Double issue! Asfar / Bergantini / Castilho / Faulhaber / Fritz / Gerats / Gronsky / Klos / Koyama / Kruithof / Leong / Lundgren / Monteleone / Naudé / Purchas / Schuman / Van Agtmael / Wilcox
foam magazine #20 / talent webshop
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foam magazine #20 / talent
editorial
Editorial
Marloes Krijnen, director Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
With great pleasure and appropriate pride, we are pleased to present a very special edition of Foam Magazine. Foam Magazine #20 is completely devoted to the work of talented photographers who, although they may be very different from each other, have in common that they are aged 35 or younger. This special talent edition differs in several aspects from a regular edition of Foam Magazine. It is at least twice as thick as usual and contains no fewer than 286 pages. Instead of the customary six sixteen-page portfolios, we present eighteen portfolios this time: six complete eighteen-page portfolios and another twelve extra portfolios, each with eight pages. Loyal readers of Foam Magazine naturally know that we compile a talent edition once a year and they will perhaps remember that last year’s talent edition already contained more portfolios than usual, twelve in fact. Then we decided to do this for two reasons: we wanted to do justice to the photographic talent that manifested in extremely diverse areas in the photographic community – from work by young talented photojournalists and documentary photographers to visual artists who work in a strictly conceptual way. The photographic landscape is so rich and diverse that justice could simply not be done to this diversity with fewer than twelve portfolios. A second reason which was put forward at the time was geographical dispersion. By consciously investigating work made in diverse parts of the world, we were attempting to do as much justice as possible to the latest photographic developments on various continents. This second reason pertains to the realisation this edition to an even greater degree – even if it is only because the editors for this issue reviewed, discussed and evaluated a far greater number of portfolios – a total of about 900 portfolios from at least 56 countries. That’s reason enough for eighteen portfolios! Many of these portfolios were sent to our editors in response to our request in Foam Magazine #18. The response surpassed our wildest expectations and impressed and greatly gratified our editors. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to everyone who responded and sent us their work! The editors would also like to thank Jörg Colberg, the ‘conscientious’ fine-art photography blogger (see also www.jmcolberg.com) who admirably performed his task of interviewing all eighteen chosen talents. The results can be read accompanying each of the portfolios. But even such an extraordinary edition also of course has a number of familiar elements, such as an interview with a prominent person in the photographic community. We are extremely proud of the extensive interview that Stephen Shore granted exclusively to Foam Magazine. The parts where he discusses his role as professor of photography at Bard College are particularly apt in this talent edition. As always, we conclude this edition with a brief description of the exhibitions to be shown at Foam in the upcoming months and a selection of recently published photo books. +
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foam magazine #20 / talent
contents
Alexander Gronsky ~ Less Than One Pages 35 – 52
Contents On My Mind... images selected by Aveek Sen ~ Shigeo Goto ~ Garance Doré ~ Robbert Dijkgraaf ~ Jeffrey Ladd ~ Robin Schwartz
Simone Bergantini ~ The Black Boxes
Pages 53 – 62
Pages 16 – 21
Interview A Conversation with Stephen Shore About What Seeing looks like by Richard Leslie photographs by Richard Renaldi
Pages 22 – 26
~ Talent:
Julian Faulhaber ~ Lowdensitypolyethylene Pages 63 – 72
Theme introduction What Defines Talent? by Marcel Feil
Pages 27 – 34
Portfolios All interviews by Jörg Colberg
Pages 35 – 262
~
Anouk Kruithof ~ Becoming Blue Pages 73 – 82
Photobooks by Sebastian Hau
Pages 264 – 267
Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam Exhibition Programme Prune ~ Abstracting Reality
Pages 269 – 284
Michael Lundgren ~ Transfigurations & Matter Pages 83 – 100
João Castilho ~ Whirlwind & Vacant Plot Pages 101 – 118
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Peter van Agtmael ~ American Wars Pages 119 – 128
Aaron Schuman ~ Once Upon a Time in the West Pages 187 – 196
Amira Fritz ~ Spaziergang im Käferwald
Elliott Wilcox ~ Courts Pages 197 – 214
Pages 129 – 138
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Sarah Gerats ~ Her
Taisuke Koyama ~ Rainbow Form
Pages 139 – 148
Pages 215 – 224
Nadim Asfar ~ Innenleben
Davide Monteleone ~ Northern Caucasus
Pages 149 – 158
Pages 225 – 242
Leonie Purchas ~ In the Shadow of Things
Timo Klos ~ Orr
Pages 159 – 176
Pages 243 – 252
Ronald Leong ~ Fibonacci/Rorschach
Daniel Naudé ~ Africanis
Pages 177 – 186
Pages 253 – 262
foam magazine #20 / talent Six well-known figures from the cultural world selected an image that has recently been on their minds...
On My Mind...
Photographer unknown, from Floh, Tacita Dean (Steidl, 2001) © Tacita Dean, courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
Aveek Sen The day’s urgencies fall away as I sit down to look at Tacita Dean’s Floh. This book of photographs that were found by Dean in the flea markets of Europe and America over a period of six years or so, bears no text or page-numbers, nothing to break what she calls ‘the silence of lost objects’. With it, I enter, and mark as I slowly turn the pages, a special kind of time. It is like a vacation by the sea – solitary, but its timeless spaces are dotted with the mysterious lives of others. The sea takes away things and people, often to return them somewhere else, in some other state. It is this impersonal, yet strangely consoling, cycle of losing and finding that Floh derives its beauty from. This photograph is, for me, about the arresting ugliness of a woman’s face. I call her Ginny. She sits back solidly against the car, separated from her man by this other handsome couple who have driven down to visit
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them on a Sunday. Ginny’s little boy stands behind them uncomfortably. He has got his mother’s face, and would one day begin to resent this gift. Her husband sees all this – especially today, when, perhaps for the first time, he finds himself measuring his own life against the comeliness of his brother’s. Yet, this fills his eyes and heart with the most tender love for his moon-faced, snub-nosed family. He even wonders if he is beginning to look a bit like them too. +
Aveek Sen is senior assistant editor (editorial pages) of The Telegraph, Calcutta. He has studied and taught English Literature at University and St Hilda’s Colleges, Oxford, respectively, and has been awarded the 2009 Infinity Award for Writing on Photography by the International Center of Photography, New York.
foam magazine #20 / talent On My Mind...
Quinault No.1, 1990-1991 © Yoshihiko Ueda, Courtesy of G/P Gallery, Tokyo
Shigeo Goto Yoshihiko Ueda showed his works of the forest called Quinault at G/P Gallery in Tokyo in May and June 2009. His photography books such as Amagatsu have presented his photography to Japanese and international audiences. His photographs have impressed audiences with their high degree of spiritual feeling and quality, as well as the perspective the photographs project to its viewers. Some viewers discover ‘new animism’ in these images of the woods. A similar sensibility can be observed in Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Seascape series. Photographs in the Quinault series were taken in the sacred forest of Native Americans in North America in early 1990s, although evidence of their religion is not highlighted in the images. A presence of blue and green hues emanates from the photos. These photographs touch the viewer’s deep emotion, even as a twisted, fictional mindset. The viewer
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reacts as if he/she was seeing the world for the first time. This emotional strength is what is meant by ‘new animism’. I believe the idea of animism and the abstract will become important paths for the progress of photography. +
Shigeo Goto is the director of G/P Gallery in Tokyo, and works as an independent editor, interviewer and curator, as well as being a professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design. He has been an advisory member on many projects, such as The Exposed, AATM (Art Award Tokyo Marunouchi) and the Tokyo Photo Art Fair.
foam magazine #20 / talent On My Mind...
Untitled, 2008 © Garance Doré
Garance Doré My first visit to Morocco was to bury my grandmother. I discovered there a world of light and a new part of me, my family. People in Morocco tend to express their feelings and to cry and laugh a lot. Usually I am like that. But I had loved her so much and she was so alive in my heart that it was like I was in a dream, as if all of this was not really happening. I couldn’t feel anymore. No tears. Nothing. It almost worried me. So I started taking pictures. For two days I spent my time shooting the food, the people, the house, the animals, the fruits, the grave. A little girl was there on the day of the burial. She was like a little cat. She didn’t speak French. She came, sat next to me, put her hand in my hand and stayed with me during all the day. She was playful and smiling, just a ray of light and joy. Like heaven sent, she helped me get through
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the day. She loved the camera, so I must have taken a thousand pictures of her. But that one, with her dress, the traces of henna on her feet, the fig trees in the background, the beautiful light and the idea that she is walking away so gracefully will always make me feel so much love that it never fails to fill me with emotions and to be able to cry at last for my grandmother. +
Garance Doré is the founder of the popular street fashion photography blog www.garancedore.fr. Based in Paris, Doré collaborates as an illustrator, a writer and a photographer with several international publications as Elle, Vogue, the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian and Le Monde.
foam magazine #20 / talent On My Mind...
Mosaic of images taken by the panoramic camera on board the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity that shows the rock region dubbed ‘El Capitan’, 2004 © NASA/JPL/Cornell
Robbert Dijkgraaf
When two small robots landed on Mars in 2004 and started to explore the planet, millions of people followed the mission on-line. One of the viewers complained that the images sent back to Earth were a bit disappointing. The rocks and dirt looked just like his backyard. How different were these pictures from what the Greek philosophers had imagined the heavens to be! They thought that the stars and planets were made of a special element called aether that was incapable of change and could only make perfect spheres and circles. Modern science definitely took away that illusion. I find it absolutely fascinating that a little spot on this largely unknown planet, hundreds of millions of kilometers away, has been explored so thoroughly. It is indeed a modest desert landscape, that wouldn’t
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ttract much attention on Earth. Yet thousands of pictures have been a made of these few rocks and are being studied in great detail. Some of the larger pebbles are fondly named after big mountains such as Stone Mountain and El Capitan; small ditches have taken on the prestige of the Grand Canyon. Yet the version of El Capitan on Mars is only a few centimeters high. The details in this picture are the size of a millimeter. If only we would pay so much attention to a single spot on our own planet. + Robbert Dijkgraaf is a mathematical physicist working at the University of Amsterdam. He is currently the president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
foam magazine #20 / talent On My Mind...
From a shimmer of possibility by Paul Graham (steidlMACK, 2009) © Paul Graham
Jeffrey Ladd The wall or the book? For me photography has almost always had more interesting presentation in book form than on ‘the wall’. There are of course exceptions where that hierarchy is upset and an equal balance achieved. Sophie Calle comes to mind in this regard - an exquisite bookmaker whose exhibitions are as beautifully conceived and presented as her printed volumes. In 2007, Paul Graham’s a shimmer of possibility made its debut in the form of twelve individual books published by Steidl. The concept of dividing the implied narratives and housing them separately was intriguing as some books offered very few photos - one featured a single image within its cloth covers - calling into question and challenging what ‘a book’ might consist of. Can a book be a single sentence? Certainly some sentences seem deserving of at least their own page. In 2009, works from five of the volumes of a shimmer of possibility were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and it was this exhibition that had me reconsidering which I thought was more compelling, the book(s) or the wall. Avoiding a faithful representation of the printed volumes, Graham varied the size and handled the images in ways
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that offered a completely new engagement with the work, one which in turn challenged the printed version. Its success was in its ability to stand apart from the books and yet within a large room (within an even larger institution) achieve an intimacy that is integral to the work. The downside of exhibitions, no matter how finely assembled, is their set duration and limited accessibility. Exhibitions are fleeting moments that rely on memory, where as, a book can conceivably remain at arms length for a lifetime. How many people saw and were inspired by Walker Evans’ 1938 exhibition versus the various printings of the book version of American Photographs? If one is lucky enough to experience both exhibition and book of the same work, hopefully, although I believe it is rare, each will relate and yet reverberate against one another, creating a third manifestation - one that belies hierarchy and enrichens the experience so that what remains at arms length will be all the more meaningful. + Jeffrey Ladd is a photographer and author of the artbook blog 5B4 Photography and Books. In 2008 he and two partners founded Errata Editions, an independent publishing house based in New York City.
foam magazine #20 / talent On My Mind...
Bean Dancing, 2005 © Tim Barber
Robin Schwartz Selecting this photograph, above all others, is my confession about what is foremost in my thoughts and desires. This choice reveals who I am to my core and who I have always been. It is like coming out. OK, this is as far as I go. I admire Tim Barber as a maker and editor of photographs. He seems true to what he likes, be it high- or lowbrow. I admire that Tim can co-opt cat subjects. As a woman, I have been on guard against cute and cat associations in my work. I would like to talk to Tim about how he thinks about this. My head contains a file cabinet full of photographs, with categories. I unwillingly see them throughout the day, like ghosts. These photographs must give me something I need or want. This summer a new image moved in; Brian Ulrich’s Gurnee, IL – the guy in love with a fishing rod in gorgeous light – there isn’t even an animal hook for me in this one. Choosing Brian’s photo would have been the sophisticated, presentable choice. But Tim’s standing cat edit is the real me, that which I have fantasies about, a fulfillment of Maurice Sendak’s illustrations of Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present. This is what I want to
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dream of, an upright walking cat companion, my red Cornish Rex, Noah. I trust that animal people, my people, would understand. I am a person dependent upon my relationship with animals. In retrospect my choice reflects my state of mind lately, a sadness at the death of Nathanial, my fifteen-year-old diabetic cat. +
Robin Schwartz is an American photographer. Her photographs can be found in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Museum of Art among others. Aperture have recently published her third monograph, Amelia’s World: Animal Affinity, edited by Tim Barber. The book features her daughter and her unusual relationship to animals. Robin Schwartz is also an assistant professor in photography at William Paterson Univeristy and is represented by M+B Gallery, Los Angeles. Please see www.robinschwartz.net. for more information.
foam magazine #20 / talent
interview
A Conversation With Stephen Shore About What Seeing Looks Like interview by Richard Leslie photographs by Richard Renaldi A little-known fact about the world famous photographer Stephen Shore is that for the past 27 years he has been a teacher at Bard College. Richard Leslie, teacher at the School of Visual Arts and Stony Brook University, met up with him for a few hours and discussed the experience of teaching, attention as intention and the impact of the digital revolution. Richard Renaldi photographed Stephen Shore for this interview. People might be surprised to know you’ve been a teacher for about a quarter century. I started at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, in the fall of 1982. It was a confluence of things. I missed the East. I needed a job. And I had been through a couple of cycles in my work, and thought I actually had something to teach. But I view teaching like anything I do; I do it to understand it. Has your teaching changed over the years? At first I really did not know what I was doing. I was trying to figure out how teaching works on the communication of certain skills and visual thinking. I had nothing to model it on. I dropped out of high school, never went to college, so I had no model in my head about what a class is supposed to be or how I was supposed to teach. I used it as a laboratory, tried different things. Early on I had ideas for assignments for particular students, and whenever they did the assignment their work improved. And I thought maybe I had some special knack, some special intuition. And then it occurred to me that it wasn’t what I was assigning, it was that they were doing something concrete and specific. Pursuing any assignment added intentionality to their work. But my approach keeps changing because I’ve come to realize that teaching has to do with a specific time and group of people. I can’t make rules about teaching today because with a different group of people the same approach won’t apply. There is always a question for teachers about limits especially if you accept you’re not their parent or a guru but an educator? I see teaching as a way of navigating that path between a guru and an educator. Think of it as a guide, which in a way demystifies it. But what am I guiding them to? To find their own voices! I’m not trying to get them
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to take pictures like mine, I’m trying to somehow divine what their pictures are going to be like, so in a way to see through their conditioning, what they bring, as anyone growing up in a visual culture would. In guiding them to their voice, it’s having some kind of sense of how I can direct them and push them toward it and when I should step back and let them discover things for themselves. Is one course more important than another for you? Personally, I find over the years one class that is crucial, that is a turning point: our view camera class. All our sophomores spend a semester using a 4x5. It focuses their decision-making. How does that work? The camera is large and on a tripod and you get to see exactly the image. It forces you to be conscious of the decisions you are making. You can’t just photograph intuitively. Even if they never go back to a view camera and spend the rest of their career using 35 mm I think it permanently affects the way they see and think. I was expecting you to say critiques were the pivotal class. Two-thirds of the semester in each class is critique. The first five weeks, roughly, is new information, but the majority of the class is what you do with this information. Critiques are what we are forced to do as photography teachers and I have different approaches to it. There are some years when I say almost nothing, and I am interested in how little I can say. I’ll just edit their pictures, but the meaning of the critique will be clear in the edit. The past several years I just open my mouth and say whatever comes into my head. Here’s my problem with it though. If this were a drawing class the teacher could go behind the student, pick up a charcoal, mark their paper and say look at this. Most photography classes don’t do photography in class. They talk about photography. This coming spring I am addressing it by teaching a view camera class where we’ll go out and photograph as much as possible. With a view camera I can look at the ground glass and actually see what they’ve done, their exact framing decision and I’ll ask what happens if you move the camera over or forward an inch. How does that change the relationships? What I am doing is what the drawing teacher does in making their corrections. >
foam magazine #20 / talent
interview
~ By only working digitally something was robbed from their education ~ What is it that suggests to you they move an inch forward or back, left or right, in communicating but not enforcing your vision? One of the things that photography does inevitably is take three-dimensional space and collapse it to two-dimensions. So there are relationships between things in the foreground and things in the background that exist differently in the photograph than in real life. Something in the foreground can be a quarter of an inch away, literally, on a print, from something yards away, and those relationships are all throughout the picture and are important to what I think of as ‘solving the picture’. How do you take this three-dimensional space that flows in time and doesn’t have boundaries and doesn’t have a single plane of focus and translate it into this flat, static, bounded object? I wanted to understand how a convincing three dimensional space is articulated, structurally, in the picture. I would put things at an edge to see how that works. I tried to see what happens when the curb of a street goes exactly into a corner, or a little above and a little below the corner. How do these little decisions affect the articulation of space in the picture? If I don’t like the way this works I try something different and when it works I’ll move on to some other aspect. I see teaching as the same thing. You try something and if it doesn’t work, there’s no great harm. If I try something with a student and it is not productive, then I’ve learned from that, and it helps in the next thing I choose. How do you translate that into your teaching? I mark their photographs with a red grease pencil in class. I don’t personally crop any pictures and I don’t allow my students to. This is not a moral stance, it is simply practical. It’s the game I have set up for myself. If I want to focus as much attention as I can on my decisions that are made in the picture, I want to know that I have no way out after that. If it’s about learning how to make a picture rather than a way of making good pictures as a product, then it can only be about experimentation and learning. It’s not about saving a picture, so they can make a good picture out of it. Who cares if the picture is improved other than them learning to alter their awareness the next time they go out and shoot. I’m interested in the process of learning. You chose the opening quotation for Uncommon Places (1982) from Louis Sullivan’s Kindergarten Chats to concentrate on attention as the essence of living life. Then you go on to say that, ‘A picture happens when something inside connects, an experience that changes as the photographer does.’ For me this reads as an interior experience that changes within the photographer, a life being lived at that moment. Right. I have two things to add to Sullivan. One is that there is a kind of dividing of attention between paying attention to what you are seeing and hearing and paying attention to yourself at the same time. Secondly, and not quoted in my book, he goes on to say that man’s spiritual nature is man’s finer, subtler way of paying attention. And in a certain way it demystifies spirituality. He’s asking to be connected to attention in a
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particular way. The way I come to it in class is what I describe in The Nature of Photographs (first ed. 1998): that we are aware of the mental image we have when we see a photograph or the world. You seem to use the word attention the way many others use the word intention. I think there can be intentions that are separate from attention and the answer is different for different students. That may sound like an easy cop out but it is true. There are some students…you can see that if they have a conceptual framework to their work, it just flowers. If they just have a camera around their neck and roam around and take pictures, they don’t know what to do. I would say the best work is done with intentionality but intentionality doesn’t mean something conceptual. It can be as simple as to pay as close attention as possible to what seeing looks like, as opposed to making a good photograph. What if I simply look at or be aware of how I see things as distinct from how I would just photograph them? Has the digital revolution changed anything? During my last year as a visiting teacher in 2008 at the University of Art and Design in Lausanne, Switzerland – an excellent program with excellent students – this particular group of students were making not just lousy prints, they weren’t understanding the color space of a picture. I found that none of them had ever made a traditional color or a blackand-white print. Historically we were at a cusp where a group of twenty graduate-level students had worked digitally their entire lives as photographers. That was not the case the year before. By only working digitally something was robbed from their education. To see color, the color space of a photograph, to make a fine print that is a complete whole, that communicates a visual idea in technical as well as visual terms…there has to be some vision of a color space in the picture, how it all works together. But for that to happen I am convinced a photographer has to see in terms of a particular film and paper combination. It’s very hard to do, because it is similar to how our eyes see but it is just a little different. And the way to learn that is by doing black-and-white because when they’ve done it long enough they actually begin to see in black-and-white. It also sensitizes you to seeing light, and, when photographers finally really see light, that guides how they make the prints because then they have something very tangible to communicate – what the quality of the light was. It’s easier to learn that mechanism in black-and-white. Color is harder because with traditional color printing you do not have the same contrast control. You learn something essential by going into the black and white darkroom, how to control the contrast – learning, optically and chemically, how to control curves. You also learn something essential by controlling color by filtration. Then you go to Photoshop where curves can be controlled by just clicking on a line and dragging it. But now you know what it means. You know what you want it to be. Now that’s the key to me! So it’s not an argument for ‘old art’ but for strengthening and determining the new conditions. Yes, exactly, and that there is a training period to take advantage of digital. The training period may be through traditional practice but in going through this process in the traditional way you begin to learn what you want the results to be. Now they go to Photoshop to use it, not to have it use them. If you know what you want, it is an extraordinary tool. You once gave advice to a hypothetical young artist who felt ‘it is important for artists to develop a true sense of themselves before showing their work, so as not to be tempted or tainted by commercial ambition’ in an art world they think is ‘ruled by fashion and greed’ (Letters to a Young Artist, 2006). Your answer is that you can do both, but it depends on your relation to your art. Quoting you (because the book is not well known):
foam magazine #20 / talent
interview
‘I believe that art is made to explore the world and the culture, to explore the chosen medium, to explore one’s self. It is made to communicate in the medium’s language, a perception, an observation, an understanding, an emotional or mental state. It is made to answer, or try to answer, questions. It is made for fun. In short, it is made in response to personal needs and demands.’ You also argued here that great art is not made as great art, it is a ‘by-product of the artist’s personal quest…adhere to your personal path…’ even if it means ‘abandoning an approach that brought you recognition.’ Is there anything else you’d like to say to that? (Laughter) I’ve never said it better! (Laughter). But there is an important distinction. I remember a student at Bard who did some really, really excellent work and had a good bit of success in shows and became personally very full of himself and was afraid to move from the work that got him his success. So his development as an artist froze. In another case there was an artist who worked for years and it was fabulous and found well deserved success. But he thought he had to do something different for his next show; that his body of work was too thin. In neither case did they organically follow those questions I described in my advice. In both cases it was their perception of the product and not following the process.
