Stephen McLaren Bryan Formhals
Stephen McLaren and Bryan Formhals Photographers include:
Photographers’ Sketchbooks
Photographers’ Sketchbooks
Mustafah Abdulaziz Christophe Agou Marc Asnin Jessica Backhaus Roger Ballen Scarlett Coten Jessica Eaton Amy Elkins Jason Evans Everyday Africa blog Jim Goldberg Naoya Hatakeyama Kiana Hayeri Rob Hornstra Michael Jang Iosif Kiraly Martin Kollar Katrin Koenning Stacy Kranitz Anouk Kruitof John MacLean Joel Meyerowitz Mimi Mollica Mari Nakani Louie Palu Laura Pannack Trent Parke Viviane Sassen Alec Soth Patric Swirc Peter Van Agtmael Michael Wolf Zhang Xiao
Photographers’ Sketchbooks
Stephen McLaren and Bryan Formhals
Photographers’ Sketchbooks
Contents
Introduction – Photographers’ Sketchbooks
6
The Photographers, A–F, including:
Mustafah Abdulaziz usa Christophe Agou fr Marc Asnin usa Jessica Backhaus ger Roger Ballen za Scarlett Coten fr Jessica Eaton usa Amy Elkins usa Jason Evans uk Everyday Africa blog africa (continent wide)
12 20 28 36 48 56 68 76 82 88
Essay 1 – Publish and Be Damned 95
The Photographers, G–L, including:
Jim Goldberg usa Naoya Hatakeyama jp Kiana Hayeri ir Rob Hornstra nl Iosif Kiraly ro Katrin Koenning ger Martin Kollar sk Stacy Kranitz usa Anouk Kruitof nl
102 112 120 128 138 152 164 178 186
Essay 2 – Works in Progress
199
Louie Palu can Laura Pannack uk Trent Parke aus
238 242 248
Essay 3 – Hunter Gatherers
251
The Photographers, S–Z, including:
Viviane Sassen nl Alec Soth usa Zhang Xiao cn
The Photographers, M–R, including:
John MacLean uk Joel Meyerowitz usa Mimi Mollica it Mari Nakani ge
202 212 224 232
Acknowledgments Picture Credits Author Biographies
317 319 320
298 306 312
Introduction
Photography is so much more than pushing a button. It is a way of seeing, a way of life, a grasping of life, a flow. At the same time it involves an enormous amount of preparatory work, research, development and trial and error. All photographers – the visually restless, the diarists, the experimenters, the R&D obsessives, the collectors and the cross-genre freewheelers – know this. As they dream of future pictures and agonize over ‘the next big project’, their sketchbooks fill with speculative work that may blossom rapidly into something important, or wind up in a box under the bed – or its virtual equivalent – waiting to be restarted, reappraised or forgotten. For most photographers these ‘sketchbooks’ are not the physical sketchbooks used by painters and other artists, but all the preparation that goes into the finished ‘work’ – if, indeed, it is ever finished. The endless possibilities for creativity in the modern photographic era are reflected in the seemingly endless forms that these ‘sketchbooks’ can take. A mobile camera phone might be the modern equivalent of the pencil on the back of an envelope, but many photographers do still prefer the old-fashioned, literal pencil and paper. Polaroid studies, maquettes, exhibition proposals, diaristic projects, found photography and small-circulation zines are also among the near-infinite media that photographers use to develop new work. These ‘sketchbooks’ can function as methods for identifying new themes and avenues of exploration, as quick studies made for future endeavours or as experiments with new chemical, digital or mechanical techniques. An increasingly important role of the ‘sketchbook’ is to facilitate the process of editing and sharing work-inprogress with friends and fellow photographers, whether in traditional analogue forms such as photo albums and contact sheets, or through the many online platforms
that have emerged in recent decades. Even those few photographers who don’t have their own websites display images somewhere online. Not everything works out the first time – indeed, some of the pictures in this book are errors, served up half-baked or sent off half-cocked, but they are still important because they led onto better subjects. Brave photographers look at their mistakes and learn lessons from them. For an increasing number of practioners, the photographic ‘sketchbook’ is more than simply a means to an end: it is both creative process and final project. This trend reflects an important shift in our understanding of photography as an art form. When the art world finally began to accept photography as a legitimate fine art in the 1970s, a sensibility of finality and scarcity entered the medium: framed prints, limited editions, pictures of massive heft and dimensions intended for big galleries and even bigger front rooms. All that now seems so long ago. In the 21st century, with the digital age in full sway, photography is less commonly presented as a finished product than as a constantly evolving ‘stream’ to share. In one sense, this recent expansion of the boundaries of fine-art photography to include the ‘sketchbook’ in all its various forms is a legitimate return to photography’s earliest roots as a medium. Painters and other artists have used cameras as sketchpads ever since they were first invented. The camera obscura allowed Caravaggio to sit in a dark room and become the perfect draftsman; Édouard Manet used photography to help him go back and fill in all that sumptuous Parisian detail in his paintings that a camera records but human memory struggles to retain. Although Henri Cartier-Bresson’s love affair with his camera was eventually superceded by his love for pencil on paper, you would never have called his photographs mere
