The Musee de l' Elysee in Lausanne, a rare museum purely for photography run by the writer and curator William A Ewing, is currently showing an exhibition titled Lasting Impressions The Fine Art & Craft of the Steidl Book. In collaboration with the ECAL/University of art and design Lausanne, the museum has organised an international colloquium on the future of the Photobook.
The Fine Art & Craft of the Steidl Book 18.11.2009 — 21.02.2010
Details of the event here.
Announced to attend are Nathalie Bocher-Lenoir, Luc Debraine, Mary Delmonico, Frédérique Destribats, Bernd Detsch, William A. Ewing, Lady Elena Foster, Philippe Garner, Jean Genoud, Winfried Heininger, Françoise Jaunin, Werner Jeker, Pierre Keller, Walter Keller, Michael Mack, Lesley Martin, Gilles Mora, Lars Müller, Thomas Neurath, Neil Palfreyman, Alice Rawsthorn, Markus Schaden, Joachim Schmid, Alec Soth, Gerhard Steidl, Joël Tettamanti.
The event, over two days, is based around three round table discussions... Profusion & Confusion: What is the photography book today? Menaces & Promises: Where is the photography book going? and Concepts & Objects: A Photobook Laboratory
So being a photographer who has spent a lot of time publishing online and more recently in print, I've come to Lausanne to hear the thoughts of those in the Photobook publishing, printing, designing and distributing business...and hopefully there will be a few photographers here as well.
A good primer for the weekend here in Lausanne would be to consult the Resolve Blog crowd scourced post on the future of the Photobook organised by Flak Photo's Andy Adams and Livebooks Miki Johnston in December. Some of the conclusions of that discussion can be found here.
There is a tangible feeling in the air that the photographic publishing industry is on the verge of a revolution, technology and the internet have moved the goal posts forever, this is good news for many but bad news for those who don't understand it and evolve. Traditional publishers are struggling to compete with the high standard of content that is now served up free on the web, new devices like Apples iPad are providing alternative non paper platforms for the dissemination of content and images...and services like Blurb have empowered individual artists to cost effectively produce their own publications. Digital printing and the low entry costs of desktop publishing have spawned a huge number of small, creative and innovative boutique publishers of books and magazines, many, I suspect, like myself, inspired by the need to hold photographs in the hand again after a decade of viewing them on back lit screens.
The Aditorium at ECAL Lausanne
Day 1: What is the photography book today? & Where is the photography book going? The first thing of note is that nearly three hundred people are sitting around discussing the Photobook at all, with attendees from Europe, the US and Australia it is clear there is a great deal of interest in the future of the Photobook. Artists can either exhibit their 'original' work or 'reproduce' it in a publication, but many, like photographer John Gossage, consider the book as their 'original'...he went on to say 'The responsibility of the contemporary artist is to create the work and setting the context in which their work should be seen, the book, between the two covers, is a world unto itself'. There seemed to be some confusion over the current state of the Photobook market, reports were contradictory from different members of the panel, some reported that 'the rate of sales increase (of Photobooks) was faster than other areas in the last 10 years', Thomas Neurath of Thames and Hudson said 'there were more people making photographs and wanting to be informed about the worldwide scene'. While others like Gilles Mora said 'The economy of Photobooks is a catastrophe'....'The market is shrinking in the US and Europe'...they 'used to sell 20,000 copies of a monograph like Walker Evans and now only 8000. Publishing is an extraordinary daily risk'. Some publishers are increasingly producing small editions instead of investing in big print runs, Christophe Shaden of Shaden books said 'Its a lousy business, everything has changed, we are more and more doing specialised editions of as little as 35 copies', Lesley Martin of the Aperture Foundation admitted they were producing fewer titles a year and agreed 'the Photobook market is bifurcating, the mainstream Photobook is the most jeapordised I don't know what's going to happen to that'. There was a lot of talk about Steidl books who apparently produce a staggering 400 books a year, there recent re publishing of Robert Franks The Americans has sold an amazing 80,000 copies since 2008. John Gossage pointed out that 50 years ago The Americans was remaindered in bookstores and you couldn't give it away...Gilles Mora suggested that a young Robert Frank today would publish The Americans digitally. Mora also suggested that the successful Steidl publishing model was in fact part of the problem..'The Steidl system works very well, its drawing towards the Steidl system other ways of working. If I want to work with an American gallery I can't because Steidl is already there, that system is going to absorb all of the others, those are the terms we are going to have to face, there is an effect of quantity, the Steidl system is like a magnet, it draws everything to him'. Lesley Martin agreed 'The smart strategy of Steidl is to own the means of production, the printing press'...Gerhard Steidl admitted they don't co-publish, everything is done in Germany and everything except the binding is done by Steidl itself. There was not much discussion of online publishing, the director of Ivory Press, Lady Elena Foster said 'The online magazine 'Burn' was a fabulous resource for young photographers, it is something to watch for publishers and artists'...but generally there was not much appetite for Photobooks on iPads...Apertures Lesley Martin said 'I wish I had the answers, we are trying to invent them right now, maybe the ebook format, social media has a place (in marketing) but you can't rely on that. We are standing staunchly behind the printed object'. The artist and founder of the ABC Artists book cooperative, Joachim Schmid said 'The book has been around for 500 years, if you want to replace that you better come up with something pretty convincing and I haven't seen it yet'....all electronic book discussion ceased after Mr Schmid declared ' The future of the book could be a pdf? this is complete nonsense, a book is a book and a pdf is a pdf.....I don't download wine!' The print on demand services were mentioned with mixed opinions and doubts over their quality but for many artists the question is not 'good quality or bad quality', it is 'book or no book'. Gerhard Steidl suggested the print on demand industry 'does not believe in art or love art, they believe in profits'. I was particularly interested in publisher Lars Mullers opinion that 'Photographers themselves are the best designers of Photobooks helped by him. Commissioned designers feel obliged to deliver 'a design' instead of being aware of the photography itself'. I guess I knew the day would be inconclusive but it was fascinating, I think Joachim Schmid summed up the day rather amusingly when he said 'Predicting the future of Photobooks is like predicting the trajectory of a clipped toe nail, you don't know where its going'. Day 2: Concepts & Objects: A Photobook Laboratory The morning started at the Musee de L Elysee with a tour of the exhibition of Steidl books and publishing lead by Gerhard Steidl himself, we learned that Steidl changes his press every 5 years to ensure quality and that he doesn't consider modern offset printing to be as good a quality as the Gravure printing processes of the past. His aim is to eventually match it and he claims to be 80% there. He works from 5am in the morning and spends a lot of time experimenting on his own presses. Gerhard Steidl likes to see himself as a benevolent facilitator for artists to get their work published in the way that they envision it should be seen, he claims to have only a 'business' relationship with those whose work he publishes like Karl Lagerfeld, Jim Dine and Robert Frank. Steidl turns around publishing projects in an astonishingly short period of time and projects are often completed without a break.