system. The infrequent classes and yet the contact over a long period of time to provide a chance to develop ideas and not have to depend on a structure of weekly classes to structure them; to become more selfreliant. Maybe this is a system for advanced photography. I think what it comes down to is that there isn’t a single system that is right for all the age groups. Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, the Rector of the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Vienna, was trying to introduce a two-tiered system, where the first couple of years there are regular classes and then it switches to the widely spaced meetings. And this is something many program directors are concerned about. Some students do marvelous work at Bard and then cannot produce in an environment that isn’t imposing a structure on them. And there are plenty of excuses not to do it: you have to make a living, you have to have a love life, you have to have entertainment, and… … if there’s something missing… … you’re an artist!
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Stephen Shore (1947) is one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. His career began at fourteen when he presented his photographs to Edward Steichen, director of MoMA, who bought three of his images for the collection. When only 24 Shore became the second living person to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His focus on ordinary everyday day life and his specific use of light fuelled the interest for color and vernacular photography. Shore’s work has been widely published
Your 1998 book The Nature of Photographs came from a course you taught at Bard for many years… I had been using John Szarkowski’s The Photographer’s Eye for this class, and I deviated from it by writing essays of my own to give, which stimulated me to write the book! Phaidon’s new edition (2007) expanded the text and portfolios. There are now enough photographs to allow me to continue my arguments in visual terms. Each time I put something forward it then develops into a small portfolio of photographs that carries it forward as visual thinking.
and exhibited for thirty years. He has had one-man shows at the Art Institute of Chicago, The George Eastman House, Rochester, the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Stephen Shore has published many books, including Uncommon Places, American Surfaces, A Road Trip Journal and The Nature of Photographs. Richard Leslie is an independent art historian, critic and curator specializing in the art, theory, criticism and photography of the twentieth century. He has taught the Art and Visual Culture of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries
There are different models for teaching… In my approach to the classes I don’t feel the need to come up with the answer because my students are at Bard for four years, they see me again, and take a different class every semester from our fabulous faculty; Barbara Ess, An-My Lê, Tim Davis, Larry Fink, John Pilson, and Gilles Peress and our historian/theorists Laurie Dalhberg and Luc Sante. We all have very different approaches, so no one of us has to have the right approach. They will encounter someone who connects with them in this unfolding of and searching for their voice. But recently I did a a four-day workshop and knew; this is the only time in my life when we will all be together, so I had a different approach. I just said everything I know about photography.
for over fifteen years at such universities as SUNY-Stony Brook, the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, City College, Rutgers, SUNY-Purchase and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has published dozens of reviews and articles in print and on-line plus books on Pop Art, Picasso and Surrealism, served as Managing Editor of the journal Art Criticism, and is recipient of several fellowships. He has curated several exhibitions on art and technology and serves on the Board of Directors for Art and Science Collaborations, Inc. Richard Renaldi graduated from New York University with a bachelor of fine arts degree in photography in 1990. He has had solo exhibitions at Yossi Milo Gallery and Debs & Co in New York, and at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta. Renaldi’s work has been included in numerous group shows, including Strangers: The First ICP Triennial of Photography and Video at the International
I’m not certain that is possible. I gave it my best shot. (Laughter) I’m also interested in the German art academy model of infrequent meetings with students over a period of time. For people starting out I think there are certain things that need to be taught, technical things. The discipline of classes and working are important to teach. But at a certain point people have to learn self-motivation and don’t need weekly hand holding… What I first encountered in the Becher’s class at the Düsseldorf Academy struck me as a pedagogical codification of what I went through in most of the 1970s with John Szarkowski. Every time I had new work I would come to see him and we’d discuss it. There was no pressure on me to do anything. But people don’t stop learning when they are 20 or 21. And I saw him even after I had a show at the New York Museum of Modern Art because I didn’t stop learning. I saw something similar going on in the German art academy
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Center of Photography in New York and in the international traveling exhibition Pandemic: Facing AIDS. In 2006 Renaldi’s first monograph, Figure and Ground, was published by the Aperture Foundation. His second monograph, Fall River Boys, was released in March of 2009 by Charles Lane Press.
foam magazine #20 / talent
theme introduction
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foam magazine #20 / talent
theme introduction
from the series Once Upon a Time in The West Š Aaron Schuman
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foam magazine #20 / talent
theme introduction
~ What Defines Talent? ~ by Marcel Feil ~ curator Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam Loyal readers of Foam Magazine know that this magazine has a clear and recognisable format with the photographic image at its core. For each edition a main theme is chosen, which can be broadly interpreted and from which the editors can compile six portfolios which express this theme in various, often surprising ways. Expressly choosing a theme that can be approached from often extremely diverse angles creates the opportunity to include varied types of photography in a given edition. The theme provides conceptual cohesion and a strong internal connection and prevents the choice from becoming too arbitrary. It furthermore enables the reader to make unexpected connections between various types of photography. The six portfolios investigate the theme, but even more importantly, the theme enables us to compile six interesting portfolios: the theme serves principally as a means and less as an end in itself. The process works differently when Foam Magazine turns its attention to the work of new photographic talent – something which the editors do gladly and with great regularity. Experience has shown that dedicating an entire edition to the work of young, talented photographers demands a somewhat different approach. Two years ago we produced a special talent edition, Foam Magazine #12, with work including, among others, Taryn Simon, Mikhael Subotzky and Lieko Shiga. At the time we still followed our usual format of six sixteen-page portfolios. Although that edition still stands strong and is a fine example of the standards of quality we have set for photography and the care that we try to give to the compilation and design of the various portfolios, in our evaluation of the issue we nonetheless felt that things should be done differently for the next talent edition. We had the idea that there was much more photographic talent under consideration for inclusion in Foam Magazine’s talent edition. Other than with a regular edition, the choice of what you decide to include in a talent edition is also a choice of what isn’t included. Talent is after all more than just a theme – it’s a state
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ment, an endorsement of a specific photographer and his/her work. Even though there are undoubtedly more extraordinary photographers who are also very talented and in principle should also be placed under consideration for inclusion. The photographic field is, as we know, so broad and diverse and the medium of photography can be used in so many divergent ways that it is difficult to choose just six talents if we, as the editors, aim in principle to devote attention to all types of photography. Because there could be very talented young photographers in photojournalism, in documentary photography or in commercial photography; there could be striking young portrait photographers or perhaps a young landscape photographer who could become of great significance within that tradition and has every reason to be seen as a talent. That makes the limitation of just six photographers difficult to defend and a limitation which we would gladly discard. This is also because the six chosen photographers suddenly gained appreciation that did not do justice to the qualities of other photographers, and approval, a quality rating that was not in accordance with how the editors of Foam Magazine wish to work. In short, things would have to be changed to some degree. That was also what happened in the next edition of Foam Magazine exclusively focusing on the work of young photographers, issue #16 which was published one year ago. This contained not six but twelve portfolios. A doubling, and a more richly coloured selection as well: more diversity, greater differences and a greater geographic distribution, something we also found important: not just attention for photographers from Europe or North America, but for as far as possible, from other parts of the world too. In order to keep the edition in hand (practical considerations are also involved…) it was decided to cut the number of pages per portfolio in half and to reduce these to eight. This could be justified in our opinion because it is not always easy to fill sixteen pages with a coherent series
foam magazine #20 / talent
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from the series Entre Chien et Loup Š Amira Fritz
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from the series Entre Chien et Loup Š Amira Fritz
foam magazine #20 / talent
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from the series Vacant Plot Š João Castilho
~ Certainly in a society driven by innovation, trends, hypes, image and economic considerations, a forced craving to keep presenting the newest and the best is also often present in the art world ~
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foam magazine #20 / talent
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of photographs with equal quality on all the pages. And that is certainly the case with young photographers who haven’t always built up an extensive oeuvre or carried out the sorts of projects which make it possible to fill eighteen pages with high-quality work. At that time the group from which the editors made their choices was mainly the hundred photographers nominated for the KLM Paul Huf Award. Because we wanted to expand our viewpoint, for the following talent edition we also evaluated work from the photographers who had been selected for the second round of the Joop Swart Masterclass organised by World Press Photo. That way we also got more insight into the work of interesting young photojournalists. In addition, we had placed a request in Foam Magazine for photographers aged 35 and younger: if you consider yourself talented and you’d like to have a portfolio exhibited in Foam Magazine, then send your work to us. The notice didn’t fall on deaf ears. The editors received no fewer than three hundred portfolios, from all over the world. The total number of portfolios that we looked at was thus far greater and provided even more justification for doubling the number of photographers. And thus, last year a talent edition appeared with work by photographers including Jehad Nga, Sarah Pickering, Pieter Hugo, Jacob Aue Sobol and Wayne Liu. That edition, too, was addressed, examined, discussed and evaluated by the editors. It was a good edition which we were very satisfied with. But the feeling arose that it sometimes was a pity that a portfolio was only eight pages instead of the usual sixteen… In the run-up to the third talent edition in the history of Foam Magazine, #20, we had already considered the idea of combining a number of complete sixteen-page portfolios with half portfolios of eight pages. This would not only ensure better differentiation, it could also lead to a better edition with another rhythm and another type of focus. This idea was only strengthened by the response we received to the talent call which we had sent out this year again. Not three hundred but more than nine hundred responses were received this time, from at least 56 different countries. Together with the nominees for the KLM Paul Huf Award and those selected for the second round of the Joop Swart Masterclass, this meant approximately one thousand portfolios to be examined and discussed. During this process we became convinced that it had to be this way: the usual six full portfolios combined with twelve half-portfolios. In short, a Foam Magazine that would be twice as thick as usual!
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This brings us to a question that doesn’t only have to do with Foam Magazine, but is at the heart of producing an edition exclusively dedicated to young talent: namely, what is a talented person? When is someone considered a talent? At first glance this seems like a fairly basic question, but one of essential importance in realising this edition. For in judging such a large number of portfolios, the judgement criteria to be applied must be discussed. What do you pay attention to, what do you look at, how do you judge, how do you compare with each other, et etcetera? But prior to the actual judging, what a talent in fact is must be considered. A definition of a talent could read: ‘the ability to reach a level in a specific discipline at a young age which others can usually only achieve at a later age, thus on the basis of experience’. In this definition, ‘talent’ is thus viewed as an ability, a capacity, a type of ‘being able to’. This presupposes a kind of innateness. Talent is often linked to a degree of naturalness, a given. We can speak about a ‘natural’ talent. The talent is nearly a gift that is already theoretically present within the bearer. The talent only needs to become recognised, and further ground and polished. It is sometimes said that a very talented person is ‘a diamond in the rough’: all the qualities are already present; they only have to be brought out. The timeliness with which the talent is recognised and the quality of the person – the master, the teacher – who further polishes the diamond is important here. As editors we only see the final product of a specific creative process, namely the actual photos. We do not know whether the photographer created these with the kind of flair and natural ease by which we would become convinced of his or her talent. For what if the same work had been created after much plodding and toil, by someone who had to pull out all the stops and study hard to achieve this result? Could we call that talent? Perhaps we could call that the talent to work hard and persevere, but what does this mean for our appreciation? Does it matter how work has been created or is it only the final product that counts? The crux is of course what is being judged: the maker or the work. To create this issue naturally it was the work which was judged. We often have only the most limited knowledge about the creator: just a CV, some background information about the work and contact information – all provided by the maker of the work. What kind of judgement could we form about the maker, if any? We therefore form a judgement about the work and link this to a statement about the maker: talented, less talented or not at all talented. Such a judgement must immediately be put into some kind of perspective as we don’t know whether or not someone has created the work by doing everything within his or her power or simply with playful ease. This brings us to another significant point in judging a talent: promise for the future. Often the terms ‘talent’ and ‘promise’ are used nearly as synonyms. ‘Promise’ as used in team sports often refers to the team with the most talented players. This corresponds to the metaphor of a diamond in the rough: the capacity, the potential is there, just as the confidence that this potential will reach maturity as long as the talent gets the right guidance. There is of course never any certainty that this really will happen, but a talent is in part determined by the confidence of those around him/her that it’s worth the effort to invest in that talent. Besides ‘natural, innate abilities’, mentality (the will to learn, perseverance, self-criticism, ambition, aspiration) also plays a large part. Thus, the confidence that experts show in someone is also a gauge for talent. In forming a judgement, sometimes the judgements of others are involved. When good things happen, they often happen fast. In the field of photography, talents are sometimes quickly scouted out by galleries and agents and presented as the newest and most promising of that moment. Without wanting to detract from the expert’s capacity to judge, there is also a risk. Certainly in a society driven by innovation,
foam magazine #20 / talent
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trends, hypes, image and economic considerations, a forced craving to keep presenting the newest and the best is also often present in the art world. Fear of being too late and missing out, fear of being a trendfollower instead of a trendsetter, means that young artists sometimes very quickly are labelled as ‘the next great thing’. With substantial risk. Some talents are as vulnerable as they are great. Foam Magazine cannot stay neutral here, nor would we want to. We are trying to investigate where there might be great, creative talents working along the sidelines and thus to get a good mixture of relatively unknown photographers. Obviously there are very good photographers and artists working in a convincing way, aged 35 and younger (our age criteria) who we nevertheless have not included in this talent edition. Related to the idea of promise for the future is an implicit judgement about the past and the tradition in which someone works. Someone is considered a talent in a specific field and within a specific discipline, and this talent is also measured in the light of a specific history and tradition. Is someone a talent if he/she attains an acknowledged level of quality and meets certain accepted standards? And therefore continues the tradition in an estimable way. Or is it up to the talented, in particular, to reinterpret a tradition and to recharge it with a new up-to-date meaning? It seems to me that the answer to this question differs greatly per discipline. There is a large difference between performing arts, such as classical music and theatre, in which it is a matter of interpretation and performance of existing pieces, and visual art. Certainly in this last art form, the primacy of innovation has predominated in the last hundred and fifty years. Innovation, responding to the past by radically breaking down barriers, avant-gardism: these are the valued characteristics of modernism which to a certain degree are still at a premium now – even if just for the already stated economic reasons. In view of that tradition, is it then expressly a sign of talent if an artist makes work that is different, that is original and authentic, contrary and difficult to classify? Does a talent primarily add something to what already exists? And isn’t that also what makes forming a judgement (possibly premature) difficult? If we move away slightly from the visual arts in general and concentrate more on photographic talent, there we also see large differences per genre. Very different skills may be demanded to become a good and significant photojournalist than those of a photographer who, for example, works exclusively in the studio or works strictly conceptually. And thus other criteria are also needed to measure a specific talent.
