a photo a day - month five

a photo a day (set). Month five (1 May-30 May).

I've now come to the end of month five of my photo project 'a photo a day' (month five is above, you can see the first month here, the second month here, the third month here and the fourth month here).

'a photo a day' is an incidental look at what I see out the window or on my way to places everyday. Even if I live in a city environment most of the time I'm primarily focusing on landscape or the sky, as I find the intense impact nature has on us even in a city-setting very interesting indeed (spending time mainly in Stockholm with its' clearly defined seasons and high impact of the weather, this is even more poignant, and thus interesting to document).

It will hopefully be an interesting capture of the seasons changing, random captures of immediate or unexpected loveliness, as well as some beautiful photographs.


You can see the result so far above, here, here, here and here (full set here) or view the individual images, today's photograph and continue to follow the project going forward by clicking here or here. Enjoy!

Symphonie diagonale

Symphonie diagonale (1924) by Viking Eggeling.

Viking Eggeling was a Swedish artist and film-maker of German decent, who's greatly influenced the area of experimental film.

In 'Symphonie diagonale' "paper cut-outs and then tin foil figures were photographed a frame at a time. Completed in 1924, the film was shown for the first time (privately) on November 5. On May 3, 1925 it was presented to the public in Germany; sixteen days later Eggeling died in Berlin."

In the film "the emphasis is on objectively analyzed movement rather than expressiveness on the surface patterning of lines into clearly defined movements, controlled by a mechanical, almost metronomic tempo.

[...]

Above all, a sober quality of rhythm articulation remains the most pronounced quality of the film."


Quotes from ubuweb.

The Dancing Night.

The Dancing Night. Photographs by Yasuwo Tsuji. Tosei-Sha, 2010. 96 pp., 57 black & white illustrations, 8x10½".

Another book from Tosei-Sha, another case of complete lack of information, and another set of really great photographs (really like these night-time abstracts by Yasuwo Tsuji!)

Sunshine Pulse.

Sunshine Pulse. Photographs by Aki Tanaka. Tosei-Sha, 2010. 64 pp., 42 colour illustrations, 5¼x7¾".

'Sunshine Pulse' is a photo book by Aki Tanaka published by Tosei-Sha.

It's the second book from Aki Tanaka (the first was The Sun Shines In, published in 2007), and it portrays sunshine and cherry blossom (sakura).


I haven't been able to find any additional information about Aki Tanaka or this book, so any enlightening would be much welcome.

It is however beautiful photography that can well stand on its' own.

Man Ray: La Photographie N’est Pas L’art.

La Photographie N’est Pas L’art. 12 Photographs. Photographs by Man Ray. Fotohof Editions, 2009. 64 pp., 12 black & white illustrations, 6½x9¾".

'La Photographie N'est Pas L'art' ('Photography is Not Art') is a book with photographs by avantgarde photographer Man Ray.

It's a "limited edition facsimile reprint of a book that was originally published by Guy Levis-Mano in France in 1937. The book is composed of twelve loose-leaf photographs within a portfolio style slipcase and includes a short, poetic text by the surrealist artist Andre Breton entitled 'convulsionaires'.

The collection is a conceptual work that encapsulates a wide range of subject matter including fashion, nature, architecture and portraiture. Providing a provocative counterpoint to the images are counterintuitive captions that disarm and disorientate the viewer."


The book concerns itself with the question 'Is photography art?' a question ("as examined in the influential Paris magazine L’Art"), which was "hotly controversial during the first half of the 20th century".

Man Ray himself proclaimed "photography is not art" in the "essay re-published here as an impeccable facsimile edition of the 1937 original".


'La Photographie N’est Pas L’art' is an "important conceptual work" for anyone interested in photography and its evolution over the years as a medium and as an art-form, as well as anyone interested in the work of Man Ray.


First quote is from the photo-eye review of 'La Photographie N’est Pas L’art' by John Mathews; the quotations in the fourth paragraph is from the publisher's description; and the quotation in the last paragraph is from the photo-eye review by John Mathews.

Route 36.

Route 36. Photographs by William Wylie. Flood Editions, 2010. 104 pp., illustrated throughout.

'Route 36' is a series of 54 photographs by photographer William Wylie documenting the area surrounding Route 36 - following its route across the Kansas prairie and "capturing the region's strong light and registering detailed textures within its vast spaces. Cottonwood trees, twisted by wind, break up the expanses, conveying a sense of scale and vertical life.

Typically, the images move between the dry, rolling landscape and stark, vertical structures. Buildings often present blank faces, abandoned without names or signage, former uses unspecified. They sometimes appear as depthless surfaces against the deep expanse of prairie.

Moving through the collection, we come to recognize this tension-between obsolescence and natural beauty - as characteristic of the region and its moment in history."

