LPV Magazine

Harlan Crichton – In The Shadow of The Burning Dog

2012-05-22T23:54:06Z

As a twenty-two year old male I am part of a wartime generation. A minority of my generation has chosen to participate in the war; most have remained stateside. As one who chose to stay I am interested in the people who left. They have experienced the brutality of war and I have not. In this body of work I have embedded myself in the aftermath of their homecoming. What is it like to have driven past banners on the highway, the dreams of their service and learn to be civilian again? In Even Wright’s book Generation Kill an older marine said “Don’t pet a burning dog.” I have appropriated this “burning dog” as a symbol for war. All soldiers have seen, touched or felt it. They have lived in its’ shadow since their service. By photographing these men in their domestic spaces I am investigating their re-assimilation into their previous lives and society.

Harlan Crichton

I sure hope Harlan pursues this project to the end.

via Carl Gunhouse

The Digest – May 20th, 2012

2012-05-20T16:03:30Z

©Jessica Eaton – ‘Cube, Color, Cosmos’ [Time LightBox]

I hope you’re enjoying your weekend and not thinking about photography too much. I’ve spent a few hours walking around with the Mamiya 7, enjoying a beautiful New York weekend. I’m not sure I made any memorable pictures but that doesn’t matter. It was good to be out looking again. Over the years I’ve tried to make a clear distinction between LPV and my personal work but as I’ve started down the process of editing my book I’ve found it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep them separate. More to come on that later, here’s what caught my attention last week.

Paul Graham Reviews

I haven’t seen the book of Graham’s ‘The Present’ yet but I’m looking forward to it. This week there were two stellar reviews of it. First, Colin Pantall on the photo eye blog.

Graham’s New York is a bit crappy for a start, an anti-nostalgic place that is run-down and anonymous. It looks pretty much like any other run down place. The people are the same. They’re not glamorous or striking or eccentric, but rather they’re harried, harassed and distant; no relationships were struck in the making of this book. These people could be anywhere; they stride purposefully along streets that hold no attractions to jobs that hold no attractions, their faces set into grimaces of urban stress. They walk along cold and uninviting sidewalks, past tired, functional shops and facades. There is a poverty of experience and environment here, an existence that appears deprived environmentally, emotionally and culturally. That’s the narrative; it’s a miserable life. Welcome to the Present.

When I saw the show at Pace, Graham’s depiction of New York never really entered my mind. This is a nice piece of writing by Colin and I think there’s some universal truth to it in terms of modern city life, but as someone who walks those ‘uninviting sidewalks’ every day, it’s a bit extreme. If you hang out on a corner watching the flow of life go by, you’ll discover more nuance and drama. I don’t think Graham was really interested in digging into the narrative of people who live in New York. I think he was using New York as the universal street photography city so he could de-construct the history of street photography. He did a good job from that perspective, but it really has nothing to do with the way New Yorkers live. I mean, fuck we all have to get from point A to point B during the day. To try and extrapolate anything meaningful from that journey is a cosmic joke played on idealistic street photographers everywhere.

Jorg’s review and flip through of the book offer up some good insights about the design.

I caught myself treating many of the pairs like the puzzles I remember from trying to solve as a child in a TV magazine my mother used to buy: You’d get a picture plus a variant of the picture next to it, with some parts missing. The puzzle was to find the missing parts. In the case of The Present I found myself treating the pairs of images pretty much like such a puzzle, trying to identify the characters in both images, to see where they had moved etc.

I also think the presentation of the book could have been simplified. The book relies on all kinds of ways to present you the images, with pairs of images on top of each other, next to each other, on different pages, or using gatefolds. This is all very fine, but for me, the different gatefolds and tricks end up feeling a bit gimmicky. I do think the design ends up overpowering the images a little bit. The images don’t need all that trickery.

Vanity Publishing Blah Blah Blah

Francis Hodgson wrote a very good piece about self-publishing that made the rounds.

