devoid of novelty and trickery but brimful of soul and humanity, that is why I chose to review Bazan Cuba this week.

Before I get into a look at the book itself and what I think personally about it, I want to start by looking back at a photo that Ernesto took in 1978. The shot shown here is from his third publication I Primi Vent’ Anni, the first twenty years and the reason for showing it here in this review of Bazan Cuba is to demonstrate that Ernesto always had the innate artistry to photograph, in a way the challenge was to find a grand subject and calling near to his heart and that came in the shape of the at that time almost inaccessible, Cuba.

The Ernesto Bazan Trilogy, Part 1 Bazan Cuba

It is my intention to review each of the books in the Cuban trilogy over the next four or five months and today we kick off with the first in the set, Bazan Cuba. I know that pretty soon the people reading this blog will get very bored by the repetitive nature of the things that I say and that is why I will probably quit this pretty soon, maybe after I review Isla, the final book in the Bazan series. What I want to say here is simple though. I have been looking at a lot of photography, photo books and exhibitions recently along with attending artist talks and events and something very personal is becoming clear to me. I fully acknowledge the beauty and necessity for diversity in this world so please remember that this is nothing more than my personal view, and many others will see things differently, and thats the way it should be. What is becoming evident to me though is that much of contemporary photography is similar in proposition and structure to the way we are fed through the media, movies, magazines, music, tv and so on. What I mean here is that somehow we are presented with things in a novelty manner, packaged in short, easily digested and very often spelt out for you manner so that you don’t have to think too much or be distracted from your iPhone for too long in case you miss some other similarly ‘exciting and new’ piece of media stimulation. Unfortunately for me, this is like blasting down a can of Coke or eating a Maccie D’s cheeseburger, its instantly gratifying but insubstantial and has no lasting benefit. That is why I personally believe that artists like Robert Frank, Jason Eskenazi, Klavdij Sluban, Nikos Economopoulos and Ernesto Bazan are so important, they are the Miles Davis’s, the Edward Hopper’s, Bill Evans’s, Rothko’s and Tarkovsky’s of the photography world and their work is substantial, artistically soulful and a clear reflection of their humanity. This marks them out from the quirky, and sensationalised or novel work of many of todays photographers who focus on the uniqueness of their project idea over the quality and depth of the photographic art. Unfortunately, and very sadly, in our conditioned world of the 3 minute song, the 1.6 hour movie, the 13, 40 minute episode tv mini-series, and fast food dining ‘experience’ that I alluded to above, there is not so much appetite for things that make you think or require a modicum of attention or are not laden with the basest violence or sexuality. For that reason, (with the obvious exception of Robert Frank) the work of these and other similar artists is relatively obscure and not as mainstream as it deserves to be. That for me, is very sad but hopefully in some very small way my ramblings might prompt someone to have a look at the work of Ernesto and the others I mentioned and that would be great because they deserve to be looked at and appreciated by a much wider audience.

Anyway, lets get back to Bazan Cuba and I know that many of the people reading this will know the work very well so please stick with me if I state the obvious for you guys.

I mentioned the ‘novelty project’ nature of much of todays contemporary photography and this is never the case with Ernesto or the other photographers I mentioned (not a definitive list by any means, just the ones that were front of mind) I almost get the impression that they do not have defined project concepts in their head and that rather they go somewhere they like and photograph………………a lot. Their work also seems to be grand scale; America, Wonderland (Russia), the Balkans, Trans Siberia and of course Ernesto’s Cuba. Many, many photographers have photographed Cuba, some very famous but I don’t think any of them got at the heart of the country, its people or its soul the way Ernesto Bazan did in his three books. How could they? they brought their photographic formulas and visited, often creating good and artistic work but ultimately lacking the kind of depth and intimacy that Ernesto was able to achieve over the fourteen years that he shot and lived there. I think David Bailey summed this up for me in his cliche ridden Havana 2006 publication: “just a superficial look, not a soul searching investigation, a quick impression of a place…”

For me the ‘cliches’ are unavoidable because they are a very intrinsic part of the country and its people, its how you use them that makes the difference, look at how Ernesto shows the famous classic, vintage American cars:

These are not separated out as anachronistic curios, instead they are an everyday part of these peoples lives and have a functional use beyond being photographed by visiting foreigners. Look also at how Che appears in the next photo:

He is of course everywhere but in Ernesto’s photos not in some obvious and too easy juxtaposition and even when the icons do appear in a more specific combination, they are never the dominant subject, more they are omnipresent almost lurking in the sub-conscious and ever present, and even sometimes to have a bit of ironic humour poked at them. Have a look at the intricate composition below, everything just seems to be in the right place and all of the elements in the frame plays its part to combine to lift this shot well above the ordinary. I want to come back to frame structure later and have a closer look at some of Ernesto’s compositions.

Ernesto spent a large part of his adult life living and photographing in Cuba and integrated fully into Cuban life, also marrying there and having his twin sons born in the country. Part of the initial attraction of Cuba for him was the compelling impression he had that he had rediscovered the Palermo and Sicily of his childhood and I think that heartfelt fondness is nowhere more apparent than when he heads into the Cuban countryside. The city shots are all very beautiful but out of necessity they are often tinged or counterbalanced with an irony that almost becomes a frustrated bitterness and that is a very strong and intrinsic part of their reality and power. Personally I believe that much of this disappears to a large degree when he heads into the countryside and it is there that his real love of people and simple humanity really shines through. I am going to harp on about this again because I think this is where where our modern lives get filled with the need for instant gratification and sensationalistic novelty that all of the time obscures and moves us farther away from our true individual personalities and common nature and these photographs return me to that with their beautiful simplicity and soulful heart.

There is always a deep sensitivity in Ernesto’s photography but I personally feel that it becomes heightened when he is amongst country people and I have witnessed this mutual affection first hand. It is as if there is a deep empathy born of trust and mutual respect that can only exist on a human level. No one feels at all exploited when they appear in an Ernesto Bazan photograph.

I don’t want to dwell too much on the countryside aspect of Cuba as I want to deal with it more thoroughly when we take a look at Al Campo which, as its name suggests, deals with the rural Cuban heartland.

To break away from the countryside themes then, I want to talk for a minute or two about the structure of Ernesto’s shots and how he uses the camera frame. I mentioned this when I wrote about Jason Eskenazi a few weeks back and there are huge similarities in the way these photographers exploit the camera for artistic purposes. What always comes into my head is that there is an economic efficiency in their shooting that wastes absolutely nothing in the photographic frame. Lets not kid ourselves though that these guys just pull the camera to their eyes and deliver these masterfully composed shots every time. Sure they have the innate artistic ability honed by many years of practice but they also have massive depth of material in their work and that is what allows them to edit down until only the most important and artistically valuable shots are left. Have a look at how these shots are composed and marvel at the tiny details that make such a difference in the frames:

Not only are the shots beautifully composed, they have a rhythm to them that is important to the sensibility of Cuba and Ernesto’s interpretation of the Cuban heart.

Its the age-old and well proven artistic requirement of Light, Form and Content and if I refer back to my earlier statements on some contemporary photography, these novelty driven concepts and projects almost never combine these three intrinsic elements completely or even satisfactorily. Sometimes the subject is interesting but the form is not there or the project will be dominated by some trickery of light or colour. This doesn’t happen in a Frank, Eskenazi or Bazan photo, these guys are puritanical about these basics and that is where much of their artistic success is drawn from - they refuse to comprimise and the basics are always absolutely rock solid and then you can start to be adventurous because you have a very substantial platform to build from.

I also mentioned in the earlier rant about the explicit, sensationalistic requirements of modern media and the desperate need to ‘spell things out for you’ Anyone who has ever watched and enjoyed a Tarkovsky movie for example will know that their artistic strength comes from simply creating a framework and perhaps infering something thereby leaving you entirely free to create your own realities and use your personal experiences and imagination to do so. That is their enduring strength and of course their fatal weakness in the snapshot, soundbite modern world where few seem to have the patience to sit through a whole movie that is not riddled with cliche and explosion and violence.