Steidl exhibit at Musee de L'Elysee, Lausanne.
Steidl exhibit at Musee de L'Elysee, Lausanne.
We settled into the auditorium at the Elysee to discuss the process of making Photobooks but this session proved disjointed and covered a lot of the ground of the previous day, particularly the changing Photobook market and financial climate...this left one with the impression that the representatives of the publishers on the stage were struggling to get past lamenting the 'way it used to be' and had yet to engage with the new climate and adapt to it. The question was asked 'Why do photographers want to make a book at all?' to which the photographer Jules Spinatsch replied 'To finalise a project, it doesn't leave me alone until its between two covers'...our moderator Mary Delmonico of Delmonico books said 'Just because you can take 10,000 photographs doesn't mean you should put them all in a book, if I'm going to make a book it has to justify cutting down that tree'. Michael Mack of steidlMack publishing in London encouraged photographers to consider carefully if a book was really the right outlet for their project, he sees a lot of proposals that would make a great magazine story but not a book. It was largely agreed that the Photobook market was polarising with expensive limited editions and specialist books being produced for collectors at one end and cheap large run popular Photobooks at the other with a big market in the middle were the publishers are scrapping it out. Neil Palfreyman of Thames and Hudson suggested that expensive limited edition books went against the whole democratic aim of publishing in general. There was disappointingly little advice for photographers about approaching publishers, about preparing and presenting their project to a publisher or about self publishing, the closest we got was a few inconclusive comments about the necessity or not of having a photograph on the cover.
The Day 2 Photobook Laboratory discussion
Conclusions The Photobook is a fundamental part of the the work of many Photographers, for many it is their aim, their final object and many things must come together if they are to reach an audience with their work. The traditional model is under a lot of stress, Photobook buyers only have a certain amount of money in their pockets and there is a proliferation of titles on the market, the pie has shrunk in the last decade and they need to reduce the number of slices taken out if they are to continue to make and sell Photobooks. subject > camera > photographer > publisher > distributor > bookshop > audience The challenge for the established publishers is that the technology is now there for photographers to self publish their own books and to market them and sell them using social media and cheap online payment systems directly to their audience. subject > camera > photographer > audience Some things haven't changed of course, the quality of the concept, the work and the publication still need to be high but if it is, the web is like a big pond, if you chuck a big enough stone in the ripples will spread far and wide through the twitter and blogosphere. In many ways this is a time to be optimistic about the future of the Photobook despite the challenges faced by the established Photobook publishers. There are no longer 'gatekeepers' between the photographer and the production of a book, which means that an unknown photographer can still produce, market and sell and a quality publication at a time when the main publishers are becoming more risk averse. Today Robert Frank wouldn't wait two years to find a publisher for 'The Americans' he'd produce 2000 copies himself and sell it through his website and market it through his blog and twitter account. While forms of electronic publication such as Burn and Magnum in Motion have a roll to play in telling stories, nobody in Lausanne really saw them as a replacement for the Photobook. Having said that, the publishers present were print experts and not technology experts, one example of an electronic book was mentioned by the director of Kodoji Press, Winfried Heininger...the 'Magbook' produced by Andreas Magdanz of his 160 page out of print book Dienststelle Marienthal available through itunes for 3.99 euros.
Dienststelle Marienthal iPhone book through itunes by Andreas Magdanz
I have only skimmed the surface of the discussions around the Photobook in Lausanne and some of the conclusions above are mine rather than those of the Colloquium as a whole. It was a great event and all those present were passionate and dedicated to the Photobook form. My thanks goes to William A Ewing at the Musee de L' Elysee for organising the weekend and to all those who were so generous with their time and candid opinions. It is clear that publishing a Photobook is a risky business and requires hard work and faith wether you are a lone self publishing photographer or a large international publisher...but this weekend showed there are many with a huge abundance of those qualities who will be producing many wonderful Photobooks over the coming years.
A wider take on the book discussion might be gained from the articles and work of 'The Institute for the Future of the Book'
P.S. If you are in the market for a Photobook, buying through my books page will contribute to the costs of running sevensevennine.com
Lasting Impressions: Photobook Colloquium
Big Hair and True Love
I first met Richard Bram when he joined in-public in the early nineties, he immediately struck me as a kind and knowledgeable gentleman, his street photography at that time was classical, black and white, beautiful and very poetic which was in contrast to the grittier street grabs of some of the other members work. One of his projects was quite different and particularly appealed to me, a series of pictures made at the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville that Richard titled 'Big hair and True Love'. I asked Richard how he came to street photography and how he came to be at the Kentucky State Fair.