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Furthermore, the tradition just referred to also has a different function and significance in one genre than in another photographic genre. How is someone’s talent thus determined? And if talent is also closely related to tradition and an existing artistic and societal context, how can someone’s talent be measured when the photographer comes from a completely different part of the world? We can lapse into an easy cultural relativism and say that each culture has its own reality and criteria and therefore it’s not up to us, a group of editors based in Amsterdam, to form a judgement about a photographer from Cameroon. But we don’t do that. We believe it’s important to know what is happening in the world, what photographers are working on elsewhere and what significance that can have for us. Furthermore, the work was sent to us in response to an explicit request and thus with a clear reason, namely to be looked at and judged. And that is what we have done. Sometimes with little or no information about the photographer concerned, sometimes with a great deal of additional data. We have tried to view the work with as little bias as possible, as a rule without knowing who the photographer was, where he or she came from and whether he or she was fairly well known or not. The first appraisal was visual and on the basis of how the image affected us: did it intrigue, irritate, call things into question, disgust us perhaps? Did it leave us completely cold, was it original, authentic, did it make us think, was it technically proficient but thin on content, or was it imperfect technically but stimulating intellectually? Slowly the large number of portfolios was sifted through. And slowly but surely the inevitable question arose: ‘What does this mean for the magazine?’ For our ultimate goal was of course, above all, to make an engrossing, varied, intriguing and original Foam Magazine that at the same time also did justice to that great diversity with which we began. All in all it was an extraordinary pleasure to look at so much work and make this special doubly thick issue. We hope that some of our enthusiasm will be conveyed to the reader. Whether the promise will be fulfilled or whether a photographer will descend into anonymity, that we can’t predict. In that sense this Foam Magazine is a snapshot, although one we’re convinced is good to take from time to time. So if it’s up to us, an exclusive talent edition will again appear next year – the fourth in the series – and we’ll work steadily on a series which keeps its finger on the pulse of photography in a completely unique way. + All interviews accompanying the portfolios are made by Jorg Colberg. Jorg Colberg is the founder and editor of the weblog Conscientious, about fine art photography.
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Alexander Gronsky Less Than One
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Alexander Gronsky
Alexander Gronsky was born in 1980 in Tallinn, Estonia. He begun to work as a photographer at the age of 18 and joined the Photographer.ru agency in 2003, the same year that he was selected as a finalist of the Joop Swart Masterclass in the Netherlands. He moved to Moscow in 2005 where he is still based. In 2008 he was a finalist in the biggest independent Russian award in contemporary art, the Kandinsky Award and in 2009 Alexander Gronsky won the Linhof Young Photographer Award. Gronsky’s photographs have been published in Ojode Pez, Art+ Auction, Intelligent Life, Esquire Russia, National Geographic, Condé Nast Traveller.
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Russia is always the main subject of Gronsky’s photographs. By photographing the vast empty landscapes he investigates the notion of psychogeography, the effects of the geographical environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals. Less Than One is about the remote regions where the population is less than one person per square kilometer. More information can be found at www.alexandergronsky.com
All images from Less Than One (except for image on p8, from the series
The Edge) © Alexander Gronsky
foam magazine #20 / talent
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‘You can get on a plane in one place in Russia, fly for 10 hours and find yourself in the same Russia, same forest, same hills and same block buildings’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Less Than One, in a nutshell, is landscape photography. So let me start by asking about your photographic influences. Whose work do you admire, and whose work inspired your own work? Well, I consider myself a landscape photographer. My main influences are Stephen Shore and writings on photography by Roland Barthes. In what way did the writing of Roland Barthes inspire you? It’s hardly possible for me to imply any philosophical text to the actual process of taking pictures. The positions of the viewer and the photo grapher are quite different. I can analyze a picture only after I’ve taken it. It seems that if you move out East, Russia is so vast that large areas are still more or less unknown – at least visually. How did you decide to do this project, given that travelling the distances alone must be such an effort? I think there is a bit of illusion about Russia’s visual variety. You can get on a plane in one place in Russia, fly for 10 hours and find yourself in the same Russia, same forest, same hills and same block buildings. Given its size you presume a much bigger variety. So in the end the abstract idea about the vastness of this space influences you more than the landscape itself. When I started shooting Russia’s outer regions I was driven by curiosity and romantic ideas. At some point everyone needs to experience this lonely wanderer role. But very soon I became bored and confused as I couldn’t find anything interesting there. My style evolved and I decided that boredom and confusion itself should be the theme of my exploration.
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Once you had decided that that was the theme, how did the work develop from there? Did you gain any insights? Did things change for you? It didn’t come to me all of a sudden. I simply started to realize that it wasn’t some wonders of the place that interests me. No matter how exotic places were, I was searching for something simple and obvious. Sometimes it was absolutely ridiculous, I’d spend three days to get to some village on Russia’s Pacific Coast and end up with just a picture of a snowy road. So in my next projects I decided to concentrate on what is most common and boring (and also easily accessible) for me – the outskirts of Moscow city. Those vast, empty landscapes speak to the viewer in a very subtle way. One imagines getting lost in those places. Has finding part of yourself (as a person or as a photographer) been part of this project? Actually, at first I called this project Lost. Only recently I found out that these outer regions I was shooting have less than one person per square kilometer density of population and thought that it would make a good metaphor for my feelings about people scattered, almost dissolving in this space. Every Russian feels this context of vastness. As a child I knew that I was living in the biggest country in the world, daily news block on the radio started with an announcement ‘It’s 3 p.m. in Moscow, 6 p.m. in Novosibirsk, 9 p.m. in Irkutsk and midnight in PetropavlovskKamchatskiy’. And as a child I had this ability to stare at some unimportant things for hours without defining whether these things were good or bad, beautiful or ugly. I don’t think I ever wanted to find anything with my photographs other than myself staring unfocused with some unclear cheerless thoughts in my head. That’s a bleak vision, though, isn’t it? Well, yes. It struck me all of a sudden, that I never experienced joy or anything like that when looking at a photograph, I mean with pictures I like. If I do take time to indulge in a picture, its more like experiencing something sad. Feeling that you are really close to something, to knowing something but cannot actually get it. Like Japanese hokku – it is pointing to the pointless. And very much like hokku, a photograph for me is just a starting verse of some forgotten sad song. +
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Simone Bergantini The Black Boxes
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Simone Bergantini
Simone Bergantini was born in 1977 in Rome. He gained his masters in Contemporary Art History in 2003, and now works as a freelance photo足 grapher for fashion and news magazines such as Mood Europe. Simone Bergantini is represented by three young Italian galleries, Jarach gallery (Venice), Mc2 gallery (Milan) and Romberg Arte Contem足 poranea (Rome) and has been part of many of their group shows.
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In The Black Boxes, a dark investigation of the common subconscious足 ness, Bergantini explores the medium of photography by pushing the boundaries towards painting. A book will be published in 2010 in coop足 eration with Jarach Gallery. For more information, see www.simonebergantini.com
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‘For me, The Black Boxes represents the return to chemical studies, research and experimentation’
interview by Jörg Colberg
In your description of The Black Boxes you say that scratches, stains and imperfections seen in your images are reflections of ‘the complicated activity of thought’. Can you elaborate on this? Every person needs a mental path through doubts, fears, lies, second thoughts and uncertainties to get to a kind of truth. Photojournalists are working between bullets and mines, explosions and gas to document a story. My research is not moving strictly within these confines, but it is based on the same ideas. And it comes out from the inside and from the invisible war that our Western culture is unconsciously fighting. Today, people expect an absolute truth from artists: we have to propose an image, we have to defend it and make it credible. But we first have to convince ourselves of the dogma we are producing, so when I take a photo of a monkey or of a bag, I have to decide which truth I want to tell. Scratches, spots and imperfections are the result of contaminations and visions: I conceive them like points of view or possible angle shots. But I also feel them like compressed blood splashes, half eaten mass-produced sandwiches, supermodels with long black eyelashes, earthquakes that cannot be prevented, or nuclear and financial experiments. Scratches, spots and imperfections are all the things you can see with your eyes shut.
You also write that your work ‘aims to overturn the objectivity of the photographic medium’. What do you mean by this? Subverting objectivity is not the result I’m looking for, it is just the method I use. Care to elaborate? It is easy to mistakenly think that a photo shows something the way it actually looks like. I’m just trying to stress that such an approach represents the stupider way to look at a photo. It seems as if photography was just a convenient tool – but little more – for you, as if you would maybe rather be a painter? Maybe after ten years I have to stop buying film and start using paint! Joking aside, I cannot deny a strong influence of painting; my family has always been in touch with painters, sculptors and writers. I got my degree with a thesis on Italian Transavanguardia. Probably photography has been an evasion, an escape. This might maybe explain my beginnings, but now, I have to confess an absolute devotion to photography. For me, The Black Boxes represents the return to chemical studies, research and experimentation. But I cannot say either that I’m completely satisfied only with photography: every day I try to fit music, poetry and painting into frames. What is your photographic background, who do you see as influences photographers or other artists? There is nothing that does not influence me. But I cannot find a satisfying answer to this question! So your art is life then? Life is art? Art is a huge word like love, justice or freedom: these words are so big that it is impossible to grasp them. On the other hand, life is a simple and small thing able to contain everything. I spend my time decoding the compressed immensity inside us, and the result of this research are my photos. +
List of works (in order of appearance):
My impression was that the public actually does not believe artists produce an absolute truth any longer – and this has reached photography, which causes some problems for newspapers and magazines. Exactly, that is what I was referring to. In this super-nihilist era we have to show certainty without really believing in anything. It is almost like a collision between two different systems, and this is where my work is coming from. I think that the public really believes in artists, but the problem is different: which public? Who is the public, and who is the artist? I am a photographer, and a gallery is selling my photos. This is the reason why I am conventionally considered an artist. My audience is small (thanks to Foam now bigger); and art is a wide space ranging from showgirls to pre-historical cave graffiti. Fashion, for example, has a great credibility. Each artist or photographer with a message has his own public ready to believe that message and to understand its real truth. In my work I try to concentrate on naked souls, but there are not many naked souls.
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98-99
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My Poor Chair
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Natural
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Grunge Safari
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Still 01
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Still 02
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Something out
All images © Simone Bergantini, courtesy Jarach Gallery, Venice
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Julian Faulhaber Lowdensitypolyethylene
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Julian Faulhaber
Julian Faulhaber was born in 1975 in Würzburg. He assisted commercial photographers in Frankfurt for two years before entering Art School at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences in 1999. He won the Epson Art Photo Award in 2005 (Best Class) and the Art Cologne (Best Selected Works). 2008 was an important year for Julian Faulhaber; he was invited to participate in the New York Photo Festival, he held his first solo show in New York at the Hasted Hunt Gallery, participated in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts exhibition Reality Check that displayed his work alongside work by Gregory Crewdson, David Levinthal and Stephen Shore and was nominated for the KLM Paul Huf Award 2009.
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Faulhaber’s images have been published in The New York Times Magazine, Damn Magazine, Departure Magazine, Stern and Geo and he will be part of the Prune – Abstracting Reality exhibition this autumn at Foam_Fotografiemuseum. Since 2003 he has been working on his Lowdensitypolyethylene series, composed of images taken in newly built rooms - often offices or public spaces – before they have started to be used. Free as yet of any organic traces of human behaviour and presence, bathed in artificial light, the spaces seem utterly constructed and somewhat hyper-real.
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‘Places that actually exist are looking like they were generated by a computer’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Can you tell me a little bit about the motivation, the ideas behind your work? I was working for years on the sets of different advertisement shootings, where I developed a sense of ‘constructed’ processes, and later I tried to transform this into my own environment. Just like in the case of advertising, the spaces I photograph have the aim of satisfying human needs. At the poignant moment of perfection between their completion by the contractors and the arrival of the first users, that aim seems to be at the highest level.
Why are there no people in the photographs? People would detract from the surface of things and the surroundings. If you would see people on the pictures, you wouldn’t have a doubt about the existence of this place and further of its usability. How do you place your work in the context of German photography? Who are your influences, what has served as your inspiration? When I started studying photography, I was a big fan of Andreas Gursky, Thomas Demand, Thomas Struth, but also of Wolfgang Tillmans. But I wouldn’t say that German photographers exerted a stronger influence on me than Americans like Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams or Jeff Wall. I am not really sure about the context, with this series Lowdensitypolyethylene I’m putting myself into the context of the German architectural, largescale photography, but the next series could be something completely different. The technique depends on the idea, and this is the problem with putting my work into one category. +
List of works (in order of appearance):
So what are those needs then? After all, all these places look very artificial and clinical. They are artificial and clinical, especially in this pristine condition. The curator Lyle Rexer recently wrote that the world in my pictures is one of intense desire, but desire antiseptically satisfied; mannequin desire, corporate architecture’s version of the zippless fuck. I agree with that. Some of your work reminded me a little bit of Thomas Demand’s images, even though your approach and his couldn’t be any different. In both cases, there is a large amount of shiny artificiality in the images – and both works seem to stress the way reality is constructed. Do you see similarities? Most of my pictures aren’t digitally processed. So the digital affect is not a result of the manipulation on the computer, it is created by the colours, by the material and the light setting. The colours are intense, the material is polished, and the light – in combination with the film – amplifies these aspects. Demand’s pictures are made of paper; and in combination with the use of light the material creates this artificial and obscure feeling, even though the pictures are beautiful. Maybe this is a similarity between our pictures. But both are constructed realities, aren’t they? Even though your photographs are taken in places that actually exist, in the photographs they feel as real or unreal as the ‘places’ in Demand’s work. That’s right. Demand’s fabrication of cardboard interiors is creating fictional spaces, but they are based on actual settings and I’m going the other way around. The places that actually exist are looking like they were generated by a computer.
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Trennwand
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Tankstelle
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Treppenhaus
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Lot
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Wand
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Sporthalle
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Automaten
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Hinterausgang
All images © Julian Faulhaber, courtesy Hasted Hunt Gallery (New York),
L.A Galerie (Frankfurt am Main)
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Anouk Kruithof Becoming Blue
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Anouk Kruithof
Anouk Kruithof was born in 1981 in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, and now lives and works in Berlin. She studied photography in the same period as Jaap Scheeren at the St. Joost Academy in Breda. They collaborated on the project The Black Hole, for which they won the Unique Photography Prize. The series was exhibited at Foam and published by Episode Publishers in 2006. The book received an Honourable Mention at Les Rencontres d’Arles Photographie and the project was part of many group exhibitions around the world, among them Dutchdare – Contemporary Photography from the Netherlands in ACP, Sydney. They worked together until mid-2006, when they decided to work individually. Kruithof has subsequently worked with installations, video and photography to investigate the borders of the three art forms and has published three Artists’ Books. In 2008 she attended the one-year artist-in-residency program at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin and in 2009 she worked for three months at the Meetfactory in Prague.
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Anouk Kruithof’s images have been published in Livraison, Capricious Magazine, Eyemazing, Identity Matters, and Fw: Magazine. Kruithof worked for three years on Becoming Blue, her major work until now, that features 21 portraits of unknown persons, caught in a specific emotional state of mind. The entire project, an installation of the portraits, three still lifes and a video, has been exhibited at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin and will be exhibited in Museum het Domein, Sittard, from 25 September 2009 to 3 January 2010. The project has been published as a book. See also www.anoukkruithof.nl for more information.
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‘In my work, the coincidence is always an important factor, because the coincidence ensures openness in my images’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Becoming Blue is what one could call conceptual portraiture. Could you explain the ideas behind it? Becoming Blue is a photography project I was working on over two and a half years between 2006 and 2008. My observations, ranging from everyday life in contemporary Western society to the behaviour of people, together with my personal experiences created the need to start with Becoming Blue. My interest lies especially in the question: ‘What impact places stress on the emotional and mental condition of the people?’ I started inviting mostly unknown people, selected for their behaviour, appearance, body posture, and sensitivity. I had them wear blue clothing and asked them to give themselves over to limbo in front of the blue studio background. I chose the colour blue, because blue stands for the infinite, the sky, the calm and meditative. These meanings are in great contrast with the unpleasant, unexpected actions that I either carried out during the sessions or asked the subjects to carry out themselves. My aim was to use this combination of action and reaction in a fictitious and slightly ironical manner to inject stress and fear into the portrayed. The actions produced many surprising and confrontational situations between the portrayed and myself. Because of the isolation of a person by the blue clothing and the blue background, in addition to the impact that the colour has, you focus on the emotional reaction of the portrayed. And that is what I mainly want to communicate. It seems as if the process of portraiture, of confronting a person to take her or his portrait, is something you want to control as much as possible as the photographer? The portraits are often made by a remote control, so I myself was not aware of the so-called photo moment. In my work, the coincidence is always an important factor, because the coincidence ensures openness in my images. The final visual images contain insignificant intermediate moments, which are the outcome of the action/reaction situations. They are the in-between moments, which only the medium photography is capable of capturing, and that’s what fascinates me. At all times, I want my images to recall a response and to evoke questions. When I selected the photographs, I consciously chose the unguarded moments, which show a mental short circuit, an unconscious or almost meditative state of mind. Becoming Blue represents the emotional and psychological condition, in which man is jammed. The three claustrophobic still lifes of the blue spaces woven between the portraits series in the book and the exhibition, reinforce the feeling of entrapment.
At the end of the day, you are at the mercy of the viewer, though, and you can only influence what she or he might think about the portrait to a certain extent. Isn’t there the danger that what you had in mind might not work? Were you ever concerned about that? No, I was not concerned about that, because I cannot control the way people interpret my work, since every viewer is looking at art with his own background, memories, feelings, thoughts and prejudices. When I am working I do not worry about how my final images might be viewed by the public. I think it is important to focus on making the photographs and to follow my intuition in the process. Because I am using chance during the process and show all kinds of traces of my actions in the final images, my work is interpretable in many different ways and perhaps not even understandable for some viewers. I do not seek to please every body with my work. My goal is not to tell understandable stories. My goal is try to move the spectators’ feelings and thoughts, and therefore my work has to be open to questions. I have had very extreme – almost black and white – reactions to Becoming Blue: Either spectators find it incomprehensible and frightening, or they are extremely touched by the emotional impact of the project. Of course, I’d be curious about your artistic/photographic influences. Which artists have shaped you? Before I started the project Becoming Blue I was already questioning the long tradition of portraiture, because – amongst other things – I started photographing people at the beginning of art school in 2000. The photos of Becoming Blue are not primarily a reaction to portrait photographs trying to catch the vulnerability of a personality. I am aware of what I am doing with the portrayed. I actually make them very vulnerable in their positions because they agree to give themselves over to limbo. My rela tion with the subjects is open and fair from the beginning until the end. I don’t see my images as photographic portraits of people, which concern the individuality of a person. The anonymous sitters, portrayed with their physical and emotional expression, give form to my project as some kind of living sculptures. Therefore, I have numbered all the 41 persons I portrayed for this project, and the titles of the images are: Untitled (with a subtitle: The numbers in order of time). My images don’t have any names, which show the individuality of a person. Among many others artists whom I appreciate I like to talk about the filmmaker Ulrich Seidl (Import/Export 2007, Hundstage 2001) because he also works with unknown people whom he selects from everyday life. The persons he works with are not actors, nor are the people I work with in my staged photographs. He too works a lot with chance. To me it is amazing to see the moments in the film where it flows out of his control. The tragedy/comedy aspect in his films is also something I found inter esting. It relates the sad and bad things in life – something I find impor tant as well. +
List of works (in order of appearance):
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Untitled (#11) 2007
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Untitled (#08) 2007
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Untitled (#35) 2007
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Untitled (#39) 2008
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Untitled (#30) 2007
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Untitled (#09) 2007
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Untitled (#34) 2007
All images © Anouk Kruithof
foam magazine #20 / talent
portfolio
Michael Lundgren Transfigurations & Matter
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Michael Lundgren
Michael Lundgren was born in Denver in 1974. He received his bachelors’ degree in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1997 and his masters from Arizona State University in 2003. He has been a faculty member at ASU since 2004. Transfigurations, Lundgren’s first monograph was published in 2008 by Radius Books. He is co-author of After the Ruins: Rephotographing the San Francisco Earthquake with the artist Mark Klett. Lundgren’s work is currently on view in the exhibition Photography is Dead at the Three White Walls Gallery in Birmingham, UK, selected by Martin Barnes, curator, Victoria & Albert Museum, London. In 2007 Lundgren was nominated by Britt Salvesen, curator, Center for Creative Photography for the Silverstein Photography Annual, New York. He is a recipient of the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward 2009 Award, a
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nominee for the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship, the Santa Fe Prize and a 2007 finalist for the Aperture West Book Prize. Lundgren’s work is included in the fine art collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Museet for Fotokunst, Odense; the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego as well as numerous private collections. He is represented by ClampArt, New York. Two distinct series, Transfigurations and Matter, are presented here in the same portfolio. In both bodies of work Lundgren engages the language of landscape, not to record the specifics of place, but to allude to an atavistic experience of the desert.
