turkish foto roman, 1974 redubbed
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KRISIS HISTORY
a w a gg i n g h i s t o r y t a l e
As the Dog Star rose that searing Summer, as it had risen over the ancient Greek city-states before the birth of Christ and a billion years before that, history got marked and scarred, as often as the rise and fall of the tides, through a series of tectonic-like shifts and crises, which on their calmest days caused madness and spoiled wine at the symposiums and during their fiercest storms were witness to holocausts, radioactive meltdowns, and rising dictators. It was on one of those days, under the gaze of Sirius, when inhumanity turns and shows its pockmarked face, that KRISIS Reporters was born on the island of Lesbos. The rafts came as slivers of orange and black on the far horizon seemingly without progress towards the Hellenic shores. We stood atop the dirt road bluffs, some puffing morning smokes and all sipping the necessary jolt of java. And then in the last ten minutes, after a ninety-minute journey, the overloaded rafts sped up as if Poseidon rose from beneath and behind and shoved them towards terra firma unto Europa. At first they landed in silence, some had sang on the trip over, and disembarked calmly and proceeded to walk along the shore, then along the road, until they found a few volunteers pointing the way to a rest area parking-lot where a bus would take them to Mitelini. But as the Summer droned on, more refugees and more volunteer saviors dotted the shore, waving their arms and life jackets pointing at a landing point. Often it was the locals vying for the engines that kept their eyes glued to binoculars. But I tell you dear reader, as I have witnessed it, that they saved a few lives. Problems arose when there were more volunteers than refugees in their skin-tight rubber outfits wading into the water, creating chaos and panic and then the songs turned into crying. Some journeys were rougher than others no doubt, but too much help hurts the situation oft times. The media, as usual were called vampires by the saintly do-gooders, but I tell you as a witness that the photographers were vital in helping the refugees, especially at the lighthouse where no volunteer ventured. Serkan was no spring chicken on the foto scene. He had an alltoo-long incubation around the learning curve of photography. Remember that back then photo schools were not en-vogue as they are today. Photographers got their lessons on the ground, under fire, and in the drama of life itself.
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Photo courtesy of Serkan Serkan
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Serkan SERKAN Photographer 1968 - Palestine Mem ber ’s Sign atu re
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Both he and Pekka recounted many a harrowing tale of their younger days, but Serkan looked exhausted. His face held an air of gravitas and the weight of years without a home. He said to me, after he crunched down on a slice of dark toast smeared with marmalade, "I'm tired of being myself." Where were the kids, the brownstone, and the fame, were written on his furrowed forlorn brow. He seemed to have woken up one day on the other side of fifty. When we finally get stuff we've always wanted five or ten years too late to make any difference, or even post-mortem, like a subsidized apartment in West Village...there must be a word for that. Serkan was road weary and had felt he had been on the wrong repaved route for most of his life. Photography had been his savior. It took him to every corner of the globe for nearly twenty-five years, let him taste the fruit on the vine, but of late it had dogged him like a curse. A long leash of missed chances. Always the observer, he wanted to rewind the film and stop chasing the world rotating in its axis one thousand miles an hour. He wanted to spend a day in his life feeling that he was where he should be. Yet strangely, it was that very afternoon, when we all scrambled on a dirt road leading to the shore for the arrival of an Afghan raft, that changed things around for him. The refugees
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Not one hour later Serkan slipped -the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away- on a wet rock just a few meters from dry land after he and Pekka had wadded out to a boat in waist-high water. He went down and his camera and bag dipped into the sea. Pekka was beside him and picked him up, Fabio snapped a picture, but still the sea salt was a camera killer. Serkan cursed the sea. Serkan cursed the sky. But it was impossible to rewind the incident. He continued to shoot until only half a dozen frames later, the camera stopped working completely. After the morning refugee rush was over we went back to the hotel and tried to wash out the camera and even put it in a bag of rice where it stayed until he was back in Istanbul. The camera repair men shook their Turkish heads and offered us some tea. But it was gone for good. On the day the OM1- went down, when many hours had passed and darkness had fallen like a velvet curtain across the sky with little pinprick holes for the countless stars, Serkan recounted the acquisition of his beloved camera....
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Grazia MORENO Photographer 1987 - Greece Mem ber ’s Sign atu re
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scrambled across some rocks onto a flat area. They hung their wet clothes on some scrubby bushes to dry. Serkan aimed his camera at a woman in black with her children. Not wanting to interfere too much, he kept back a few meters when the woman turned and walked towards him. Sometimes the refugees, especially women and their male companions, would get aggressive after their trying journey feeling sensitive towards the cyclops-like intruding photographer.
But Nadia, whose name Serkan came to learn later, smiled and held out a ring. His initial reaction was to not accept such an offering but as she was about to turn around, he put his hand to his chest in thanks and took the ring. Immediately, it was as if a drug had been injected into his veins. He found something he had lost many years before. He felt a connection to the "other" which his human sensors had become dulled to. He was exuberant. And soon after, as the refugees started to walk to the transfer point, he followed her and her family, as she held a Koran and a stone in her hands. Strangely, Serkan was to meet her again in Gevgelija, Macedonia, on the train platform to Serbia.
"I wanted to get back to basics and a few years ago (now 20) I bought an old silver Olympus OM1- in a second hand shop in Russia and used it for a few months. When I came back home to New York, I took the camera to Herb Zimmerman at Professional Camera Repair to get it cleaned and checked out. When I picked up my camera a few days later I asked Herb that if he ever saw a mint black OM1- he should call me. He said that it was not very likely in those days. Some days passed and on a cold winter day approaching the holiday season, I called Phillip Jones Griffiths from a Herald Square payphone (yes, payphone) to see if he had time to show him my Neverland project about Russia. I needed some advice from a master and Griffiths had shot one of the most influential books of his time, Vietnam Inc. He was a mentor to a generation of photographers. He told me to get myself over to his place right away. I doubled, then tripled my pace trying to imagine what the rush was all about. I crossed Broadway, passing Macy's department store and the fat Santas ringing their bells, trying to navigate myself through the bustle of New York's famous garment district. In the past, whenever I had ran into Phillip, we'd end up talking about cameras and photographers and Magnum Photos for hours. He's a well of information and great stories in the old Magnum tradition. When I arrived at his loft on West 36th street, he led me straight to the back of his office where he crouched down and opened the bottom drawer of an old green metal filing cabinet. The drawer's contents looked like a small mountain of tangled metal filled with shot-up cameras and spare parts. I knew that he had used Olympus cameras in Vietnam and that he had a love for the old classic OM1-'s. His hand literally disappeared into the pile of cameras and he pulled out a black OM1- still sealed in its original plastic. He handed it to me and said, “Happy Holidays�. I was surprised to say the least. I felt like I was being passed a mantel from one generation to another. That very day I took the camera to Herb. The camera was so old that when I opened the back the foam inside, which had deteriorated so much, turned into a fine black dust that trickled down to the floor. Herb fixed it up and made sure it was running smoothly. In the months that followed I returned to Russia to continue my project and used that black Olympus as my main camera and some of my favorite pictures were taken with that camera which I still use till today. Correction: used until today."
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KRISIS HISTORY
That story was verbatim. After that we all sunk into a mellow slumber on our devices; iPhones, iPads. A smooth cold beer at the end of the day softened the sound of the night waves. Our heart rates slowed a pace. And we found bedtime to be a welcome respite from the high emotions sailing across the sea. Meanwhile Grazia was in Idomeni, not far from where she was born on the Greek mainland, where the refugees came after their sea journey, after weeks in the camp on Lesbos. First waiting at the port for the big ship to Athens and after sleeping in the park, they would head North towards the Macedonian border. There they sat and waited to cross the fence-less line when it used to be only a dirt road. And this was before thousands had amassed there. It was the first time I met Grazia. I can see what Serkan saw in her. She was tough and amorphous. We stayed in a house nearby with the Albanian. A lucky guy. So every morning we only needed to walk 200 meters or so to get to the border point where a few local Macedonian police were processing bunches at a time for the walk to the train station in town. On the third or fourth day we came upon thousands waiting to cross. Because they usually started letting them through
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Photo courtesy of Fabio Faraone
about 8 am, we thought there must have been some major policy change about the border at the U.N. We waited and about an hour later we saw the aging German female reporter come from the Macedonian side towards the border with her TV crew and the police. And only after they had positioned her with the thousands behind her, did they let everyone through which caused a scene not unlike a herd of antelopes on the Serengeti Plains kicking up clouds of dust, making for a dramatic moment never seen there before. The police were happy because they got to show that their job in policing the huddled masses was heroic and the German reporter got what she needed, satisfying her editors back in Germany and she certainly got material for a chapter in her memoirs. But that was not the real tragedy. Reporters should report on the news, but her actions created a domino effect. At the train station a few kilometres away, a dire situation arose because of the mass influx of refugees trying to board the train North to Serbia. Thousands upon thousands now fought their way onto the trains, climbing through windows and causing chaos, all due to the German reporter needing the "shot" thus creating the news and showing a false situation that in turn changes policies and causes more suffering.