Nick - Richard, you grew up in the states of Ohio, Utah and Arizona, settling in Kentucky in 1980 with degrees in Political Science and International Business. Can you tell us a little about the culture of those states and why you now make photographs in the Street?
Richard - Photography was not a big priority while I was growing up. I was just an average hobby snapshot photographer. I suppose like many of us, I took my first pictures when I was a child, with a small Kodak Brownie I received as a Christmas present when I was 5. I did not know from the beginning that I wanted to be a photographer, I just liked taking pictures and it became a hobby. My father too loved photography, but perhaps he loved playing with many different cameras as much as the results. Though he loved Photography, She did not return his affections. My childhood was comfortable enough, but we moved around a lot, which is difficult for a child and for me rather lonely. My father's career - he was a sales representative in the clothing business - took us all over the States. I was constantly starting over in a new town and a new school. I grew up in very different regions both physically and culturally within the continent that is the United States. As a small child, we were in four different towns in northern Ohio, geographically mostly flat plain, farmland mixed with industrial cities and the Great Lakes ports on the north. When I was 9 we moved west to Salt Lake City, Utah, a big valley surrounded by high, snow-covered peaks. There I grew up in the peculiar atmosphere of the center of the Mormon Church. It is a very conservative though outdoors-y sort of place. (We heard about the turmoils of "the Sixties" but they were mostly going on somewhere else.) However, I still have fond memories of skiing November to March and taking vacations all over the West of the United States, one of the most varied and magnificent natural regions of the world. Finally settling in Phoenix, Arizona, when I was 16, I finished high school in the much more open atmosphere of the suburban desert Southwest. There I attended Arizona State University and then the American Graduate School of International Management, earning those degrees you mention. Following the formal education was a series of lack-luster jobs in assorted businesses: international shipping clerk in Texas, export manager for an industrial firm in Pennsylvania, even briefly a security guard to keep the rent paid, finally landing in Louisville, Kentucky in 1980 as a children's clothing salesman. When this too ended badly at the beginning of 1984, I told a friend who'd run a fine art photography school in Louisville that I was thinking of becoming a photographer. His advice: "Don't! You shouldn't be a photographer unless there is nothing else you can do." He was right. I am simply unable to do anything else. So armed with ignorance and courage, I went forth and proceeded to starve for a couple of years. I went to the Library and devoured everything about photography, especially looking at photographers' monographs and deciding whom and what I really liked. It wasn't easy, as I was but a talented amateur with the art but not the craft. But I had a few breaks early on and for the first time was prepared when Chance chose to favor me, something I had never been. Those first few years were my 'starving artist' period. I was indeed hungry and got so far behind in my rent that I nearly got thrown out into the street. But I began a career as a public relations and public event photography and in a couple of years began to earn enough to be able to eat regularly and to build a reputation. In 1986, the biggest break came: I became one of the official photographers for the Kentucky Derby Festival, the biggest series of events in that state's event calendar, and America's most prestigious horse race. Through the Festival work I met all the corporations in the region and within a couple of years was as busy as I could handle with corporate work, specializing in public relations, public events, portraiture and performing arts photography.
Nick - Your project 'Big Hair and True Love' has been a favorite of mine since I first saw it, it captures wonderfully an aspect of the cultural life of the midwest states at a period in our recent cultural history that we all look back at with a slight embarrassment. Can you tell us about the circumstances in which you made those pictures?
'Sacred Reich' 1991: Richard Bram
Richard - "Big Hair and True Love" grew out of the 12 years I spent shooting for the Kentucky Derby Festival. Several of the two-week-long series of events preceding the first Saturday in May were outdoor beer gardens with music stages at two or three locations around Louisville. Early on, one of my regular assignments was to cover these KDF "Chow Wagons." The best shooting and the biggest crowds were at night which means flash. I also shot other outdoor events around town, especially the downtown Strassenfest and the Kentucky State Fair, both of which took place annually in late Summer, and had similar atmospheres, especially once the sun went down. All three events contributed to what became "Big Hair & True Love." The Chow Wagon and Strassenfest photos, being commercial assignments, were generally made with one of my two workhorses, the Nikon F2 or Leica M3 with a big melt-yer-eyeballs Vivitar 283 flash. The State Fair photos, however, being just for myself and usually with friends along, were made with a little Olympus XA rangefinder and its own tiny-but-powerful attached flash. This camera is small, light, unobtrusive and doesn't attract attention, as opposed to the big pro camera that screams "Here's the Photographer!" especially after you set off a powerful flash. However, when you use a flash, large or small, you only get one shot - the flash fires, everyone knows you're there and you have to move.