As photography has spread into every corner of human activity, we have lost the ability to keep track of our responses to it. A culture of name-checking has grown up to replace judgment. Never heard of X or Y ? But he’s published by Hatje Cantz, or Twelvetrees, or whoever….it must be OK. This allows for stupid snobbery: treating pictures as somehow ‘different’ just because they don’t come from the precious world of photography but maybe smell of commerce or hobbies or even journalism or fashion.

I followed up with an article that was more inspired by, than a reaction to Hodgson’s piece. Nothing is going to stop self-publishing and that’s a good thing. There can never be too much photography, especially in print. The people obsessed with extracting monetary value out of what’s being produced will find some way to discover the work that has the most value in the market.

©Ben Roberts – ‘Occupied Spaces’ [The New Yorker]

Links of Note

‘Worker Bees of the Art World, Unite’: It’s great to read well written articles about the art world that don’t try to confuse anyone. The team at Hyperallergic does this very well.

Like it or not, we have an official visual culture, and that culture is determined by an entrenched hierarchy. This is no different from any other historical era, though the hierarchy has evolved from emperors, popes, cardinals and kings to museum directors, biennial curators, collectors, gallery owners and select members of the media.

‘How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet’: This lengthy article from Mat Honen of Gizmodo deconstructs exactly why Flickr fell behind the social networking game. It was a tough read for me. The way I became immersed in photography was through the amazing people I met through Flickr. Many of them are still close friends. There was something truly special happening in the first few years. But the web evolved and so did many of the people that made it a special place. I don’t regret the numerous hours I spent in the forums on Flickr. It was a good time. A time I’ll never forget, but at the end of the day, we should never really get too attached to these platforms. Their whole game is to convince us that they’ve created a special platform, when in reality they’re just trying to exploit the data we share with them.

Because Flickr wasn’t as profitable as some of the other bigger properties, like Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Sports, it wasn’t given the resources that were dedicated to other products. That meant it had to spend its resources on integration, rather than innovation. Which made it harder to attract new users, which meant it couldn’t make as much money, which meant (full circle) it didn’t get more resources. And so it goes.

As a result of being resource-starved, Flickr quit planting the anchors it needed to climb ever higher. It missed the boat on local, on real time, on mobile, and even ultimately on social-the field it pioneered. And so, it never became the Flickr of video; YouTube snagged that ring. It never became the Flickr of people, which was of course Facebook. It remained the Flickr of photos. At least, until Instagram came along.

‘Photography and Place’: Jorg is really doing an exceptional job of clarifying many of the issues that pop up in photoland.

When it comes to photography and place, the photographs really are only the beginning. We do need to talk about the biases that might be present in any body of work claiming to portray a place. But we also need to include our own biases in the discussion. We must not overburden photography with something it cannot do – providing us with an accurate portrayal of anything. Instead, we must acknowledge the maker’s hand, and we should talk about its role – and our reactions.

‘The Most Important Occupy Wall Street Photographer You’ve Never Heard of’: This article is months old but I just came across it through Petapixel this week and I think it’s fascinating.

I care more about experience than money. I was at a party once where someone asked me about my work and she said I must make a lot of cash. When I said I give my photos away to the public, she looked at me like I was a fool. She derisively asked, “Why would anybody do that?” and I replied “What did you do last Tuesday?” She said that she came home from work late and watched Law & Order on her DVR. I said, “Last Tuesday I had a four-hour dinner with Augusten Burroughs, and then I photographed him. I didn’t make any money off of it, but it was a hell of a Tuesday night.” Then she smiled and got what I was about.

‘Why Your .JPEGs Aren’t Making You A Millionaire’: Brad Troemel often reminds me how much more the young art community has thought about the internet than the photography community, which tends to stubbornly want to believe the good old days will come back.

Internet artists, for all of their digital-native wisdom, should know better than to think .JPEGs are a viable commodity when they’ve seen multi-billion dollar industries like music, film, and newspapers run around like baffled idiots for the past decade trying to figure out why they can’t sell MP3s, MOVs, and PDFs like they used to in traditional media.