07 So many odd events happened on Lesbos. When the volunteers outnumbered the refugees and photographers combined, I witnessed an exchange between two foreign "life-saviors." The man was explaining to the woman how to treat a person in shock. He said that one must do this and do that and she turned to him and said these very words, "Don't fucking tell me how to save lives, I know how to save lives." And then she walked off to save more lives that didn't need to be saved. And more humorously, there was a late-comer Reporter on the scene who came upon a boat of Pakistanis that had already landed and that really didn't need his help but he ran to them full of emotion, as his cameraman's light shone on his brow. He took one in his arms and led him to "safety" only to return again and again to one man after another to "save" until the video light was shut off by the cameraman saying "Got it". As he walked along the road, I said, “nice ham job”. He smiled and winked my way. That night on Lesbos, Serkan, Pekka, and Fabio looked at all the ripped up passports and the soaked, tossed away photos they
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collected after the refugees had disembarked from the rafts, littering the landscape near the lighthouse, not wanting any documentation that would send them back from whence they came (which we feature in the following article). There was no returning for them. Not ever. They were finally going to start their new life not yet knowing what was in store for them in the camps and at their final destination in a foreign culture. After that, and a few glasses of wine, the gang all sort of gathered in a synchronized huddle and when they broke out of it, the manifesto sort of appeared and revealed itself like the Qur'an or the Disciplina Etrusca, on the dinner tablecloth after days of debating about it. It felt like it fell from the sky, like an apple onto H. Newton's head. Perhaps it was A. Kerteszian view of the universe that was now guiding us, or even kismet on the Weegee board (Ouija), aka, Arthur Felig, that hovered over and around us that evening.
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KINEN Pekka KOS er h p Photogra nd la in 1970 - F M em be r’s
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Fabio FARAONE Photographer 1973 - Italy Mem ber ’s Sign atu re
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And in the next days everyone retuned back to their home bases: Istanbul, Helsinki, and Geneva. And so it was only a few weeks later, after the festival, that Serkan went missing on his way to the Syrian border. He is still missing. We miss him dearly. And so we created KRISIS in the hopes of finding him, and perhaps finding ourselves. Pippo Palermo Dog Food Archivist, Captionist, author of Breakfast of Champions article in DF 3. Pippo was on Lesbos with Serkan, Fabio, and Pekka as KRISIS was formed, and traveled to northern Greece, where he met Grazia, and Peter Labrador.
Photo courtesy of Pippo Palermo
Lesbos suitcase
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Photos courtesy of Esa Ylijaasko and Jason Eskenazi
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Lesbos suitcase
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10 Since the end of the Cold War former Soviet scientists have been doing a lot more than just playing chess. Star City, (Zvyozdny gorodok,) still the home of Yuri Gagarin's widowed wife, Valentina, located 25 Km from Moscow is attempting a cosmic comeback in collaboration with the old Apollo NASA team retired in Cocoa Beach FL. headed up by former Majors Anthony (Tony) Nelson and Roger Healy, 2001 shuffleboard tag-team champions. We are excited to let the genie out of the bottle and announce that on July 20, 2019, the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's famous step onto the lunar surface, we will launch the Weegee 1. We will begin construction of the new Interstellar Center for Photography (I.C.P.) half buried beneath the lunar surface, under the guidance of famed bow-tied Bon Vivant Phil Block, who has always had his feet on the ground and eyes towards the stars. Block will be permanently based on the moon as I.C.P. Commander. Since the earths polar ice-caps have less than 50 years before they melt into the sea, not even enough ice-cubes will survive for a nightcap, basements all over Queens will be flooded. Soon Siberia, will be the Venice of the North. London will become a lake. San Francisco's Chinatown will become a vast rice field. Paris will be sunk in Perrier as the cool Arctic water floods France's nitrogen-based caves producing tasty bubbles. So start to horde your lemons.
degree deep freeze allowing for a half-life of about 10,000 years, about the same amount of time as we have had our so-called terrestrial human civilization. We are offering crater space so please choose a storage plan that best suits your needs:The Nadar; The Rodchenko; The Gerta Taro; The Max Penson; The Eugene Atget. Details @ www.lunararchive.ru. The I.C.P will store every conceivable current and out-of-date piece of equipment for viewing and accessing your visual information: slide projectors, every card reader, cable, photoshop version, etc. So upload now to our launchpad application site and your images will outlast your friends and will become the story of civilization that has survived us all.
LU NAR AR CHI VE
Our project was originally inspired by the story of the archive of famed Soviet WW2 photographer Yevgeny Khaldae's archive which is slowly deteriorating. There is a rush to save and store it by Daniel Rothstein and Igor Posner, the Batman and Robin Deterioration Duo fighting moisture and sliver-nitrate. "Their fight seemed endless, until now, thanks to the new I.C.P." stated Block.
which will make you feel Acufine. But seriously she will be doing a lunar residency documenting the left over vehicles and equipment from past lunar visits, including the black slab left over from the 2001 Kubrick film. Or you can drop in anytime to the Neopan cinema room where continuous showings and endless discussions of the meaning of Blow-up might make you throw-up from motion picture sickness. Every evening, actually it will always be night, you can sit in our Lartigue Lunar Rovers to view endless 1980's famous photographers Ektachrome slide out-takes in a specially designed cinema Drive-In with popcorn pills included.
Visitor journeys will begin in the year 2022 aboard the reusable TRI-X shuttle taking off from our launch site in Kazakhstan. This issue of DF 5 has been specially selected as inflight entertainment for the ride to the moon which will take approximately 3.14 days. Also for your viewing pleasure we have uploaded movies and TV shows with a strong photographer We want to permanently store and lead role including the films; Blow-up, help save your photo archive until the Buster Keaton's Cameraman, Palermo extra-terrestrials have time to get here. They will need to be entertained and their Shooting, and TV shows; The Odd Couple, Man with a Camera. The special flight ships refueled before their final invasion menu will include Friedlander fishcakes of earth. Perhaps after seeing the visual for dinner. Winogrand waffles for breakstory of humanity, safely stored at the I.C.P., they will come in peace. Or they see fast, Arbus watermelon ices for desert. our ability to destroy our selves and our Once on the lunar surface you will be planet that they might just sit back and watch the show from the front row seats transported to the Polaroid Complex on the lunar surface. Let's hope they have personally greeted by Commander Block. I.C.P. students will guide you to one of the eyes. And if they come on Wednesday specially designed suites: The Evans, The admission is free. Kertesz, The Smith, The Cameron, The Burrows, The Cartier-Bresson, The EisenAfter initially researching Mars, where stadt, and The Woodman, popular with dust storms can last over 100 years, we have returned closer to home and chosen S.V.A. female students. our windless satellite for the I.C.P. The Once settled in, you may visit The Roma moon also has no magnetic poles like Room where nothing is allowed but the earth further reducing ion molecular anything is possible. Space suit and tie frictions that can eat through your negrequired. Matt Stuart is a frequent flyer atives. It's like parking your car in Miami as opposed to Minneapolis. No rust from there. The Infra-Red Lounge serving road salt. Storage in the dark Basalt filled cocktails invented and served by our craters, which we can see from earth, will dear Xenia Nikolskaya; try the Xtol or the Dektol at our Kodachrome bar, protect photo material in a minus 200
Contact this number 7(095)314-1959 and ask for Sergie. Or email lunararchive@gmail.ru for further instructions. We accept Russian roubles and Diners Club. We will be doing a Kickstarter campaign for fuel. Keep your lens focused on Facebook. Remember; It's one small step for your archive, one giant leap for permanent historical preservation. You snap the picture, we do the rest. And as Yuri Gagarin said on April 12th, 1961, just before Khrushchev pressed the red button. Поехали! Let's go! Pippo Palermo
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dogma
A 10-Point Portfolio Guideline for young photographers
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These guidelines are fully guaranteed so please be quick and don’t miss the trend.