'Corn Dogs' 1993 image: Richard Bram
People came to hear the music, but more than anything else it was an excuse to meet one's friends and hang out on a warm evening, eat bad food, drink beer, cruise and check out the opposite sex. Louisville is an odd cultural mix of Midwest and South. Relatively close to Nashville, the biggest direct cultural influence is the world of country music, which in the early 90's when most of the pictures were made still meant peroxide and lots of hairspray for women - i.e. Big Hair - and lots of mullets or heavy-metal haircuts for guys. I'm not particularly into country music nor were most of my peers. But I found this whole scene fascinating because it was a different tribe to mine, a generally blue-collar culture as opposed to my suburban middle-class background, to observe with curiosity, amusement, and wonder. Also, as I was 10-15 years older than most of the crowd, there was perhaps a bit of longing for those younger years now past. I didn't see all these photos as a particularly distinct body of work, however, until 1993. I was labeling negative pages from that week's Festival shoot and scrawled on top of one page "24 Apr 93 - Waterfront Chow Wagon, Saturday Night: Stalking Mall Hair + true luv." [I'm looking at that page as I type]
'Shades' 1993 image: Richard Bram
'Chicken' 1993 image: Richard Bram
Nick - It's fairly rare to see this kind of observed photography illuminated by a flash; it reminds me a little of some of Winogrand's "Public Relations" images. Is there a reason that you haven't employed this method again as it was so successful with this project?
Richard - The correlation with Winogrand's "Public Relations" cannot be avoided. Though separated by 20 years and in different locales, we were both doing essentially the same thing: taking public relations photographs for a sponsor paying us to record an event. It means using flash, working with carefully scripted schedules, making sure you get what the sponsor, who has hired and will hopefully pay you, wants. However, what sets Winogrand's work apart is his equal willingness to take the photograph that the sponsor definitely does not want to see: the off-script moment, the uncomfortable confrontation, someone obviously not at their best, not smiling, exposed and vulnerable. When I was first studying in the library I kept looking at Winogrand's work and wondering why would anyone take such ugly photos? Who would want to see that? After two or three years of PR work, I saw those same uncomfortable, off-script moments occur in front of me and I took them too. In most of my personal work, however, I have very rarely used flash under any circumstance, both for the reason that it attracts immediate attention as well as that it destroys the ambient light that drew me to the scene in the first place. What moves me to click a shutter is what I see unfolding in front of me, and I see it in available light, not lit by a flash. I also dislike, even fear the reaction one gets from a subject who would otherwise be unaware that I’d made a photograph. If you set a flash off in someone’s face, blinding them momentarily without permission, it is an inherently hostile act and will often engender an equally hostile response. I'm not trying to emulate the work of Bruce Gilden, for example. I am rarely hostile toward the subjects of my photographs and really do not want to disturb them from whatever they were doing at the moment I made their picture.
'Great American Hog' 1993 image: Richard Bram
'Iron Maiden' 1993 image: Richard Bram
'Genuine Draft' 1993 image: Richard Bram
'Silver Bullet' 1993 image: Richard Bram
'Tasmanian Devil' 1993 image: Richard Bram
Nick - Martin Parr's flash-lit observations of the working classes at play seem so cruel and condemning. His approach has been described as capturing the 'derisive moment.' How have you managed to maintain a playful affinity with the people in these pictures?
Richard - We differ in our opinions of this part of Martin Parr's work. Though I'd first seen some of his work in Aperture before I left the States, when I moved to Britain in 1997 I immediately noticed the same uncomfortable things that Parr photographed in "The Last Resort:" The grottiness of resorts, people throwing litter on the ground while standing next to a bin, sunburned pale people in front of over-priced tatty shopworn seaside attractions. He turned the same sharp eye on the middle classes in "The Cost of Living," which engendered even a bigger outcry, as he was looking at those who write letters to editors or might even be the editors. His work evoked the same reaction in Britain as Frank's "The Americans" and Winogrand's "Public Relations" did in America in their time. (My mother would think both books horrible and not worth the paper they were printed on. However, my late father, a quick, sharp and usually accurate observer of people, recognized the genius in "The Americans.") While "Public Relations" doesn't bother you, it bothered me a lot at first. "The Last Resort" spoke to me, but repelled you. I photographed a lot of middle- and upper-class cocktail parties and receptions in my Louisville PR years and recognized the same things Parr put in "The Cost of Living." It all depends upon whose ox is being gored. That said, I'm not usually hostile to the people I photograph. When doing formal PR work, I am conscious that they have invited me into their places of work and homes and feel that I owe them a measure of civility for this. They are also paying me for being there and biting the feeding hand is never a good policy. Also, I have always been somewhat of an outsider wherever I've lived and am conscious of rarely being included in the phrase "one of us." Being both curious about and a little wary of those among whom I move, I do not want to offend, and feel bad if I do, especially if they have done nothing to offend me. So while I may get a bit hostile and snarl if I'm sleep-deprived and my blood sugar level is on the floor from not eating enough protein, I still don't want to hurt anyone or portray them as something they are not or to put too much of my own psychological judgments on to them. I'd much rather make people laugh than irritate them.
'Pine Street, Yankees Parade' 2009 Image: Richard Bram
'Baseball Cap, Yankees Parade' 2009 Image: Richard Bram
(An exception: Last November the New York Yankees won the American Baseball World Series and a proper New York City ticker-tape parade was duly arranged for a few days later so that the team, its coaches, staff and retainers could be feted by the fans up Broadway to City Hall where they would get a pat on the head from the Mayor. On the morning of the big parade, my wife and I were awakened at 5:30 AM by drunken, shouting and hooting fans in the streets 25 floors below. I could see the police barriers all going into place in anticipation of a big crowd. About 8:30 I grabbed the XA, flash and three rolls of film, bundled up against the bitter cold and went out feeling sleep-deprived, hostile and in need of a good breakfast into the quickly-growing crowd to shoot. I used the flash for all the exposures I made that morning, very close in, squeezing through what became a real crush of bodies as the hour of the parade approached. The series does have a different feel to my regular work.)