Jade Doskow – via [Searching for the Light]

ETC.,

“Insist on engagement. Wrestle with what is difficult. Pretty is boring. Seek intensity.” – W.M. Hunt

Emiliano Granado – Thank God That’s Over

2012-05-20T02:07:13Z

“Thank God that’s over.” Those were the very first words out of my mouth after five days onboard the Explorer of the Seas.

It’s nice receiving things in the mail. Naturally photographers send me stuff because they want me to share it. Others just send stuff because they enjoy it I presume. I have some ideas about sending printed matter (beyond the obvious PR material) through the mail I’m going to flesh out about for a future article. I think there’s a cool opportunity for photographers.

Emiliano’s essay is taken from an editorial shoot and printed on newspaper, which is another thing I think is kind of cool. I’ve been lucky enough to see a whole mess of photographs from the project. I personally think it’d make an interesting book if he wanted to pursue it as a long term project, which of course, would require him to go on several more cruises. It’s an odd culture I think is worth exploring.

INFO
‘A 16-page newspaper, 29 color images, printed in New York City. 16.5′ x 11.5′.
Designed by Caleb Owen Everitt.
Photographs by Emiliano Granado.’

BUY IT HERE

Photographs ©Emiliano Granado – ‘Thank God That’s Over’

Vanity Publishing That Smells of Your No Good Photography Hobby

2012-05-18T10:04:15Z

©Michael Dennington

And the converse is also true: that books which purport to be displays only of photography are often not fit to be published as books. Most usually, these fall into a category I think of as ‘project books’. A photographer has an idea for a formula which can generate some pictures. He makes enough of them to fill a book. He gets a book. He is proud to be the author of something which nobody else cared about in the first place, which nobody much gets to see, and of which second-hand book dealers will struggle to sell even the paltry number of copies in existence for the next fifteen years. We all know – we all own ! – books like this. But photography is a way of communicating. It deals in facts, and it deals in ideas. If your facts are banal and you’re bereft of ideas, you may well not have a photograph at all. You certainly won’t have a book of them. - Francis Hodgson, ‘The Sound of One Hand Clapping’

Personal and creative fulfillment are perfectly valid motivations for self-publishing a photography book. Sure, maybe only a handful of people will actually see it, but who cares? How does that possibly harm serious minded photography and its pursuit of discovering canon worthy work?

I think Jonathan Blaustein put it best when he said:

I believe we need more Art, not less. More people out there making cool shit, pushing their brains sideways, and hopefully eliciting interesting questions from the people who look at it. More public support for the Arts will lead to more monkeys typing away, which of course will lead to a more intelligent society. Make it so.

The ease and affordability of self-publishing allows people who might otherwise be excluded from the game to pursue their ideas and passions. I don’t understand how this can be seen as anything but positive. And honestly, it’s sort of silly to debate. It doesn’t matter how many commentators take to their blogs (self-publishing!) to criticize self-publishing, it’s not going to stop it because most people aren’t paying attention to anything they have to say anyway, they’re just going to keep sending those files to Blurb and Magcloud. (Note: I’m not refuting Hodgson, in fact I agree with much of what he says. I’m just saying that often people criticize self-publishing through social media which is, you know, a form of self-publishing)

I’d rather not focus on that aspect though because it’s not what interests me most about self-publishing. What I’m interested in understanding are the motivations for pursuing photography and self-publishing. In a private forum, “I wondered whether people will take you seriously unless you’re committed to earning a living as an artist or photographer.”

I’m not sure they will when it comes to photography because the terms amateur and hobbyist have been become poisonous these days. Generally they’re just easy scapegoats for the ills of the photography industry or added to the litany of reasons why photography is dead. The fact is though that most people are going to end up making their living from something other than photography.

Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree here though. I think most intelligent people realize that good work can come from people with a multitude of backgrounds and perspectives. I guess my point is that I think there’s value in pursuing work that doesn’t aim for commercial value or validation in the fine art or documentary photography world.