Just look at how these photos work in respect of creating possibility without spelling everything out or being sensationalistic in any way.

I was absolutely horrified at the Sluban talk in Singapore when one of the audience asked him ‘if you don’t have captions how do we understand your photographs’ !!!!! I can think of how some photographers would have answered that however Sluban politely tried to explain the artistic viewpoint that they were reflections of himself and an attempt to capture something intrinsic or soulful in the nature of our world and that is how Ernesto’s photos always appear to me. I know they are photographs of Cuban’s in Havana, walking, sitting and drinking on the Malecon, living their lives out in a particular environment and political climate that Ernesto comments on however the best photos in Bazan Cuba go way beyond that. They are comments on humanity, often shown in a beautifully simplistic manner, the glances, the looks, the shapes and light strike at something that renders where the subjects happen to be entirely irrelevant.

I think this is something that elevates the work of the artists I mentioned at the start out of project world. Their photography, although structured and presented on a theme (Cuba, America, Russia etc.) in a way is not at its heart about those thematic titles at all. You could probably take stills from all of the above mentioned artists and interweave them with each other because they are not reliant on the theme or concept for their success as photographs or photo books and that is the key difference between them and the type of work that I was critical of. The novel project approach relies almost entirely on that idea for its success and is therefore extremely narrow in what it is capable of. Think about that for a moment, if I fish Anders Petersen’s Rome off my shelves there is almost nothing in that book that anchors the photos in Rome at all !! These are photos of Anders personal realities and they could (and often are) be easily interchanged with shots from any of the other locations that Anders has shot in. These photos are not concept bound at all in any way shape or form and I feel that about Ernesto’s photography as well. I know that these shots were taken in Cuba over the ‘special period’ during the fall and collapse of the Russian wonderland and the economic consequences that held for Cuba, however, they are not recordings of that at all they are much deeper and more universally human in their nature.

Incidentally, please forgive the quality of my snapshots of Ernesto’s photos. They are obviously just intended to illustrate points and you really need to see these in book form to appreciate the sequencing and flow. Which is another point worth making. Part of Ernesto’s teaching process in his workshops is to get his students to select from his own collection of contact prints and this obviously has the dual benefit of helping the students to learn how to critique and edit while Ernesto gets important feedback on his own work. I mention this because I know from personal experience that Ernesto can produce boxes upon boxes of extremely good photos for these reviews and at times there seems to be a bottomless depth to his work. This just underlines the point I made at the start about very little coming fast in art, his current South American work began mainly in 2006 when he was forced to leave Cuba with his family and is still being developed nearly ten years later.

Its always hard to close these reviews out and this one is harder than most because of the personal aspects. I will remind again that you really need to hold, handle and look at these books time and time again to begin to apprecaite them fully and all I try to do here is to give my honest view on what I think personally about the book being reviewed. It should be obvious now that this book is one of my prized possessions in life, it stands up there with The Americans, Wonderland, Balkanlarda, City Diaries and the other classics that I am lucky enough to own and I use the oft abused word ‘classics’ very deliberately for, as I hope I have described, the true nature of these books lifts them well out of the world of photography.

IN THIS THERE IS NO MEASURING WITH TIME, A YEAR DOESN’T MATTER, AND TEN YEARS ARE NOTHING. BEING AN ARTIST MEANS: NOT NUMBERING AND COUNTING, BUT RIPENING LIKE A TREE, WHICH DOES NOT FORCE ITS SAP, AND STANDS CONFIDENTLY IN THE STORM OF SPRING, NOT AFRAID THAT AFTERWARD SUMMER MAY NOT COME. IT DOES COME. BUT IT ONLY COMES TO THOSE WHO ARE PATIENT, WHO ARE THERE AS IF ETERNITY LIES BEFORE THEM, SO UNCONCERNEDLY SILENT AND VAST. I LEARN IT EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE, LEARN IT WITH PAIN, I AM GRATEFUL FOR: PATIENCE IS EVERYTHING.