All images © Michael Lundgren, courtesy ClampArt, New York
foam magazine #20 / talent
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‘Only in darkness can light be born’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Let’s start by talking about what might sound like technique, but which is more than that. Transfigurations is very stark – almost completely black or white. What motivated you to take this approach? Photography is a duality: a record and a transformation. Jonathan Greene describes this perfectly in his book American Photography: ‘The camera cannot lie, neither can it tell the truth. It can only transform.’ My hope is that they convey the transformative experience of the desert; however, these pictures relate as much to the medium as the land they traverse. In the desert one is often confronted by extremes of light and dark. My work is motivated by the Sublime: a meeting of one’s personal awareness with something much larger. What one knows is overwhelmed by one’s experience at high noon, or in the gray black of the desert night. I work at the edges of photography’s sensitivity, to circuitously speak to that experience. Recently, an astronomer described to me the beginnings of a star. Within a molecular cloud of dust and gas, the particles become so dense that no light can enter. Without light, the temperature and pressure drop and eventually the gravity of the cloud collapse on itself. Only in darkness can light be born. From the facts, form arranges content, begetting metaphor. Matter at first seems more colourful, but its imagery is as stark as that of Transfigurations. Does this have deeper meaning for you? Stark is a way to describe it, but perhaps more appropriate is the word reduced. I’m interested in reducing the world to a bare essential. By photographing in non-directional light or with on-camera flash, and printing with a less saturated palette, the photograph becomes a presentation of a symbolic subject amidst a field of mute colour. These pictures are motivated by a history of violence in the desert, not just our own politically underwritten aggression, but nature’s violence as well. Within this is the idea of two levels of time: shallow time and deep time – the life of cells and the life of stone. How do you approach working on a series? Is there an idea, or do you have images and then develop the series? How do you find the photographs for your series? I’m a follower of the Nathan Lyons’ school of photography. In this tradition, photography is ideographic; photography is its own language. A body of work developed over time deals with associations from picture to picture. By working intuitively (making photographs, digesting them, going out to make more), one allows meaning to develop and be sustained by the pictures themselves, rather than imposing a pre-formulated idea or continuity of subject matter. I’m drawn to make certain photographs, yet I never know what I’m going to photograph next.
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Transfigurations would be called landscape photography, even though your photographs look nothing like most other landscapes. How you see yourself in the tradition of this genre? In response to the idealization of nature as Eden, landscape shifted dramatically with the work of the New Topographics’ photographers. This shift is more complex than I can describe here, driven by major changes in photographic seeing. Underlying both movements is the assumption: ‘Look at how great nature is. Look what we’ve done to it. It is better off without us’. Since then we’ve been inundated by work that describes human devastation. This imposed limitation acknowledges only one half of the photographic duality: the record, leaving little room for a spiritually-motivated response to place. I’m interested in what exists because we are perceptive beings, susceptible to direct impressions and in need of mythology. Care to elaborate on this a bit? I’m interested in your idea of mythology especially. Western culture is short on myth. And perhaps for modern humans, the choice is between mythology and fantasy. What interests me is the idea that mythology is real. Mythology gathers small untruths that when taken as a whole, form a story of humanity’s real experience. Through the interpretation of mythological archetypes – the desert, its phenomena, its blinding light and enveloping darkness – what cannot be expressed in words is elucidated in metaphor. A lot of photographers are trying to push the boundaries of what photo graphy actually is. Is this something you are interested in? Yes and no. I’m simply trying to understand photography. Dealing with the medium in a simple way is enough for me. The word radical comes from the Latin ‘radix’, meaning root. Much contemporary work is disconnected to the trace of history, disjointed from photography’s essential paradox. Instead it relies on technological possibilities and the spectacle of the subject. Photography’s future is in peril. New technology expands the medium’s democratic nature, but a nuanced understanding of the inherent dialectic in photography is at the risk of being lost. Thomas Ruff would probably argue that photography’s future is only in peril if we ignore new technologies’ potential. Might it not be time to re-think old ideas of photography, given that image-making now encom passes ways people never imagined in the past? You said that photography was a transformation: Haven’t recent photographic devel opments made this fact clearer than ever? Foremost, I am not a Luddite. Much of my work is altered in the computer and the darkroom. Directorial photography and digital compositing (directorial’s newest agency) have been steadily supplanting analytical photography. It is often so seamlessly crafted in intent and message that it becomes indistinguishable from advertising. History demonstrates that technology alone will not expand what photography is. Pictorialists created directorial narratives 100 years ago while Edward Muybridge seamlessly printed rocks and skies into his albumen prints. What interests me is how digital will change photographicformalism. What does the world look like photographed digitally? Does the transformation exist because one creates a composite, or is it something more integral to the way digital sees the world – as hyper-reality, a state where it is impossible to distinguish between reality and fantasy? +
foam magazine #20 / talent
portfolio
João Castilho Whirlwind & Vacant Plot
foam magazine #20 / talent
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João Castilho
João Castilho was born in 1978 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He graduated in 2001 with a degree in journalism, completed with studies in Contemporary Arts and received his Masters in Visual Arts in 2009. Together with Pedro David and Pedro Motta, João Castilho collaborated on the project Underwater Landscape for six years, a merging experience between different forms of photography. The project, depicting the lives of three families in the Jequitinhonha Valley, has been exhibited widely, amongst which at the Noorderlicht Photofestival, Groningen, in 2005 and was published in 2008 by Cosac Naify. In 2007 Castilho received a grant from the Rijksakademie and Rain which supported a residency in Bamako, Mali, for 3 months, where he mainly worked on the project Between Rivers. Castilho received the Brazilian National Arts Foundation’s Grant and in 2008 the Conrado Wessel Foundation’s Prize of Photography, one of Brazil’s most prestigious photography prizes, which allowed him to work full time as a visual artist in photography, video, installation and
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art research. João Castilho has already held solo exhibitions, mainly in Brazil and Bolivia and has exhibited at several festivals and biennales. His images have been published in National Geographic Brasil, Le Figaro, Bravo Magazine, O Globo, Folha de São Paulo. Whirlwind and Vacant Plot are two series presented together. Anchored in the tradition of the Latin American Magic Realism, Castilho deals with mythology and archetypes in Whirlwind. Using the same saturated colours and creating the same vibrant, uncanny atmosphere, he portrays the attempts of some unemployed people to relieve their boredom in Vacant Plot. See http www.joaocastilho.net for more information.
All images © João Castilho
foam magazine #20 / talent
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‘God and Devil, sky and earth, light and shadow are all elements from the sertão life, which I brought to guide me in this work’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Can you talk about the idea behind Whirlwind? You wrote somewhere that it was a ‘fantastic narrative’ – what do you mean by that? Whirlwind (Redemunho) is about the sertão. The sertão is a place in Brazil, a geographic region, but also, it’s a place inside us. Geographically, it’s associated with the desert environment, where sowing is complicated, where water is scarce, where the access is tortuous, I mean, where life is hard. Within all this isolation, people in sertão have learned to live along another world, which is not so tangible, not so immediate, not so material, or in other words, a world which is not so real. It’s a metaphysical, or a fantastic world, if we want. In sertão, for instance, people believe that the devil lives inside the whirlwind. This series departs from these beliefs and the opposites which are present there. God and Devil, sky and earth, light and shadow are all elements from the sertão life, which I brought to guide me in this work. This series was edited and photographed this way, blue sequences followed by orange and earthy ones. Some of the photos refer to the divine (wings), others to darkness (snakes), bodies that disappear into the light, bodies that disappear into the shadow. The climate, the ambience that the photos reveal, comes from that. We can also see that cosmology in the Latin American literature of Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez and João Guimarães Rosa. Vacant Lot follows a different idea, even though it’s clear that it is the same photographer at work. What is the background to this series? You are right. Both works meet aesthetically although they are conceptually separated. There is the outlines issue, the saturated colours, which are repeated. That happens because at that time I used to photograph in a very short time space between the end of the day and the beginning of the night. At that moment the light is very poor and is not enough to illuminate the subject. That’s why I liked that light, because it was not my interest to show the details. I didn’t want to show faces, expressions. Again, I was interested in the climate, the ambience, the sensation.
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Vibrant colours dominate your images – what do these colours mean to you? I like to work with blocks of colour. They are intensities, blocks of intensities. And most of the time, each colour appears solely. They are monochromes, which empowers the search for sensation. To mix two or more colours in the same frame could end up causing the opposite effect. A lot of photographers have recently tried to move towards using elements from painting, but their photography still looks like, well, photography. Your work and your motivations work in completely different ways, and you are moving towards painting in the results. Is this coincidental or part of what you are after? It is possible that some of my work can be read this way because of the care with the colours. But, definitely, in Whirlwind and Vacant Lot, I wasn’t consciously thinking about painting. So, maybe, it might be coincidental. However, in more recent works, like in Spices (2009) for example, the bond with painting is much greater. Can you talk a little bit about your photographic background and influences? Which photographers are you drawn to? I have a close relationship with a practice that we could call imaginary documentary. It’s a kind of documentary work that is not so attached to reality and makes use of fiction and subjective elements, an approach that has become quite popular recently. Much of what is seen in a documentary movie has to do with this way of shooting. But nowadays, increasingly, conceptual proposals and combinations of other means allied to photography tend to be important in my work. I have left the documentary practice aside to work with the relationship between photography and other elements. In my most recent work, I blend photography and interventions in nature, videos, actions, texts, translations, appropriation and displacement, while deepening the research with colours. I have always been fascinated by the work of Roger Ballen, especially his two most recent books. The series of Sophie Ristelhueber were an important discovery. Lately I have carefully studied the works of artists who deal with photography such as Robert Smithson, Edward Ruscha and Gabriel Orozco. However, above all visual references, I feel mainly influenced by the literature of Franz Kafka, J. M. Coetzee and Georges Perec, among others. +
foam magazine #20 / talent
portfolio
Peter van Agtmael American Wars
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Peter van Agtmael
Peter van Agtmael was born in 1981 in Washington DC and graduated in History with honours from Yale University in 2003. He spent a year in China on a Charles P. Howland fellowship photographing the environmental consequences of the Three Gorges Dam and became a freelance photographer at the end of 2004. In 2005 he covered the Asian Tsunami, then relocated to Johannesburg, South Africa and photographed the AIDS epidemic by following the story of Holly Moyo, an HIV-positive Zimbabwean refugee. He travelled on assignment throughout Africa. Since the beginning of 2006 he has documented the consequences of America’s wars, at home and abroad. A monograph of the work, 2nd Tour Hope I Don’t Die, was recently published.
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Van Agtmael has received a number of prizes, including a World Press Photo Award and the Photo Lucida Critical Mass Book Award. In 2008 he helped to organize the exhibition Battlespace, presenting the largely unseen work of 22 photographers working in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peter van Agtmael joined Magnum Photos as a nominee in 2008. The portfolio presented here combines his images from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the United States. Based on his personal experience of the war, van Agtmael follows the experience of recovering wounded soldiers and the families of the fallen.
All images © Peter van Agtmael, courtesy Magnum Photos
foam magazine #20 / talent
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‘War was an abstraction, a spectacle’
interview by Jörg Colberg
You have supplemented your coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with images taken in the US, and you have followed the lives of some of the soldiers who were engaged in those wars. I’m curious about your motivation and ideas for such a vast endeavour?! It all happened pretty naturally. I’m an American, and at this critical time in our history, I think it’s an obligation to contribute something. When I returned from my first trip to Iraq in early 2006 I showed the pictures to friends and family. Most people found them as exotic as they found them troubling. War was an abstraction, a spectacle. I started thinking that if I could complement the images of war with powerful moments set in the familiarity of home, the spectacle could be stripped away, they would resonate more. I didn’t define the parameters of the work in advance. I just worked, new ideas occurred to me periodically, and at some point I felt ready to transform the disparate images into something cohesive. I’m wary of conceptualizing with too much structure. It is my belief that this rich world generates far more beauty and truth than our feeble minds can conjure or corrupt so I try and just go out into it without too much fear and let its rhythms guide me. Of course I’m often still an arrogant fool. How has this project evolved while you have been working on it? Has its focus shifted? And when do you think you will be done with it? I think the work has evolved a lot. In the beginning I felt that I was fulfilling a checklist of references to the iconography of war. While it was an essential step and I’m proud of the pictures, as I spent more time at home and took space to reflect on my experiences, I began seeing things that were specific to my own life. I tried to capture that feeling in photographs. That decision was a bit of a leap of faith, and perhaps does not universalize the images, but it was important to me to balance the more common place with the authentic and personal. Also, I was looking for answers about myself and the starkness of war seemed to instinctively provide a bridge to that other world. Now, maybe I know some of the secrets, but I also have a lot more questions. It makes war a seduction. A very dangerous and rewarding seduction.
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As for the work, I don’t think it will ever be done. I just had a book published called 2nd Tour Hope I Don’t Die. It weaves together my experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan and America over three years. I’ve started working on two new projects, but I expect I will keep returning to the wars and their legacy for the rest of my life. My experiences there profoundly changed my life and I want to be respectful of that influence by making it the core of my life’s work. That’s my instinct, but who knows? How do you see your work in relation to what one could call the canon of war photography? And what other photographers have influenced your work and style? I guess I fit pretty squarely in the canon of war photography. There are certain situations that are enduring in every conflict and yet they continue to resonate again and again if captured properly. I believe in that classical tradition and want to uphold it. But we live in an image-saturated world, and I think photojournalism needs to be personal in order to resonate. I believe that people will always remain far more moved by photographs than hardened by them (despite contrary claims in fashionable discourse), and anyhow, I don’t trust any type of rarefied intellectual who claim to know the way the world works. I’ve been influenced by hundreds, if not thousands, of photographers in some way. Magnum has always been the core of the influence. To me it embodies the beauty and promise of photography; that so many different sensibilities and approaches can coexist and thrive, creating something stronger and more unique than any one vision. Of course, I love the work of many other photographers outside the agency; Richard Avedon, August Sander, Robert Frank, Mark Steinmetz, Jacob Holdt, Garry Winogrand, Larry Burrows, David Goldblatt, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin… the list could go on and on. I love good photography in all its forms. You have been a member of Magnum for a while now. Has this had an influence on your work or on your approach to photography? Well, I’m not a member…I’m a nominee with a long road ahead. Magnum has been great to me. I’ve always felt a kinship to the ideals of the agency. It inspired me to become a photographer. My life has been fraught with periods of deep insecurities and doubts. I’ve gained a lot of confidence over these years of being a photographer but I’m also more wary. I want to live a life of asking questions. In my experience, the questions are usually pure and the answers are corrupt. Now, in Magnum I feel free to be myself and it’s wonderful. +
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Amira Fritz Spaziergang im K채ferwald
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Amira Fritz
Amira Fritz was born in 1979 in Rosenheim, Germany. She grew up in the countryside and moved to Vienna to study photography. She graduated in 2002 from the Höhere Graphische Bundes Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt Wien. During her time in Vienna she was the assistant of the photographer Reiner Riedler and worked as a film projectionist, which was particularly influential in her photographic work. At the end of 2002 Fritz travelled through South Africa for six months. She moved to Berlin and ceased all photographic work for four years, studying mathematics and working again as a film projectionist. She rediscovered her roots, both personal and photographic, when she revisited her family. Spaziergang im Käferwald, which was completed in 2007, is the result of that period of her life.
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Fritz went to Paris and applied for the Hyères Festival International de Mode et de Photographie in 2008 with her body of work and won the Mention spécial du Jury. Her subsequent photographic collaboration with Matthew Cunnington and John Sanderson, the Hyères fashion winners from that year, resulted in the unusual fashion series Entre Chien et Loup. In 2009 she showed the work Au Coeur de l’Avalanche at the Galerie d’actualité in the Villa Noailles in Hyères.
All images © Amira Fritz
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‘Although we don’t e xactly know, there is still a sense of these symbols in us, even if only subconscious’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Your work relies heavily on flowers and their meanings. How did you learn about this topic? And how did you decide to incorporate it into your photography? I grew up on the countryside where my parents run a plant nursery and a flower shop. For generations almost everyone in my family has been working with flowers in one way or another. Spaziergang im Käferwald was the first of my projects that dealt with my roots. I decided to show nature as I experienced it as a child. I left home right after finishing high school to live and travel in different countries and I increasingly felt the need for some sort of home. After realizing that it seemed to be the most natural thing in the world to put the flowers in the picture. While the meaning of a few flowers is well known, many others are unknown. So some aspects of your work might be lost on people unaware of the meaning of the flowers. Does this concern you? No, not at all. The exact meaning of some flowers is sometimes not clearly defined, or varies between countries. Although we don’t exactly know, there is still a sense of these symbols in us, even if only subconscious. I think it is like old paintings; people who no longer understand the symbols can still experience a mystic feeling. So do you pick flowers according to what they mean, or might mean, or according to what you feel would look good when setting up a shot? That’s hard to say, as most of the time the flowers mean what they look like, and they look like their meanings, so it goes hand in hand. But maybe I arrange the flowers in a different way after I know their meaning. One of the main challenges for me is to find flowers in full bloom. For example, at the moment I would like to work with gladioli, which symbolize sincerity, strength and pride. They are in full bloom in the summertime when the landscape in Germany is green and the light is bright, which I don’t like. I might have to take them up on a mountain. You process your prints in a very particular way to achieve a certain look and feel. Can you explain what you do and what your motivation is for doing it? First of all: I love working in the darkroom. Working in the total darkness, which is necessary for colour prints, is like being in another element, maybe comparable with taking a bath or diving – I can switch off everything else, concentrate on my picture and develop new ideas. There is no general explanation of what I do. I think the most important thing is taking the time and trying out different papers, chemicals and ways of printing.
How do you pre-process your paper, if that’s the right term? How did you come across that method? The pictures from the series Spaziergang im Käferwald are printed on preflashed colour paper. It is an old method to reduce the paper’s contrast. Unfortunately, colour paper doesn’t work like black and white paper where you alter the contrast by adjusting the filter. These old-fashioned darkroom tricks are easy to find in old photo technique books. However, it is important to know that it is impossible to change the atmosphere of a picture in the darkroom the same way it can be changed with a computer. I can only intensify something that already exists on the negative. That’s why the mood of the light the moment I take the picture is crucial.