'Unbutton My Fly' image: Richard Bram
While my upbringing makes me cringe at the sartorial taste of a young girl who goes out wearing a t-shirt that says "Un-Button my Fly" on it, I didn't make her wear it, I just chose to record it and the little drama of body language between her and her boyfriend on the State Fair Midway. I'm actually more interested in the relationship between these two young people as an example of the angst of growing up and of relationships everywhere. The young, being less adept at hiding their emotions, make it all easier for a jaded middle-aged photographer like me to see and record it. I've always believed that our psychological states are reflected in the art that we make, no matter what the medium may be. Perhaps for a photographer not in an individual image, but looking through a few months' contact sheets or the modern digital equivalent can give one an insight in to the state of mind of that photographer. Most of what became "Big Hair & True Love" was shot in 1993 and 1994. I was going through a personal crisis that led in June of 1993 to the ending of a 5-year relationship. Looking back on this I see the state of my emotional psyche reflected in the photographs I made at that time. In many of them I see a peculiar combination of anger at and longing for one younger woman in particular, women in general, a relationship, a love of my own, for my lost youth. In the Summer of 2007, I found myself again In Kentucky at State Fair time. On a very hot Saturday night I took my old XA and its flash and went out to the Midway to see what I could see. I shot a couple of rolls of film and got some good images, but not yet enough for a project. they are different though - Big Hair is gone, replaced by big bellies and hip-hop clothes. Kids are still cruising, though, eating bad food and checking out the opposite sex.
Nick - Having recently returned from Europe to the US to live in New York, do you find it a noticeably different experience shooting on the streets of NYC to those of London?
Richard - Both yes and no is the answer. In some ways, it is easier to work on the streets here in New York as it is so crowded that no one notices you. There are more neuroses on view per square yard of ground than any place I've ever been, so who notices another guy with a camera in a city swarming with tourists? The police aren't pulling Section 44 notices on anyone caught suspiciously taking pictures of the Empire State Building or a Papaya Dog storefront. However, people are a bit more suspicious than they used to be and there are a lot more 'No Photography' signs everywhere. After eight years of the government telling them to always be afraid, the Terrorists are out to get them, the general background level of paranoia is higher. Private security guards are more hostile and full of themselves than they used to be, and seem to feel, as they do in London, that they own not only the territory of the building that hired them but the public sidewalks around as well. But with all that, it generally seems more relaxed in terms of walking around with a small camera and making photographs than it seems to have become in London. I've even taken pictures of policemen and had them smile at me and pose! Now there is a difference.
Thanks to Richard for taking the time to speak with me and you can see more of his work over on his site.
The Leica M9, perfect street camera?
Although I enjoy having suitable equipment as a photographer, after shooting for 20 years I am a little over the continuous reviewing and discussing of the pros and cons of each and every camera that comes to the market place. I think we would all agree that ideas and their communication are the most interesting aspect of photography regardless of the medium or tool employed to convey them. Having made that statement I am now going to make a big exception. I suspect I am not alone in feeling that since giving up film cameras for the brave new world of digital capture there has always been a slight feeling of compromise and unease. Whilst I love the Canon DSLR's I have been using for my commercial work I have never really felt comfortable using them for my street photography, they have never fully replaced the Leica M6's that I used to employ on the streets...they are big, black and loud...and whilst the quality of their imagery is superb they represent a different way of working. The NYC street photographer Gus Powell put it very well in his interview with Michael David Murphy on 2point8
"I do a lot of work with the digital camera but it's all for editorial or commercial clients. I have tried to make my own pictures in the street with the digital camera, and continue to try to, but for whatever reason, real or imagined, I end up feeling like a pedophile. Even if I am taking a picture of a tree and a trash can I feel like a creep with a big lens and a mirror flapping away. I am sure that eventually the equipment will move on and there will be some sort of rangefinder camera that will do the job"
Well, in my opinion, Gus's wish and that of many other street photographers has been answered in the last few months with the release by Leica of the 18mp full frame M9 rangefinder camera. I have lived with the M9 for a couple of weeks before making this statement because over the years I have tried many new digital cameras and it has taken time for me to work with them on the street and discover their little niggles and idiosyncrasies.
Full Frame Leica M9 rangefinder
Lets first get out of the way the fact that this camera costs £5000 without a lens and very few of us can justify spending that much money on a camera. I am the first person to tell students that you don't need an expensive camera to make great street photographs and that is certainly the truth. Those of you who followed my trip around the world making pictures with a small Samsung cameraphone will know that I am sincere when I say that. Owning an M9 is not going to open your eyes, give you a new vision or great ideas.
I'm not going to talk about sensors or chips but I am going to tell you how nicely the small Leica body and 35mm f2 lens fits into the palm of your hand and how easily it zips up underneath your jacket so you can wear it hidden when you walk and travel and go about your day...and that is super important because street photographers need a camera that is going to fit seamlessly into their daily routine...if its too big or inconvenient you don't take it to the store when you go for bread and you miss the shot of the lady nibbling on her baguette (nearly wrote baps!) in the queue. The M9 is the only full frame digital camera that is small enough to pass the 'Turpin Jacket Zip up Test'. The M9 feels like the film Leicas we used to use, its a smidgin deeper but you hardly notice...you do, however, notice badly the lack of a resting place for your thumb where the wind on lever used to be. But Match Technical have already provided for that.