I’m trying to avoid being overly cynical but it really seems that these days there’s an unhealthy obsession with the economics of photography and status within the community (whichever community you find yourself in). It just seems like too many people are motivated by either economics or receiving validation from the right people. The internet exacerbates this problem because the currency of the web is attention and recognition. It’s not exactly the best medium for contemplation.

Like I said, I’m really interested in motivation, passion and dedication. Why are you making photographs? What are you thinking about? I find that many people can’t answer these questions. It’s hard, I know, but at some point you need to be able to do it.

I’m going to take my editor hat off for a moment and speak as a photographer. I’ve spent the last six years making photographs, educating myself, connecting with other like minded people, and generally allowing myself to be completely consumed by photography. It’s been a magical six years and an unbelievable journey.

So, what’s my motivation? Photography is personally and creatively fulfilling. I need no other rewards. The process and everything about it satisfies my soul at the most primal level. It’s a great a moment when you arrive at this stage. The sense of freedom is liberating. Certainly most of what you’re going to create is going to be banal and forgettable but as long as you’re alive and capable, you can keep on trying, and keep on making more photographs.

I’m in the process of editing a book a photographs I made in California between 2006 and 2008. I’m going to self-publish it. I don’t care if people ignore it. I have to do it. I have to satisfy my creative urge and finish what I started. The creative process and all the work I’ve done these last 6 years is the reward.

Naturally, all of this can also come off as completely narcissistic and self-indulgent. That’s fair. There’s plenty of truth in that but given the amount of vacuous, pointless art that exists in the world, I’m not sure there’s much to worry about in that regard. The beauty of photography is that it’s so pervasive these days that it can almost literally (if Google has its way) cover all perspectives. That’s something to celebrate. So is self-publishing. Let’s keep cranking out the books and zines, and putting work out into the world. Let history and time figure out the rest.

Photographs From: Jennifer Loeber, Andrew Jackson and Misha Friedman

2012-05-15T02:06:04Z

©Jennifer Loeber

Grounded in the ideals of a counter-cultural past and freed from the forced constraints of a conventional camp experience, these photographs explore a society of teenagers empowered through otherwise impossible freedoms.

Nestled in the mountains of Massachusetts is Rowe Camp, a summer utopia self-governed by teens. In the real world, the campers are too young to vote, but here they’re allowed to give strong opinions about the way they live. It’s a glimpse into what life might be like if no ideas were too absurd and eccentricity was the rule, not the exception. My own summers spent at Rowe were both a culture shock and nothing short of paradise. Years after my initiation, I returned to photograph the rituals and intricacies of this unusual community.

From the series ‘Cruel Story of Youth’

©Andrew Jackson

These images were produced in Handsworth, Birmingham; in Britain’s second largest city. They are a snapshot of contemporary Britain that perhaps some wish not to see and yet at its heart is a story of young people who feel forgotten in a city they feel is not theirs and of a young man of eighteen called ‘Fire’.

Already in his short life, ‘Fire’ (he refuses to use his ‘government name’) has been homeless, a gang member and now a father to a son who he hopes will not live a life like his.

From the series ‘The Hidden Landscape’

©Misha Friedman

In the second half of the 18th century romantics revolted against the Industrial revolution in Europe – against rationalization of nature, against social and political norms. In art, a viewer once again was allowed to use his emotions and imagination. Inspired by German and French Romanticism, this ongoing project from Ukraine is my attempt to show how Nature and Man have learned to live within the industrial complex. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, much of Eastern Ukraine ended up ruined many mines and massive factories are lying abandoned, people are unemployed or earn just enough to survive abandoned by the government – and nature is taking over in full force. For decades this land was a symbol of Soviet Rationalism and victory over Nature, but it did not take long for all of that to crumble, leaving behind ruined lives.

From the series ‘donbass-romanticism’

Misha was named PDN 30 and Critical Mass Top 50 this year.