-- from the publisher's description.

To see more of William Wylie's work go here or here for example, and to view more photographs from inside this book go here.

Grassland.

Grassland. Photographs by Phil Underdown. Phil Underdown, 2010. 50 pp., 23 colour illustrations, 4x6".

'Grassland' is a limited edition book by photographer Phil Underdown, documenting an old airstrip artificially being turned into a national wildlife refuge.

The book is limited to 50 signed and numbered copies and is made up of bound digital c-prints. Each edition also includes a small inkjet print stored in the inside of the cover.


The publisher's describes 'Grassland' like this:
"When an abandoned airstrip was turned into a national wildlife refuge, photographer Phil Underdown began a 5-year process of documenting the contours of this artificial grassland.

An archaeology of the present, the images depict the landscape of this time - managed but wild, planned yet unpredictable, expressed not through traces that have left their mark for centuries or millenium, but through phenomena that are more fleeting and ephemeral, some playing out over seasons or years, others lasting a mere afternoon."


See more images from inside, and read more about this book here.

Mercy Mercer.

Mercy Mercer. Photographs by Derek Henderson. Michael Lett Publishing, 2009. 140 pp., 128 colour illustrations on Magno Satin matt artpaper and AA woodfree, 12¼x14½".

'Mercy Mercer' is photographer Derek Henderson's second monograph (his previous monograph was The Terrible Boredom of Paradise, published in 2005). You can see more of his series of work by clicking here.


Henderson's work and areas of interest has been described as anti-heroic and everyday, and area-wise they stretch from "abandoned rural New Zealand landscapes and the residents of the alternative communities that line the Waikato River, to Maori teenagers and workers at the Waitoa Slaughterhouse, to fashion models and intimate moments from his private life. [His] vast and varied subject matter is united by an approach marked by a kind of democratic naturalism, where all phenomena, no matter how insignificant or commonplace, is given equal attention.

Although variously described as antiheroic and anti-iconic, Henderson’s interest in the ‘ordinary’ can be deceptive and his narratives often reveal themselves to be more complex and unsteady than they first appear.


Mercy Mercer’s 128 colour photographs of the Waikato river, its neighbours, travelers, typically ‘New Zealand’ in flavour, are punctuated by unexpected moments that tell unofficial stories of New Zealand; tales of colonial invasion, poverty, immigration, boredom, and the ecological degradation of the landscape at the hands of commerce."

-- from publisher's description.

To see more images from this series of photographs go here, and to see more of Derek Henderson's work go here.

A special edition (including original print) of 'Mercy Mercer' is available through the publisher.

True North.

True North. Photographs by Tim White. Tim White, 2009. Unpaged, colour and black & white illustrations throughout, 10x11¼".

'True North' is a photography book by New Zealand photographer Tim White.

Over the course of four years he "travelled to the Far North of New Zealand documenting the lives of several families and community members in the area and their surrounding landscape.

White says he was originally attracted to this project because of the area's past reputation as the most 'Maori' place in New Zealand - a mysteriously spiritual place with a reputation of 'hopelessness'. But after spending years meeting and entering the lives of local people and families, White discovered this 'truth' turned out to be anything but."


To view more images from inside this book go here (you can also go here for more of Tim White's work).


There's also a limited edition of 'True North'. This edition is limited to 75 copies, which are "signed with authentication card, contains book, Whakarongomaikio DVD-R (PAL no region coding), A4 inkjet print (1 of 5 images) in a hand made box designed by NZ artist Mike Davison. Made to order".


Both quotes are from the publisher's description.

Cannonball

Cannonball (shortfilm, 2010) by California is a place.

"Some of them are full of black water. Others have become graveyards for old lawn furniture and rodent carcasses. They are shaped like jelly beans and manufactured by companies named Sunny Side and Champagne.

Once upon a time, Fresno was the California Dream. Own a car. Own a house. Own a pool. Everyone wanted it and the wonderful world of credit made it all possible.

But now, with the foreclosure monster running wild, the dream is dry. Thousands of pools are festering in the hot Central Valley sun. For most people this is tragic. But for some, it’s an opportunity."

-- source for description.

I really like this skate movie, which is also interesting as social comment to the economical down-turn and its effect on California. As an extra bonus some of the shots of the abandoned swimming pools are just pretty breath-taking.


For more here's their blog, and here's their vimeo video page.

Melt. Portrait of an Iceberg.

Melt. Portrait of an Iceberg. Photographs by Simon Harsent. Pool Productions PTY LTD, 2010. 100 pp., colour illustrations throughout, 16¾x12". Images: the publisher's cropped images from plates from the book.

British photographer Simon Harsent has lived and worked in the UK, US and Australia doing commercial photography work and having his work included in numerous books and magazines.

