Tracking HK Visual Traits! (Part 2)

#24 Photobook Club Session by Phoboko

The world is increasingly constituted through visual mediation nowadays. Meaning, is generated overwhelmingly through the circulation and exchange of visual images and icons, in relationship to culture, politics, data, information, identity, or emotion etc. So how do we read visual codes? And how do we make meaning from visuals?

To dive deeper and talk about HK visual traits through photobooks, we felt the first step was to have a common language or structure to talk about it. Similarly to language systems, the representation system used in photography also involves rules and conventions, known as visual semiotics.

In signs, there are the signifiers and the signified. Visuals and photographs are signifiers. They are physical forms of communicating a particular sign or meaning. ‘Signified’ refers to the meanings or thoughts that a photograph expresses. The signified can be interpreted through reading physical objects from an image e.g. there are blocks of buildings with washed-out paints. This is known as denotation. Yet most of the time, the signified is interpreted connotatively. This means that we make meaning from an image via experiences, ideologies, and expectations we have e.g. the blocks relate to the grassroots community in Hong Kong. It reminds me of how we used to go to Tze Wan Shan every year to visit my uncle and my grandmother. It also led me to think about the housing structure and policies back in the 80s when HK was still governed by the UK. I expect to see elderly gathering around to play chess, and people with their frugal lifestyle and outfits.

For signifiers, Peirce categorise them into 3 types – icon, symbol and index. To put it in relation to photography, an icon is when the photograph has a physical resemblance to the signified. We know how to read these images because they clearly resemble what they are representing e.g. a picture of a rose is an icon of a rose. Most of the time, photographs are icons of actual objects we see. Symbolic signs, on the other hand, have no obvious nor natural relationship to their objects. The relationship is learnt culturally e.g. a rose is a symbolism of romantic love. However, in this case, the rose is almost universally known for its symbolism of romantic love. So depending on the context in which the image is presented e.g. museum / gallery / magazine and the kind of viewers who interpret it, the rose can be an iconic as well as a symbolic sign of romantic love. Lastly, indexical signs have an “existential” relationship to their objects. This means that they have coexisted in the same place at some time. Photographs are indexical signs that testify to the moment that the camera was in the presence of its subject. At least up until before AI photography and CG imaging, photographs are indexical in that it represents a trace of the real.

With these terminologies in mind, we confronted four generic styles of photobooks from Hong Kong that surfaced during session #23: black & white documentary, pop culture representations, the young or contemporary, and typological presentation. We were split into small groups to assess such recurring themes.

1 – black and white documentary – Blues by Alfred Ko

Blues by Alfred Ko is a photobook made in the 90s that talks about Hong Kong colonialism before the handover in 1997. At the back of the book the artist quoted, “my images represent a state of mind, an extraordinary state of mind prevalent before the founding of S.A.R.”. The book is chronologically arranged from 1989 up til July 1st 1997, the day of the handover. Throughout the book there are repeated gloomy skies and recurring icons of the status of the Queen. There is an image of people holding candles at Victoria Park, several images of airplanes against HK cityscapes and repeated images of banners with slogans that say “democracy”. They all symbolise the idea of “freedom” which was circulating in the city. In one of the images taken in 1993, 5 years before the handover, we see the back of a middle-aged man holding his left fist tight with visible veins while overlooking the harbour at a reclamation in Yaumatei. On the opposite side of the harbour parks many barges and cargo boats. It should be the view of Stonecutters Island, which was connected to the Kowloon peninsula by the West Kowloon Reclamation in the 1990s to provide land for the construction of the road and railway network to the new Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok. His gesture reveals a kind of tension, symbolising the anxiety that people have with what is to come in the future. Overall, the black and white documentary images throughout the photobook generate a mood of tension and uncertainty. Perhaps it is this atmosphere and feeling that reflects a type of Hong Kong trait from a particular era.