The Digest – May 13th, 2012

2012-05-15T02:09:42Z

©Stacy Kranitz – ‘Regression to the Mean

After taking last week off from The Digest, we’re back and there’s plenty to share. Almost too much really, so I’ll do my best to stay brief and to the point. It’s interesting how many of the same themes keep popping up in one way or another: the economics of photography and art, the impact of the internet and social media, controversy over the use of new tools, etc.

The Various Interpretations of Appalachia

Photographer Stacy Kranitz has been working on a project about Appalachia called Regression to the Mean. Here’s an excerpt from her statement:

This concept outlines my process, which requires many visits in order to gain a photographic series of images that averages these extremes. I am initially drawn to stereotypes. Then I look to demystify these stereotypes only to find that they are rooted in some sort of reality. I do not exclude the stereotypical image from my representations, nor do I only seek it out. The resulting images are a regression to the mean and the mean is interwoven with both typical and atypical lives captured through controlled and chance operations.

On her website she has well over 100 images from the series. CNN published a series of 16 on their blog and big surprise, they chose the most stereotypical photographs which didn’t sit to well with Kranitz, as it shouldn’t. Photographer Roger May has a nice summary of the episode on his blog.

As you can imagined I am in a state of shock. I feel ashamed and humiliated for trusting CNN. I am stunned that they would take my work out of context. I spent a long time looking at their website before agreeing to show my work and in no way did I see any indication that they were subverting photographers work to lead to controversy that would provide greater visibility of their site. Still, I take responsibility for not knowing better.

After contacting the editors at CNN, Kranitz convinced them to make some changes but by that point the damage had already been done. So what can we learn from this? Colberg has a couple of ideas.

I think there are two things we can learn from this. First, the internet can serve as a corrective when it comes to these kinds of events. Second, this story can also teach us a valuable lesson about stories that come from places outside of the US. It’s very important to keep the mechanisms that created the CNN story in mind when viewing, for example, photography produced in places like Africa.

Those are excellent points. I think this really is where the internet can play an important role in showing different perspectives on stories. I think the mainstream media also needs to participate in the dialogue a bit more. This would have been a good opportunity for CNN to explain why they chose the edit they did, but from what I can tell they’ve been silent. I tweeted that I thought it’d be interesting if the LENS Blog or Time LightBox showcased edits as well. This is where things could get really interesting. Maybe I’ll get in touch with Stacy about an LPV feature. What do you think?

The Hipstamatic Instagram Photojournalist

I can barely muster up the energy to comment on this issue. Thankfully others have done a better job than I can. It started with Ben Lowy’s (the Hipstamatic Photojournalist) LENS Blog feature.

If you make an image look different enough, peculiar enough, I think that’s that hook,” he said. “I think that if you create a different aesthetic than people are used to seeing, you can attract the public — you can bring them in and then all of a sudden that is when the content is delivered.

Oye. I think Mr. Lowy may cringe at that quote in a few years. Jon Anderson has a really great post on the issue that is definitely worth the read. It’s probably one of the best pieces I’ve seen on the use of hipstamatic/instagram.

Certainly anyone involved in an aesthetic practice — anything tied to perception and communication — is looking to innovate, to experiment with the form. That is a given. But this emphasis on the need to look different in order to attract attention and somehow correct the effects of so called image fatigue begs questions about the nature of image-based reportage, its status within the news industry, and the qualities that make it meaningful, which are not solely a matter of achieving a ‘different look.’

As Colberg points out, the filtered iPhone hipstamatic instagram look isn’t really different, not by a long shot really. And this is what has always perplexed me about anyone who complains about filters. It’s not new! The whole point is that the filters mimic many different “old school film cameras.”

The problem here is that using a Hipstamatic/Instagram app is not at all “a different aesthetic than people are used to seeing” – everybody and their grandmother are now using those apps or filters. On top of that, these apps mimic old film cameras. So it’s not a different aesthetic at all – it’s a trendy aesthetic. In fact it’s so trendy and popular that Facebook just paid $1b to buy Instagram – a site centering on those kinds of images!