Buy a Lomo at the soonest, (one from Galata will be cool). If not, search for one in an old chest; a Lubitel inherited from your father or grandfather will also be cool enough. If not, find an AE-1 that is as old as your father from Hayyam Han. Again no? With a bit of effort make a Pinhole camera for yourself. Still no? Ok then, cut it short and go to Hazzopoulo Pasaj, for a tea.
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If you are determined, and if you find one of the gadgets/cameras mentioned above, find out the addresses of the shops that sell corny black and white film in Sirkeci. (It is not so difficult. Anyone in the neighborhood would know one of those shops. You can even ask a grocer).
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Now you are ready to shoot:
A.The first shot should be a dog that you can find on any street. A black one is preferable. Do not be afraid, encourage it to come to you. When it is very close, bend a little and click the shutter. If your hand shakes out of fear, do not give up and on the contrary, be happy. Had you forgotten to close the flash? The eyes of the dog will light up in the photo. Super! What else? The first shot is done. With this hopeful first success, preregister to the workshop. Send the news to your colleagues. Request a place on the poster for ‘‘young talents’’. b. The second shot can be a puddle in the asphalt. Check AccuWeather in order to take the photo at a cloudy time and follow the forecasts on your cellphone. This photo must be also taken from a high angle. Be sure that your feet or hands are not shaking. Flash can be a plus in this case also.
Text by Yücel Tunca - Translated from original Turkish
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dogma C. For the third photograph, find a bunch of branches. Position yourself in front of it. Just before clicking, make your hands shake - you can jump or sneeze. Take five or ten photographs repeating these vibration-full motions. Later, in order to pick one of them, close your eyes and put your finger on the thumbnails on your computer screen. Copy the photo which your finger randomly landed on to your folder of selected photos.
D. After this point, we can work on a human being. You need a naked-back photo whether it is of your girlfriend or boyfriend or of an old man whom you notice on a beach (It can be on the floor or on a bed, but someone on foot is preferable). A pimply or freckled back, one full of beauty marks or a very hairy one will be useful. As usual, be careful if you are taking the photo without permission.
E.Now we have come to a dead-bird photo.
Luckily it cannot be found easily when looked for. May God give them a long life. But photography is as such, namely difficult. A lot... You can go to the Princes Islands for instance. Certainly you will come across one of them under a tree or on a street. Please find a crow or a magpie if possible. Sorry, pigeons are out as they can evoke a classic message. Do not stand too close. It is better if the space around the bird is littered or maybe covered with some leaves or grass.
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Bravo! You guessed right. I suggest you transfer them into digital images for printing rather than print them from the negatives. Never forget to put the “spot reducer” feature on the printer on the “off ” mode.
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When five photos are shot in accordance with the above five points, your task is done. Now it is time to process the film. If you cannot do it yourself, please get the film washed in the cheapest place. Even better, give them five liras more and ask them to do some extra work on the film. For instance they can throw it on the floor before it totally dries. Or they can make it dry on a newspaper. It will also help to rinse a sweater all over it before it is completely dry. If you say that you can easily do all this yourself, then go to the YouTube videos to learn and apply the process. And with some beginner’s luck, the effects can be even more impressive. Those who later see them, might think that they are special Instagram effects.
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Artwork by Roï Saade
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Before scanning your negatives, I suggest you cut them into strips of six and put them in your back pocket so that the special effects will be more impressive.
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The printing must definitely be done on paper, fine art paper. Please do not forget this and don't spare any expenses. In the end, they are prints for museums. Do not feel embarrassed when you are invited to a museum after two days.
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Make sure that the margins and edges of each photograph, when transferred into a digital image, are dark- we call this the “vignetting effect” and we love it.
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Now we have to find a cool title. Never let it be an emotional one. Avoid poetic wantonness. Be attentive to make it sound conceptual and even English. French also is acceptable. I have rarely seen it in German but come to think of it, that can also be interesting.
In order to write the introduction text to your project, it will suffice to wander around a few bank corridors and read the ads there and get your writing inspiration from them. If this is not your cup of tea, then have a look at old biennale leaflets in any bookstore. Take a few photos of them with your mobile phone and continue at home.
You are ready. It is really simple to get chosen for the workshop. At the instigation of your advisor who says “Amazing” about your work, you can exhibit your portfolio in one of the Tophane or Nisantasi galleries and get some rest drinking espresso at one of the cafes in Karaköy. See you at the Contemporary Art Fair in Autumn… Yücel Tunca
Natura Morta
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Hors la vie (1991) - Director: Maroun Bagdadi / Photo courtesy of Nadilekolnas.org
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Mr. Kite Kite
............courtesy of Jesse van Dijl Photo
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Lovely Shirley Meter Maid cards were used by photo labs in the US and later around the world to calibrate skin tones, light and shadows during the printing process. Originally Kodak sold and processed their own film, but in the mid-1950's the federal government broke up their monopoly allowing other labs to process their film. Kodak introduced a new small printing machine for labs and with that came a kit with color prints and original unexposed negatives. The original Kodak model was named Shirley and that name stuck to all the subsequent cards. Shirley cards started in the 1950's, but by the 1970's other films made their own versions of Shirley cards. With the advent of digital photography and the bankruptcy of Kodak in 2012, Shirley cards had stopped being produced. But Shirley never aged, especially for me. When I worked in a photo lab in
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Shirley Meter maid
the Mid-West in the 60's we had an especially beautiful Shirley card pinned to the wall. I'd see her everyday over morning coffee and say goodnight when I flicked off the light and went home. When new Shirley cards came to replace her we never left her. I was a bit obsessed. She had hazel eyes, red lips, and a red dress. I always wondered what she was thinking about during the thousands of flashes. I even wrote to Kodak asking for a signed card. Months went by and nothing, then one day it came, a card from Shirley. Her name was Rita. That was a long time ago and since then I have embraced digital photography and my friends call me the pixelator. I even named my boat after her. Roy G. Biv
Photo credit: Š The Eastman Kodak Company
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ARCHIVE INTRO
It was 20 years ago today, more or less, that I sat on a bus in the outskirts of Moscow in the dead of a winter night, under a sky with diamonds sparkling brightly. I peered over the shoulder of a man reading a "Gazetta" with a photo of a photographer holding up his most famous image from World War 2 of the flag raising over the Berlin Reichstag. "He's still alive?" I gasped, to my companion sitting beside me. Some weeks later a friend working for ITAR TASS (the government Russian news agency) asked me if I wanted to come along and meet an old Soviet photographer. A sort of Day in the Life type piece. It was him, the same man in the newspaper, Yevgeny Khaldei. Born in Donetsk, Ukraine, in 1917, his mother shot dead while she held him in her arms during the pogrom, Khaldei, was destined to make the most famous photo icon for the Soviet Union. Fashioned after Joe Rosenthal's photo of Iwo Jima, Khaldei had his "portnoy" (tailor) make three giant Soviet flags for him, as flags were in short supply after many victories, and took them to various locations in Berlin, the last atop the Reichstag. As the soldiers came down, he took them back up to the roof and snapped his Leica as they re-raised the fluttering flag over a destroyed city. And only later, in the darkroom he sandwiched some background smoke to intensify the moment. Perhaps only then did he see that one of the Soviet soldiers holding the legs of another had on two wrist watches which was afterwards scratched out by Soviet censors because it would have shown their Motherland soldiers as war looters. For many years Khaldei lived in a typical Soviet flat far up in the north of Moscow (on Kopek Lane) on the Green line. His bedroom was his darkroom, or visa versa. We drank gin. He was Jewish, which would eventually get him fired from TASS years after the war. He was my "adopted" Russian father. Mine, who had died 10 years before, had also fought in the war at the Battle of the Bulge. It was the first of many times that I would visit him, always bringing friends with me. It was a kind of foto pilgrimage to pay honor to an ageing legend. Whenever we'd go visit him we would call him from the metro and ask him "Yevgeny Ananievich. What do you need" and he would always say "Kielbasa and shoelaces", but of course we would bring a bottle of gin, and with a little help from my friends we would finish it to the last drop,
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toasting, L'chaim, as he told us stories. Sometimes he played the violin and cried when he saw his fotos, especially the one of the female traffic cop in Berlin. His wife was a dead-ringer for Ingrid Bergman. Her portrait hung in his room, but wait... that was Capa's wife...and surely they did meet. Once or twice Khaldei gave me a photo from a pile he had under his darkroom sink. We even went out shooting together once on May 5th, Day of the Soviet Woman Pilots. He always went to veteran reunions, as he was one himself. Back at home when it was time to go, he would always ask my date to stay behind tapping the bed beside him trying to quell his smiling lonely heart. In the two years that I knew him, before he died, he was rediscovered by the international photography world and met with Joe Rosenthal in Perpignan where they shared the stage and Khadei also had a major show at the Jewish museum in New York. We took a ride together with his friend and agent to Brighton Beach where we sat in one of the kitsch Russian restaurants eating and drinking like there was no tomorrow. When he died in 1997 I got a call from the New York Times and the Moscow foto community came out as we laid him to rest. Back at the family house we ate and they gave me his loupe as a keepsake of his memory. Many years passed and I lost contact with his family. Until one day...a lawyer representing Khaldei's daughter Anna, contacted me about his archive, much of which had been stored by his friend and agent in meat boxes underneath a bed in New Jersey for nearly twenty years until they were transferred to a storage facility in Manhattan. Because the archive was in escrow, each time we visited the small room we were accompanied by Marshals. After about five years of contentious litigation, the bulk of the archive was finally returned to its rightful owner. And although they won and could have raised their own flag in victory, the deleted watch in the unaltered 1945 photograph somehow tells us that time is ticking even faster than before as the images will slowly disappear from the silver-gelatin if they are not put into cold storage. The nitrate-based film, which Khaldei used during the war, starts to deteriorate on average after seventy tears. So another Cold War has begun....to save the archive.