His work is also in the permanent collections at the Queensland Art Gallery and at the Powerhouse Museum.

'Melt. Portrait of an Iceberg' is the first monograph of his work.


'Melt. Portrait of an Iceberg' can be said to be a photographic journey following the ice berg travlling down what is know as 'Iceberg Alley' ("an area off the West coast of Greenland where icebergs break away from the ice-wall and travel from Baffin Bay to the East Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, and then enter the shipping lanes").

The portfolio of work starts with "images of the massive icebergs as they enter Greenland's Disco Bay from the Ilulissat Icefjord; it ends with the icebergs off the East Coast of Newfoundland, by which time they have travelled hundreds of miles, and have been so battered and broken down that they are little more than ghosts of what they once were".


Simon Harsent about 'Melt. Portrait of an Iceberg':

"Seeing them first overpowering in grandeur and then, later, about to be absorbed back into the flux from which they came, is both beautiful and humbling: a metamorphosis that endows them with a life-span, each with it's own personality, each with it's own story.

This project had its origin in a wholly personal moment; a personal journey. It is impossible, however, to look at these images and not think of the environmental issues we face right now.

Just as the choice I made in my childhood in some ways defined me as a man, so the choices we are making as a species will define who we become, and what becomes of the planet on which we live."


Read more about this book here, and view more images from the portfolio here.


First two quotes from the statement for 'Melt. Portrait Of An Iceberg' by Simon Harsent, third quote from the publisher's description.

Open See.

Open See. Photographs by Jim Goldberg. Steidl & Partners, 2009. 100 pp., numerous tritone and colour illustrations, 6½x8½".

The book 'Open See' "follows refugee and immigrant populations traveling from war-torn, economically devastated and often AIDS-ravaged countries to make new homes in Europe.

Goldberg spent four years documenting the stories of Greek refugees from Iraq, Somalia, Congo, Ukraine, Albania, Russia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, China, Sudan, Kenya, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Palestine and Moldavia."

- part of publisher's description.

Read more about this book and view images from inside it here at Steidl.


'Open See' was selected as one of photo-eye's Best Books of 2009 by seven of its participant artists.


UPDATE: Images of this post have been changed from time of first posting.

1 min series short film

Kobra (short film, 2009) by Jesper Halling.

I just thought we'd have a little short film on a Friday...

This film is by Jesper Halling and was part of the 2009 1 min- series on the Swedish cutlutre program Kobra, where people sent in contributions that was then selected to be shown (or not as the case might be).

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any information on Jesper Halling or any other work he might've produced - please enlighten me if you can.


UPDATE: Jesper Halling is a Swedish artist currently studying at the Oslo Art Academy (Norway) and is part of the Okynnes art collective. Click the links for more information (thank you Caroline!)

Kin Subscription Series Number Two.

Kin Subscription Series Number Two. Photographs by Todd Hido, Abner Nolan, Marianne Mueller, and Alec Soth. TBW Books, 2009. 48 pp., Four volumes with four colour illustrations, 6x8".

'Kin Subscription Series Number Two' is a limited edition series, in its second year, that's comprised of four books (limited to 800 copies, including subscription copies of 650 unsigned and 50 signed copies).

Each book is hand numbered and its cover hand stamped. It comes wrapped in a slipcover measuring 6x8".


The publisher describes this book series like this:

"Four accomplished artists [Todd Hido, Marianne Mueller, Abner Nolan and Alec Soth] working in the photographic medium were invited to present an intensely personal and poetic exploration of their work to be released in the form of a book.

Each artist will be represented by one book in this four book series. Given complete creative control, these gifted individuals crafted powerful, surprising, and completely uncompromised works that implore the viewer to contemplate the relationships between images.

This series provides an unparalleled glimpse into the thinking processes of who we consider to be four of today's most exciting photo makers.

[...]

Last years' Subscription Series was recognized and collected by many prominent galleries and museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. An article about the series also appeared in PDN (Photo District News)."


Click here and scroll down to read about the artists and their work and individual books featured in this series.

Pyramids.

Pyramids. Photographs by Mike Slack. The Ice Plant, 2009. 80 pp., 41 colour illustrations, 7x9".

The book 'Pyramids' by American photographer Mike Slack "commemorates an era that ended towards the close of 2008, when Polaroid stopped production of its self-developing film.

Slack’s work celebrates the beauty and mystery of this beloved medium, with a volume that continues the striking aesthetic of his previous titles, OK OK OK (2002) and Scorpio (2006), rounding out a trilogy of stand-alone volumes that together form a series of 123 pictures.

Slack’s most recent Polaroids collection captures everyday scenes of quiet drama - a dust storm in the desert, stairways and windows, schoolchildren on a field trip - that manage to eschew nostalgia, and which are charged instead with an atmosphere of anticipation.