What I want to see is a project created with an iPhone in which the words iPhone, Hipstamatic, or Instagram are NEVER mentioned. Certainly with the tools available a skilled photographer could process their iPhone 4S photos to look like they were taken with any old point and shoot digital camera, because that’s exactly what the iPhone is and the sooner we accept that, the quicker we’ll get past these type of debates and focus on what matters, the content of the photographs!

©Noah Kalina – General Electric

Links of Note

‘Saatchi captures the confusion of contemporary photography’: This would fall under the ‘photography is dead, photography is confusing’ category, whether either is true is up to you I suppose.

Photography is a very strange place to be right now, either inside looking out (the producer) or outside looking in (the public)” – then takes us on a humorous journey though the various continents that currently make up “the entire World of Photography”: Commercia, Documentaria, Amateuria, Artistica and Artcontemporanea. As Ewing rightly points out, these continents view each other across vast oceans of mutual disdain. Many commercial photographers, for instance, think documentary photographers are hopelessly old-fashioned, while the latter view the former as corporate whores in thrall to the filthy lucre of advertising. Both watch the continent of Amateuria, “a continent so vast it has never been properly mapped, never mind explored”, with a mixture of pity and contempt that cannot quite conceal their nervousness.

Photography Is @Higher Pictures: Another great review from DLK Collection. If I had a list of five blogs you should absolutely follow, DLK would be on it for certain.

I think this kind of show is a message from the future. It indicates that the simplistic Photoshop effects of a decade ago are far in the rear view mirror. What lies ahead, at least on the bleeding edge, is the mature investigation of multiple media in concert, with the artist employing increasingly sophisticated levels of control to achieve his/her desired results. The camera is just one tool in the overstuffed tool box, and the thought patterns we bring from the world of vintage photography will be increasingly irrelevant. This show is fresh, and challenging, and unexpected, and this new style of “photography” is going to knock us out of our comfort zone until we begin to accept that the edges we once drew around the medium have been erased.

‘You Don’t Always ‘Get’ Art, But We Still Need More Of It’: Jonathen Blaustein writes about art in A Photo Editor.

I believe we need more Art, not less. More people out there making cool shit, pushing their brains sideways, and hopefully eliciting interesting questions from the people who look at it. More public support for the Arts will lead to more monkeys typing away, which of course will lead to a more intelligent society. Make it so.

‘The business of art fairs’: Felix Salmon writing about the Frieze Art Fair.

Which is why it’s fascinating to me that the imprimatur of high prices is still conferred almost exclusively on those artists with high-profile gallery representation. You’d think that the internet — a medium made for disintermediation — would by now have done a spectacular job of cutting out the middleman and allowing branded artists to sell directly to awed collectors. But that hasn’t happened, and galleries continue to happily introduce big-name collectors to their top artists, comfortable in the knowledge that neither artist nor collector is likely to try to do a deal behind the gallery’s back.

‘New Art MAGIC AMID THE MONEY’: Jerry Saltz with some thoughts on what’s going on with art these days.

But now, all of a sudden, more art is coming from private places, looking almost outsiderlike, untaught, odd in ways that feel pressing, impatient and important. In from the wilderness. A lot of it is smaller, made of less expensive or found materials, and more provisional, or at least bad in ways that aren’t so annoying.

‘Ryan McGinley’s Menagerie’: I saw this show the other day and well, didn’t really like it, but I think McGinley’s a smart guy and in this interview offers some good insights.

It’s weird being a photographer because you really have to divorce yourself from the image. After a while the early photos of mine that keep coming up and appearing in exhibitions or in books no longer give me the feeling that I’m looking at a family album anymore. I had to let go of them as personal moments or else I’d be living in the past, and who wants to live in the past? I need to keep the wheel moving forward.