2 – pop culture representation – The Dayspring of Eternity by Lau Chi Chung

The Dayspring of Eternity by Lau Chi Chung, on the other hand, was produced recently. It talks about the artist’s state of mind, or a representation of a state of mind, on Hong Kong colonialism as well but 25 years after the handover in 1997. The artist used a lot of found images from old newspapers, advertisements and tickets across the photobook. He also used a lot of text to narrate his nostalgic feeling towards the period of Hong Kong when it was colonised by the UK. The front cover image is an image of the sea with a purply hue and a lens flare. Some identified it immediately with Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. As D puts it, “the varying colour reflections in this image is very Hong Kong. I have only seen it here.” Others have more of a consensus feeling towards its sign of signifying dreaminess. As we went through the book, B picked up that the word 「香港」is prevalent throughout the book as well as the “Hong Kong font”「真體字」. Whether it is represented as a lightbox icon on an image or used as the text font throughout the book, there is no doubt that this is one of the iconic traits of Hong Kong.

3 – the young or contemporary – Teleportation by Lai Long Hin

Teleportation is a photobook created by a Hong Kong contemporary artist, Lai Long Hin. The photobook is a vast collection of snapshot pixelated images from his mobile phone photography. The work is split into 17 chapters. Each chapter consists of an array of images. Each image can relate to either one or the other or both adjectives from its title e.g. Treatment or Healing, Hiding or Invisible. The artist often zooms in as much as possible using his camera phone to focus on people and objects, excluding all unnecessary detail and clutter from his images. Hence, it is difficult to depict them connotatively as single images. Even when looking at them as a set of images from a chapter, they inspire questions rather than provide signs for readers to associate meanings to them.

In particular, I like Chapter 8: Still or Frozen. The first image is a girl frozen in her posture, leaning her right side against the wall while the boy leans forward. Next page on the left is an image of a few Guanyin statues. They are in crossed-leg positions and are floating on the wall. As I flip through to read this chapter, I began to question whether the images relate more to Stillness or Frozen. Other ambiguous images from this chapter such as, an image of a girl hanging upside down on a swing as if she was unconscious; an image of a pile of sand against a concrete wall; an image of many empty Bonaqua bottles uniformly standing on the floor. Towards the end of the chapter there is also an interesting diptych image. One is a close up of a man sleeping against a red pole, the other is an image of a lady with a similar facial expression but looking blank.

The joy in reading this photobook is in the details of the day-to-day that the artist directs us to see. How do we look for symbolism of Hong Kong traits from this work? Perhaps there are no commonly-known or easily identifiable signs such as Hong Kong font or people holding candles at Victoria Park. Instead, we make-meaning and associate the work to Hong Kong from the combination of the 500 pages thick photobook of images of gestures, objects, architectures and people.

4 – typological presentation – BLOCKS by Dustin Shum

BLOCKS by Dustin Shum is a photobook about the Hong Kong public housing estates. Found in the artist statement of this work, he mentioned that, “according to the 2010 statistics of the Hong Kong Housing Society, thirty percent of the territory’s population lives in public housing… public housing has come to represent typical living spaces in Hong Kong.” The photobook contains portraits of these public housing estates, almost all of them documented in isolation from people. Images are of architectural designs, exteriors and interiors of public housing communal spaces, wall graffitis, and traces of decays as well as renovations. There are a few set of images that display the before and after of the exact same location. For example, there is an image of On Yat House, Shun On Estate with handwritten notes on the exterior wall. The page after is an image of the exact same location yet taken a year and four months after. The image shows that the exterior wall is newly painted in a gradient of blue. The blocks on the sides are no longer dull in colour but in sharp yellow.

Although the work is very personal to the artist Dustin as he grew up in one of these public housing estates for 30 years, images from BLOCKS definitely have strong indications of Hong Kong traits to Hong Kong readers. Public housing estates often symbolise the low-income, ageing, and backward community that relies on social securities. They are also important monuments of the Hong Kong Government’s social policies during post-war years, as the dense multi-storey design was able to accommodate waves of immigrants from the Mainland effectively. Even without such cultural knowledge of Hong Kong, the lego-looking multi-storey design of these blocks are iconic to the city Hong Kong that can also be found in postcards, magazines and publications.