I was fairly happy with the Leica M8 but even that felt like a compromise, the half frame chip (doh!) meant all my lenses were unfamiliar lengths and the 10mp sensor (doh!) didn't really provide me with file sizes I was comfortable with for exhibition print quality at a reasonable size (Lets not even mention the IR filters we had to attach to every lens we used with it). Each Raw file from the M9 is giving me 34.7 mb of picture information. The M8 did show promise especially in producing beautiful 'film like' images that made my Canon files look very 'digital' in comparison...the M9 has retained this quality, producing files that seem very forgiving with an apparently broad dynamic range. The images so far have been extremely sharp and detailed which is much more than I can say for the Canon 7D I tried for a month recently. The M9 shutter release is very quiet indeed and would only be noticed in the quietest of locations, the motorised re-cocking of the shutter is somewhat louder but again it is only going to be heard in very serene surroundings...I took a photograph on the train this week and the gentleman across the aisle had no idea but the gentleman beside me did look up from his paper. The M9 allows you to delay the re-cocking noise by leaving your finger on the shutter release until you are able to release it more discretely. Leica rangefinders have always been excellent in low light situations, the lack of a mirror box firing reducing the vibration caused by the actual act of releasing the shutter. The M9 has taken this even further with a selectable 'soft' mode which releases the shutter electronically with the slightest touch on the release, the kind of touch that normally just brings the cameras metering to life. This is a great advantage over the fingertip stab needed to release the shutter of the M range of film cameras. In Switzerland last week I made images in a dark hotel foyer handheld at 1/6th of a second.
Handheld at 1/6th second using the M9's 'soft' mode shutter release.
Even in the street at night the M9 gives one the confidence to tackle difficult subjects at slow shutter speeds.
1/4 second handheld using continuous shooting mode.
The M9 is not perfect, it only allows 7 images to be recorded in succession before hitting the buffer, the lcd screen is a poor resolution and slow to render images but it is now viewable in bright light outdoors which the M8's wasn't. For me, however, the biggest problem is its high value, I actually feel a little nervous taking it out on the streets and am very nervous about taking it to places like Sau Paulo, Mexico City and Mumbai for a project I have planned this year...with a lens attached it is £7000 worth in a very small package and that makes me very anxious.
England expects every man will do his duty.
Detail of Leica M9 image at 400 iso
Further detail of Leica M9 image at 400 iso
There is currently no other camera this small, quiet and discreet that can deliver this sort of image quality and file size. If it weren't for the high purchase price it would be the perfect street camera. Overall I feel like I have lived through a short drought, one that the various compacts and DSLR's I've tried have not quenched. The Leica M9 feels like the camera I can take forward and make great pictures with again, I feel like I can stop looking for the perfect street tool and get back to the grind of actually communicating my ideas and shooting my projects. And that is a relief.
Normal non 'Gear Head' service will resume shortly.
WHY is he pointing his camera at me?
Street photography is not a commercial activity, it is the only kind of 'art' photography that involves the public without their knowledge or cooperation. Even photojournalists who make pictures of people in public places are just doing their jobs and are seen as being, to one extent or another 'acceptable' because at least their motive for picture making is clear. The street photographer, however, is almost exclusively unmotivated by financial gain, so WHY is he pointing his camera at me?
The lack of a clear, quickly comprehensable reason for making pictures in public is probably the main reason that street photographers are particularly singled out for suspicion. When ones privacy is momentarily invaded by a photographer or cameraman in a public space the minor objection or irritation we feel is tempered when we realise that it is a commercial activity, we don't feel singled out, we accept it and walk on.
A conflict does exist between the street photographer and those candidly photographed, nearly half of the 500 respondents to my poll on this agreed with the statement The right of a person to privacy in a public place is equal to the right of the photographer to take a photograph in a public place. If both parties rights conflict equally there can be no resolution but perhaps the problem is not so large, after all, most people photographed by a street photographer don't know anything about it, its very much a matter of approach. At one extreme you have highly invasive street photographers like Bruce Gilden whose approach involves physically jabbing at passers by with a camera and flash and results in pictures of scared people. And at the other extreme you have someone like Beat Streuli who shoots on a long lens from such a great distance that neither he or his pictures have any physical or emotional connection with the subject.
Bruce Gilden on the street
image: Bruce Gilden
image: Beat Streuli
image: Beat Streuli
Despite the fact that I actually quite like Gildens pictures for what they are, I'm not sure what his images tell us beyond what results when a big scary man takes a photograph at the exact moment you think you are about to be knifed or mugged, his pictures record his process not the people of Manhattans streets. Beat Strueli's work is harder for me to like and understand, here is a man who risks nothing on the street, he doesn't risk physical interaction with the street and its people and more importantly he doesn't risk making a decision about editing the scene, his pictures contain no moments or happenings, he literally records the bland and you don't need a camera to see that. (Perhaps someone could help me with this? I would love to here a defence of Struelis work. As someone who shoots on the street, I know these pictures were not difficult to make so write and tell me why I should admire or respect them. I'll post it here)
For me the key word in resolving the photographer/subject conflict is 'empathy'. I believe it is the strong empathy I feel for the strangers I photograph in the street that has prevented me from ever having an unpleasant incident while street shooting, you only have to watch someone for a short amount of time to feel for them and their situation. This brings about a way of working that connects you with people not just subjects and produces candid images of strangers with whom you feel a relationship. The Photographers empathy for the predicament or situation of another human being results in gentle, sensitive and subtle observations. These two images by in-public photographers David Solomons and Matt Stuart are good examples of pictures that sensitively observe the situations of others in the street. They are taken at close quarters and bravely engage with the subject whilst not singling them out in an aggressive way.
image: David Solomons
image: Matt Stuart
Perhaps a discreet, sensitive and empathetic approach not only avoids confrontation but makes you a better street photographer.