Printed at their actual size, the Polaroids are presented on the page as physical artifacts of cryptic events to be narrated by the viewer.

While the title of this book derives from a group of three early 1970s office buildings in Indianapolis called The Pyramids, the deeper implication is that photographs themselves (Polaroids in particular) are, like the ancient pyramids, containers of the vanishing past fading into the future."

-- part of publisher's description.

See more of Mike Slack's work here, and view more images from inside this book here.

Iris Apfel

Stills from Kobra interview clip where Iris Apfel talks about her wardrobe and style.

Iris Apfel is one of those people that's just magical - her spirit, personal sensibility and person. It's like a shot of energy and inspiration straight into your veins.


The Swedish culture program Kobra recently had a segment where they talked to Iris Apfel about her work as an interior designer at the White House (she's worked for the Presidential administrations of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton and Bush Jr).

You can watch the entire episode here on the web (this episode also includes an interview with German Artist Thomas Demand, who's wonderful book 'Thomas Demand' I've previously featured here on Rare Autumn).

As a bonus they also did a web exclusive (stills from this clip above) where Iris Apfel shows some pieces from her wardrobe and talks about fashion and style.

Really don't miss these two absolutely excellent clips! (all interviews in English).


Iris Apfel has also had a number of exhibitions featuring clothes she's collected - see here or here for example.

To read/see more about her go here, here, here or here for example.

Gravity.

Gravity. Photographs by Kalle Sanner. Farewell Books, 2009. 28 pp., 26 black & white illustrations, 6x8".

'Gravity' is a small title published by Farewell Books, which features work by Swedish photographer Kalle Sanner.

Sanner has a Bachelor and Masters degree in Fine Art Photography and has exhibited his work frequently. He has also published a number of Artist Books.

To see more of his work go here and click on the individual images.

Invasion 68.

Invasion 68. Prague. Photographs by Josef Koudelka. Aperture, New York, 2008. 296 pp., 250 duotone illustrations., 9½x12½".

"In 1968, Josef Koudelka was a thirty-year-old acclaimed theater photographer who never photographed a news event. That all changed on the night of August 21, when Warsaw Pact tanks invaded the city of Prague, ending the short-lived political liberalization in Czechoslovakia that came to be known as the Prague Spring.

Koudelka had returned home the day before from photographing gypsies in Romania. In the midst of the turmoil of the Soviet-led invasion, he took a series of photographs, which were miraculously smuggled out of the country.

A year after they reached York, Magnum Photos distributed the images, credited to an unknown Czech photographer to avoid reprisals.

The intensity and significance of the images earned still-anonymous photographer the Robert Capa Award. Sixteen years would pass before Koudelka could safely acknowledge authorship.

Forty years after the invasion, this impressive monograph features nearly 250 these searing images-most of them published here for the first time-personally selected by Koudelka from his extensive archive. Though they document a specific historical event, their transformative quality still resonates.

A compelling introduction and chronology by three Czech writers provides a nuanced examination of invasion."

-- publisher's description.

Read and see more about Josef Koudelka here, here and here for example.

Outerland.

Outerland. Photographs by Allison Davies. Charles Lane Press, 2010. 144 pp., 65 colour illustrations, Tyvek binding, 15¼x11¼". (Click individual images for larger view).

"For more than a decade Allison Davies has been quietly making landscape photographs and ambiguous self-portraits of haunting beauty.

In 'Outerland', her debut collaboration with Charles Lane Press, Davies portrays herself as a solitary interplanetary wanderer lost in the spectacular vistas of alien worlds.

Presented without text or explanation of any kind, and with only a handful of mysterious symbols to help orient ourselves in Davies’ imagined cosmos, 'Outerland' offers a compelling new perspective on self-portraiture within the narrative of modern landscape photography."

-- part of the publisher's description.

View more of the beautiful images from inside this book here.

a photo a day - month four

a photo a day (set). Month four (1 Apr-30 Apr).

So I've now reached the end of month four of my photo project 'a photo a day' (month four is above, you can see the first month here, the second month here and the third month here).

'a photo a day' is an incidental look at what I see out the window or on my way to places everyday. Even if I live in a city environment most of the time I'm primarily focusing on landscape or the sky, as I find the intense impact nature has on us even in a city-setting very interesting indeed (spending time mainly in Stockholm with its' clearly defined seasons and high impact of the weather, this is even more poignant, and thus interesting to document).

It will hopefully be an interesting capture of the seasons changing, random captures of immediate or unexpected loveliness, as well as some beautiful photographs.


You can see the result so far above, here, here and here (full set here) or view the individual images, today's photograph and continue to follow the project going forward by clicking here or here. Hope you like it!