After a long and deep look into these four photobooks from Hong Kong, how do we make meaning about Hong Kong through the images in these photobooks? Are there patterns that emerge and is there a Hong Kong visual language? Is it important to recognise it and if so, archive it? Perhaps it is too early to say as we only really unfolded one small layer of this huge topic. What’s next might be to look into the history of Hong Kong photobooks and the existing archive of it from varying sources.

Tracking HK Visual Traits!

#23 Photobook Club Session by Phoboko

“What are the visual codes that represent Hong Kong?”
“How do we read, recognise and value these in photographic works?”

When we look at an image, how do we know that it is of Hong Kong?

For example, these two images:

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  © Michael Wolf “Informal Solutions” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

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  © 葉英𠍇 「如意象」from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

I know this is a very broad question, and maybe a retarded one too. But I wonder, if there were no texts disclosing where the image was taken, or if the image was taken out of its original context, would anyone be able to read or recognise whether this image is of HK or not? And hypothetically, if we aren’t living in HK or have been to HK, would we be able to tell or value an image of HK? And then I wonder, can there be “HK images” that are not taken in HK? How do we value images that recall a sense of belonging to this land, HK?

I love Chan Long Hei’s zine The Blooming Souvenirs. I found that it is an excellent example to ease into the above questions. Souvenirs of Hong Kong are symbolic objects that are designed and marketed to be the brand image of Hong Kong. They can be purchased as an association to the city itself. Here, the image of the Hong Kong’s emblem, a giant statue Golden Bauhinia flower located at The Golden Bauhinia Square where the daily flag raising ceremony occur, is transformed into different types of souvenirs such as puzzles, nail clippers, fridge magnets etc. Since Hong Kong’s handover, these replicated souvenirs seek to display their political history in an engaging way. Not only do these souvenirs represent Hong Kong’s touristic experiences, but they also imply the imagery of Hong Kong’s prosperity metaphorically. When the souvenirs are brought home, they recall a sense of belonging or ownership of the land.

Notes: 

1. 1997年7月1日，中華人民共和國自1949年在中國大陸地區建立政權以來首次接收香港主權，並成立香港特別行政區；中國國務院贈送給特區政府一座名為「永遠盛開的紫荊花」的貼金銅雕，此雕塑安放在新落成的會議展覽中心新翼。雕塑寓意香港永遠繁榮昌盛；銅雕高6米，重70噸，以青銅鑄造，表面鋪以金箔，以紅色花崗岩作底座。基座圓柱方底，寓意九州方圓，刻有長城圖案，象徵中國懷抱香港。 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%91%E7%B4%AB%E8%8D%8A%E5%BB%A3%E5%A0%B4
2. The flower is a sterile hybrid, and Richard Saunders, author of Portraits of Trees of Hong Kong and Southern China, suggests that this means it is “arguably an inauspicious symbol for a city built on mixed Chinese and British heritage.” https://zolimacitymag.com/how-did-the-bauhinia-a-sterile-flower-become-the-symbol-of-hong-kong/

© Chan Long Hei “The Blooming Souvenirs” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

Yau Ma Tei by Chan Wai Kwong, on the other hand, speaks of HK visual codes through the way he photographed. This photobook is his first published monograph focusing on the Yau Ma Tei neighbourhood of Hong Kong. His use of candid and unpretentious visual language reflects the area honestly, neither subdues nor favours either landscape nor individual. He faced everything and photographed anything. Perhaps it’s this style of visual language that we see honest and vernacular images of street traders and local residents gather, the old and the young, revealing glimpses of visual elements of HK such as HK buses, Chinese neonlights and phonebooth, and the textures that represents HK.

© Chan Wai Kwong “Yau Ma Tei” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

With Under the Flyovers by Chau Ho Man, the HK visual codes become less recognisable in my opinion. Although all images are shot in HK, the landscape style of capturing the world under shadows of flyovers creates this feeling of otherworldly. The way it was printed on black paper with silver tones made it even more so. It feels as if I was travelling in the realm of hell when flipping through this photobook. I then wonder, without the sensitivity and awareness of the visual culture of this side of HK, would we be able to recognise these images and more so, value these images as images of HK.