‘Are you mom enough’ cover controversy’: I don’t have much to say about Time’s controversial cover about breastfeeding or attachment parenting, but I do agree with the assessment from the guys at 1/250.

Now, it’s pretty obvious what’s happening here. TIME is presenting a deliberately provocative photo, and people are being provoked. This is nothing new. But I’ve found the reactions — mostly dirty jokes, of course, along with a smattering of indignation — to be really refreshing. Most of the time, lately, when people got excited about anything related to photography, it’s to do with things like digital manipulation, intellectual property, Instagram, etc. Many of these discussions fail the 1978 test. And even the ones that don’t are usually still really boring.

‘Interview: Jon Rafman, The lack of history in the post-Internet age’: Great interview with Rafman by Marc Feustel.

I was very aware of photographic history when working on this project. I really believe that photography was the medium of the twentieth century, because of the ambiguity surrounding the question of whether it was or was not art, due to photography’s mechanical nature. I saw GSV in some way as the ultimate conclusion of the medium of photography: the world being constantly photographed from every perspective all the time. As if photography had become an indifferent, neutral god observing the world.

‘Interview: Blake Andrews, Part I’: Has Blake Andrews retired from blogging? Maybe, maybe not. But even if he has, I think he’s still going to find ways to voice his thoughts about photography. Maybe he’s moving into an ‘earned media’ model where he only writes on others blogs and magazines.

Another aspect in that photography is very egalitarian. Everyone has a camera and so everyone has to come to terms on some level with what role photos play in their lives. Few people have fine art paintings in their homes but everyone has photos. So there are 7 billion ways to approach it, and no one clear path, and so photography tends to attract thinkers and theoreticians who want to sort it out. That’s part of its problem. Sometimes it can become buried in hyper-conceptual rhetoric. And it is pretty widely open to interpretation. I’ve often wondered about photos in relation to music. You can play a song for someone and within ten or fifteen seconds they will generally know if they like it or not. There’s a societal construct from early childhood which trains one in musical appreciation and taste, even if it isn’t always conscious. But show that same person a photo and they will probably have a much harder time deciding. Is it good? Bad? Interesting? There’s less of a societal baseline for determination, so I think that invites in all the thinkers and theoreticians.

Etc.,

“I’m interested where photography collides with history. Any kind of history, whether it’s personal history, cultural history, political history. So I guess I’m trying to get some kind of intersection with history with my photographs.” – Gerry Bager

Narrative and the Serialization of Photography Online

2012-05-15T02:11:07Z

In July, 2011 I wrote an article titled The Process, The Stream, and The End which outlined some of my thoughts about how photographers are using the internet to publish their work. In it, I advocated ‘photography as process’ in which photographers embrace showing their work in progress in order to make a deeper connection with their audience. While I still think that’s relevant for some photographers, I’ve been slowly re-thinking my position, especially as I’ve come across new insights and ideas.

In the same article, I also touched on the idea of ‘serializing’ blog posts. It’s something that has been on my mind frequently these days, so I want to use this post to see if I can further these ideas and hope stir up some conversation.

When Magnum Jumped Aboard Tumblr

I’m on Tumblr probably too much for my own good, so I was curious to see how Magnum would use it for the next installment of the Postcards from America project. As expected, they posted photographs from Rochester as they worked, sometimes with short captions about the subjects, other times with nothing more than the name of the photographer. It was a your standard ‘random’ visual Tumblr, which is probably what they were aiming for I suppose. Use the tools of the day and all that.

The guys from Magnum are in a tough spot. People expect to see the highest quality documentary photography but as we all know, it’s tough to produce great work in a short period of time, and for them to show work in progress is probably challenging and goes against their natural instincts as disciplined photographers. The photos kept arriving in my stream but I wasn’t really paying too close attention. It just wasn’t all that engaging, but I did wonder about how they felt about using Tumblr and working on the fly.

Then oddly enough this article appeared on The Online Photographer which related to publishing random projects.