32. Cristophe Agou
The work of French photographer Christophe Agou thrives on spontaneity and represents his intuitive reaction to life as it unfolds around him. Life in its various manifestations is weighed, considered and celebrated in all his projects, whether they originate in France, China or New York. As a career analogue photographer with firm notions of traditional craft and personal agency, Agou makes all his own maquettes by hand in his studio in Queens, New York. Looking for Words is a spare, elegant maquette Agou prepared from his work done in China in 2007–8. I made this maquette in 2010 and 2011. I used Photoshop to create the layouts, then made inkjet prints on heavy archival matt paper and bound them using an accordion-fold technique. Conceptually, the making of a maquette takes place in steps: determining the editorial content, sequencing the photographs, shaping the design and creating layouts that enhance the ‘heartbeat’ of the work. This exciting creative process can go on for months. Each step of the process has its own pleasures. For me it is a joyful and a fantastic experience. I believe that all aspects of a genuine collaboration with everyone engaged in the making of a lasting book are crucial. Looking for Words explores the emotional relationship between the individual and a fast-changing environment in today’s China. Despite the recent financial and social advances taking place, over the course of my travels I realized that opportunities for a better quality of life remain inaccessible to millions of people. The sense of belonging to a just society, having access to good education and healthcare, feeling secure, and improving the quality of the environment does not depend solely on the country’s economic growth. Looking for Words presents my own emotional responses to people affected by overwhelming transformations – people from all walks of life who are ‘looking for’ new directions and meanings. In collecting my thoughts and emotions, making photographs and interacting as best as I could with my Chinese subjects, I too was desperately ‘looking for words’ in order to communicate these ideas. Every work and book I have made has been in synch with what I was going through in my life at the time. To present a personal and poetic viewpoint to a publisher in the form of a maquette is a great starting point. There is a very important meditative process that is benefitted by spending so much time with the work. I hope Looking for Words begins a new life.
34.
Cristophe Agou
36.
Cristophe Agou
48. Jesscica Backhaus
Even after publishing six books filled with perfectly calibrated everyday scenes, Paris-trained German photographer Jessica Backhaus’s methods for bringing her projects to life are as instinctual and open to chance as the images she captures. Sequencing her books is a central part of Backhaus’s practice. Although she views her best pictures as resulting from individual moments of grace, her books only come to life when sequences of pictures flow as if expressing her inner stream of consciousness. To achieve this effect, they are carefully edited, using old-fashioned methods such as arranging printed photographs in albums. Serendipity is also allowed to enter the equation: Backhaus often throws scores of random prints onto a white sheet to see what patterns, themes and stories emerge. Experimentation is an important part in what I do. For someone who wants to start out, it’s good to have an idea and then use that idea to guide you until the project takes shape. My mentor [Gisele Freund] told me that all art-forms involve technique and it’s important to know that technique – how to use light, etc., but once you have mastered that technique you should try and lose it when you are working. It’s more important to feel. I see beauty in the banal and everyday of life. I am open to anything that comes my way – things, objects, feelings, interiors – if it expresses what I am looking for. Sometimes pictures come to me while I am enjoying myself with family and friends. I work on a project looking for a theme but then I find these individual photographs. A big part of what I do is being open to the world and allowing for all this beauty that is out there. Accae porpore mporro tem dolores repudia vel ipiendu ciendip iendae. Edicid maximinctota voluptu reperioria quidendione autem eum dolupta eum fugiatur. Delit adis quatem recatio magnihil ipsa di nus re lignimus idebis quis pratus core iusapeliquae nesti alit ant faccabores quae mi, aut magni non et fugit alist omnite nobit que pelibus, que net as eatiatest maion perchil icimus doloreperum autaque comnimp oreptur, quiat.Is sequi autaeptaepro is aut voluptate eiciur. Accae porpore mporro tem dolores repudia vel ipiendu ciendip iendae. Edicid maximinctota voluptu reperioria quidendione autem eum dolupta eum fugiatur. Delit adis quatem recatio magnihil ipsa di nus re lignimus idebis quis pratus core iusapeliquae nesti alit ant faccabores quae mi, aut magni non et fugit alist omnite nobit que pelibus, que net as eatiatest maion perchil icimus doloreperum autaque comnimp oreptur, quiat.Is sequi autaeptaepro is aut voluptate eiciur.