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I’d be curious to learn a little about your own photographic influences. Are there photographers whose work you admire? Are there other artists who have had a strong influence on you? I love the colours in Joel Meyerowitz’s pictures. I also admire the work of Karen Knorr and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Other artists that have a strong influence on me are Albrecht Dürer and the members of the Pre-Raphaëlite Brotherhood. In addition cinema had a great impact on my work. When I was living in Vienna and Berlin I used to work as a film projectionist in small independent movie theatres. Watching the movies through the projection room’s little window – often without hearing the sound – has changed my way of seeing. It’s funny you should say that. My guilty pleasure is watching the movies on airplanes without the sound. It’s interesting to see how the cinema tic and its use of images can have such an influence on photography, isn’t it? Any movies that you particularly enjoy, and why? From my point of view the best in the cinema is that the pictures are not flashed – I think in cinema images often tend to be darker. Le Temps du Loup by Michael Haneke for example is so beautifully dark. Or the amazing colours in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon that were shot with a NASA lens, natural light and candles. I also love Carl Theodor Dreyer’s perfectionism and structure in all his movies and the amazing way nature is pictured in The Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky. And then, of course, there is Lars von Trier, the best director ever. +
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Sarah Gerats Her
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Sarah Gerats
Sarah Gerats was born in 1983 in Alkmaar, the Netherlands. She moved to Ghent in Belgium as a child, but returned to the Netherlands to study art, first at the Design Academy in Eindhoven and later at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. In 2006 she travelled for the first time to Iceland as an exchange student. She returned there two years later, to travel alone and discover the island, which had a huge impact on her work; the vastness of the nature and the Nordic light are recurrent motifs in her work. Gerats has been on an exchange to Germany and recently completed her masters at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in HÂelsinki at the department for Time and Space. She has been accepted on a two-
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year post-graduate program at Hoger Instituut Schone Kunsten in Ghent starting in 2010. Her is a series made during her studies at the Rietveld Academie. By questioning the male gaze and the female body, and by working as her own subject, Gerats places herself firmly within a female photography tradition.
All images Š Sarah Gerats
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‘To find these new bodies I had to do it over and over and over again, taking the aspects of selfportraiture to an obsessive extreme’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Can you explain the idea behind Her? At the time I made Her, I had been working almost exclusively with staged photography. I would put the camera and than run to become part of the image. Accidence, atmosphere, both photographer and model, that kind of young female photography, I would say now. A completely private process. Making Her was somehow the acceleration of this focus. Here as well, I am both photographer and model. I was thinking a lot about the gaze and how we can be present in an image and hide behind this presence at the same time. I became very interested in a story I read about a woman who completely lost the sense of herself, and had to invent another way of knowing where she was. Instead of perceiving herself from the inside she learned to define her borders from the outside. I made the series in the same way as my earlier photographs, in the absence of a direct gaze, without seeing how I became the image. It was absolutely impossible to imagine what I was photographing, and often the mirror reflected a part of the room, the ceiling, a window... To find these new bodies I had to do it over and over and over again, taking the aspects of self-portraiture to an obsessive extreme.
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In your statement, you mention the work of Hans Bellmer. To what extent is this project influenced by his – or someone else’s – earlier work? I was fascinated by the work of Hans Bellmer, and as much by the fascination itself. There is so much written about the male gaze, and it’s so easy to talk about it in relation to the work of a young woman photographing herself. But, if it really is all that simple, how could I recognize so much in his images and not feel only aversion? I think it is because we are deliberately part of the gaze and not just undergoing it. Also, it struck me that we always talk about his dolls, but that they only exist as photos. In fact they are different parts – not even that many – arranged in different ways to form a body that only exists as a photo. It’s what we all do, becoming an image before it is taken, but then obvious, aware. Although the photos include a lot of accidence, the camera was clearly not accidentally present. I took a lot of care polishing the image – on forehand, by being very exact in my narrowed-down colour scale. Now I would be able to do all the polishing afterwards, but then I just made the photo, and that was it. I have always been a little repulsed by perfect glossy aluminium mounted photography, and still am. I was playing out lots of fascinations and frustrations I guess. There is definitely also a presence of Francesca Woodman and Claude Cahun, the physical experience of a photograph and the self as other, or the theatrical self. It’s all there, but it didn’t start from that, it simply started from an undefined relationship and finding a pair of white stockings. Your website shows some of your work in the form of projections – why projections? I very rarely show works as prints. For me photography at its basis has a sense of ‘being part’ and a sense of ‘looking at’. Very often this sense of being part gets completely lost. I really wonder when photography found its present standards – everything seems to be aluminium and glass, maybe even more here up north. I couldn’t put these images just on the wall, without any consequence, without any demand from the viewer to look. I wanted to be very exact about how they would be seen. For this series I built a room with three doors. The projectors where located behind the doors, as soon as you would enter you would erase the image, and when you closed the door the image would reappear. It was impossible not to be part, not to have your look influence what you were seeing. I use projections and installations to articulate the content in the experience of looking. I think I might abandon prints completely. But a magazine is fine, I agree with the way of looking it defines. In my latest work it is getting more difficult to separate the image from the installation. After I finished Her I moved to Finland, where I gradually became less interested in constantly creating a stage out of everything. I became too much of an image. My approach has shifted from staged photography to staging photography. I am still making photographs, but the moment of releasing the shutter is getting less and less important. It’s just that, maybe we have frozen photography a little bit too much. +
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Nadim Asfar Innenleben
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Nadim Asfar
Nadim Asfar was born in 1976 in Beirut, were he still lives and works. He received a bachelors’ degree in Cinema Studies from the Academie Libanaise des Beax Arts in 2001 and completed a masters in photography in 2003 at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis Lumière in Paris. He presented his first solo exhibition Juin at Fadi Mogabgab Gallery in Beirut in 2004 and another in 2008 entitled Immaterial World at the Galerie Tanit in Munich. Nadim Asfar’s work has been shown in several group exhibitions such as Présence that toured to the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris and Centro de Arte Contemporaneo in Sevilla among other venues between 2006 and 2007. The series Innenleben was part of the group exhibition Exposure 2009 in the Beirut Art Center. Nadim Asfar makes videos, among which the short movie Print(1) was
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presented at several festivals including the Cinemaeast Film Festival at the Independent Film Center in New York. Since 2004 he has taught theory and practice of photography at ALBA. Nadim Asfar is represented by Tanit Galerie in Munich. Innenleben features apartments broadcast on free adult amateur channels; Asfar photographed the empty rooms soon after the broadcasters had moved out, leaving a vacant image in which a strange intimacy is still palpable, revealing small, unintended details. The private and the public merge in these pictures of anonymous interiors.
All images © Nadim Asfar, courtesy Tanit Galerie, Munich
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‘What interests me is this weird feeling of a contra diction between proximity and distance’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Innenleben is a view into other people’s lives in an interesting way: even though the people did agree to show their lives by making it available via a webcam, they have no knowledge of you creating these images. Did you ever get in touch with any of those people? I viewed public adult sites. There are thousands of them, men and women. Straight and gay. I only got in touch with them as a viewer, not at all as a photographer. I wanted to keep my relationship with them mainly as a visual/superficial relationship. I was mainly interested in the images. A bit like some live images of war: accidental, ephemeral and vanishing, but deep and memorable. You can only watch them without being able to act. When I startedrecording the images in a material way it gave them a new dimension. And to what extent did you follow whatever was going on in those web broadcasts? Did you decide to become a bit familiar with these people? I spent hours watching them, and I took thousands of pictures. It was a daily process. I spent hours watching the movements, the acts, the way light changed in the space. And hours to understand what fascinated me. Somehow, these sites or views mainly confront one with oneself. The feeling of an ‘other’ person is very fragile and fictitious. It was more like a weird process of my own fantasies becoming real through these images. There was a kind of matching between what I wanted to see and what was available. I did not get real connections with these people; and I preferred also to keep a kind of fiction going on, or a fictitious intimacy. I also have many portraits, but I still don’t know how to process them. I don’t understand them yet. It took time to understand that what interested me most was the window on my screen, their presence in my own space. Innenleben in a very interesting way seems to tie in with the recent development of people freely making a lot of information about themselves public. You can learn about very private matters simply by becoming someone’s Facebook ‘friend’. I’m wondering whether this is something that interests you, too. Right. What interests me is this weird feeling of a contradiction between proximity and distance, this shortcut that can lead me to another space and time and that looks so much like something imagined. As photo graphy, it can literally transform space and time. I am interested in how as an artist, I often feel I am exhibiting my thoughts, my feelings, my desires... And the link between art and eroti cism, art and exhibitionism.
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Sometimes when I exhibit my usually quite intimate work, I feel it is perceived with the voyeuristic and perverse texture that you can feel in the images of Innenleben. My work and my images all come from sexual desires or frustrations, which are sublimated into flowers, city views, landscapes, beds, moments, portraits. In the same way, Innenleben shows images of houses, plants, beds, doors, which came from broadcasted images motivated by sexual fantasies. Lately, we all have become eager to find the object inside of us, a fetish, to market ourselves, to be able to exist inside the atmosphere of consumption we are evolving in, and not to feel like outcasts. Public profiles like on Facebook or elsewhere push people to define themselves in very simple schematic outlines to fit the categories in those profiles. There is a need to project ourselves somewhere, or have a ‘twin’... We have become like a kind of reduced sample of ourselves. Disembodiment might be a right word to define these images. As if we were all somehow ‘killing ourselves’ to live. Innenleben also addresses the topic what we can actually know about peoplefrom looking at their portraits or photos of their apartments. Are you also trying to address those connections? Of course. It is amazing to me to have all these bodies in front of me. It nourishes my fantasies. I was very surprised to discover the rooms, furniture, small details of these homes, which were accidentally shown, as the main topic of these webcams were cocks and masturbation. Suddenly, you are projected into another accidental dimension of the person. You can find fragile porcelain put in a specific, affectionate, place of the apartment, behind a huge guy masturbating, with hundreds of people telling him what to do, how to sit, what to show, asking him to come... But I never thought I actually learned something deep about these people, and I was not looking for any kind of sociological or anthropological approach. It is more a feeling of space, or a perception of space. So all I get to know is that this person has a green couch, white china, watches many DVDs… I think that Innenleben also treats images as a superficial skin of things, something that is very important to me. As a photographer I am always f rustrated by this bi-dimensional feel of things. The German word ‘Innenleben’ means inner life, and it can refer both to something mechanical and to something psychological. You can pry open a watch, and then you see the mechanisms that make it work. The psychological you cannot know, but you can try to infer it, even though what you infer might be heavily clouded by your own thinking and perceptions. What you see might, not be real, even though the technology around it might make it look very real? Exactly. This is why I found this German word very convenient as the title of this work, although I do not speak German. It is the only word I know in German. I did a lot of research to find one word that could describe this process. Innenleben sounds to me like a generic space, like a country. +
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Leonie Purchas In the Shadow of Things
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Leonie Purchas
Leonie Purchas, born in 1978, is British. After taking honours in the History of Art she worked as a full-time assistant to the photojournalist Tom Stoddard. She has won numerous awards including the Ian Parry Sunday Times Young Photographer, the Jerwood Photography Prize, the Arts Foundation fellowship, the F Photography Award and most recently the 2009 Paul Huf Award. She has had solo shows at the Rome Photo graphy Festival. She organizes photography workshops from her studio in London with Still/Moving. Her work has been featured in The Sunday Times Magazine, The Saturday Telegraph Magazine, Portfolio Magazine and Newsweek.
to clear the piles of clothes, boxes and bags which filled much of the house. In exchange, her mother Bron, step-father David and brother Jake agreed to let her photograph whatever she deemed important, with the understanding that the images might eventually be displayed in public. She has photographed the whole turbulent ongoing journey, creating a moving visual diary that conveys both the oppressive weight of her mother’s low days and the laughter and love which Purchas hopes will ultimately prevail. The exhibition in Foam_Fotografiemuseum juxtaposes a slideshow of this photography with a room of films, diary entries, found photographs and other archival items.
In the Shadow of Things explores the emotional terrain of Purchas’ own family. For over two years she has been helping her mother confront her depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, working with her
See www.leoniepurchas.com for more information.
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‘I came to a point when I wanted to face things that needed to be faced’
interview by Jörg Colberg
A large section of your previous work is dedicated to portrayals of families in various cities. How did you get interested in this? I don’t know if I was ever interested in portraying ‘whole families’ more than I felt excited to work within four walls and closely with the same group of people. I saw the work of Richard Billingham and Nick Wapplington, and I felt inspired to follow their lead by working within the family. I looked at a lot of photography at this time, and this approach woke me up and got me excited to take pictures and start to find my own language. I wanted to cherish this approach and use it to explore and find my own questions. Family is a fairly universal subject of interest. As a child I used to love looking through old family albums building narratives around the pictures. I’d stare at the pictures pretending that I knew the people that were now dead, and I’d imagine their lives. I think photographing within the family unit was an instinctive choice, a way that I felt comfortable to photograph strangers that then became friends. ‘Access’ seems to be the magic word for photographers. How did you find those families and how did you convince them to let you be a spectator of their life? I’m always asked this question. It’s very simple. I just show people my work. They like it and want to be a part of it, or they don’t. I find this first approach terrifying. But as of yet, no one has ever said no. You must give people pictures of themselves. This is really important to build trust, and as a result further doors normally open. I also take time to be more than just a passive spectator. I’ll do my best to pick up the family rules and quirks and, where appropriate, offer what I can to contribute. Reading with the kids, teaching English. What ever is appreciated. I try to share myself with them, to give a little back in return for all the generosity and openness given to me. I also try to pay attention to when I am not wanted around. For a brief while I try to become a part of the family, and far more time is spent just being with them and getting to know one another than actually taking pictures. But when I do take pictures I am not trying to be invisible. I am the photo grapher, that is my role. Do my subjects ever ‘perform’ for me? Some perhaps do, others carry on as normal. But I notice that by taking the role as the witness, people seem to become themselves. People are often genuinely surprised that I’m interested in them and their lives, and they realize they’re actually quite proud of what they have. That’s certainly the bit I’m interested in.
never a conscious intention to photograph other people’s families and then my own. But I think that working with other people slowly reassured me that love in a family is by no means the one dimensional love we witness time and time again in mainstream blockbuster movies. I feel privileged to have glimpsed some of the odder facets of love in other people’s lives. This ultimately gave me the courage to look at my own little nest. With other people’s families, as an outsider the photographer might be shut out from a lot of what is going on. But inside one’s own family, one might know too much. Doesn’t this make portraying one’s own family hard? You take that knowledge with you wherever you are, and it influences the way you see your own family or other people’s. I aim to overcome this, and I hope to photograph in a more instinctive and less informed way. I think this challenge applies to whatever I am photographing – to empty one’s mind and respond in a simple and open way to what is in front of me. When I was photographing other people’s families I felt like I was trying to crack an egg, to get inside, while photographing my own family feels quite the opposite, trying to get out of the egg. I understand that sensation less in terms of knowledge, but more in terms of the intricate emotional terrain one steps into when photographing one’s own family. It consumes me emotionally, and I am trying to articulate those emotions, to make sense of them and then look to other horizons. It has been interesting for me to realize that I’m not trying to portray my family in the same way I did with previous families. This project is much more about coming to understand myself and my relationship with my mother who I have always been extremely close to. I am so much more invested in every image than I have ever been before. I think I might have ventured outside the safety of the photojournalistic approach to photography, where the subject is The Other, regardless of the photographer’s compassion. Yes, I have used my camera as a kind of shield to protect me during some almost unbearably intense times, but when I look over the images it has taken, it’s like looking into a very revealing mirror. +
List of works (in order of appearance): 1
David and Bron, 2007
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Daphne’s sun chair, 2007
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David and Jake, 2007
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Bron sorting, 2007
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Roe Deer, 2009
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Jake, 2009
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Maple, 2009
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David, 2007
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Watering, 2008
10 David #01, 2008 11 The greenhouse, 2007 12 Jake #01, 2009 13 Bron and Jake, 2008 14 Bron, 2009 15 David and Bron #01, 2009 16 David #02, 2008
With In the Shadow of Things, you’ve now turned your camera on your own family. What made you do this? Because I believe that this is not a dress rehearsal. This is it. It’s my family that I care most about. I came to a point when I wanted to face things that needed to be faced. I needed to see if I was able to make sense of some of the unsaid problems that seemed to be holding us all back. I see the process like walking into a house and going from room to room, opening all the windows and doors to let fresh air flow again. It was
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All images © Leonie Purchas
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Ronald Leong Fibonacci /Rorschach
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Ronald Leong
Ronald Leong was born in 1980 in Singapore. After high school he was conscripted into the army for two years and then travelled extensively. In 2001 Leong started to work as a photography assistant and has worked independently since 2004. Fibonacci/Rorschach was shot at the market. All of the models were shoppers who happened by. The black ink was applied digitally
 fterwards. The mirroring effect emphasizes the question of symmetry a and beauty. The project was shot across two days, while the processing took two years. Please see www.ronaldleong.com for more information.
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All images Š Ronald Leong
foam magazine #20 / talent
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‘These everyday faces suddenly became fascinating’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Your series Fibonacci/Rorschach examines the way we perceive people from their portraits. How did you come up with this project? Fibonacci/Rorschach represents the end of an involved thought process that I began during my earlier experiences in photography. What is beauty? Researchers discovered babies looked longer at faces that were more symmetrical. Beauty defined by symmetry. Even within facial symmetry there were other ‘rules’ like spaces and ratios, which led me to the Fibonacci ratio. While it is possible to discuss at length the various research and studies, I’m a photographer; discussion provides no practical application to my discoveries. For me, it is a state of introspection quite similar to gazing into a Rorschach ink-blot. The differences between the two portraits are not just the application of the paint – it’s also the posing. What are the ideas behind this? When you remove the emotional aspects, the work is technically about the exaggeration of symmetry, proportions and imperfections. The poses were planned to facilitate the technical details of the work. The diptych is a balance of these details – symmetry/asymmetry, clean/natural, soiled/artificial. Some people say that when a portrait is taken, the photographer determines the outcome. Others say it’s the subject. The viewer is often not supposed to be part of the process. Fibonacci/Rorschach seems to indicate that the viewer plays a very important, if not the most important role? While the subject of a portrait is the person in front of the lens, the subject of a photograph isn’t. When you see an image of a starving child, is it a portrait of a starving child? Or is it a portrait of starvation? The role of a photographer depends on the nature of the image. The subject matter sets the course. It gives the photographer purpose and determines the image. The viewer’s reaction determines the outcome, that is, how well the photograph succeeded in relating the subject matter to the viewer. Fibonacci/Rorschach is not a portraiture series – the subjects are not the context here. The subject here is beauty, or rather the question of beauty. An attractive face draws you to look at it. While the images in Fibonacci are not inherently ‘beautiful’ you’re somehow drawn to them. It creates a conflict in the mind. This dissonance is critical so yes – the outcome lies in the viewer here.