I find it curious that Magnum photographs are now so often compiled into random sets, even in books, when one of the reasons for Magnum’s founding was so the photographers could control the presentation of their pictures and make sure they were always presented in the proper context. Magnum photographs now most often seem to be seen out of the context of photojournalistic stories. And sometimes in the context of truly random groupings—such as pictures that include wallpaper.

Maybe the Postcards from America project is one of their ways of regaining some control over context while still working with the platforms of the day (Tumblr). It’d be interesting to hear some of their thoughts about it. I think the Rochester hook has potential but from the photographs I’ve seen it doesn’t really seem like the location matters too much. They just as well could be in Buffalo. I don’t want to be overly negative about the project but it hasn’t really resonated with me, nor with many of the people I’ve asked about it.

But they’re out there trying and to be honest, it’s not like there’s much imagination in photoland when it comes to publishing on the internet. That’s something that has bugged me for awhile, but like most complicated problems, I haven’t really come upon any insights worth sharing. Then I read Megan Garber’s piece about ‘Making the Internet More Like Our Brains’ in The Atlantic and a few things started to click.

The web may be, in the broad cybernetic sense, a brain; as a user experience, though, it has some faulty wiring. When we disparage the digital environment as “overwhelming,” what we’re also faulting it for is its lack of a narrative. The Internet moves, but it doesn’t necessarily move forward. It expands, but it doesn’t necessarily follow any particular trajectory. It lacks, in that sense, a purpose. It lacks a plot. Men die, the Greek physician Alcmaeon believed, “because they cannot join the beginning and the end. – Megan Garber, The Atlantic

What’s the Plot of Your Tumblr?

I suppose asking what’s the plot of your Tumblr might sound a bit strange, but it’s also a bit intriguing. Through social media we sort of naturally and passively tell our story and depending on the person, reveal varying levels of biographical details. In some cases a natural narrative develops but it often comes off as incidental, or at its worst is nothing more than personal branding with an economic objective in mind.

It’s funny how we work on certain ideas, and how they stick with us for months and years. In my article from last July I wrote:

Instead of posting a series of disconnected blog posts, why not serialize them and tell a story? Have a new project in the works? Why not plan out a series of posts that tell the story of how it came to be, from inspiration to execution. The only limitation to the possibilities here are creativity and courage.

This begins to touch on a larger issue within photoland. For the most part, I think the web is viewed as a platform for discussing and commenting on photography and not as a storytelling platform.

That doesn’t have to be the case though. The tools we have at our dispense are powerful and can be used in many creative ways. The time is ripe for a photographer to fuck with our expectations and put these tools to use in new ways that will engage us on a deeper level.

The stream is powerful and frightening. Conforming to its expectations is understandable. But the stream is also malleable. All it takes to change our perceptions of how it can be used are a few creative people who aren’t afraid to push the boundaries of what’s possible. And they exist everywhere.

In the Magnum example, I think instead of publishing the ‘Rochester’ project in progress on Tumblr, it would have been more interesting if they spent time editing the work, adding context and then releasing it in chapters or episodes over a short period of time. Each day they could publish a few pieces of content that link together in some way and then just like good serialized TV shows, leave a bit of cliffhanger. Much can be learned from serialized TV dramas and I think this is a way that you can embrace the randomness and pace of the web but also impose some narrative arc that tells a story. It won’t be easy and naturally photography doesn’t necessarily work like a TV drama, but I think a similar structure can be used in interesting ways.

Maybe I’m being a bit idealistic here, and it could be that I’m just want the web to do something it’s not very good at doing. That may very well be the case but I think photographers and publishers can do better and make the way we experience photography on the web more interesting and engaging (There’s always just ‘good’ pictures too I suppose.)

I haven’t fully fleshed out my ideas but I wanted to write something down to share what’s been on my mind lately. Perhaps we can use this as a starting point for a conversation. If I’m not being clear, or you have questions, please feel free to drop a line in the comments, or on Facebook, or Twitter, or email, or the next time you see me at the pub.