Khaldei photo envelopes - Courtesy of Jason Eskenazi
Archival Materials
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and Meanderings
Most won't be as lucky as Vivian Maier, born less than ten years after Khaldei and unknown as a photographer during her lifetime, whose archive ended up in a thrift store sale found by John Maloof plucking her from obscurity as a foreign-born nanny, living in Chicago, thus proving her importance in Twentieth-century photography. And most of us won't be as unlucky as Jacques Lowe who took many of the photos of JFK which are seared into our collective memory, whose archive of over 40,000 negatives was safely vaulted in the World Trade Center Tower 5 until 9/11, when it was pulverized into dust, though the safe was found intact. I've sometimes asked myself what would happen to my archive when my own fixer has been exhausted and my images slowly fade from the glossy surface of this earth. If Khaldei's historical archive can fall to the point of deterioration, then I've not much hope that mine will be cared for. I'm not too famous, and not a member of a photo agency, nor represented by a gallery. Even my Alma Mater, Queens College, doesn't know I exist with Guggenheim and Fulbright scholarships as feathers in my hat. I have thousands of rolls of film from over thirty years in as many countries, with a few of my own books under my belt. A few years ago I decided to tackle my archive and put it in order. A photographer's archive is more than just stories or pictures of streets and buildings. Photographers can trace their own lives through the contact sheets. And as photographers are natural collectors of ticket stubs and boarding passes, they can tell tales of the trail of a lifelong road-trip. I wanted my archive to make sense to someone looking through it. A photographer has the responsibility to not leave a mess. I do not want to depend on family for this and would not want to put the onus on my brothers. My accounting to a future archivist confronted with my archive would be this: 1) 28-11x14 negative boxes labeled by year (1985-2016) and subject (New York, Russia and former FSU, Haiti, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Greece). Negative strips stored in 2 1/4 glassine and paper negative envelopes. Approx 200 rolls per box. 2) 8-file drawers of darkroom contact sheets in green hanging folders by year. (1985-2016) that correspond to number of negative rolls.
3) 12-Project boxes that contain material for each major project. (Notes, Keepsakes, 4) Print boxes 16x20 (Russia); 8x10 (Russia); 5x7 work prints (Black Garden and Departure Lounge). All fibre-based prints. 5) Publications and tear-sheets in 16 IKEA open box folders. 6) Color slides in white plastic containers in 2 small filing cabinets. c.1990's. Uncounted. 7) Color negatives in plastic print files and binders. Not much value to me. 8) Book dummies for most of my projects. 9) Wonderland negatives and contacts in separate binder kept in glassine in strips of 6. 10) Cameras: 2 Leica M6 with 3 lenses; 1 Russian Horizon Panoramic, 3 Black Olympus OM1n bodies with 35mm and 28mm;1 Rolleiflex; 1 Holga; 1 Contax G2 w/28mm. 11) Unpublished book projects: Vanishing Points; Double Zero; Festina Lente. 12) Project box of personal mementos.
Note for archivist: save my Black Garden Trilogy and its 314 photos with their corresponding negatives, an additional 200 or so images that I like but never included in my books, a copy of the Americans List, a copy of this Dog Food 5, my Guggenheim letter, Securitology: The Art of Boredom manuscript (unfinished), and send the rest to the Moon for cold storage. University archives and photography organizations like the International Center for Photography or Center for Creative Photography must have sponsors and/ or endowments to care for archives in perpetuity. Too few of us have that option. Many children of famed photographers care for their own parents' archive as with the American Photography Archive Group. My photography archive is well organized and is in the recreation room of my mother's house. How often have we walked in our own neighborhoods and seen family items thrown in a dumpster, or outside a university, the old darkroom enlargers and timers trashed to make room for a digital future. We have all walked through second-hand markets and window-shopped in antique stores and seen baskets of loose and serrated black and white photos and intact family photo albums with the classic corners. These are lost histories perhaps of families that have dissolved and disappeared.
The analog-to-digital revolution continues to throw us off course from the paper trail we've been on since the invention of the printing press, as we turn and trade tactile materials like paper and textured rough cardboard for the plastic keyboard and matrix screen, or lose the alchemy of developing powders for digital apps. Numbers are just a system to interpret a reality. They break down into the infinitesimal, like language. The word Red is not the actual color but just a descriptive approximation of it. And by the way dogs and the ancient Greeks could not see the color red. So let's even take this to the vanishing point. Perspective doesn't really exist except in the eye and brain of the viewer. People and buildings do not get smaller as they recede towards the horizon. And in the same way images have no inherent power but just what our minds and society imbue them with. I can only fear that a sun-storm within the next 100 years will erase the Ones and Zeros leaving us unable to decipher or read, a landfill lost or broken Rosetta Stone alloy, like the shattered framed spectacles of Henry Bemis in the famed Twilight Zone episode,Time Enough at Last. Dark clouds containing the history of the world can evaporate on a very very sunny day! It is often the case that we, the 2nd or 3rd generation of immi-
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ARCHIVEs ARCHIVE INTRO INTRO
grants, are the ones who are the keepers of the family archive. Organizing the photo-albums. Licking photo-corners. Turning the leaves over to uncover or save the almost-forgotten stories on the family tree. As I continue to be involved with and consult on the Yevgeny Khaldei archive I wondered about my photo colleagues; from younger to older, from analog to digital, on how they organize and store their archives; what are their archives' contents; and what is their plan for it after they click their last picture. And if there's anything they want to say to their future archivist. Dog Food asked 20 photographers to take a dip in the stop-bath and fixate for 125th of a second or so on these questions. And also for this issue we created a few new archival stories with Steven Bollman, Rawsht Twana, Irina Popova, and Jean-Christian Bourcart. This paper copy of Dog Food will self-destruct and disintegrate in 20 years from today if not properly cared for. Jason Eskenazi
Khaldei negatives - Courtesy of Yevgeny Khaldei family archive
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ARCHIVe questionnaire Dog Food asked 20 photographers: - How do you organize and store your archive? - What are the contents? - what is the future for your archive?