© Chau Ho Man “Under the Flyovers” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

While the style of photography matters in recognising HK visual traits, The Queens by Wong Kan Tai brought another interesting aspects to this topic. The book is a collection of Hong Kong and Macau’s streetscapes from 1977 to 2009. These photographs are mixed in the photobook to narrate “a borrowed time, a borrowed place”, like the essence of a hotel, as Wong Kan Tai explained.

He said that these two places are like twin brothers, a Portuguese colony for more than 400 years, and a British colony for 150 years. There is only a little time difference in their development, but there is not much difference in essence. In the photos, one can recognise HK with iconic visuals such as, the passenger plane flying over the Kowloon Walled City that is about to be dismantled, the important ceremony of the withdrawal of the British army in 1997, the scenes of citizens celebrating in Statue Square on the day of the handover etc. However, what intrigue me the most is that there are some photos that led me to question whether they are taken from Hong Kong or Macau. For one, the visual style of the book was consistently photojournalistic which makes it harder to distinguish which city the images were taken from. But more so, in these images, I find that the cityscape of Hong Kong and Macau is so similar that when I cannot recognise any iconic visual codes of HK when viewing these images, I become suspicious of their locations. I then wonder, is there a recognisable or traceable visual codes for cities with similar fate and background, as Wong Kan Tai mentioned? Could a way of tracing HK visual traits be about tracing the imprints and relics of a colonial era?

© Wong Kan Tai “The Queens” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

Lastly, The Dayspring of Eternity by Lau Chi Chung I feel is a personal photo essay (rather than a photobook) about Hong Kong. He uses the pop song <黎明不要來> from the 80s as the title of the book to metaphor his question on whether there is such thing as “permanence”. The book walks us through the Hong Kong history as well as his imagination and personal feelings towards Hong Kong via archival materials from pop culture, his photographs and texts. I feel the primary work in this book is the texts, while the images are supplementary to the story narration. Within those photographs he took, the visual codes of Hong Kong are more prominent in some images than others. There is a documentary image of the State Theatre in North Point, and then there is an archival illustration from HK old school textbooks, which visually both very much signifies HK. On the other hand, there is an image of a table covered by a laced tablecloth with toilet rolls on top and someone who looks like he’s doing calligraphy. Here, the HK visual codes become harder to identify. What interests me most with this book is that, instead of the visual representations or the visual style of the images that resonates with HK, it is the approach to the design and narration of the book that feels very HK to me. The narration is very much in sync with the melody and lyrics of the pop song – melancholic and nostalgic – which is the general theme of HK pop songs back in the 80s.

黎明請你不要來 就讓夢幻今夜永遠存在
Dawn please don’t come, let the dream exist forever tonight

讓此刻的一片真 伴傾心的這份愛 命令靈魂迎入進來
Let this moment of true love welcome the soul in

Note:

1. 《黎明不要來》，1987年香港電影《倩女幽魂》的插曲，屬慢板抒情，由黃霑作曲並填詞、戴樂民編曲、葉蒨文主唱。黃霑憶述，《黎》原是他為1984年電影《先生貴姓》寫的插曲，描述應召女郎女主角與男主角纏綿時的心情：她本來因為抗拒接客而討厭夜晚，現在卻唯恐夜太短，祈昐黎明不要來。歌曲沒被採用，1987年黃霑任《倩女幽魂》音樂監督時覺得適合用在聶小倩和甯采臣的情愛場景裏，就略改了幾個字，找跟他合作過幾次電影歌曲的葉蒨文灌唱；插曲最後以交叉時空音樂的蒙太奇電影手法呈現。 黃霑亦曾表示「不許紅日教人分開」一句隱喻時事，紅日暗指中共，因為當時正值中英談判，許多香港人對前途缺乏信心而移民外國，當中包括他的朋友。黃霑曾表示「不許紅日」處用了「降e」這個藍調音符，有論者認為這個不和諧的音程道出曲中人對「黎明」的抗拒和無奈。https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/黎明不要來

© Lau Chi Chung “The Dayspring of Eternity” from Lumenvisum Photobook Library

Before we can dive deeper into tracking HK visual traits, the discussion about HK visual traits gets blurry and confusing when we cannot define what we mean by “visual traits”. To my understanding, it is a combination of visual semiotics (ie. the visual elements that signifies HK), visual style (ie. the style of the image created) and visual language (ie. the way these images narrates a particular story).