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There also is the beauty aspect, which adds another layer to the perception of a portrait. Let me play devil’s advocate: Isn’t beauty an infinitely complex entity, with many aspects way beyond anyone’s control so that an investigation of how we perceive beauty can only touch some aspects? Precisely. This is not an exhaustive exploration of beauty. I’m personally more intrigued by cognition. The people in the series were not super models. I played up their superficial flaws and even stained their faces – the antithesis of beautifying a subject. Yet as a result, these everyday faces suddenly became fascinating. I didn’t radically change anything. The stained faces were left otherwise untouched. The unstained faces had their existing flaws pumped up and made almost symmetrical. Essentially, it’s the same person, only amplified. Suddenly one does a double take, fixates and even lingers on the image – all symptoms of fascination and curiosity. People have an established idea of what is beautiful and the cor relations between fascination and the reactions/symptoms tied along with it. If I can take an everyday face, not change it much, and trigger these symptoms of fascination in the viewer, that creates a cognitive dissonance. Hopefully the work triggers off further exploration into aesthetics. Because it is a complicated issue – a human issue. This is interesting, because what you are engaging in here is the complete opposite of what most people are used to, namely seeing overly Photoshopped people on the covers of magazines and in advertising. Those imagesare also containing ‘amplified’ people, except that it’s a completely different way of what to stress and what to suppress. And I think there has been a growing backlash against these Photoshopped images now – do you see your work as part of such a movement? Countercultures are facets of humanity’s journey. Part of that journey is to continually examine the things we do and understand why we do them. Once something becomes routine, we lose perspective. We lose the understanding of why we did it to begin with. We end up doing things simply because that’s how they’re done. It is important that we maintain perspective. In Fibonacci/Rorschach, I was examining the role of symmetry and ratios – to explore them as purely as possible. Part of that process meant removing the distractions of flawless skin and other conventional ‘ampli fications’, focusing purely on symmetry and ratios. In the end, the work took on a quality I had not seen before and it excited me. If it engages other people as well, that’s great. The journey, however, remains the same to me. Of course, there is also the fact that for example in the United States applying black make-up to someone’s face brings up the issue of racism. Is that something you’re concerned about? Is that something you want to investigate with your series? Racism, elitism or discrimination of any sort is something I am concerned about. But that’s not something I explore in this series. People of many diverse races are featured in the images. Both halves of the diptychs contain modifications of the same person and neither image is contex tualized as being superior to the other or any other image in any way. But as you mentioned, the viewer does have an important role in the series, and if the viewer sees issues of racism in these images, then perhaps race is an issue that weighs heavily on their minds. We after all, often see what we choose to see. Much like how one interprets a Rorschach print. +
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Aaron Schuman Once Upon a Time in the West
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Aaron Schuman
Aaron Schuman was born in 1977 in Northampton, Massachusetts. He received a bachelors’ degree in Photography and History of Art from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1999, and a masters in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium in 2003. Having assisted various photographers – most notably, Annie Leibovitz and Wolfgang Tillmans – Schuman began to pursue his own freelance career in 2000. He has worked as a writer, editor and curator. His photographic work has been exhibited internationally, and he has contributed both photographic and written work to publications such as Aperture, ArtReview, Modern Painters, HotShoe, British Journal of Photography, Foam Magazine, Creative Review, The Face, DayFour, The Guardian, The Observer and The Sunday Times.
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Schuman is currently a Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the Arts University College Bournemouth, a Lecturer at the University of Brighton, and is the founder and editor of the online photography journal, SeeSaw Magazine. In Once Upon a Time in the West Aaron Schuman investigates the fundamental American archetype of the Wild West and its associations with freedom, rebelliousness, brutality, morality and honour. For more information, please visit www.aaronschuman.com.
All images © Aaron Schuman
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‘I was surprised to find that many images served as allegories for my own underlying views of America’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Your photographs of sets used for Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns contain many subtle aspects. Where did the idea come from? I’m American, but I’d never really thought of myself as a stereotypical American. When I moved abroad in 2004, I found that people associated me with many American clichés, and often made inaccurate assumptions about me. Furthermore, it had been one year since the invasion of Iraq and Bush was about to be re-elected, so I had a lot to answer for as an American, despite the fact that I was deeply saddened by the country’s conduct at the time. At first, my newfound American-ness was very disorientating, but I gradually recognized that it might be worth investigating. I became fascinated by American-ness as a concept, particularly as seen through the eyes of others, and decided to make photographic work around this theme. I read that the Leone sets were still standing in the Spanish desert, and became intrigued. Firstly, they aren’t American; they were built in Franco’s Spain by an Italian filmmaker. Secondly, they aren’t a real place, but instead an imagined one; in reality, they’re made of plywood and plaster – flimsy simulations of a generic, archetypal America, and maybe that in itself suggests something about America. So after some more research, I picked up my camera and went to see what I could find. These kinds of movies have a special appeal for audiences everywhere. Why do you think that is? Originally, the sets appealed to me as an existing place, and what that place represented. But having learnt to appreciate Leone’s films whilst making this work, I think that a similar fascination with place lies at the heart of their appeal as well. Most movies are plot-driven or characterdriven, but Leone’s Westerns contain relatively basic narratives, and their protagonists are stoic and unrevealing – hence the unofficial title, The Man with No Name Trilogy. Instead of twisting plots and complex characters, such films seem to fixate upon their mise-en-scene, and their allusive, atmospheric and emotional tones. Of course, all of this lends itself quite well to photography, a medium that struggles with both explicit narrative and comprehensive character study, but is incredibly successful at evoking, defining or capitalizing upon the underlying mood of its subject.
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I am not sure how aware Americans are of the European Westerns. I could never take those movies seriously, but I’ve also thought that a not-soserious approach might be a better one for this genre. Would you agree? Well when I first arrived on these sets, I realized that I could treat them in one of two ways. Either I could do a sardonic take, distancing myself from it all; or I could succumb to the illusion, and try to genuinely connect with the place. I chose the latter. So as I walked around, I tried to convince myself that I was in America, searching for familiar details from my own experiences in the American Southwest. Such elements drew up longburied emotions, and I was surprised to find that this entirely fictional façade did both evoke and represent something deep within me. Furthermore, I was surprised to find that many images served as allegories for my own underlying views of America (pre-Obama): the faceless assassin, defaced icons of American independence, boundaries between darkened interiors and threatening exteriors, dead cowboys in the sand and so on. Despite that they were made in a contrived environment, four-thousand miles from the United States, the images still managed to contain certain themes, symbols and concerns that were very relevant, particularly as the Bush years came to a close. So I think that embedded within the Western genre are certain myths and motifs, which are incredibly revealing about both America and perceptions of America. And for me, the most appropriate approach was one of sincerity, as the motives behind the work are genuinely sincere. That said, several German friends have encouraged me to photograph the Karl May-inspired film sets in former Yugoslavia, but my original aims were not to focus specifically on the Western – and I certainly don’t want to become pigeonholed within the genre as a photo grapher – so now I’m ready to address other subject matter. You also write about photography. Does that influence how you take photographs? Originally I began to write because I wanted to talk to photographers whom I admired, and to study certain works more thoroughly. My first article was about Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places, and I pitched it simply because it was a good excuse to meet with Shore and ask him about his work. Since then, I’ve continued to write regularly because it forces me to seriously consider why photographs excite me, and inevitably this informs my own work in many ways. But I am also very conscious of the fact that looking for a photograph is a profoundly different act than looking at a photograph – the former is spontaneous, intuitive, and intimate, whereas the latter is much more considered, calculated and cerebral. Some people assume that the two pursuits would conflict with one another, but I find that it allows for a more dynamic experience of the medium. Furthermore, many of my favourite essays about photography are by photographers, so I don’t accept that there’s any contradiction in pursuing both activities at the same time. Of course, writing also makes me very aware of the criticisms that may be aimed at my own photographic work. But if I tried to cater to every potential critique, or responded to every doubt, I’d probably never produce any images – or if I did, it wouldn’t be much fun and they’d probably seem incredibly contrived. So like many photographers, I tend to follow my instincts – I try to respond intuitively, and hope that at least some of my efforts will prove to be meaningful in the long run. +
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Elliott Wilcox Courts
foam magazine #20 / talent
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Elliott Wilcox
Elliott Wilcox was born in 1987 in Southampton, United Kingdom. He graduated from the University of Wales, Newport, with a bachelors’ in Photographic Art in 2008. Wilcox has received several awards including a Judges’ Award at the Nikon Discovery Awards and a New York Photo Award in 2009. He has exhibited in Britain. His work was part of Singapore’s first International Photography Festival and selected for both Catalyst Arts Belfast and the Crane Kalman Gallery Brighton’s Graduate showcase exhibitions, and Elliott Wilcox is affiliated with Wanted in Paris. His work is featured in the Magenta Foundation’s latest publication on the future of photography, focusing on emerging talent, Flash Forward-
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Emerging Photographers 2009, which exhibition will tour. Wilcox’s work will be part of the exhibition Prune - Abstracting Reality at Foam_ Fotografiemuseum this autumn. Courts examines representations of the enclosed spaces of sports courts. In photographing the empty courts, minus the fast-paced action the spaces become estranged. The vivid stains, ball marks, blood and scratches force the viewer to focus on these details rather than the court. See also www.elliottwilcox.co.uk for more information.
foam magazine #20 / talent
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‘When you take away the one singular purpose ‘the game’ from these courts you are left with something very odd but intriguing’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Photography and painting have influenced each other in many different ways. Some painters have used photography as a basis for their work for example, Francis Bacon or – in a more obvious way – Gerhard Richter; and some photographers have tried to achieve the effects of painting, for example Andreas Gursky. In your bio, it says that you are interested in ‘pushing the boundaries’ of the medium. What do you mean by this? I am a fan of Gursky, though I think most photographers are. His works are very imposing objects, pictures that stop you in your tracks. I love how his work isn’t necessarily viewed as part of a series, rather like a painter. Brilliant photographs. In terms of ‘pushing the boundaries’ I like to create work that is fresh and new, finding my own element or dimension in photography and targeting that. Working hard conceptually and technically to produce an outcome that has pushed me as an artist and hopefully has an impact on others.
Coming to Courts – how did this get started? How did you find these places as a subject matter of your work? Courts started as a project initially looking at space, space that people chose to encounter, in some ways escaping the perils of modern life. I am interested in spaces and why they attract certain types. ‘Non-space’ referring to Marc Augé is a concept that has developed in and out of my work. I started shooting in Squash courts, this got me interested and thinking about space. When you take away the one singular purpose ‘the game’ from these courts you are left with something very odd but intriguing. The development to other courts, for example Real Tennis and Rackets, was a natural progression, experimentation technically led me to where I am currently with Courts. Could you see extending your approach beyond courts, to other spaces? Is Courts going to be part of something bigger maybe? Well at the moment my main focus is on courts, I feel the work has a lot more in it and I want to pursue this. I am constantly shooting more courts or re-shooting courts that I feel I can improve on. I will have a lot more new images on my website soon. If I can get in touch with the right people I am hoping to use Courts for my first solo show maybe even a small publication. I am due to start a Masters degree this year. During my studies I will be exploring new spaces and environments. It is an exciting prospect for me to explore new thinking and image-making. +
List of works (in order of appearance):
What photographers have influenced your work? And what photo graphers can you think of who are also pushing the boundaries? Andreas Gursky, Ori Gersht, Robert Frank, Edgar Martins, Ewen Spencer. I’m a bit curious about photographers as different as Andreas Gursky and Robert Frank have influenced you. What did you take away from them? How did they inspire you? Ahhh, I thought that might pop up in the question matter. Well it’s rather straightforward to be honest. When my practice started evolving towards a large format basis I began to look at photographers such as Gursky, Martins, Norfolk and more as a way of comparing and understanding, getting a grasp on how others have approached subject matter in this way. I mentioned Robert Frank because I guess he had a big impact on me when I first became interested in photography. I saw his retrospective, I think it was at the Tate Modern. This was the first all photographic exhibition I had ever been to by one man. The show really blew me away. There were big fantastic tonal fine prints exhibited along side contact sheets, you were able to see how this man worked, how he lived and breathed photography. Each photograph big or small had its own personality and soul. I felt a real sense of life in the work and it really motivated me to take pictures and still does today.
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1
Squash 01
2
Squash 02
3
Real Tennis 02
4
Real Tennis 01
5
Rackets 01
6
Real Tennis 03
7
Real Tennis 05
8
Sticke 01
9
Rackets 01
10 Rackets 02
All images © Elliott Wilcox
foam magazine #20 / talent
portfolio
Taisuke Koyama Rainbow Form
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portfolio text
Taisuke Koyama
Taisuke Koyama was born in 1978 in Tokyo. He studied Biology at university and is a self-taught photographer. In 2005 he won a prize in the 25th Recruit Hitotsubo Award, a competition for young photographers, which marked the start for his career as a photographer. He has published three books, Your Surviving Door, Dark Matter and entropix. Taisuke Koyama is represented by G/P Gallery in Tokyo and has held several solo shows. His works were exhibited at Paris Photo 2008 and Photo Miami.
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Rainbow Form is a close study of a found poster of a rainbow. Continuing his interest in micro phenomenon that started with the book entropix Koyama takes digital photographs of the superficial details of artificial objects, which seem to materialize a city’s metabolic activities.
All images Š Taisuke Koyama, courtesy G/P Gallery, Tokyo
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portfolio text
‘I tried to express something very graphical, that can never be achieved by anything but photography’
interview by Jörg Colberg
Can you explain the ideas behind Rainbow Form? How did you get them? This is a series of photographs of a close-up from an advertising poster that used a rainbow image. The shooting took place in various parts of Tokyo. To capture the more vivid rainbow image, I only shot on sunny days. I have been shooting the micro phenomenon on the surfaces of the city of Tokyo. One day I found the first picture of Rainbow Form in a pile of my works. It was a photograph of a rainbow, but at the same time it was not a rainbow. The image holds various thoughts: there are a number of visual layers in the image and the image photographs as well as materializes the light, matters and natural phenomenon. It asks the questions: What is seeing and what is the relationship between image and words (in this case, the words ‘I have seen a rainbow’)? I saw the potential of this photograph and started working on this series. Based on what I’m often told, my photography looks like graphics. In response, as my reaction to that opinion, I tried to express something very graphical, that can never be achieved by anything but photography. I needed to capture the whole situation and environment of the object, including printed dots that constitute the image of rainbow, dust on the surface of the paper, dew drops, the scratches and extraneous matters on the invisible plastic board in front of the poster, in the strong light of a sunny day. Rainbow Form seems to be photography about photography which seems to be becoming more commonly produced: Image-making as a way to study image-making itself. Do you see your work as part of such a bigger scene, which might include, for example, Penelope Umbrico? Partly, yes. As a photographer using a digital camera, I do think that the examination of photography is vital at the moment, especially when everything is being digitalized at such a rapid pace, filling our daily life with photographs and advertising images. However, I must note that photography does not exist only for such examination. A photograph needs to have the potential and power to let people’s minds slide away from the matter on the surface of a picture to another dimension. And that breadth, that possibility, can be the essence of photography.
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Can you tell me a little bit how your own photography evolved? What motivates you, what inspires you? Which other artists have served as inspiration? My first impact was Daido Moriyama’s photography. At that time I did not recognize it was photographs, but the vivid images of something cut out from the city just burnt into my memory. Based on this experience, my early approach of walking in the streets and capturing fragments of the city was obviously influenced by Moriyama. My early works were taken with the street-snap method using such themes as ‘sign of presence’ or ‘trace and persistence of vision’. Later on, while constantly walking around Tokyo and taking pictures, I sensed the fact that urban artefacts are organically changing, like nature. That idea was largely based on my study of biology and the environment. I became interested in the abstract images on the surfaces of those organic changes, based on my theory that they are the result of the same dynamic metabolism in which the urban environment and nature itself lives. Materials exist as equal phenomenon. I have used a micro-lens ever since to derive maximum detail of the object. My first photobook, entropix, was published in 2008 and presents a series of my works that shows all the phenomenon on the surface of the city. This series was based on my point of view that the artificial components of the city, including posters, signs, buildings and their materials, are continually changing and metabolizing under the influence of the environment, just as every organism, including human beings. Rainbow Form is a development of entropix and specifically investigates the act of seeing and the notion of photography. I exhibited a high-speed slideshow, projecting ten pictures per second. This project grew out of my thoughts on the difference between looking and seeing. In my latest exhibition, I showed a slide-show movie of 6000 images together with my other movie works with a large inkjet print hanging on the wall. I am often inspired by books about biology, nature and the universe. I am at present interested in the approaches of artists such as Olafur Eliasson and Carsten Nicolai. And for those who are not so familiar with Japanese photography, how do you view your own position in Japanese photography? Are you following a tradition? For a long time, in Japan there has been the deep-seated mind-set that photography means capturing the truth. In addition to that, the Japanese photography scene contains many genres of photography including advertisement, fashion and documentary all together. I personally think that the situation can be very interesting, but I doubt if there is any concrete tradition of Japanese photography beyond generations. As a result of the trend of digitalization of photography and the increasing domination of art fairs, however, art photography and artwork that challenges photography has gradually become more acknowledged. My photography partly follows Moriyama’s approach to the city though at the same time it will wade into a tide of contemporary photography that achieves a certain quality and approach with questions about photography-about-photography or photography-about-light. +
foam magazine #20 / talent
portfolio
Davide Monteleone Northern Caucasus
foam magazine #20 / talent
portfolio text
Davide Monteleone
Davide Monteleone was born in 1974 in Italy. He started to work as a photo-reporter in 1998. He has covered news, conflicts and social issues. Since 2001 Monteleone has been a member of the Italian agency for Photojournalism, Contrasto. The move to Moscow in 2002 was decisive for his photographic career and photographic style, and he has portrayed his new homeland many times. In 2005 he started collaborating with the Accademia de Francia in Rome. His first book, Dusha, Russian Soul, was published in 2007. Davide Monteleone’s reportages have been widely published and he has won the World Press Photo Award twice: in 2007 in the category Spot
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News and the first prize for General News in 2009 for his coverage of the war in Lebanon and in Abkhazia. The images presented here are from the project Russian Caucasus, depicting the daily life, with its miseries and joys, in the poor regions of the Caucasus torn by internal strife.
All images © Davide Monteleone, courtesy Contrasto
foam magazine #20 / talent
portfolio text
‘My goal is to go beyond the news that from time to time brings the region into the spotlight’
interview by Jörg Colberg
The Caucasus is one of the most troubled regions of the world, with, it seems, an almost infinite number of conflicts and sub-conflicts going on at the same time. What made you decide to pick this particular region to look at? It seems like such a huge task. I’ve been working on Russia since 2002 and my first project ended with the publication of the book Dusha – Russian Soul by Postcart, at the end of 2007. It was my personal interpretation of the well-known Russian soul, a reportage more inspired by literature than journalism. The Caucasus, particularly the Russian Caucasus, is a project born in summer 2008, after the lightning war between Georgia and Russia in the territories of Ossetia and Abkhazia. Such a territory is the quintessential of both stereotypes and surprises. For centuries it has been the land of political, ethnical and religious rivalries, the land of battles and expansionist aims, cruel struggles among hostile countries and also among allied people. This new project I’m carrying out with journalist Lucia Sgueglia takes into consideration those regions where disputes have not yet come to an end, disputes which nowadays resurface as intermittent fires under the surface of the rhetorical politics of ‘normalization’ and ‘pacification’. On one hand, this project originated as the continuation of my personal interest in the Russian Empire, while on the other hand it’s a journalistic survey of an area too often neglected by the media, for which it’s hard to represent. Given the complexities of the Caucasus, I’m curious about your approach to the region. When you thought about portraying it what went through your mind? Images of wars shot in Chechnya and the articles written by Anna Politkovskaja are part of my memory, and I reckon they are part of a collective memory, too. They were a starting point for me to begin looking into the region, especially today that rivalries and clashes are half-hidden from a normalization politics, as it’s defined by the central government, which makes it harderto find out the facts as they really are. My goal is to go beyond the news that from time to time brings the region into the spotlight. I’d like to document the daily life in the diversity of those republics torn between the dream of independence and pride, the economic subordination and the historical-political affiliation. My curiosity was tickled by the need to see with my own eyes and trying to comprehend what makes Chechnya differ from the Republic of Dagestan, Ingushetia from Ossetia, and so on. Also, what makes these countries so close to their homeland. This work began with the passion for a specific geographical area and its inhabitants, for the dynamics of the situation and the difficulties it invariably presents. This territory has won over my soul and my thoughts. In my opinion, it’s a new piece in the greater comprehension of a large and diversified region and, at the same time, the chance to give my small contribution for others to understand such a not-so-well known area.