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Background: Pixelated collage photos from the photographers archives
ARCHIVe questionnaire
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Background: Pixelated collage photos from the photographers archives
ARCHIVe questionnaire
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Background: Pixelated collage photos from the photographers archives
Twana Abdullah Wassim, my father, born in 1948, was a photographer in Iraqi Kurdistan between 1976 and 1992. He was born in Qaladze, a village on the border with Iran, which was completely destroyed by Saddam Hussein during the Anfal campaign. He died in 1992, during the Kurdish uprising, after Sadam's troops left and before the civil war. He was accidentally shot dead in Qaladze, while trying to pacifying two opponents from different parties who were having a fight over money. I was four years old. He was not simply a photographer: he was a good photographer with a creative eye. He had a portrait studio in Qaladze and Khabat between 1977-1990. I have an old Practica camera of his. My family spoke about him and I learned about my father through words. In 2006, when I was 18 years old, I found a box, containing thousands and thousands of negatives. It was my father’s archive: 16 years of photographic work, including daily life, reportage, and studio portraits.
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KURDISTAN ARCHIVE
Overall I have counted about 16.000 frames. Since 1988 my family was forced to move three times and parts of the archive were lost. I didn’t know what to do with it at first, but a friend of mine made me understand the importance of such an archive. Generally there are not many images from those years. I bought a scanner and spent 10 months scanning negatives. I would not eat, nor leave the house: I needed to understand what was in those images. It was also a way for me to discover who my father was. In the images I saw many people I knew, and still know. Some other people have passed away, but their sons and daughters now have families of their own. I saw places that no longer exist, or that are now completely changed. In those images I saw a life, and a tradition, that is rapidly disappearing. And besides all of this, I saw my father, and his personal quest to document the world he lived in. I became a photographer because of that: I wanted to follow in my father’s
Courtesy of Rawsht Twana
footsteps, and document the world I live in. Also, I wanted to use this archive, bring it to light, show it to the world, and see if I could combine those images with mine and create a connection between that world and mine, between my vision and my father’s vision, between present and past. Rawsht Twana
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Courtesy of Rawsht Twana
Note on the B
oxes and Film :
Portriga Rapid PRW, PRN 11 7. 3 1/2 x 5 1/2, Grades 2 & 3; Chinese Luck y B&W; and Fo rte Fortezo FN 13 WL 9x14cm paper was used . Only the nega tives were in the boxes as prin ts were sold to the subjects. Fortepan 400 professional extra tropical sheet film with glossy retouc hable surface, and Agfa XRS 100 films were used .
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Courtesy of Rawsht Twana
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Kurdistan archive
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russian archive
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Courtesy of Irina Popova
russian archive
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............
russian archive
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Forgotten archive
Forgotten Film - 30 years in the making. The summer of 1985 was an exciting time in my life as a 24 year old photographer. I was eager to get out into the world and wander. A couple years out of art school and I was intent on building a body of work that reflected my thoughts and experiences. Europe beckoned. My backpack was filled with the usual: clothes, tent, sleeping bag, a pair of Leicas and 120 rolls of Tri-X. I meandered a fairly vague itinerary through Europe (England, France, Portugal, Italy and Spain) with only one hard destination; Pamplona, Spain, for the Running of the Bulls. For some reason, I didn't develop all the film from this trip upon my return. 30 years passed… I didn't realize what was on some of the rolls until very recently. I still have about 110 from the late 1980s to about 2004. A few rolls here and there added up. I used to get distracted easily. I am very curious. I've tried many different things in my life: art, guitar making, furniture building, quilting, painting, I played guitar and sax. With each interruption from photography a few more rolls would accumulate. At this point in my life (I’m 55) I know photography and music are my sustaining passions. There have been enough cycles and orbits to make it obvious to me. There were a lot of lost memories on the film. Dormant memories. And some images I can't recall anything about. I have images of my mother and grandmother (both passed away years ago), images of my father, images of waiting out a hurricane on Long Island, World Trade Center from the middle of NY harbor in my father's sailboat. Statue of Liberty encased in scaffolding from a major restoration, friends wedding, photos from my grandmother's hometown in southern Italy (a medieval walled city called Altamura), I had always wondered why I couldn't find any photos of The Eiffel Tower among my negatives. There were some.
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Courtesy of Steven Bollman
I still have to make contact sheets. I've been scanning images up to now. Last summer I bought a good scanner and that was what brought a lot of old negatives back to life. Negatives that were difficult to print in a darkroom or were neglected and unnoticed the first few viewings. In 1987 and '88 I photographed in Haiti covering their first post-Duvalier era elections. It was very violent. I saw/photographed a man hacked to death with machetes, heard a massacre from a quarter mile away and photographed the emergency crew attempt to rescue the survivors. There were 17 people shot and killed with M-16’s. As we were leaving the site, we were attacked. A Dominican camera man was killed. British journalist shot in the leg. We barely made it out. When I got back home to NY, I took a break from photography for what I thought would be a short one. I ended up getting involved in other things and before I knew it 13-14 years passed. I got back to taking pictures again in 2002. I mention that story to show how the film accumulated and then got forgotten. Little bags of 5-6 rolls added up until I started to really look at what was in the big bag. Lots more still to do. Incrementally newer film I think. Up to 2004 or so. About 110 rolls to go. Steven Bollman
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I had seen him a few times by now. For a long time I called him the Apparition. I liked his face and his posture. I liked his silent sadness. He reminded me of a nostalgic Count who had known memorable days that were no more. On the streets and in doughnut shops, he would appear in front of me unexpectedly and I would always be ready with my camera, all set up for a candid shot. I did not have the courage to aim my lens at him directly. I knew that I had to be discreet. I respected his silence. I was almost giving up this pursuit and obsession with getting a photograph of him. Every time the same thing had happened. My candid shots were either blurry, or at most depicted a silhouette of some unknown ghostly figure. Then, it happened! He sat a few stools away from me on the counter near the cash register. How sad and profound he looked! By now I knew he must be penniless, maybe even homeless. One could easily tell from his coat and shoes. Yet he had an air about him, almost elegant in his poverty. He sat there smoking heavily and gazing into an infinite emptiness. Motionless, except for the hand that lifted the cigarette to his mouth. What could he be thinking? There he was, an ascetic monk sitting so close to me yet untouchable. And the light! It was as if it had appeared through the only gap between the blinds, only to caress his hand. I could not eat anymore. I was starting to shake. This was the SHOT. I had waited so long for this moment. Never mind what I had missed until now. But to miss this one shot! I would never be able to forgive myself. I got up. As always in those days, I had my camera hanging from my shoulder. I approached the cash register, pretending to pay. For a quick instant I looked at him from where I was standing, decided roughly on the distance between us and opened the aperture of my lens to a safe stop. It did not matter much whether I would be overexposing the shot. I knew I had enough light. I was shaking nervously in anticipation now. I had to take a deep breath. He was still in his reverie. If only he would stay like that just for a few seconds! I thought I still had time. The cashier had just noticed my twenty-dollar bill in front of her. I could hear the cash register opening. I could not lose another single moment. It had to be Now. I slowly turned sideways and for the last time I felt my camera against my hip to make sure it was aiming towards him. I took a deep breath to make myself motionless and pressed the shutter. I knew from the sound of the click that from now on he was an apparition no more.