Free Art

As with last week I thought I would put a little breaker in here with some free flyers that I have been adding to my collection so here we go:

I really like these and I hope you do too.

Zines, Kitajima Photo Express Tokyo V3

Here we are back again for a dose of 70’s Japan with our old friend Kitajima and we are up to No.3 in the twelve zine series. As you can see, this is the first of the colour covers and personally I think it looks really cool with the yellow and black hi-contrast look. I am glad that he didn’t over milk this and used it on the cover only as inside are two or three shots that exemplify what Kitajima was about and I have chosen a few of these to show today.

I won’t bore you again by giving my opinion on why and when his shots work but suffice to say that the sequencing and content is strong in this particular edition and its one of my faves in the series.

I really love the look and feel of these photos and would dearly have loved to have attended one his shows to see the full process live. I mentioned last week that he often shot and developed all in the same session and this added to the almost random vibe that you can sometimes feel from the zines. One thing is for sure and that is that many of these shots and pairings have a real energy and buzz about them that I think perfectly matches the impression that I have of Japan at that time.

My original idea with these was to look at all twelve zines in the series but to be honest I am now realising that its going to be impossible for me to add anything to the views that I have already given on the series so I think I will wrap it up next week by taking a selection of my favourites from the remaining zines and that way it won’t get tedious. I sincerely hope that its been enjoyable looking at these so far though.

Incidentally, I got an e-mail from Sarah who edits the lovely little Goose Flesh zine from Glasgow that I looked at a few weeks back and there is a new issue (no.4) out and I will be trying to get my hands on one as soon as possible to have a look at here with you.

Fave Photo, Nikos Economopoulos

I mentioned Nikos above when I talked about the short list of ‘classic’ photographers that were front of mind for me as examples of photographers that shot epic works without having to resort to novelty or trickiness. The photo that I have chosen here (sorry again about the quality of my shot of it) is from his stunning Balkanlarda book which I think stands alongside Ernesto’s Cuba and the others that I mentioned as the definitive work on this particular region by someone who spent a long time driving around in his camper van observing and creating an incredibley deep but highly artistic work on the Balkan countries and the people who live work and die there. The photo itself might at first glance appear to be a strange choice but I chose it very deliberately for its importance to me personally and also because I think it says a lot about how Nikos observes and uses photography to express himself. By crazy coincidence, I also bought this book on the same trip to Istanbul that I mentioned when I bought Jason Eskenazi’s Wonderland and this was the second serious photography book that I ever bought. The reason for the visit to Istanbul was a workshop with Nikos and I have to attribute him with really showing me what was possible with photography. The workshop itself was a really uncomfortable experience for me as I struggled to come to terms with the shift in thinking that Nikos was enabling for me and I will be eternally grateful to him for opening my mind to a new world of possibility. Back to the photograph itself and what I find remarkable about it is the simple arrangement of lines and motifs and the incredible use of space that is a Nikos trademark. Nikos is a true artist in every sense of the word, his grasp of dynamics and placement in a photographic frame is just amazing and you can see it time and again in his work. Many of the photos in Balkanlarda almost fall for me into the category of modern art because of the way Nikos provokes beautiful but challenging form and I think you will agree with me that the photo above looks amazing yet it appears so simple in its elements. I can’t think of a single other photographer that would have seen this shot and been able to compose it so beautifully and with such well balanced attention to detail. Just look at what an absolutely critical role that the little feather on the line plays, it somehow snaps the whole photo into artistic sensibility and without it the whole thing would lack that mysterious interest that only Nikos can create in this way. I have said it before in this post but it takes real command of the photographic medium to be able to make this kind of shot and if you take the time to look at his work you will quickly see how bold he is with structure and how thought provoking and enduringly interesting the photos become as a result.

I sincerely hope that you can find some sense in what I have tried to say about the work of Ernesto, Nikos and the others that I have mentioned this week and I am very much looking forward to reviewing Al Campo which is the second in Ernesto’s Cuban trilogy, I will probably get around to that one before Xmas.

Thanks again for reading, hope you will catch up again next week.

Colin Steel, Sunday 12th October 2014, Singapore