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What made you come to Russia in the first place? What got you interested in this vast country? Places that differ from those we belong to are often exotic and stimulat ing. My first journey in Russia dates back to the summer of 2001. Due to my job, that same winter, I decided to move to Moscow even though I didn’t know the language and I had no personal bonds there. Within two years, Russia became, and still is, my adopted country. I reckon every photographer looks for his own path, his own place, his own method to express parts of himself. Basically, how to express his way to see, tell and live. I learnt a new language, I learnt different customs from my own, I suffered the cold, and I rejoiced, I lost my temper, I got excited. I made this place not only my working ground, but part of my life. Nowadays I find my place of choice is apt to express my photography, and my photo graphy is apt to tell this territory. I feel at ease with the light, spaces, such a vast and different territory that allows me to inquire into various aspects yet staying tied to a sole topic. What are your photographic influences? Do you see yourself as part of a photographic tradition – if yes, which one? My sources for photography inspirations are quite a few and diversified. I admire the work of many photographers, from well-known reporters from the past, such as Robert Capa, to present-day Paolo Pellegrin. I adore the intimacy and poetry derived by photographers such as Larry Towell and Josef Koudelka, the landscapes by Luigi Ghirri, the colour by Alex Webb, spaces and portraits by Alec Soth. The photographic tradition I feel most attached to is photojournal ism, even more than documentary photography. The photography that goes into personal research and investigation. The photography that tells about spaces and people, making them part of the photographer’s life. Above all, I feel inspired by Robert Frank’s The Americans, or for likeness of places, Luc Delahaye’s Winterreise on Russia, which is one of the first reportages that tickled my curiosity of this territory. +
foam magazine #20 / talent
portfolio
Timo Klos Orr
Sleeping, 9 hours
Hot Shower, 10 minutes
Mint Cigarettes, 5 minutes
Picnic, 30 minutes
Boat to Suomenlinna, 12 minutes
Last Beer in Erotaja, 20 minutes
Watching Twin Peaks, 90 minutes
Goodbye at the Airport, 11 minutes
foam magazine #20 / talent
portfolio text
Timo Klos
Timo Klos was born in 1983 in Bad Hersfeld in Germany. He started his photography studies at the University of Art and Design in Offenbach am Main, and moved to Helsinki in 2008 for an exchange year at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. He plans to graduate next autumn.
With Orr, Klos let the exposure time extend for as long as the moment lasted. The result is paradoxical; the longer he wants to keep a moment, the more information is lost. All images Š Timo Klos
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portfolio text
‘The series deals with transitoriness and loosing information’
interview by Jörg Colberg
With your series Orr, you documented moments from the last ten days of your time with your girlfriend Orr. How did you decide to do long-term exposures instead of, say, taking snap shots? Actually, the idea of making long exposures came to me before I started with the series Orr. I thought it could be really interesting to expose moments as long as they are to show how transitory they can be. The last time with Orr was perfect to use this method. It’s interesting you picked those last moments with Orr for that, though. Wasn’t there the risk of ending up with photographs that would not describe those moments for you? Were you never worried about that? I mean there’s the intellect understanding things, but then there are also feelings, which often might argue for something different... To be honest, I was not worrying so much. It is quite rare that I take snapshots of something. Even during our last time I would not have taken any ‘normal’ photographs. Therefore, it was either doing the project or not; and since I made some tests at the beginning, I was quite sure that there would be some interesting work. Furthermore, at the end I was more concentrated on my feelings than on the photographs. Many of those photographs have exposures so long that most of them contain almost no discernible information. One could interpret this in many different ways. For example, it might point to the futility of trying to ‘keep’ a moment by taking a photo. Even with the photo present, the moment – and most of what came along with it – is gone, and the photo only contains a meagre fragment of what in one’s memory is so rich? Yes, that is true, but first it was more important for me to use these pictures and the technique of long exposures to explain that there are moments in everybody’s lives that you cannot hold on to forever. These pictures showed this. If you cannot hold on to anything in real life, and you just have some fragments in your own memory, what is left in a picture? These were thoughts I got later, when I looked at the pictures after everything was done. Then, even though on the surface there is not much information, pictures might work as a trigger for your memory. You could also interpret it as follows: The less you can see in the picture, the more your memory is trying to fill the empty space.
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Not being able to see much might make it hard for viewers other than you, though. Were you never worried about other people simply missing what you are after? No. I was just focused on my idea. The series deals with transitoriness and loosing information. I wanted to keep it real, so the longer I tried to hold a moment (meaning the longer I exposed the picture) the less information was on the pictures and the brighter they were. I did not want to get all the details back in the picture afterwards. People will understand... And what did Orr think/say about your recording of this time? She really liked the idea. Of course, sometimes it was exhausting. The camera was our constant companion in all kinds of situations. On the last picture at the airport, it was she who convinced me to photograph this moment. And what did she say when she saw the pictures (assuming she saw them eventually)? She knows all the pictures and finds them really beautiful. The series pushes the boundaries of photography, of how it is done and what it can do. Is that something you are concerned with? Yes, for me it is necessary to push these boundaries to open up new possibilities inside one medium and to look critically at it at the same time. The series Orr just showed again how helpless and important photographs can be. Some overexposed pictures show almost nothing, but in combination with the right story they explain everything. +
foam magazine #20 / talent
portfolio
Daniel NaudĂŠ Africanis
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Daniel Naudé
Daniel Naudé was born 1984 in Cape Town. He graduated as a bachelor in Visual Arts from the University of Stellenbosh in 2007. His works were shown at the Ava Gallery as part of the show Greatest Hits of 2007 and at the Michael Stevenson Gallery as part of Summer 2008/9: Projects. The series Africanis portrays the wild dogs living in the Karoo area. The dogs have adapted to the landscape and the climate of the region,
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reflected in their size, diet, posture, skin and fur. By merging the two photographic traditions of the portrait and the landscape Naudé has created mesmerizing portraits of these rare creatures. Daniel Naudé is represented by Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town.
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portfolio text
‘Africanis were in South Africa long before Westerners; they are in a sense pre-colonial or even un-colonial – untouched by this kind of historicity’
interview by Jörg Colberg
How did you come up with the idea for your series on Africanis dogs? My first encounter with the Africanis happened in late 2006 on my way to a surfing trip in Mozambique. I was driving on a long, straight, flat road in the middle of the Karoo, far from any form of settlement, when a lone white dog ran across the highway, no owner in sight. I immediately pulled over and grabbed my Hasselblad, but the dog ran out of shot and just continued r unning like it knew its path through this barren land. It took my breath away. The fact that this scavenger-like dog had survived in this landscape was astounding. The encounter was surreal, like a scene from a Tolkien tale. Soon afterwards I came in contact with another of these dogs in the Transkei and I took my first portrait. The intensity of the dog’s expression inspired me to search for others in the Karoo and rural areas of S outh Africa. As a child I grew up surrounded by dogs – at one stage my dad had nine of them – and I have always loved them. Dalmatians and Labradors barking behind fences was all I had known, so this encounter was far more interesting. I wanted to portray these dogs in their habitat and explore the history behind them.
Do you see your work as part of a tradition of portraying animals, be it in painting or photography? Yes, people have been portraying animals through various art forms from the beginning of our existence. My medium of portrayal happens to be photographic, but what I am doing is essentially no different from what the Khoi-San did with rock art or the Egyptians on tomb walls. I also want to illustrate the interaction between living creatures, men or animals, and the environment. Africanis were in South Africa long before Westerners; they are in a sense pre-colonial or even un-colonial – untouched by this kind of historicity. Their breed is not synonymous with any culturally identifiable group, whereas Alsatians are associated with the police, Boerboels with Afrikaners, Corgis with the British. Africanis dogs vary enormously in appearance because they have adaptedto the landscape and climate. This is reflected in their size, diet, posture, skin and fur. The studio-like format of my images, with the dog centrally placed, includes the landscape that has molded them into who they are. Let’s talk a bit about your photographic background. Which photo graphers (or other artists) have influenced your work, and who are your personal f avourites? The work of Rineke Dijkstra, especially her minimal beach portraits, is probably one of my biggest influences. I am drawn by how the subject confronts the viewer in such a romantic, harmless and sublime way. And then Richard Avedon’s In the American West series. With his portable studio, he was able to portray a generation across his country. I have him in mind as a reference when I investigate the relation between men, animals and landscape in South Africa’s rural areas. I am also influenced by the works of 18th century painters such as Samuel Daniell and George Stubbs, specifically their use of colour and light, and the sculptural quality of their subjects. I have always been fascinated by wildlife books: as a boy I used to draw the same buck (antelope) over and over again. I guess I keep doing it, with a different medium and a broader scope. +
List of works (in order of appearance):
Anyone who has ever tried to take a photo of their pet knows how difficult it is, as animals like to move a lot. Shooting these dogs must have posed a challenge. Yes, definitely, it takes a huge amount of patience to photograph animals, and at the same time you are never really sure what you are going to get. I guess that’s the excitement of photographing these dogs. I now have a kind of strategy about how to approach them, though generally I just take pictures as they appear. Before I approach the dog I observe the landscape and make a decision about what scenery I want inside the frame to convey the environment. I try to get closer with ease and no sudden movements. I allow the dog to accept me in his space. Then I lie down on the ground at the same eye level as the dog, as standing up straight tends to create a position of power, which I’ve learnt intimidates him and often causes him to run off. I’ve also found that the older dogs seem to be calmer and easier to shoot. I guess the most challenging element is the fact that your environment and subject are so unpredictable. You can’t set up your tripod, get the exact plan and composition and then walk between the sitter and camera, perfecting the shot. There is no moving the dog’s head up or down or making any adjustment. It is about capturing a fleeting moment of stillness, in which the dog and the landscape are one. In these instances I almost feel that the animal is posing for me.
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1
Africanis 2. Strydenburg. 1 April 2008
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Africanis 6. Strydenburg, 2 April 2008
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Africanis 3. Strydenburg, 1 April 2008
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Africanis 9. Strydenburg, 31 March 2008
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Africanis 4. Britstown, 5 June 2007
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Africanis 11. Murraysburg, 4 February 2009
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Africanis 1. Strydenburg, 31 March 2008
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Africanis 8. Barkly East, 5 July 2008
All images © Daniel Naudé, courtesy Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town
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paper selection
Foam Magazine’s choice of paper from ModoVanGelder Amsterdam The paper used in this magazine was supplied by Amsterdam paper merchant ModoVanGelder. For more information please call +31 20 5605333 or email marketing@modovangelder.nl
Alexander Gronsky is printed on
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Novatech Satin 135 g/m² coated fine paper 120 g/m² recycled offset paper and
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tom&otto Silk 130 g/m² coated fine
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Amira Fritz is printed on Romandruk
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a company of
foam magazine #20 / talent
books
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Nagano Shigeichi Hong Kong Reminiscence 1958 Although unknown outside Japan, Nagano Shigeichi has had three books of photography published there, the first of which was a publication in the prestigious series Hysteric Glamour. His latest book is especially well designed and presents pictures taken during a stay in Hong Kong in 1958. As a photographer, Shigeichi is not easy to describe. An unprejudiced eye is required to recognise his qualities.
Vince Aletti Male
From the 1940s until the late 1990s, he documented everyday life in Japan.
Aletti has shown restraint in the design of this collection and has taken
Even during a visit to Hong Kong, he 2
was untiring in his photographic ex-
photographs. The male nudes in this
Thomas Ruff Surfaces, Depths
book come from many different areas
Kunsthalle Wien and Verlag für mod-
which, however, he quickly had to
of photography, and Aletti’s eye and
erne Kunst Nürnberg have made a
leave. His photographs lack drama,
Natascha Libbert Take Me to the Hilton
taste are immediately evident. Eroti-
remarkable achievement: they have
the formal play of black and white,
With the support of the professor of
cism, pride, weakness and strength are
produced a Thomas Ruff monograph
and the stereotypes and presump-
photography Corinne Noordenbos,
just catchwords that pale before the
that even bibliophiles will like. The
tions about people which we can see
Natascha Libbert has published a
images themselves. Not for nothing is
designers opted for a clear text layout
in many photographs from the 1950s,
small work of her own that captures
Aletti one of the most influential pho-
and reproduced the photographs on
from Robert Doisneau to many other
life in front of and behind the scenes
tography critics in America. In addition
newsprint. The book includes well
photographers included in The Family
in Hilton hotels around the world.
to reproductions from his collection,
known series, which can be studied
of Man. Shigeichi can perhaps best be
Whether of guests or employees, the
there is a gatefold in the middle of the
again, but what is most impressive is
compared to the Italian neo-realists.
photographs show us the interaction
book which provides an overview of
Ruff’s collection of newspaper photo-
He is now being discovered by a new
between places, people and activi-
his collection and a look at the rooms
graphs from the 1990s. These show his
generation of Japanese photographers
ties and do so in an unobtrusive but
in which it is housed. This book will
sober and unprejudiced interest in im-
since, when confronted with the city,
eloquent manner. As we have come
appeal to enthusiasts and collectors
ages. The book also features two new
photographers are constantly forced to
to expect of Dutch publications, this
and affords an invaluable insight into
series entitled Cycles and Cassina.
re-invent themselves, and his unspec-
production in magazine format has a
tacular pictures can teach us so much
precise, bold and conspicuous though
about what he photographed.
not exaggerated design.
every care in the presentation of the
the history of the male nude. Kunsthalle Wien and Verlag
PPP Editions
für moderne Kunst Nürnberg
ISBN 978 09 715 48 06 0
ISBN 978 3 94 118 55 00
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ploration of the streets, taking pictures even in the opium dens of Kowloon
no ISBN
no ISBN
foam magazine #20 / talent
books
Photographing America : Henri CartierBresson / Walker Evans
3
This juxtaposition of the work of
Stefan Canham and Rufina Wu Portraits from Above: Hong Kong’s Informal Rooftop Communities
Evans and Cartier-Bresson from the
Ever since Hannes Wanderer opened
ments 20 different households. The
Kodachrome slide film, the Archive
thirties and forties practically guaran-
the doors of Peperoni Books in 2004,
sober and engaging approach taken
of Modern Conflict brought together
tees readers a deeper understanding
this publishing house has produced
by the authors brings to light worlds
5000 slides that were made during the
of history and aesthetics. The authors
exciting and well crafted books. The
that have nothing to do with clichés
1950s in America, the golden age of
have carefully researched the short
most recent, Portraits from Above:
of slum life. The primary occupants of
Kodak. A selection of 250 pictures was
common history of these two influen-
Hong Kong’s Informal Rooftop Com-
these informal dwellings are migrants.
made for this finely-printed book. The
tial photographers and have intuitively
munities, is a cooperative effort by the
These people may eke out a living in
pictures not only are a commentary
edited the pictures shown in the plate
photographer Stefan Canham and the
the city in precarious economic cir-
on The Americans by Robert Frank
section of the catalogue. Fortunately
architect Rufina Wu. Its 300 pages, ex-
cumstances, but most lead more or
but also take St.Paul’s Epistles To the
they decided against a chronological
tensive essays, and architectural draw-
less secure lives. With this knowledge,
Corinthians as a subtext for satirising
presentation of the photographs. Al-
ings describe the living conditions of
readers are no longer surprised to see
American society. The snapshots of
though I was familiar with many of
rooftop inhabitants in Hong Kong and
home computers in many of the huts.
family life, which capture the unusual
the photographs by Evans, many of
make this book an almost scholarly
This and many other details, as well
and the ordinary, can be read with a
Cartier-Bresson’s were new to me. The
production. For more than 50 years,
as the overall integrity of the approach
number of subtexts (films, photobooks
editing, the straightforward layout, and
semi-legal dwellings have been erected
taken, make this book a stimulating
or religious texts) and thus develop
the print quality make this a wonder-
on the rooftops of Hong Kong build-
and exemplary achievement.
into an uncanny mirror of the arche-
ful book.
ings. There are estimated to be more
4
Timothy Prus The Corinthians To mark the discontinuation of
types and dreams of our society, too.
than 9,000 of these dwellings, most
Thames & Hudson Ltd
of which have been built with cor-
Peperoni Books
Archive of Modern Conflict
ISBN 978 05 005 43 702
rugated sheet metal. The book docu-
ISBN 978 3 9809677 7 8
ISBN 978 09 547 09 150
265
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books
7
Rommert Boonstra Beyond Photography
5
JH Engström and Anders Petersen From Back Home
The publisher Voetnoot together with writer and photographer Rommert
This publication recently received the
Boonstra has compiled a collection of
author book award at Arles and is thus
42 photographers who work in that
no longer an insider secret. Thanks to
realm that one could call staged or
Swedish taste and careful production,
surrealistic photography. With fore-
this book is a pleasure to hold and a
fathers such as Joel-Peter Witkin or
convincing combination of design and
Ralph Eugene Meatyard or contem-
traditional book craftsmanship. Pe-
poraries such as Gregory Crewdson
terson and Engström, his former as-
or Roger Ballen, this has always been
sistant, both come from the Swedish province of Värmland, and it is to this
a strong strand in photographic praxis, 6
although there is no actual treatise or
photographs speak of the ambiguous
Tim Brennan English Anxieties
as well as the unequivocal feelings that
As part of a commission last year the
cuttings, texts and clippings to com-
ajo (who has just published her first
arise when one returns to a place that
British artist Tim Brennan scoured the
pile a new report, which has been aptly
book with Kodoji Press) and Erwin
once was home. The ambivalence of
archives of the Mass Observation Unit,
published wrapped in brown paper,
Olaf are cross-wired until the sparks
the photographers is seen in many dif-
an association of artists in the 1940s.
looking very factual, but which upon
fly. Imagination and technique meet to
ferent images, and Engström’s photo-
The MO collected information about
study opens up a vault of British para-
produce images full of romanticism or
graphs often give the impression that
daily life in Britain. Brennan came
noia. The way in which these possibly
humour, lust or obsession, or to create
he wished only to flee. Both men nev-
across a report issued by the famous
meaningless pictures are brought to-
artificial worlds that feel like bubbles.
ertheless have an intense relationship
archeologist T.C. Lethbridge, a record
gether and the contents of the pictures
I have to admit that among the differ-
with their subject and I came away
of unusual visual phenomena found
themselves will be a source of satifac-
ent schools in photography this one
with the feeling that it was good for
in Cambridge, consisting of photos of
tion for those readers who delight in
is the most open to non-photographic
both to be confronted with their ori-
chalk drawings, early graffiti, pavement
photographs that have awoken from
trends and this book provides an in-
gins after so many excursions, trips,
art, invitations and flyers, all collected
a long archival slumber and that still
sight into a rich sub-genre with works
and commissions abroad.
by someone who feared German spies
retain a life of their own.
from between 1980 and 2008.
place that the book is dedicated. The
manifesto. Artists as diverse as Teun Hocks, Edwin Zwakman, Melanie Bon-
operating in the UK, or more precise-
Bokförlaget Max Ström
ly Cambridge. Brennan has rephoto-
Photoworks
Voetnoot Publishers
ISBN 978 91 712 61 64 9
graphed these images and newspaper
ISBN 978 1 872 771 72 4
ISBN 978 9 078 06 8341
266
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books
8
Olivier Cablat Galaxie
John Szarkowski Looking at Photographs
and one that brings together various
Whoever doesn’t own or wish to pur-
aspects of his work. His study of com-
chase the expensive first edition from
mercial structures and popular culture
1973 is now able to acquire the third
led to the series entitled Discotheques
edition of this classic work. Writers
which documents discotheques
and curators who are able to combine
around the Mediterranean, their pre-
facts and historical knowledge and
fabricated building style, and their
who have an intuitive understand-
strategy of adopting names such as
ing of photography are few and far
Las Vegas, Kheops or Nitro in an at-
between. Apart from John Berger and
tempt at extravagance. When we open
Vince Aletti, Szarkowski is probably
9
Galaxie is Olivier Cablat’s first book
the book and leaf through it, the first
presents 100 pictures from the col-
Robin Maddock Our Kids Are Going to Hell
obviously come from the Internet.