50.
Jessica Backhaus
52.
Jessica Backhaus
66. Amy Elkins
While on an artist’s residency in Europe, Los Angeles-born photographer Amy Elkins struggled with the linguistic and cultural differences that confound many travelers in foreign countries. To confront her feelings of homesickness, she set out to capture the ‘weird, lonely and gorgeous moments unfolding’ before her on a daily basis. The spontaneous nature of mobile photography made it an intriguing platform for Elkins’s diaristic-type photography. ‘Nothing was set-in or settled into place, which is how my moments of travel felt. The medium mirrored the experience.’ In her new project, Whilst I Was Drawing Breath, Elkins demonstrates that the Instagram platform and aesthetic can be used to create a compelling visual project that grows and expands on a daily basis. The title of the project comes from a book of poems that I found in the closet of a Bavarian mansion in the mountains outside of Munich where I lived for the months of October and November on an artist’s residency. The house was old and eerie. It had been occupied by Nazi soldiers and turned into an infirmary for their wounded. The book, which was by a woman who wrote poetry while in hiding during the Nazi occupation, became something that I looked through every day. I felt a closeness to the words. At the same time I went on daily explorations and kept stumbling on moments and taking photos of them. All are done with either an iPod Touch or an iPhone. The quality varies, but I sort of love the decay of some of the images – really gritty. Why digital black-and-white? I usually work in colour and in rectangular format (usually with a Mamiya RZ, but I’m now starting to play with a Canon Mark III). The the square format on Instagram forced me to compose differently. I’ve always loved black-and-white but struggled with returning to film and becoming locked into that final decision when working on a portrait project. Being able to vary the result of each image with a black-and-white filter, using instant capture (iPhone/Instagram) allowed me to shoot in black-and-white without feeling tied to it. What attracted me to Instagram? Curiosity. I had heard about it from everyone and felt like I was the last one to join. I enjoy that it’s the most stripped-down form of social media. Not a lot of words, just imagery in a fleeting feed. You can’t get too lost in it like in Facebook, and you discover that a lot of your friends take pretty decent photos. I’ve always enjoyed blogging. Tumblr has really clean layouts and a professional look, but it also has a really nice built-in way of viewing other Tumblr accounts. This series is a semi-deviation from my past non-portrait projects, but it is very much in tune with my past blogging projects that deal with using snapshots and instant publication (blogging/sharing) as a way to ‘journal’ and get active feedback. I did a blog-based project of self-portraits in 2006 that paralleled time a family member had spent in jail (and the phone calls we had together where he described his days in prison). It ended up getting write-ups on websites like American Photo, Conscientious and Pop Photo, and finally landed me a Nikon ad campaign and appeared in several books, magazines and exhibitions. It was a really personal project, and I had no expectation of getting a response from it at all, but then I got a really strong one. It reminded me that people enjoy seeing personal work and feeling like they’re part of it.
68.