For those of you in London Matt Stuart will be showing his work from the 4th February at KKoutlet....info
I wish I’d taken that #2
image: Henry Wessel Jr, Santa Barbara, California, 1977
Henry Wessel shot in California from 1970 onwards and this image from 1977 struck me when I first saw it a few years ago for several reasons, it is carefully created compositionally in a way that draws you in and then keeps your eye framed in the middle, the standing man is caught by the sunlight against a single strip of shadow on the far wall and his own shadow points directly towards the strong vertical of the tree in the middle of the shot which in turn stops the eye, denying you any distant horizon or way out. Also captured in this closed space like a wired cage at the zoo is a flock of birds that seem also to be looking for a way out...although in flight they seem to be static, going knowhere. What I like most is the strange relationship between the Hitchcockian tension of the flock of birds and the casual demeanor of the man who is just standing, hands in pockets, as if he is as bemused by the birds apparent panic as we are. Despite all of this activity and careful framing the picture still has the easy feeling of a casually glanced snap which is certainly a charcteristic of my favorite street photographs. I wish I had taken this photograph.
The Virtually Invisible Street Photographers
It is amazing how invisible a photographer can be these days if he doesn't have a web site, especially if he hales from a non english speaking nation. I recently found, by accident, the work of the Japanese photographer Abe Jun, I took a chance and ordered, from Japan, his book Citizens and have been delighted at his quiet understated vision of Japanese daily life filled with subtle visual echos. I don't believe his work is well known in the west and this is probably due to the lack of any web presence that I have been able to find...he is virtually invisible. Its pretty rare to find a street photographer you didn't know and even rarer when the work is of this standard.
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
Image: Abe Jun
This reminded me of another virtually Invisible street photographer, Cristobal Hara whose book Vanitas is one of the best books of street imagery ever published but without a web presence his work fails to get the audience and recognition it deserves. Late at night after a few drinks I sat in the back of a yellow cab in NYC with Cristobal and the NYC street photographer Gus Powell trying to persuade Cristobal to let us show his work on in-public. To my delight, he agreed...only to change his mind a few weeks later. Whilst I respect his decisions, it seems a shame that his work is not as available to inspire us as that of so many less qualified street photographers. A google image search reveals little of Cristobal's wonderfully colorful, surreal and ambiguous imagery.
image: Cristobal Hara
image: Cristobal Hara
Image: Cristobal Hara
Image: Cristobal Hara
Image: Cristobal Hara
Image: Cristobal Hara
Image: Cristobal Hara
Vanitas is available from Schaden and Citizens through Japan Exposures
Visit my books page for my street photography 'must own' books list.
Tod Papageorge 40 year old out-takes
Earlier in the year I received in my inbox some rather nice images taken on one day by Tod Papageorge at the Alabama-Auburn foortball game, in Birmingham, Alabama in November 1970. Tod had received a Guggenheim Fellowship Grant and had chosen sport and its role in American life as his subject. 1970 was a watershed year for public opinion against the Vietnam war which cast a grave historical shadow over the project. The project was published by Aperture in the book American Sports, 1970 The publishers statement says:
"Each and every picture is electric with disquiet. Military men in uniform parade across a field or relax in the stands. Cheerleaders rehearse beneath the gaze of the police. A couple sprawls and embraces in the debris of the Indianapolis 500. And hundreds of fans are drawn in unsettling group portraits at various stadiums and in the stands of many classic American sporting events. Papageorge eloquently and palpably captures the civic and psychic distress of the time on the faces of his subjects and in their gestures and interactions"
Apart from the interest of seeing the young Jackson Five and Duke Ellington in attendance in these pictures, it certainly ads significance while viewing them to bear in mind that while cultural and sporting life continued in the US over 58,000 young American men lost their lives in Vietnam, 6,081 in the year these pictures were made alone. Most of the people in these images will go home from the football field to see the latest death tole on the evening news. Accompanying the pictures below, Tod wrote: "They're out-takes from my book, of course, or, more precisely negatives that I never even scanned for the book. Since I expect that most, if not all, of them will never see the light of day" Well here they are...seeing the light of day.
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
image: Tod Papageorge
Winogrand speaking at MIT in 1974
I got an email from Tod Papageorge today with a link to a nice audio interview with Garry Winogrand introduced by Tod himself...he says "This is the Garry Winogrand I remember--much more than the video versions floating around the web from 7-8 years later. Worth listening to all the way through"
Thanks Tod, I love it. Listen here.
I loved this quote about the nature of a photograph "If there's such a thing as truth, its a lie"
A good read & A good story
Phil Coomes over at BBC online has a nice story this morning about Steve Harrison and the photographs he took in the 70's and 80's about "his deep outrage about society and the gap between the rich and poor", the story is particularly touching because Steve died last year from Prostate cancer and his work was brought to Phil's attention by Steve's adopted daughter Rosie. Steve's pictures of the poor and homeless of society somehow manage to avoid the cliche's that can often arise and many are wonderful stand alone street images.
image: Steve Harrison
Johanna Neurath and Stephen McLaren, two of the conspirators behind Thames and Hudson's forthcoming survey of contemporary street photography, Street Photography Now, sent me a link to a wonderfully written article on the blog of cinematographer John Bailey titled Street-Wise: The Photography of Garry Winogrand and Alexey Titarenko in which Bailey compares the work and approach of these two, quite different, photographers of the street. It makes one consider their work but also ones own and the nature of photography all together....Its a treat.
The Future of Photo books?
Having just entered the world of publishing with my first photography magazine PUBLICATION, I view with interest the debate about the future of photography books and publishing initiated by Livebooks in conjunction with Andy Adams at Flak Foto. They are asking the general photography and publishing community “What will photobooks be like in the year 2019?" and asking us all to contribute to a 'crowd sourced' answer. The more interesting ideas and predictions will be gathered and linked to here. This is in its early stages by all accounts but already taking part is Adam Westbrook, Eyecurious and there are related posts by Ocular Octopus and Jorg Colberg.
