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