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stolen archive
Ivan: The Apparition Much later, I somehow met him. This time he sat on the stool next to me. And we talked. He invited me to his room. A squeaky bed with a worn-out mattress, a drawer with a mirror, a side table with an ashtray full to the brim with cigarette butts. I had a confession to make and I was reluctant. Finally I decided and showed him the photo I had taken of him. He looked at it for a while and he broke out into a long laughter. I laughed too. The ice was somehow broken. He liked the photo of the apparition.I started visiting and photographing him often and occasionally I would give him a print or two of the shots I was proud of. We shared many packages of cigarettes. We shared a lot of silence too. I understood him through his silence. Like me, he was from another place, another time. From a place he called back home. Like me, dreams of youth had evaporated in this Promised Land. He from Bosnia-Herzegovina, me from Qamishly. I understood him looking at his sad eyes...his gaze so far... Sometimes we laughed. And sometimes he talked with his broken English. We would sit on his bed, with the ashtray between us, and I would listen to him. Everyone knew him at the Queen and Bathurst neighbourhood as well as on College street. But very few knew his past. They said he was once an elegant man. They said he had been a hard-working man. He would dress smartly, elegantly for those days. He knew many people and many knew him, even though they did not know where he had come from. He used to go to the Saturday night dances and he danced well. Those who knew him said he used to be a talkative man. Now all that was left were a few silent gestures and a few things in his pockets to show for the lack of words: a comb, a nail clipper, a small bar of soap...a small container of medication. They said he used to have a flashy car and a pair of dark sunglasses. Sometimes he was even arrogant. But all that was so long ago, before the accident...
Courtesy of Berge Arabian
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For about six months I visited him few times a week and the rolls and prints piled up. So did Ivan's collection of the photos I gave him as gifts. Then one night after a few days of editing with a few colleagues, I arrived home exhausted and without bothering to carry any of my folders or boxes of prints out of the car into the house, I went to bed. Next morning was one of the worst of my life. When I went out to the car to go to work, there was no car. I thought it had slid from the driveway onto the street. I was wrong. There was no car. I was shaking all over. My negatives... my prints...I searched the whole neighbourhood. No luck. The nightmare was real. With the car also had gone 3 portfolios of projects I had been working on...as well as all the negatives and master prints of the six months I had spent with Ivan. To this day and even though I am not in Toronto any more, I still hope that one day I will open my door and will see the 2 bags with my negative binders and boxes of prints left by a kind-hearted someone to make my day. I often remember that story by Galiano about the robbers who stole a small box from the house of a senile old man. The box , they discovered later, was full of love letters from the old man's lover in his youth. Well, soon after, every week one letter started arriving by post at the old man's house. The old man read and read the letters that never stopped coming. He was in love again without having a clue. He died as a young man in love in his old age. To this day I wish the car thieves had been as kind-hearted as those robbers... The police could not help. For them it was just one more stolen car. What did they care about negatives and the dreams of a photographer. Three weeks passed during which I must have searched every parking lot in every shopping mall in Toronto hoping the thieves had abandoned my car in one of them. The whole archive was gone. Only a few second-rate prints of Ivan which I had at home, had survived. Then I remembered the prints I had given to him. I rushed to his place that same night with a gleam of hope...I could re-
shoot the prints I had given him and make new negatives. Not as good as the originals but nevertheless...better than zero. Ivan was silent. I kept asking him if I could borrow the prints for a couple of days. Silence...after a long while, he said, “I no have them”. I was shocked. “What do you mean you don't have them? Those were my presents to you”, I said. Silence...then, “donnow. Gone...”. It turned out that every time he met someone he liked, he would give them one of the prints. One woman here, one man there, a shop owner, friends on the street...every single photo. It was a second nightmare I was living. “What am I going to do Ivan?everything is lost”, I said. He started laughing and then with a wave of his hand sweeping the air, he said, “So? That make two of us. We are same. Before, me had car, nice stereo, suit, cravat...gone...everything gone. Now you...everything gone. We same... yeh?”. He was still laughing. For a moment stunned, I was watching his face. Then all of a sudden, I started to laugh. Together we laughed and laughed, at first gently and then hysterically. For a good long while we laughed like that. Two friends... an old man and a photographer...both immigrants with broken dreams sharing a worn-down mattress. You know, when you stumble upon wisdom, you lose your inhibitions, you forget your own suffering and a simple truth strikes you and you are only able to mumble, “that's life”, in relief. N.B: Soon after this episode, I began to rephotograph Ivan. With the help of my photographer friends, we reproduced 4X4 negatives from the few surviving prints. In the end I photographed Ivan for almost two years very intensely and ended up building a new archive in memoriam to the stolen ones. I showed this work in two different exhibitions.
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Courtesy of Berge Arabian
basement archive
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Courtesy of Jean-Christian Bourcart
Over several decades of professional and personal adventures, I have, like many pho=phgk]j d Yj[`an] ]kl mf] im]klagf ima ljYn]jk] d] ljYnYad \]k tographers, accumulated thousands of shots. Yjlakl]k ]l \]k [mjYl]mjk \]hmak mf] \arYaf] \ Yff]k 3 \] >jYf¬gak In fact, I have filled two basements - one in Hajgf § ;`jaklgh`] Ca`e$ \] Kgh`a] ;Ydd] § L`geYk @ajk``gjf$ \]k Paris, covering the period from 1980-1996 l]flYlan]k gfl l ^Yal]k 3 dY eYbgjal \] []k ]phgkalagfk f_da_] and one in New York, from 1996 to today. d Y[l] \] d gmn]jlmj] ]l \] dY [gfkmdlYlagf \] d Yj[`an]& Gj$ []k \]mp A part of it is already inventoried, exposed and marketed, and can be regarded as my ghjYlagfk kgmn]fl [gdd][lan]k kgfl \l]jeafYfl]k 3 ]dd]k [jaklYdcurrent artistic corpus. dak]fl fglj] jYhhgjl Ym hYkk 3 ]dd]k \l]jeaf]fl dY ^jgfla®j] ]flj]
d] nakaZd] ]l d afnakaZd]$ dY eegaj] ]l d gmZda$ d] Z]Ym ]l d] dYa\$ My proposal now is to look at the rest of the d aflj]kkYfl ]l d] ^mlad]& =f kgee] []k _]kl]k jafalaYdak]fl [] im] production, that includes product packshots, fgmk \ka_fgfk [gee] hYkk&
war reports, portraits of personalities, experiments, and intimate photos, and to envision Ad k Y_al \] e]llj] ]f hdY[] mf hjg[]kkmk \ ]phgkalagf § d ]fn]jk 2 what could extend the artistic corpus. D]k ha®[]k j][gfklalm]k \]na]ff]fl d] da]m \ mf] fgmn]dd] dYZgjYlagf& Fgmk Yddgfk \gf[ h]j^gje]j dY l¨[`] ljY\alagff]dd] What meaning can we give this mass that \m h`glg_jYh`] ]f eg\] hgkl%hjg\m[lagf remains as a silent grave if it \alagf$ kim]f¬Y_]$ is not explored, k[Yffaf_$ aehj]kkagf$ ]f[Y\j]e]fl! Ym k]af e¯e] \] dY _Yd]ja]$ searched, furrowed, and questioned? How h]je]llYfl Yafka mf] [gfklYfl] afl]jY[lagf Yn][ d] hmZda[ ima k]jY can we look at very different photographs (a collection of Dior bags, an earthquake [gfna § \gff]j kgf Ynak kmj [] ima nYml dY h]af] \ ¯lj] ljYnYadd$ in Turkey, portraits of CEOs, a rave party Y_jYf\a ]l ÚfYdak& in England...), and what effect can produce 9 ^jim]f[] j_mda®j]$ k]jgfl gj_Yfakk \]k ogjck`ghk ]f[Y\jk their juxtaposition? What transformation hYj \]k [`]j[`]mjk ]l \]k h]jkgffYdalk \m egf\] \] d Yjl \]ka_f can be done to the images so that they be_jYh`aim]$ `aklgaj] \] d Yjl$ h`glg_jYh`a]$ `aklgaj]$ kg[agdg_a] ! come something different than what they ima k ]ehYj]jgfl \]k Yj[`an]k mf l]ehk \gff ]l ]f ^]jgfl mf] represent? I experiment, transform, alter, afl]jhjlYlagf& ;`Yim] Yl]da]j k]jY kmana hYj mf _jYh`akl] ima ]fj]destroy. This is a sophisticated operation _aklj]jY dY eYla®j] \an]jk] Y[[memd]$ hgmj mf gmnjY_] § n]faj § that unfolds like a dialectical movement bedY Úf \] d ]phgkalagf& tween erasure and invention.