This will be further discussed in my next writing, which will also be the topic of the next Photobook Club session in February 2023.

Honest Photography: how to photograph with a free mind

Part 1. Kosuke Okahara on photographing with a free mind

“If there’s a pure form of documentary photography, the picture should not be influenced by any preexisting visions.”

Having been working on a story about the impact of drugs on local community in various parts of Columbia for 13 years, Kosuke Okahara became able to predict the kind of scenes that he would see even though he was in different towns, and in the way he would frame the images.

“It’s like I was trying to see what I’ve seen already… it’s almost like I’m copying myself…”

“I asked myself – am I documenting or am I just taking pictures of the situation that I kind of wanted to see… ” he quoted. 

A former aspiring Olympic skier whom became a W. Eugene Smith Fellowship recipient, Japanese photographer Kosuke Okahara shared his struggle with the philosophical dilemma he had with documentary photography, and his journey to finding his ways through making the work The Blue Affair. 

© Kosuke Okahara, from the photobook ‘The Blue Affair’; Source @ Kosuke Okahara Website

The Blue Affair is a a work with photographs taken in Koza, the heart of Okinawa, which gave Okahara the refreshing sense of being a photographer with a beginner’s mind again. The repeated visits without a specific purpose in producing a story somehow led to the people, the conversations, the happenings he encountered from this place infiltrating his dreams — as if these were symbolic gestures in nudging him to return, and at the same time, to relight his inner flame and re-experience again the joy of just pure photography.   

“… being more conscious takes one away from the purpose while getting ride of the purpose is the only way to get closer to the intent. In that sense, documentary is like a tragedy of fate. Achieving by losing – like a Shakepearean play.” —extract from the afterword written by Tatsuya Ishikawa, of the photo book The Blue Affair by Kosuke Okahara. 

Are we really creating images from a fresh eye every time we shoot, or are we already building on from pre-existing images of what to be seen? How can we be more aware when the way we photograph becomes purposeful rather than being open and honest with what is there to be seen? And how can we remove ourselves from the position of already knowing and begin again with a beginner’s mind? These are the questions to ponder, and with the blue affair, Okahara has shown us that it is possible.

Going through The Blue Affair book gave me chills. It’s the kind of book that gives you a visual journey in a way that you are drawn in as if you were present with the photographer, experiencing what he was experiencing at the same time. That’s the kind of work I aspire to work towards, because the work that one would remember the most, are the ones that are felt.

His recommended Photobook:  Rasen Kaigan by Leiko Shiga

Please check out his work:

Website: https://www.kosukeokahara.com / IG: @kosukeokahara

To be continued… Part 2. Teju Cole on embracing chance in a confined time

Evidence – Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel

Larry Sultan, famously known for his work Picture from Home, which documents the lives of his home with parents in Southern California with contemporary photography, film stills, fragments of conversations and his own writings and other memorabilia, collaborated with Mike Mandel for a work less well-known Evidence, a brilliant recent discovery while reading the book Photography and Collaboration by Daniel Palmer.

Between 1975-1977, Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel worked together and curated selected photographs from a multitude of images that previously existed solely within the boundaries of the industrial, scientific, governmental and other institutional sources. The work Evidence is about juxtaposing these previously contextualised images into new forms of narratives which some become humorous and while others perplexing. The work demonstrate that the meaning of a photograph is conditioned by the context and sequence in which it is seen, and by isolating from their original context that these images take on meanings that address the confluence of industry and corporate mischief, ingenuity and pseudo-science.