Amy Elkins
84. Everyday Africa
While on assignment in Africa, American photojournalist Peter DiCampo began to use his iPhone to document the ordinary moments he encountered during his daily routine. The photographs resonated so strongly that he saw an opportunity to share an aspect of life in Africa that is not often represented in the mainstream media. Thus Everyday Africa was born. This innovative project presents the work of ten photojournalists working regularly in Africa, each sharing their vision of everyday life on the continent. The project has amassed over 20,000 followers on Instagram and has been featured in The New Yorker and the New York Times LENS Blog. I suppose part of the beauty of photographing with a phone is that you can start working before you’re issued a press pass. Often my work as a photojournalist seems surprisingly, even dangerously, predetermined. We know the story we have been sent to cover, and we edit ourselves to tell that story even as we shoot. But when I remember I can shoot without a theme, the other photos I am making simultaneously – on a silly phone with a silly app – begin to feel more honest. I notice a man in the elevator, the symmetry of the men around him and their reflections, the row of lights above his head. This type of picture is interesting in its mundaneness, and therein lies the truth. Africa can be the place of extremes that we in the West see so often. Inundated with images of incredible poverty, we also occasionally see vast wealth. But Africa can be familiar. It can also – thankfully – be boring. One morning, with an egg sandwich in one hand and a phone in the other, I snap a photo of a young Guinean girl walking through curtains. Her parents own the breakfast joint we frequent. Two hours and ten minutes later, a man wipes the snot from a young boy’s face. I can’t understand his language but I know what is being said: ‘This visitor is photographing you. Look your best.’ As we line up waiting for the UN to return the refugees to their homes, I’m torn. Who should I photograph: the sad faces peering through the windows, or the men standing, laughing, poring over DVDs for sale, deciding which Hollywood film they will purchase with the UN readjustment allowance they have been given? Which shoot-em-up blockbuster should be the first thing they watch after they get back to their village and rebuild their homes? It’s jarring. Sometimes I don’t think we let it jar us enough. Refugees, we think, should be heavy with the terrible burden of everything they’ve seen, weary with the miles they’ve walked to flee this place – not smiling and posing with the foreigner who appears with a camera. I’m wandering in a village that was only recently destroyed, burning through rolls of film to gather evidence that the conflict may not yet be over – and then four young men come by laughing. They stand with their arms crossed in the shade of a tree and make a camera motion with their hands. Snap snap snap. I’m wandering in a shopping mall, a plantation, a border crossing, a harbour, an airport terminal. As a photographer, it all seems to exist for me to point at and snap. But it’s not for me. It’s Africa, everyday.
86.
Everyday Africa
88.
Everyday Africa
192. Mimi Mollica
For many photographers the most useful tool after a camera is a pencil or pen. This is especially true for Italian photojournalist Mimi Mollica, who keeps his notepad and pencil close to hand when developing a rapidly unfolding story. While modern photojournalists often use their digital cameras like as recording devices that can be consulted for instant updates, Mollica’s reliance on a Hasselblad film camera forces him to work at a slower, more considered pace, which means that a notepad serves a variety of purposes. A notepad and pen is an integral part of the creative process – it’s an extension of my brain. It’s great to have it with you when you are in the thick of work and you don’t have to have a straight line of thought, or experiences that flow logically. So my notepad is disorderly, full of hectic sketches and fragments of notes. As it will be a while before my film is processed and I see the results, I make notes of what I have been shooting, record my thoughts about how the story is proceeding, and write down the names and details of the people I come across. These are oldfashioned reporting techniques, but visually they are also very important for sketching out the days ahead so I am ready for specific shots. I always dream of photos that I would like to take, and when a strong visual image comes to me I will make a drawing and this helps me. Obviously you don’t often actually manage to photograph that exact image, but it’s good to direct your visual aspirations and work with those visual hints. When I was shooting my project about the Mafia in Sicily, for instance, while planning a trip to the capo fish market in Palermo, in my mind’s eye I saw a swordfish head with the price of the fish stuck through its eye. When I got to the market and looked though the mirror-image in the well of my Hasselblad I saw an almost perfect version of the image I had sketched. A mixture of luck and preparation! On a basic reporting level, however, the notebook is essential. One day in Palermo I came across this very poor women walking alone who had no government or social support at all. When I took a picture of her I realized that in my story she was a symbol of how Sicilian society had become orphaned because of the influence of the Mafia. I had to take down her name and details so I could easily report her situation when my story was ready for publication.