Mf []jlYaf fgeZj] \ de]flk k]jY \akhgfaZd] § dY n]fl] 2 kgjla]k Jean-Christian Bourcart dYk]j$ \aYhgkalan]k gja_afYd]k$ eg\aÚ]k gm fgf$ l`meZ\jan]k
Louisville Memories of John Ranard I met John Ranard in August 1977. We had both come to Louisville, Kentucky to study at the Center for Photographic Studies with C. J. Pressma. I was hoping to complete a master’s degree and John was looking to become a better photographer. We became fast friends, in part because of our shared love for street photography and our using of Leica rangefinders. John was tall, thin and bearded, looking taller than he actually was because of his thinness. He spoke rapidly and peppered his speech with ”man.” His look and speech made me think of the Beat generation types I had met when I first went to art school 10 years earlier. Much of what he said in those first days came out in the form of questions. This guy really wanted to know, to understand…everything, it seemed. As I got to know John, I realized much of this curiosity was due to his spending a good deal of his youth in the Far East, Burma, India, Korea, where his father was posted to various U.S. embassies. He’d been back in the states for a couple of years by the time we met but his ingrained curiosity drove him to find out more, to photograph more. The US, and especially Kentucky, was always new and different to him; he found it full of surprises and photo opportunities. At the Center for Photographic Studies John stood out for the amount of energy he put into projects. He was part of a team of 3 students who were assigned to document the floodwall in Louisville, a 12foot high relatively-featureless concrete wall-system designed to keep the Ohio River out of Louisville during floods. Over the course of the semester John walked several miles of the floodwall and found
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when i'm 64: lost dog
enough interesting photos to carry out the project. Two-thirds of the photos in the final presentation were his.
A photo essay appeared in City Paper and John began putting together a photo exhibition, The Brutal Aesthetic.
One day John came to me with a print he’d found on the drying rack outside the Center for Photographic Studies darkroom. “This is your filed-out negative carrier in this photo. Somebody else is using it. That’s part of your signature, man, other people shouldn’t be using it.” John was generous but he guarded his identity as photographer and was telling me I should pay attention and do the same.
One of the fighters John began photographing was Louisvillian Greg Page, a ranked heavy-weight boxer on his way to becoming World Champion. Ranard became part of Page’s entourage travelling with him to fights in Las Vegas, New York and Atlantic City, including the July 1981 fight in Atlantic City where Page was crowned United States Boxing Association Heavyweight champion. Other members of the entourage and Page’s family called John “Beard.” When Page died in Louisville in 2009, after years of poor health following a 2001 knockout which resulted in brain injury and a stroke, an audiovisual program using John’s photographs from Page’s glory days in the 1980s was shown at the memorial service.
The Center for Photographic Studies closed after the spring semester in 1978. I found a job as darkroom manager at the University of Louisville Photographic Archives and John signed on as the photographer for City Paper, a new weekly alternative tabloid. Besides assignments covering local events John was given a weekly slot for a photograph of his choice, called Ranard’s Picture Show. Over the next few years with City Paper, John produced several self-generated photo essays ranging from life on an Ohio River barge tow to following a steer through the Bourbon Stockyards, from the livestock auction to the meatpacking plant. John’s curiosity led to what was arguably the best of his Louisville photo essays. He was looking out the window of the Outlook Inn one afternoon and wondered why all these strong looking young men with gym bags were going into the former Odd Fellows Hall across the street. So, he crossed the street and went up the stairs to find a boxing gym on the second floor of the Odd Fellows Hall. After a few questions and answers John got permission to photograph the boxers training in the gym. Soon he was regularly photographing these boxers in the Friday night fights in gyms and small clubs around Louisville.
Young John Ranard - Courtesy of Ranard Estate
While he was working on the Brutal Aesthetic exhibit, John moved to New York. In 1985 he read a Joyce Carol Oates essay on boxing in the New York Times Magazine. John contacted Oates, suggesting they collaborate on a book. Oates agreed and the 1987 publication of On Boxing was celebrated with an audio-visual presentation at the International Center of Photography. After John moved to New York, we saw each other only sporadically when he would visit Louisville. John called me in 2008, a few months before he died of liver cancer, to thank me for the friendship we had begun in 1977 and that had lasted more than 30 years. I told him our friendship meant as much to me as it did to him. Bill Carner
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1952 (Washington) * 2008 (New York City)
John Ranard's Photo Postcard - Courtesy of Ranard Estate
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John Ranard's Postcard - Courtesy of Ranard Estate
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when i'm 64: lost dog
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We once lived in the same area - East Village, in New York. We sometimes showed each other's work to one another. We went on a photo day-trip together in the city and beyond. When it came to photography and the related story, his mind often became childlike, pure and with sensitivity. I remember one photograph from his Odessa series. Although the series and most of the photos were dark, because the story was about AIDS and drugs in the Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, the photo had, at least at a glance, a sense of happiness. It was a portrait of a young smiling woman. John said, “ She was pretty, right!” He continued, “... she was 17 years old, but she worked as a sex-worker to survive...” He was also honest, not cunning. Many photographers, especially documentary photographers and photojournalists, often manipulate the situation and even exploit the person as subject to try to get greater images. John, however, would never have exploited the people. Instead, during his street shooting, he tried to communicate with a very open attitude. Importantly even after the shooting, he often continued talking with the person(s) in an intimate way. It was one of his natural talents, and it brought out not only fun, but also trust that is one of the significant elements for creating great photography, especially in a difficult situation. He was not only a good friend of mine but also someone I learned many things from... John, I miss you. Q. Sakamaki
John Ranard's Portrait - Courtesy of Ranard Estate
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Nick Kendrick, Kentucky Golden Gloves. Louisville, 1980 - Courtesy of Ranard Estate
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ons. Bloomington, 1979.
Card Girl. Mohammed Ali Producti
Baker Tinsley's Back, Louisville boxer. From Ranard's boxing portfolio. Undated.
Purcell Davis. Bloomington, 1979.
Victor Rodriguex (vs. Greg Page). Louisville, Kentucky, 1980.
John could be abrupt, stubborn, difficult, and extraordinarily off-putting. He was blessed with few social graces, he did not engage in preliminaries. At no other time did I feel his occasional rudeness more acutely than when we were on the phone. Typically, a chat with him would go as follows: John (J): (in a tone of bafflement, as if responding to his own greeting in surprise) ‘Oh, hi, so what’s going on?' Andrea (A): ‘Hi, John!’ (J, monologue of 3-5 + minutes: …) J: ‘ok see ya…’ (dialtone)
A: --. At times I’d resolve to never talk to him again. But, of course, we always did talk again. We’d meet for drinks, go to openings, hang out in his cozily cluttered East Village apartment, the one with the many rugs and the sticky keyboard. We had many, frequent, lengthy email exchanges and, over the years, we became close that way. Though it was a distant closeness, one we never acknowledged, I intuitively knew we recognized parts of each other in each other: two reclusive loners somewhat adrift. In retrospect, it seems that the circumstances that elicited the most outward expression of our affection for each other involved several trips to his bathroom. While, admittedly, I never did feel completely at ease in there (John was not one for domestic chores), I once noticed a ‘posse’—as John would call it—of little plastic animals. I further noticed that, with each trip to the bathroom, the constellation of these animals was slightly changed, each time telling a different story. I began going to the bathroom more often. Eventually I would scout for other little animals and during visits to his flat (and more and more frequent trips to his bathroom), I'd surreptitiously add them--one by one--to his posse, altering his narrative. He’d silently respond by repositioning posse members, developing an unspoken dialogue among the animals, and--among us. And so it went.
issue 05 Photographic archive
Plainclothes Policeman Inspects Drug User For Fresh Track Marks. Russia, 1998.