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© Larry Sultan, from the series ‘Evidence’; Source @ Larry Sultan

One needs to read the book to fully absorb and comprehend what they set out to do (And I wish I have the book to read it closely too!). The absurdity of these pairings somehow has a common thread that holds the whole book, transporting you to a universe that you may be familiar with yet completely off in some way – suggesting that we often read images in a contextualised form and when that’s been removed, what seems familiar becomes floating in a space that is waiting for us to make meaning of. When there’s a series of these and are carefully curated and sequenced, our brain has its way to fill in those blanks and create new forms of narrative. Evidently these are images of evidence, of truths, of events, of history… somehow in Evidence the value of these images changed and became fictional.

2:16.22 – Kensaku Seki

Japanese artist Kensaku Seki (with a background in physical education and himself also as an athlete) recently made a work 2:16.22 which looks at five athletes who stake their lives on the act of running and the on-going fight to set records. The work looks at the other side of glory in setting the record numbers – the sweat, the pain, the endurance etc came together for an artist book as well as an exhibition that is currently showing at Reminder Strongholds.

I really enjoyed the work perhaps because I was also a former swimmer and I resonate with the hardship behind the glorification.

Particles – Boris Loder

German photographer, Boris Loder’s recent book Particles has a refreshing take with the use of photography as a medium to talk about landscapes and human impacts on urban planning.

The concept of identity often seems like a container that can be filled with very different, even contradictory contents. With Particles, Boris Loder transforms the notion of identity as a container into sculptural photographs. He collected objects from various sites around the city of Luxembourg and took them back to his studio, where he packed them carefully into 10-centimetre square plexiglass cubes. The resulting constructions were then photographed, and the silhouette of the plexiglass edited out in postproduction. In this way, assumptions about urban planning intentions are contrasted with actual use. Fast food on a sports field or a drug stash near a renowned bank allude to socio-geographical realities that only very rarely surface in popular notions of Luxembourg.

© Boris Loder, from the book ‘Particles’; Source @ ASX

A landscape is understood both as a physical place and a representation of a physical place which both forms are reliant on the idea of a boundary – the first, on invisible political demarcations separating one tract of land from another, the second, on pictorial boundaries of linear perspective. What intrigues me was how he challenges the limitation of photography of transforming a 3D landscape into a 2D print. He cleverly uses fixed 3-dimensional cubes to building sculptural photographs. As Eugenie Shinkle from ASX puts it, “each photograph, in other words, is a two-dimensional rendering of a three-dimensional construct held together by an invisible boundary – a landscape by any other name.”

His other work Cloroplastics is also intriguing in that he uses plastic plants to try to answer where and why people prefer the substitute rather than the ephemeral beauty of the original.

Jardin – Massao Mascaro

A garden is an enclosed space. A garden needs a frame if it is to be called a garden.
The garden is the moment when a place becomes a landscape.
The garden, or the orchard, is the germ of the settlement, the village, the town, the city and the nation.
The garden, we might be inclined to say, is neither completely natural nor fully human and as such stands at an equal distance between Man and God.⠀

Humans are makers of gardens just as they are tellers of stories.

verde 027

ata-bp 008

madrid 006

Jardin 007

© Massao Mascaro, from the series ‘Jardin’; Source @ Witty books

Young french photographer, Massao Mascaro, who is based Brussels did a book Jardin which talks about the mythical space of the garden, found in the streets and parks of Madrid. The scope of his work is profoundly political, as it is rooted in the need to explore how humans relate to the spaces (both cultural and geographical) they inhabit. His point of view is always intimate, his use of a soft-focus, a tight cropping and a narrow depth of field evoke touch.

I love the way he sees and the way he frames his images. The highlighted monochrome of the work makes it feel poetic and dreamy. The book looks promising and I look forward to seeing more of his work.

Photobooks 2019 – Part 2

Yeah, it’s already February and I’m still writing about photobook list 2019. I know I’m slow at this but hey, I take my time to read upon works that I haven’t come across which challenges my small little brain. So here another few that caught my attention, because of how many been listing them as top books where at first I found hard to comprehend but took my time to digest and read more about.

1. Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road by Tim Carpenter published by The Ice Plant

© Tim Carpenter, from the book ‘Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road’; Source The Ice Plant

In Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road, Brooklyn-based photographer Tim Carpenter (born 1968) revisits the Central Illinois topography of his first monograph, Local Objects, with a sequence of 56 black-and-white medium-format photographs, all made on a single winter morning. In Local Objects he meandered this semi-rural Midwestern landscape through changing seasons in an abstract sequence, but here Carpenter follows a straightforward path, literally taking the viewer on a two-hour walk from point A to point B. Nothing much happens along this brief narrative arc—there are fallow fields, standing water, dormant trees, the occasional tire track on worn pavement—yet Carpenter explores the stillness of this outdoor space with a palpable, almost erotic anticipation, revealing intimate subtleties as the journey unfolds. Made with an intensity of attention and a lightness of touch, the photographs in Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road are less about the confines of this specific time and place than about a poetic strategy for narrowing the distance between human desire and the factual content of the everyday world. 

 

2. The Rug’s Topography by Rana Young published by Kris Graves Projects

© Rana Young, from the book ‘The Rug’s Topography’; Source Kris Graves Projects

“My complex relationship with photographs began when I was young. I remember tearing images out of publications and bringing them to my dad prepared with questions. Where I grew up, normative values defined by anatomy at birth impacted an individual’s gender perception and performance. Raised by a single father, I experienced a non-traditional family structure in my home. Seeing photographs portraying the “wholeness” of family contradicted my reality. Those psychological impressions provoked my curiosity and propelled me to solve the mystery of what existed beyond the scene depicted. In retrospect, my search for missing context stems from an interest in narrative and how the single frame of a photograph begs questions rather than provides answers. As I conceive my photographs I am in a state of reverie. In my work, I use the figure as a conduit to move between past and future. My aesthetic interpretations of intimacy, privacy and identity mirror a metaphorical cycle of introspection. Subtle clues within the photograph may evoke an individual’s aversions or desires. I am interested in this negotiation, and through my work, investigate foundations of gender expression.” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316608424_The_Rug’s_Topography

“The Rug’s Topography began with me photographing my intimate partner of six years. Simultaneously, we were facing an internal conflict: how we identified as individuals differed from the roles we occupied in our partnership. As we began to grow apart romantically, our anxieties rose in response to the distance widening between us. Our individual identities within a romantic context stemmed from the commonality of both having witnessed predominantly cisgender roles during our formative years. Our performance of those expectations was perpetuated by inexperience and an impulse to adhere to, or in my case “correct,” our potential family structure. Recognizing a shared inherent foundation opened our dialogue and together we began unpacking our preconceived notions regarding societal norms. Collaborating visually to express our reflections served as a catalyst for the reconciling of our emotional intimacy in the midst of a separation. It is through the juxtaposition of gaze and gesture we create blended self-portraits, expressing our emotions in relation to who we were and who we’ll become.” –LENSCRATCH.

 

3. The Island Position by John Lehr published by MACK

© John Lehr, from the book ‘The Island Position’; Source MACK

The “Island Position” is an advertising term that describes the premium position of an advertisement surrounded solely by editorial content. In The Island Position, John Lehr explores the facades of American commercial spaces that are threatened by the emergence of e-commerce. In a rush to remain relevant, storeowners emblazon their windows and walls with anything that will grab attention: tessellations of quick-fading ads, floor-to-ceiling decals of fanned money or flowing hair, haphazard product displays, and desperate, hand-scrawled invitations. They repaint, renovate, rebrand, and rearrange, gestures which point to the desires and anxieties of people who are being left behind as our thumbs lead us into the new economy. The work presents a turning point in our cultural landscape: the transition from a physical culture to a virtual one.

Masquerading as a typology of storefronts, the surfaces in The Island Position embody something unseen: the people who constructed them. The signage is not simply an appeal to consumption, but a typography of emotion: vulnerability, ingenuity, distress, and hope—the language of capitalism as a form of public address. Lehr is not interested in what is for sale. He is interested in what is at stake.

A great interview was done by ASX with Brad Feuerhelm.

 

4. A Few Model Palm Trees by Bruno Roels published by Art Paper Editions

© Bruno Roels, from the book ‘A Few Model Palm Trees’; Source Art Paper Editions

A Few Model Palm Trees is a remake, an interpretation, an appropriation, an adaption of Ed Ruscha’s famous book A Few Palm Trees from the 70s. Instead of using real palm trees, Roels makes use of downsized plastic trees that are used in architectural scale models, or that are used as children’s toys.

