Weekly Picture 80

Skater with Hat, San Marcos, TX, 4.20.2007

Alec Soth on the Importance of Titles

Men might think about sex every seven seconds, but I think about project titles. There is no greater pleasure than lying on the couch, closing my eyes, and daydreaming about the perfect title.

Link

Stephen Shore on Leonard Lopate

Stephen Shore was promoting the Nature of Photographs on wnyc
Here is a slideshow from the book.

He will be signing copies of the book tonight at the
The Chelsea Barnes & Noble
675 Sixth Avenue, at 21st Street

Report from Texas no.1

Luby's is Hiring, Skater, Roadside Tree,
Barry Stone, April 2007

Wagstaff

Tall, handsome and rich would be one way to describe Sam Wagstaff, a legendary figure in the international art world of the 1970s and ’80s. Urbane is another. Iconoclastic, certainly. And glamorous, without a doubt. But the word that keeps cropping up in “Black White + Gray,” a new documentary about Mr. Wagstaff by a first-time director, James Crump, that will be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival next week, is “visionary.” Link Thanks, Deron.

Weekly Picture 79

Ghost, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 4.18.2007

Czech Eden

Matthew Monteith will be signing his new book Czech Eden at the Aperture gallery and bookstore on Tuesday, May 8th at 6:30 p.m and will sign them again along with Gillian Laub at the ICP bookstore on Friday, May 18th.

Winds of Change at Kodak

Plus ça Change

Photographers in the 1900 debate the garrish new "filmist" attitudes and ingnorance of stand cameras in the wake of the innovation of film which threatened the traditional plate process. Sound familiar?

Thanks, Joan
Link

Cathy Kunkemueller's Opening Tonight

Her solo thesis show (April 9th to 14th) opens tonight at the
ICP-Bard studios in Long Island City.
Gallery hours: by appointment all week or
Saturday Apr 14th from 12-5p.
Reception: Friday April 13th from 6:30 to 8:30.

See Photographers/Aritst Friends for more images.

Details:
24-20 Jackson Avenue, 3rd floor, Long Island City
How to get here:
By subway: E/V to 23rd/Ely (1st stop into Queens) or 7 to 45Rd/CourtHouse
Square (1st above ground stop). Takes ~ 10min from midtown Manhattan.
- From the E/V, walk to the far end of the platform past the Citibank sign
and past the G train to the Anable Avenue exit. Walk upstairs, you'll be
next to Brooks Diner and across from the Citibank building. We are on the
same side of the street as Brooks between Brooks and the Court Wine Shop at
24-20. (Note, the V does not run on the weekends)
- From the 7. Walk downstairs. Walk left half a block towards the Citibank
building and cross the street to 24-20 (between Brooks Diner and the Court
Wine Shop).

Iggy Pop to the Point

A technical glitch at WNYC allows the simultaneous broadcast of The Stooge's Fun House on John Schaeffer's SoundCheck and Warren Olney's discussion of the Iraq war on his show, To the Point.

Feeling Nostalgic Tonight?

From Aperture
New York, New York

Feeling Nostalgic
Tip of the Tongue Heated Debate
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
6:30 p.m.
Free
Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555
Feeling Nostalgic presents the ways in which enduring "photographic" sensibilities continue to be felt in an era where digital processes and dissemination predominate. This debate brings together a range of opinions about what photography should keep from its analog past, the importance and relevance of creating prints, and new directions that digital photography and the Internet offer contemporary practice.

Moderator: Charlotte Cotton, head of cultural programs, art + commerce

Panelists: Walead Beshty, photographer; Mark Stafford, educator; Kevin Moore, curator.

The Nature of Photographs Redux

The Nature of Photographs Stephen Shore's seminal meditation on the essence of photographs has been reisssued. Phaidon has published a hard back version complete with more plates and a slightly updated text. In the new text he adds "...or a digital file" to the end of the original paragraph which explains that,

"This book explores ways of understanding the nature of photographs, that is, how photographs function-and not only as the most elegant or graceful photographs, but all photographs made with a camera and printed directly from the negative." p.3 1988 edition.

This books leans heavily on John Szarkowski whose, The Photographer's Eye, (1966) attempted via five discreet catogories, The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time, and Vantage Point, "... to consider the history of the medium in terms of photographers' progressive awareness of characteristics and problems that have seemed inherent in the medium." In this spirit, Shore offers: The Physical Level (the materiality of the print or image on the screen), The Depictive Level (what is shown), The Mental Level, and Mental Modelling. The final two catagories are where things get interesting. The mental level describes how our mind constructs the image. Shore points out that you can feel your mind refocusing as your eyes travel through the space of the picture. The mental level hinges upon focus.

"Focus is the bridge between mental and depictive levels: focus of the lens, focus of the eye, focus of attention, focus of the mind." p.98 (2007) ed.

This feeds into the Mental Model which is my favorite catagory. Photographers make pictures with the idea of what makes a "good" photograph. As we make new photographs, question our own images, explore the work of others, our models shift. If we are curious, and our mental models can then be made more fluid. We can then make new kinds of pictures.

"...And all the while, as your awareness is shifting and your mental model is metamorphosing, your are reading this book, seeing these words-these words, which are only ink on paper, the ink depicting a series of funny little symbols whose meaning is conveyed on the mental level. And all the while, as your framework of understanding shifts, you continue to read adn to contemplate the nature of photographs." p.117 (2007 ed.)

How to Approach a Gallery

Julian showed me this post by Edward Winkleman which provides the goods on how to approach a gallery. Very good stuff.

All 15 paintings of Gerhard Richter's October 18, , 1977 are on view at MoMA as a part of the show:
Out of Time: A Contemporary View, August 30, 2006–April 9, 2007

Publication excerpt
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 309

On October 18, 1977, Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Gudrun Ensslin were found dead in their cells in a Stuttgart prison. The three were members of the Red Army Faction, a coalition of young political radicals led by Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, who had earlier hung herself in police custody. Turning to violence in the late 1960s, the Baader-Meinhof group had become Germany's most feared terrorists. Although the prisoners' deaths were pronounced suicides, the authorities were suspected of murder.

The fifteen works in October 18, 1977 evoke fragments from the lives and deaths of the Baader-Meinhof group. Richter has worked in a range of styles over the years, including painterly and geometric abstraction as well as varieties of realism based on photography; the slurred and murky motifs of this work derive from newspaper and police photographs or television images. Shades of gray dominate, the absence of color conveying the way these second-hand images from the mass media sublimate their own emotional content. An almost cinematic repetition gives an impression, as if in slow motion, of the tragedy's inexorable unfolding. Produced during a prosperous, politically conservative era eleven years after the events, and insisting that this painful and controversial subject be remembered, these paintings are widely regarded as among the most challenging works of Richter's career.

Music + Art

Today my band, in mountains in stars, played the inaugural show of what hopefully will be a great on-going series of Saturday performances on the patio/roof of Mehr (Midtown) Gallery. Good times were had. Thanks to Daphane and Lital and all who braved the frigid temperatures to make my up on the roof "Let it Be" fantasy come alive. (Also: check the new mic stand storage device/stroller bag)

Decoder

Mae at the Queen's Zoo.