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when i'm 64: lost dog
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John and I were in and out of each other’s lives in Moscow, NYC and in cyberspace for a little less than a decade. But, looking back now, it feels like a near lifetime. How close I felt to him became fully palpable only after his death. It seems that since the day of his death on May 14th, 2008, since that morning when I sat on a bench outside Mount Sinai Hospital, after having been told by his sister, Pat, that he had passed away overnight, there’s hardly been a week or two when I haven’t thought of him. And in all those years since his death, it has occurred to me that his occasional lack of etiquette, his brusqueness and bluntness, were the flip side of his virtues. John was unique in that he was absolutely authentic. He was honest with himself and with others. He had a fine-tuned nose for—and impatience with—bullshit and baloney. He had the courage to speak his mind, ruffling feathers or not. He was brave. He was compassionate and kind in an understated, uncalculating way. He had an incorruptible sense of justice. He was modest and melancholy. He had a wry sense of humor and a chuckle that often hinted at knowing more. And, he had perhaps that rarest of qualities: integrity. In the months, weeks, days before he died he never succumbed to self-pity. I never heard him lament or complain about what was happening to him. In the end, he applied the same strict no-nonsense standards that he applied to others, to himself. His Percocet were his “perkies” because they perked him up. They were also his refuge in case he needed to take things into his own hands. Throughout his illness he carried on clear-headed, unsentimental and dignified, without ever shining a light on his plight. I feel he died quite alone. And deeply misunderstood. He is alive in my memories. Andrea Hoyer
Kaliningrad, 1998 - Courtesy of Ranard Estate.
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TRIGGER FINGERS
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dog eared 10 Photographers Name 10 Books And 10 Films That Have Inspired Their Life. Victor Cobo
Books: Women - Charles Bukowski Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson Tristessa - Jack Kerouac Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes - Jonathan Shaw Catching the Big Fish - David Lynch The Brutality of Fact: Interviews w/Francis Bacon - David Sylvester Ham on Rye - Charles Bukowski Hollywood - Charles Bukowski Hell's Angels - Hunter S. Thompson Lynch on Lynch - Chris Rodley
Films: Memento - Christopher Nolan Enter the Void - Gaspar Noé Inland Empire - David Lynch Mulholland Drive - David Lynch Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock Eraserhead - David Lynch A Clockwork Orange - Stanley Kubrick Only Lovers Left Alive - Jim Jarmusch A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - Ana Lily Amirpour The Skin I Live In - Pedro Almodovar
Peter van Agtmael
Books: Train Dreams - Denis Johnson Kafka on The Shore - Haruki Murakami Dispatches - Michael Herr Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee The Art of Loving - Erich Fromm All of Ha Jin, but especially 'The Bridegroom' Chronicles: Volume One - Bob Dylan Much of Vonnegut, but especially 'The Sirens Of Titan' CivilWarLand in Bad Decline - George Saunders Thinking the Twentieth Century - Tony Judt
Films: Spirited Away - Hayao Miyazaki Baraka - Ron Fricke The Thin Red Line - Terrence Malick Fog of War - Eugene Jarecki The Big Lebowski - The Coen Brothers Rushmore - Wes Anderson Waltz with Bashir - Ari Folman The Act of Killing - Joshua Oppenheimer Star Wars - George Lucas No Direction Home - Martin Scorcese
Thomas Dworzak
Books: Tintin Au Pays De L'Or Noir, and all - Hergé Durchs Wilde Kurdistan, and all - Karl May Our Game - John Le Carre War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy Circle of Deceit - Nicolas Born The Man without Qualities - Robert Musil A Heroe of Our Times - Mikhail Lermontov Travel to Erzurum - Alexander Pushkin All S.A.S. - Gerard de Viliers Orientalism - Edward Saïd
Films: All James Bond films All Winnetou films M*A*S*H* - the series Soy Cuba / I am Cuba - Mikhail Kalatozov Frantic - Roman Polanski Ali G, the series - Sacha Baron Cohen Tam-e-Gilas - Abbas Kiarostami Deadline - Nathaniel Gutman Red Chapel - Mads Bruggen The Deer Hunter - Michael Cimino
Alexandra Avakian
Books: The Stranger - Albert Camus The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad To Have and Have Not - Ernest Hemingway Animal Farm - George Orwell Day of the Locust - Nathanael West 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Men in the Sun - Ghassan Kanafani God Dies by the Nile - Nawal El Saadawi Acts of Faith - Philip Caputo
Films: Traffic - Steven Soderbergh Ararat - Atom Egoyan End of the Road - Aram Avakian All About Eve - Joseph Mankiewitcz Touch of Evil - Orson Wells Rear Window - Alfred Hitchcock Blowup - Michelangelo Antonioni The Color of Pomegranates - Sergei Parajanov Burnt by the Sun - Nikita Mikhalkov The Constant Gardener - Fernando Meirelles
Yusuf Sevincli
Books: The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa Time Regulation Institute - Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar The Praise of Folly - Desiderius Erasmus The City in History - Lewis Mumford Rubaiyat - Omar Khayyam Moby Dick - Herman Melville Tristes Tropiques - Claude Levi-Strauss All works by Edgar Allen Poe Greil Marcus - Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Films: Fight Club - David Dincher Wild Strawberries - Ingmar Bergman Breathless - Jean Luc Godard Pierrot le Fou - Jean-Luc Godard Man with a Movie Camera - Dziga Vertov Decasia - Bill Morrison The Holy Mountain - Alejandro Jodorowsky Yol - Yılmaz Güney Stalker - Andrei Tarkovsky Children of Men - Alfonso Cuaron
67 Harvey Stein
Books: Dear Theo - Vincent Van Gogh Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks Concrete - Thomas Bernhard Life Work - Donald Hall Camera Lucida - Roland Barthes Labyrinth - Paul Auster Time’s Arrow - Martin Amis
Films: Aguirre The Wrath of God - Werner Herzog Ikiru - Akira Kurosawa Ali:Fear Eats the Soul - Rainer Werner Fassbinder Taxi Driver - Martin Scorsese Wings of Desire - Wim Wenders Fitzcarraldo - Werner Herzog On the Waterfront - Alfred Kazan The Thin Blue Line - Errol Morris La Dolce Vita - Frederico Fellini Citizen Kane - Orson Welles
Tanya Habjouka
Books: Sophie's Choice - William Styron Henry and June - Anais Nin On the Road - Jack Kerouac Big Sur - Jack Kerouac Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski Hashem El Madani: Studio Practices - Arab Image Foundation The Hakawati - Rabih Alameddine Hell’s Angels - Hunter S. Thompson
Films: Black Orpheus - Marcel Camus Henry and June - Philip Kaufman Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle - Alan Rudolph Al Karnak - Aly Badrakhan Jaws - Steven Spielberg The Exorcist - William Friedkin West Beirut - Ziad Doueiri Divine Intervention - Elia Suleiman Sex and Lucia - Julio Medem The Great Beauty - Paolo Sorrentino
Bill Burke
Books: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - James Agee Moby Dick - Herman Melville Kentucky Straight - Chris Offutt Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy The Plague - Albert Camus Dune - Frank Herbert Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad The Lover - Margaret Duras Mortal Lessons - Richard Selzer
Films: Apocalypse Now - Francis Ford Coppola Aguirre, Wrath of God - Werner Herzog Beauty and the Beast - Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise Wings of Desire - Wim Wenders One-Eyed Jacks - Marlon Brando The Music Room - Satyajit Ray Into the Abyss - Werner Herzog No Country for Old Men - The Coen Brothers Pulp Fiction - Quentin Tarantino
Krisanne Johnson
Books: Dr. Zhivago - David Lean Days of Heaven - Terrence Malick A New World - Park Hoon-Jung The Piano - Jane Campion On the Waterfront - Elia Kazan Winter’s Bone - Debra Granik Urban Cowboy - James Bridges Bright Star - Jane Campion Howards End - James Ivory The Pianist - Roman Polanski
Rania Matar
Books: Hold Still - Sally Mann Les Désorientés - Amin Maalouf Les Identités Meurtrières - Amin Maalouf L'élégance du Hérisson - Muriel Barbery The Trilogy - Naguib Mahfouz The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera This is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper Oscar and the Lady in Pink - Eric Emmanuel Schmitt The Giver - Lois Lowry The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Films: John Ashbery Poems Alice Munro (Anything, all of it) Lucia Berlin (Short stories) To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Plague - Albert Camus One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Films: Boyhood - Richard Linklater My Cousin Vinny - Jonathan Lynn Women on the Verge - Pedro Almodovar Les Intouchables - Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano The Devil Wears Prada - David Frankel The Silver Lining Playbook - David O. Russell Rear Window - Alfred Hitchcock The Graduate - Mike Nichols Caramel - Nadine Labaki Nebraska - Alexander Payne
krisis manifesto manifesto