194.
Mimi Mollica
204. Louie Palu
Louie Palu is an award-winning Canadian photojournalist whose time photographing the war in Afghanistan over the past decade has proved to be an intense and nerve-shredding experience. Palu’s use of a pencil and paper has been as integral to his reports from the frontline as have been the photographs he takes with his camera. His notepads, drawings and still-lives of ephemera from the battlefield are essential witness reports of some of the most brutal moments in the conflict. In Afghanistan ‘The Fighting Season’ comes after spring, when the weather warms up and provides the ideal conditions for Afghanstyle guerilla warfare, and lasts until the start of autumn. I titled my latest body of work The Fighting Season after it. Many of the photos were taken in combat conditions. While covering the conflict, I spent significant time with the Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police, US Army, US Marine Corps, and the Canadian and British armed forces. 2010 marked the fifth year that I had been photographing the conflict in Afghanistan, working mostly in the south, based in Kandahar. I worked both embedded inside military units and independently with an Afghan journalist. I focused my work on three of the most violent districts in the country west of Kandahar: Zhari, Panjwa’i and Arghandab. This region is where Mullah Omar gave founded the Taliban movement, and where Osama bin Laden had his pre-9/11 al-Qaeda headquarters. It is the birthplace of the modern state of Afghanistan. In 2009 I began turning my daily notebooks, which I had used mainly for logistical information and caption details for my photographs, into diaries where I recorded my daily thoughts and experiences on the front lines of the war. Most of the entries were written at times when I was at my emotional, psychological and physical limits. There were many times when I was no longer able to write what I thought. The words began connecting me to my greatest fears, such as the thought of losing my legs by stepping on a landmine or IED (improvised explosive device). Sometimes writing in the diary was like having a conversation with someone when I needed to relieve stress and did not have a friend in the field. It was an attempt not to feel alone. Working as a photographer is a very solitary activity, regardless of whether you are photographing people or not. The objects you see in the upper image on p. 37 are: a mangled piece of shrapnel from a drone strike on insurgents that almost hit the position I was in with some Canadian troops; one of the numerous ball-bearings that were packed into a bomb meant to kill the unit I was with; and a shard of shrapnel from an RPG (rocket propelled grenade). The lower image on p. 37 shows the glasses I wore on numerous combat operations and hundreds of patrols from 2006 to 2008. I was with British and American troops in Helmand in 2008 when I broke them. After an excruciatingly hot day of patrols I took them off to wipe the sweat from my face and left them on the pillow of my cot. When I came back, I broke them as I laid my head down on the pillow. Kind of ridiculous for them to have survived all those years of combat, caked in white salt from my sweat, only to get broken when I went to take a nap.
206.
Louie Palu
208.
Louie Palu
238. Trent Parke
The effect of the subconscious on the twists and turns of a photographer’s decision-making process is a subject that gets little critical attention. Yet dreams, buried emotions and conflicted inner impulses always find a way into the creative act, manifesting themselves in shutter clicks and project-editing. Far from ignoring the effects of the subconscious on his photography, Trent Parke, an Australian member of Magnum Photos, relies on it almost exclusively to guide every part of the artistic process. ‘My main method of physically arranging the work is always on boards and then in accordion maquettes. When we travelled around the country on the Minutes to Midnight trip I had a 35mm scanner and a small postcard printer in my tent that I would use to print out the pictures every day. Narelle, my wife, shot Polaroids of all my film hanging on clotheslines, in trees, by the beach – wherever we were, all around the country. It’s important that I see everything I do that day, because I am fascinated with the subconscious and why I am drawn to photograph certain things. Usually it’s the result of some influence from when I was growing up, some deep, dark thing that resurfaces in a different way. Then I keep looking for similar themes and ideas that relate to it. They become part of a storyboard that continues to develop. This is where the accordion book starts. I never usually know what the story is when I start; events just start to play out and I begin to hone in on all the coincidences that seem to fall my way. It then comes down to imagination. Even though the images are documentary photographs, once they enter my world they take on different meanings. I like symbols. At the heart of everything I do is storytelling. I think of myself as a storyteller first, then a book-maker, then a photographer. The books are the work, not the individual pictures. Sequencing is of the utmost importance as a fictional story plays out, and imagination is key in this – if you don’t have any, chances are you won’t get the overall big picture. All this work is in black-and-white and entirely hand-processed by myself as usual. It’s a huge part of my working method – shaking the silver tank for one hour for each four rolls of film – and it’s one of the quiet moments when I have time to think, just shaking the tank every minute for ten seconds, in the backyard, watching the clouds. I have a huge series of photographs of developing clouds – clouds developing while I am developing, heh heh! There is never really any time to stop photographing. The best physical object I have is the Minutes to Midnight dummy that travelled around Oz and everywhere else. It’s all battered and the crappy 6" x 4" prints I made on little portable printer are fading yellow and blue. It’s always everyone’s favourite thing.