So here is my modest, fairly uninformed, contribution to the discussion: My choosing this year to publish PUBLICATION was not random, I felt that we have all spent a lot of time over the last ten years seeing the massive expansion of the web as a tool for photographers to share their work, promote their practices and produce new multimedia and socialmedia ways of disseminating their photographs, Magnum in Motion and Mediastorm are good examples of organisations using this but individuals like Andrew Hetherington , Brian Ulrich and Amy Stein have all used the web very effectively as a gallery/folio and tool to communicate and promote themselves.
So why would we ever want paper books again? The publication of a book or even a magazine is an event, it can be time stamped by its publication date, registered globally by its ISBN and its essays and articles can be referenced by future writers and commentators. The edit and order of a books photographs are literally bound and they represent decisions made by the photographer or editor at the time...the published photographic book is a landmark in the cultural and historical development of photography. Take a random example like Joel Sternfeld's American Prospects, the pictures and essay by Andy Grundberg now represent a snapshot, not only of America at the time but photography at the time. A great deal has changed in America and photography since 1987 when American Prospects was first published but the book itself is a reference point, a cultural way marker.
1980's America is encapsulated in Sternfelds 'American Prospects'
This was brought home to me when I received a letter from the British Library in London requesting a copy of the first edition of PUBLICATION magazine for their archives, the first dedicated street photography magazine has now, already, two weeks after its launch, become part of that cultural history, its contributors essays and photographs have become part of the 'bound' record.
The smell of the ink This brings me inevitably on to the photographic book as object, the weight, the size, the texture, the smell of the ink, the style of the binding and the fact that its a self contained whole which you can own and keep and develop a relationship with over the years...It is a coveted artefact. “A photobook is an autonomous art form, comparable with a piece of sculpture, a play or a film. The photographs lose their own photographic character as things ‘in themselves’ and become parts, translated into printing ink, of a dramatic event called a book.” –Dutch Historian Ralph Prins Darius Himes agrees... "Books, as physical objects, are indispensable to our collective history—no electricity is required to access them—and they are indelibly printed onto our consciousness from early on. If you can show me just one five-year-old who has, instead of a favorite bedtime book, a favorite PDF, then I’ll believe that books, made of paper and ink, will disappear." "The market for the book-as-object is getting more firmly established every passing auction season. And more and more artists, not just photographers, are seeing the book as a central means of expression. Concurrently, more and more curators and galleries are seeing books as a central means of expression." Although internet blogs are extraordinary tools for sharing opinions, commentating, criticising and developing ideas like us all here, now, trying to decide 'What will photobooks be like in the year 2019?', they cannot replace the photographic book as a loved object...I read aphotoeditor.com most days but I wouldn't swap it for my copy of 'The Americans'. I think the future will see two things, a greater experimentation with the traditional printed format of photographic publishing and the development of a symbiotic relationship between the paper and digital product.
Innovating with the photo book format I can see photographers presenting their work like artists books, more limited editions, more accompanying prints or print boxes, less of an adherence to the format of the bound book with two end covers. This is something that I have tried to do with PUBLICATION magazine, producing a box that contains 22 unbound prints, like a small exhibition, and an accompanying booklet of related essays...a simillar format is used by Shane Lavalette's wonderful Lay Flat.
Lay Flat comes in 21 parts
At Paris Photo last month I bought Hans Eijkelbooms Paris-New York-Shanghai published by Aperture which is in the format of three small books, one for each city, each with hard covers, joined together to make a single large book. Whilst I found Eijkelbooms vernacular photography a bit monotonous, the format of the book was refreshingly engaging.
3 into 1, Hans Eijkelbooms Paris-New York-Shanghai
The 'Printernet' model We published PUBLICATION in a numbered edition of 2000 which means that when they are shortly all sold out the images and texts will no longer be publicly available. We plan to publish the essays on the magazines web site at some point after the edition is sold, perhaps when we publish edition #2 in May 2010. I can see the printed and digital elements of PUBLICATION complimenting each other in this way as we go forward, the printed magazine on sale for six months whilst the essays from previous editions are archived and made available online. We are also using the web site to invite submissions from street photographers around the world and if the standard is high enough we will regularly publish an edition of images contributed in this way...PUBLICATION will become a product of the interaction between its editor, its contributors, the printed product, its web presence and the people who buy, read and submit their work to it. I would suggest that photographic publishing in the future, particularly in the magazine arena, will involve this sort of two way relationship between the product and the community it serves. I look forward to reading the conclusions of other bloggers on the future of photo publishing and thank Andy Adams at Flak for inviting sevensevennine to participate. My apologies for mentioning my own magazine so frequently but the issues involved are obviously fresh in our minds at the PUBLICATION London office. One of the joys of financing and publishing your own magazine is that you don't have to adhere to any rules and you can innovate and experiment in ways that large publishers are not so free to do.
Update 14th Dec: Darius Himes, Amy Stein and Alec Soth join the discussion.
This is a function that it is difficult for a slideshow or blog on a website that is held on a server somewhere, to perform, the binary code is intangible and vanishes with the failing of a hard drive, it is not archived or easily referenced and struggles to stand as a solid cultural artifact.
Darius Himes from 'Who Cares About Books' on Words Without Pictures
Darius Himes of Radius Books interviewed on aphotoeditor
Twitter links powered by Tweet This v1.6.1, a WordPress plugin for Twitter.
Copyright © sevensevennine.com | nick turpin on street photography. All rights reserved.