Sebastian Hau works in the specialised
lection of MoMA and explains both
Together with Trolley Books, Robin
Trusting his intuition, Cablat under-
photography bookshop Schaden.com
the background and quality of each
Maddock has chosen photographs
took an almost obsessive search for
in Cologne.
photograph in a short accompanying
from his documentation of police
pictures that correspond to the names
He also writes for the German website
text. The fact that Szarkowski himself
work and has published them in pock-
of the discotheques he photographed.
www.fotokritik.de
was a photographer is, of course, an
etbook format. The book attempts to
He then allows these pictures to clash
advantage. His experience as a cura-
do justice both to the inhabitants of
on the page. This leads to comical mo-
tor and photographer allows him
Hackney in north London and to the
ments but also makes us question our
Credits: all images are reproductions of
to view the pictures with a mixture
police officers who are confronted with
understanding of photography. This is
book covers, unless numbered.
of generosity and precision which is
petty crime, household violence and
often the case with found photographs,
Credits for the numbered:
rewarding even today, more than 30
drug abuse during mostly night-time
since they often prove more difficult
1©P eter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz /
years after this book first appeared.
operations. The night photographs
to read than art photographs. With
PPP Editions
The selection of photographs begins
oscillate between large depth of field
this seemingly complicated approach,
2 © Natasha Libbert
with William Shew and concludes
and atmospheric shadows in red and
which is actually easy to understand
3 © Stefan Canham / Peperoni Books
with Henry Wessel Jr. and thus offers
blue tones. The smart selection of pic-
with the book in hand, the photogra-
4 © Unknown photographer / Archive
insights into the influential collection
tures, which are sympathetic without
pher is able to take a new look at the
of MoMA as well as the most impor-
indulging all too much in violence, has
interplay between words and pictures
tant developments in photography in
resulted in a convincing mixture of re-
and between names, signs, images and
the 20th century.
portage, essay and parable.
photographs.
the writer who can best read photographs. In this album Szarkowski
thing we see, however, is a large collec-
Text by Sebastian Hau
tion of found photographs that have
of Modern Conflict 5 © JH Engström, Anders Petersen / Bokförlaget Max Ström 6 © Tim Brennan / Photoworks 7 © Nadine Tassel / Voetnoot Publishers
Museum of Modern Art
Trolley Books
White Press Editions
8, 9 © Olivier Cablat / White Press
978 0 87070 515 1
ISBN 978 19 071 12 027
no ISBN
Editions
267
Jaap Scheeren, Horse C-print, 30x40cm edition of 10 together with the signed book 3 Roses 9 Ravens 12 Months for € 250,-
Also in Foam Editions: Daniëlle van Ark, Karl Blossfeldt, Kim Boske, Mitch Epstein, Marnix Goossens, Pieter Hugo, Marcus Koppen, Marrigje de Maar, Awoiska van der Molen, Daido Moriyama, James Nachtwey, Sanne Peper, Bart Julius Peters, August Sander, Malick Sidibé, Raimond Wouda and Vincent Zedelius
Open Wednesdays – Fridays 1.00 pm – 6.00 pm Saturdays & Sundays 11.00 am – 6.00 pm and by appointment Foam Editions Keizersgracht 609 NL-1017 DS Amsterdam T +31 (0)20-5516500 W www.foam.nl E jacob@foam.nl
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Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
Foam exhibits all genres of photography: fine art, documentary, applied, historical and contemporary, and is a museum with international allure. Along with large exhibitions of established world-famous photographers, Foam exhibits emerging young talent in smaller, shorter shows. Keizersgracht 609 1017 DS Amsterdam tel +31 20 5516500 www.foam.nl Open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Foam is supported by the VandenEnde Foundation and the BankGiro Loterij
foam magazine #20 / talent
Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
PRUNE
~ Abstracting Reality ~
18 September – 9 December 2009
The exhibition PRUNE – Abstracting Reality focuses on the complex but intriguing relationship between realism and abstraction in contemporary photography. The exhibition includes only photographic work based on reality with a greater or lesser degree of abstraction. The exhibition shows work that primarily can be appreciated for its abstract, formal qualities of form, colour and composition. Only later does the viewer recognise the subject rendered in the work and become aware of an underlying story and the photographer’s concept. Usually it is the caption that compels the viewer to relate to the work in a new way. Abstraction of reality is ever present in photography and often an underlying story which only reveals itself indirectly. The exhibition, produced by guest curator Kathy Ryan, photo editor of The New York Times Magazine, in cooperation with Foam, includes work by Roger Ballen, Walead Beshty, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Lisa Oppenheim, Julian Faulhaber, Luke Gilford, Idris Khan, Thomas Ruff, Horacio Salinas and Elliott Wilcox. A photo can never simply be equated with the image of reality it represents. After all, a photo in itself is an object that represents a reality entirely of its own. The image shown in a photo is not reality itself, but always a fundamental abstraction of it. Yet photography has a direct relationship with perceptible reality for many and therefore can be used for many aims: to express something about that reality, for journalistic purposes or even as supporting material in a legal case.
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Nevertheless, since the beginning of photo history, photography has been a pre-eminent medium for focussing on the tension between reality and abstraction. To this end, some have focused on pure form studies while others have consciously maintained a recognisable, measured degree of realism. Contemporary photographers and visual artists have recently increasingly accepted the tension between abstraction and reality intrinsic to photography. Some arrive at forms of abstraction through the specific use of framing when recording a subject. Others go much further and treat the material based on reality in such a way that direct identification with the subject becomes ever more difficult. The conceptual foundations which make more and more use of divergent forms of abstraction within photo work remain extremely diverse: ranging from an awareness that photography can only to a very limited degree say something about today’s current complex reality, through focusing on the complexity of our observation, to criticism of a heavily digitalised image culture in which images can actually be reduced to abstract data. + This exhibition is made possible with the support of the Mondriaan Foundation. Foam is sponsored by the BankGiroLoterij and the VandenEnde Foundation. image on left side: Multicultural Crayon Displacements, 2007 © Lisa Oppenheim, courtesy Galerie Juliètte Jongma, Amsterdam
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Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
Untitled, from the series American Landscapes, 2009 Š Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, courtesy Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
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Untitled, from the series American Landscapes, 2009 Š Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, courtesy Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
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crucibulum spinosum, 2007/ 2008, courtesy Horacio Salinas Studio
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two_gastroliths, 2007/ 2008, courtesy Horacio Salinas Studio
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Struggling to Hear..... After Ludwig van Beethoven Sonatas, 2005 Š Idris Khan, courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery
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Bach...Six Suites for the Solo Cello, 2006 Š Idris Khan, courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery
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Cassini 12, 2009 Š Thomas Ruff, courtesy VG Bild-Kunst
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Cassini 06, 2009 Š Thomas Ruff, courtesy VG Bild-Kunst
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Untitled, 2008 Š Roger Ballen, courtesy Galerie Alex Daniels, Amsterdam
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Untitled, 2007 Š Roger Ballen, courtesy Galerie Alex Daniels, Amsterdam
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Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
4 September – 22 November 2009
Charlotte Dumas ~Paradis Paradis is the first major exhibition of Dutch photographer Charlotte Dumas (1977). Dumas makes serene, intimate portraits of animals. For the first time she will combine selections from her series of animal portraits made in recent years in one exhibition, creating new relationships between portraits of animals such as horses, wolves and tigers, making connection between her subjects. Dumas’ first series of animal portraits during her time at the Rijksakademie – of five police dogs – arose from her interest in recording controlled aggression. In subsequent years, series followed focusing on police horses (Four Horses) military horses (Day is Done), wolves (Reverie), and most recently stray dogs (Heart Shaped Hole). Dumas chooses animals, usually in captivity, who live close to and work for people. Dumas records moments of concentrated tranquillity in a classical style, with the animal nearly always positioned centrally. The psychology of the portrait is central.
Untitled (Reward), 2009 © Charlotte Dumas
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Jake, from the series In the Shadow of Things, 2007 © Leonie Purchas
11 September – 25 October 2009
Leonie Purchas ~In the Shadow of Things In March 2009 Leonie Purchas (1978) was named winner of the KLM Paul Huf Award, an international prize for young photographers organized annually by Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam. An exhibition at Foam is part of the prize. Purchas investigates the complex relationships within families around the world. She has set out to record how individuals in families relate in the complicated interaction between ‘nature and nurture’. The longer she followed these families photographically, the more she was able to refute the myth of the perfect family. In the series In the Shadow of Things, Purchas points the camera at her own family. She photographs the isolated life of her mother Bron, partner David and their young son Jake. Her mother suffers from depression and an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Purchas’ exhibition consists of photos, projections, audio recordings and films from the family archive.
foam magazine #20 / talent
Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
11 September – 28 October 2009
Foam_3h: Saskia Dommisse ~Mindscapes For the Mindscapes series Saskia Dommisse (1975) has allowed herself to be inspired by her surroundings. By framing subjects such as the sky, sea or landscape so that all narrative elements are reduced to fields of colour, they lose their original form and function. The resulting images become a landscape of the imagination in which Dommisse reproduces the feelings invoked by a landscape. Her aim of simplicity, spaciousness and serenity results in an unusual and aesthetic form of minimalism. Photography for Dommisse is a meditative act, a search for emptiness that creates the abstraction so characteristic of her work. Saskia Dommisse graduated from the Photo Academy Amsterdam in 2008, when she was proclaimed Overall Winner of the Photo Academy Awards.
Untitled 1962-1965 © Sanne Sannes, courtesy Kahmann Gallery
30 October – 13 December 2009
Sanne Sannes ~Darkness & Light The Dutch photographer Sanne Sannes (1937-1967) earned a name for himself in the early 1960s with his grainy, erotic portraits. He was viewed as an extremely promising photographer of the new generation characterized by the freedom of the Sixties. Women were his favourite subjects and an endless source of inspiration, obsessively photographed during ecstatic sessions, often in the nude, recording their most intimate moments. This intimacy was emphasized in out-of-focus and underexposed photos, working with existing light and a hand-held camera. Sannes held exhibitions both in the Netherlands and abroad. His untimely death in a car accident at the age of thirty prevented an international breakthrough. Even though his career was short his oeuvre was of the finest quality. The Foam exhibition presents a cross-section of this work. Part of the mock-up of Sannes’ never-published photo book Dagboek van een erotomaan [Diary of a Erotomaniac] will be on display.
Mindscapes #4, 2007 © Saskia Dommisse
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Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
27 November 2009 – 21 February 2010
Decoding In the Autumn of 2009 Foam presents an exhibition of work from five young Dutch photographers, a new generation whose work is fresh, unconventional and sometimes anarchistic. There is sufficient conceptual room for contiguity in the group: their images are often totally constructed worlds, lightly surrealistic or absurdist in tone, creating an interplay between fiction and non-fiction, and probing the limits of photographic language. Each photographer is searching for a personal and often innovative relationship with the medium, which will generate surprise when presented in an exhibition. The participating artists are Corriette Schoenaerts (1977), Anne de Vries (1977), Jaap Scheeren (1979), Constant Dullart (1979), and Katja Mater (1979).
Stairs, 1930 © A. Rodchenko, courtesy V. Stepanova Archive,
Moscow House of Photography Museum
18 December 2009 – 17 March 2010
Alexander Rodchenko ~Revolution in photography Foam’s unique retrospective of the world-famous Russian avant-garde artist Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) will contain over 200 vintage photographs, some of which have never before been exhibited in the West. The exhibition has been curated in collaboration with the Moscow House of Photography. The Russian avant-garde of the twentieth century is a unique phenomenon both in Russia and in world culture. Alexander Rodchenko was one of the era’s main generators. He worked as a painter and graphic designer before turning to photomontage and photography. Rodchenko’s influence changed the ideas about the nature of photo graphy and the role of the photographer. Conceptual thinking was introduced into photography. Instead of just being the reflection of reality, photography became a device for the visual representation of dynamic intellectual constructions.
Human Color Wheel, 2008 © Katja Mater
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Missed an issue? You can order back issues of Foam Magazine online. The earliest editions of Foam Magazine doubled as exhibition catalogues. Since the release of #3, Foam Magazine is no longer linked to the exhibition programme of the museum. Foam Magazine has become an exhibition space in itself. A timeless collectors-item, a source of inspiration and reflection, containing over a hundred pages of photography featuring a specific theme. Collect them all and go to www.foammagazine.nl to see the latest offers!
foam magazine #10 / stories Larry Burrows / Alessandra Sanguinetti / Suky Best / Raphaël Dallaporta / Hunter S. Thompson / Wendy McMurdo
foam magazine #11 / young Raimond Wouda / JR / Lauren Greenfield / Oliver Sieber / Viviane Sassen / Ryan McGinley
foam magazine #12 / talent Domingo Milella / Taryn Simon / Jiuliang Wang / Astrid Kruse Jensen / Mikhael Subotzky / Lieko Shiga
foam magazine #13 / searching Stephan Shore / Wolfgang Tillmans / Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin / Thomas Ruff / Philip Lorca diCorcia / Hans Aarsman
foam magazine #14 / meanwhile Clare Richardson / Bart Julius Peters, Risaku Suzuki / Thekla Ehling / Masao Yamamoto / Daniëlle van Ark
foam magazine #15 / construct Melanie Bonajo / Thomas Demand / Moira Ricci / Toshiko Okanoue / Martina Sauter / Myoung Ho Lee
foam magazine #16 / talent Ahmet Unver / Jacob Aue Sobol / Kenneth Bamberg / Pieter Hugo / Ulrich Gebert / Curtis Mann / Jehad Nga / Clémence de Limburg / Wayne Liu / Sarah Pickering / Adrien Missika / Philipp Ebeling
foam magazine #17 / portrait Samuel Fosso / Franziska von Stenglin / Bill Sullivan / De Wilde, Stark & Bolander / Koos Breukel / Schels & Lakotta
foam magazine #18 / young Henk Wildschut / Roland Bonaparte & Friedrich Carel Hisgen / Jim Goldberg / Juul Hondius / Dana Popa
foam magazine #19 / wonder Jaap Scheeren / Jessica Backhaus / Syoin Kajii / Koen Hauser / Madi Ju & Patrick Tsai / Sanna Kannisto
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colophon
Colophon Foam Magazine International Photography Magazine Issue #20, Fall 2009 September 2009
Binding Binderij Hexspoor Ladonkseweg 7 5281 RN Boxtel – NL www.hexspoor.nl
Editorial Advisers Kathy Ryan, photo editor The New York Times Magazine / Markus Schaden
Paper
Editor-in-chief Marloes Krijnen
The production of Foam Magazine has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Drukkerij Slinger, Binderij Hexspoor and ModoVanGelder, Amsterdam.
Creative Director Pjotr de Jong Editors Marcel Feil / Pjotr de Jong / Marloes Krijnen / Sara Despres Managing Editor Sara Despres Magazine Manager Isabel Butzelaar Communication Intern Eva Valkhoff Concept, Art Direction & Design Vandejong, Amsterdam – Pjotr de Jong / Hamid Sallali / Marcel de Vries / Laura Verduijn / Claudia Doms Typography Claudia Doms Contributing Photographers Asfar / Bergantini / Castilho / Faulhaber / Fritz / Gerats / Gronsky / Klos / Koyama / Kruithof / Leong / Lundgren / Monteleone / Naudé / Purchas / Schuman / Van Agtmael / Wilcox
Editorial Address Foam Magazine Keizersgracht 609 1017 DS Amsterdam – NL T +31 20 5516500 F +31 20 5516501 editors@foammagazine.nl www.foammagazine.nl Advertising Isabel Butzelaar Foam Magazine PO Box 92292 1090 AG Amsterdam – NL T +31 20 4622062 F +31 20 4622060 isabel@foammagazine.nl Subscriptions Bruil & van de Staaij PO Box 75 7940 AB Meppel – NL T +31 522 261303 F +31 522 257827 info@bruil.info Subscriptions include 4 issues per year e 70,– excluding VAT and postage Students and Club Foam members receive 20% discount
Cover Photograph Becoming Blue #11, 2006/2008 © Anouk Kruithof Contributing Writers Marcel Feil / Sebastian Hau / Jörg Colberg / Richard Leslie Copy Editor Pittwater Literary Services, Amsterdam – Rowan Hewison Translation Iris Maher / Paul Christensen Lithography & Printing Drukkerij Slinger Strooijonkerstraat 7 1812 PJ Alkmaar – NL www.drukkerijslinger.nl
286
ModoVanGelder, Amsterdam Postbus 49000 1009 CG Amsterdam – NL www.modovangelder.nl
Single issues e 17,50 Back issues e 12,50 Excluding VAT and postage Foam Magazine #1 is out of print
Publisher Foam Magazine PO Box 92292 1090 AG Amsterdam – NL T +31 20 4622062 F +31 20 4622060 contact@foammagazine.nl www.foammagazine.nl ISSN 1570-4874 ISBN: 978-90-70516-15-4 © photographers, authors, Foam Magazine BV, Amsterdam, 2009.
All photographs and illustration material is the copyright property of the photographers and/or their estates, and the publications in which they have been published. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. Any copyright holders we have been unable to reach or to whom inaccurate acknowledgement has been made are invited to contact the publishers at contact@foammagazine.nl All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the publishers. Although the highest care is taken to make the information contained in Foam Magazine as accurate as possible, neither the publishers nor the authors can accept any responsibility for damage, of any nature, resulting from the use of this information. Distribution
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