240.
Trent Parke
282. Alec Soth
A project: a series of pictures in which a photographer takes on a theme or a story. This is where the medium of photography goes from short- to long-game and moments of shutter-pressing become stepping-stones to a much more ambitious and fulfilling expression. This is where serious photographers get serious. But what stories to take on? Which voice will the photographer assume? Dispassionate observer, committed protagonist, or quixotic storyteller? Magnum photographer Alec Soth revels in these conundrums thrown up at the start of a new project. He bristles at being considered a fineart portrait photographer, preferring to think of himself simply as someone who brings the full narrative powers of photography to new investigations. His account of the creation of Broken Manual in 2006 perfectly demonstrates how a project can gestate in uncertain beginnings and then flourish when the resulting pictures are gathered together and arranged by a master storyteller. Broken Manual is about a character whose craves to be alone and is assembling this manual on how to run away from society because he has such a hard time in it. There is a kind of madness that occurs when people spend too much time alone. As I photographed and researched people who spend a lot of time by themselves, I noticed there is consistent aesthetic – a kind of writing that they do, often with made-up terminology and imaginary characters. When I was a kid I had pretend friends and a fort, so I was kind of replicating that process of craving solitude while making this work. I’m not truly alone – I’m in the studio next door and there are other people there – but I’m creating this fictional cave, going into character by pinning all the stuff on the wall. It’s a nonlinear book. I’m interested in storytelling but it has no beginning, middle or end. The pictures are fragmentary: some are grainy black-and-white; some are very detailed; some are large and in colour. It was an intentional fragmentation that was supposed to represent a personality falling apart. So in terms of sequencing I could have taken all the pictures, thrown them up in the air and seen in what order they came down, but the process of slapping them on wall and making connections was what it was about. For a long time the book was not going to be bound for that reason; it could have been a pile of shards, much like that wall. When I think of literary references, part of Broken Manual is inspired by any dumb thriller, like all those paperbacks you see in the airport bookstore that have a man in silhouette running across the cover. I read those things because I like that fantasy of running away. The imagery also references the stock-thriller police procedure: the detective looking for the killer always creates a wall of pictures. And then there’s also the serial killer with his own pictures on the wall, that wall of madness. So I was kind of tying those two things together. None of Broken Manual was planned. It started off as a commission to photograph in the southern US. One thing led to another and it was incredibly serendipitous. Then it had this bizarre ending. The whole project is like a dream at this point and feels as ephemeral as that wall.
284.
Alec Soth
Stephen McLaren Bryan Formhals
Stephen McLaren and Bryan Formhals Photographers include:
Photographers’ Sketchbooks
Photographers’ Sketchbooks
Mustafah Abdulaziz Christophe Agou Marc Asnin Jessica Backhaus Roger Ballen Scarlett Coten Jessica Eaton Amy Elkins Jason Evans Everyday Africa blog Jim Goldberg Naoya Hatakeyama Kiana Hayeri Rob Hornstra Michael Jang Iosif Kiraly Martin Kollar Katrin Koenning Stacy Kranitz Anouk Kruitof John MacLean Joel Meyerowitz Mimi Mollica Mari Nakani Louie Palu Laura Pannack Trent Parke Viviane Sassen Alec Soth Patric Swirc Peter Van Agtmael Michael Wolf Zhang Xiao