Roels often works with (photographs of) palm trees. All palm trees look alike, and as a symbol the plants are highly recognizable. Historically they’re connected to victory, triumph, endurance, religion, hospitality, wealth, luxury, vacation, paradise but also to colonization, trade and globalization. Palm trees have meaning across cultures. By using photographs of palm trees, Roels makes the idea of copying, mimicking and representation (all part of the very fabric of photography) very tangible. Now he takes on the next step by appropriating Ed Ruscha’s book.

Conversation with Brad Feuerhelm at ASX can be read here.

A different kind of photobooks – texts & images

In 2019, there are several interesting photobooks that incorporate the clever use of text, turning them into the best photobooks of 2019 named by various renowned critics and artists.

One which I own myself – Slant by Aaron Schuman published by MACK and I wrote a review about, brilliantly combines the use of local newspaper reportage of succinct and “extraordinarily anticlimactic” accounts of crimes, suspicious activities, events and non-events with black and white photographs. They are hilariously ridiculous.

Two more which came to my attention lately while reading the rest of the best photobooks of 2019 list by Photo-Eye.

Were it not for by Michael Ashkin published by Fw:Books

© Michael Ashkin, from the book ‘Were it not for’; Source @ Fw:Books

Were it not for combines a line phrase which begins with “were it not for…” with 218 photographs of the Mojave Desert. This combination creates a powerful sense of unease throughout the document, with the black and white images that show areas of bleak and grim, it seems as though don’t we always have an excuse for making this mess in the world? As Jorg Colberg mentioned in CPhMag, “Wherever you look, whatever you hear, it’s all the same hopeless mess: a lived environment that more often than not looks like a garbage dump, with soulless anonymous architecture everywhere, and a cultural/societal environment filled with endless violence, dread, and despair.”

Here the photographs don’t play the starring role like in most photobooks. They are not necessarily memorable yet it is its combination with the text and the whole book itself which creates this looming feeling of helplessness for the world. And that is what sticks to our mind.

I walk toward the sun which is always going down by Alan Huck published by MACK

© Alan Huck, from the book ‘Were it not for’; Source @ MACK

By way of an interior monologue, I walk toward the sun which is always going down is a reminder amongst the daily stream of distractions to slow down, give full attention to our daily endeavours and, according to Annie Dillard, “to discover, at least, where it is that we’ve been so startlingly set down if we can’t learn why” as Raymond Meeks describes in Photo-Eye. It is a book that takes a visual form of what a long meditation of the inner self while exploring a place with a very long walk. Highly recommended by many.

Refences: https://cphmag.com/images-and-text/

The Second Shift – Clare Gallagher

Sometimes I like photography work that is highly representational, but sometimes I love works that are just simple and more directive, that it doesn’t take a genius or knowledgeable brain to pick apart or understand. You know, entirely simple and close to us in our everyday.

Clare Gallagher, an Irish artist based in the UK, made laundry and the everyday chores just as beautiful. “Although there has been progress, women still resent the day-to-day reality of housework, its draining repetition and the anxieties it breeds,” Gallagher says. “The more I research the subject, the more I think it is tied to the relentless drive of capitalism, and informed by deeply embedded notions of female duty and respectability. What’s really annoying is that you become good at it – cooking dinner, cleaning, coaxing the kids, doing the laundry and making sure it dries fast. And then you go to your actual paid job. In both contexts, you are constantly being measured up and judged.” From the Guardian by Sean O’Hagan.

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© Clare Gallagher, from the book ‘The Second Shift’; Source @ Clare Gallagher

‘Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition. The clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.’ — Simone de Beauvoir

‘And what’s worse is that all of it, all of this work that I shouldn’t be doing, is taking place in the one place I shouldn’t have to be doing work at all: in fact, the one place I come to get away from work. It is taking place at home.’ — Edward Hollis

Get the book here: The Second Shift ; Review of the book by Jorg Colberg