September 2009
23 posts
5 tags
Essay - On the Reconfiguration of Symbols...
It is the ambitious photographer’s job to find, define, redefine, configure and reconfigure the symbolism present in the world. The photographer must continue the job of Adam but go further in naming things not just in and of themselves but as either something new, or more significantly, to give it a new character in relation to something else. Perhaps to everything else.
Take a tree and...
3 tags
Essay - Must Everything Be an In-Joke?
The conundrum in art now is that the most bizarre is the most acceptable. The crowd and the Art Industry likes nothing better from their high art than to be shocked and horrified. They are titillated by the rudeness of it, the incomprehensibility. Of course they pretend to be in on it all and barely raise an eyebrow. Ever since their mean jokes on the Impressionists backfired, they are quite...
3 tags
Essay - Desire, Desire, Siren, Desire
Desire as a subject is highly problematic. The reason is very simple, it is so strong a force, and has such a personal effect that it overwhelms the ability of the artist to analyse. In the throes of desire the artist is helpless and cannot get his hands on the rudder. Creating art, as opposed to living life, is an out of body experience. Desire implodes self-consciousness. It draws one into...
3 tags
Review - On Looking at Lee Friedlander’s Book: The...
Photos by Friedlander
I usually avoid landscape photography. I see it as too often cliche and banal. But I’ve always remembered Lee Friedlander’s close in desert work of bushes, and thistles, and cacti. I’m looking through it right now, as preparation for my own time out in the Australian bush.
The first thing is that they are brilliant. They have so much critical intelligence in them and so...
3 tags
Review - Szarkowski's Essay 'Atget and the Art of...
Photo by Atget
I’ve seen Atget’s pictures a hundred times, and in many of them I can feel a subtle, mysterious power. But I’ve never been totally convinced as I am about say Frank, or Winogrand, or Klein. I’ve never been able to appreciate or see the consistent greatness of his work that would merit a huge exhibition at MOMA by Szarkowski. I fear that it is an example of a critic taking on an...
3 tags
Essay - On Uniqueness or Fuck the French
Speaking to the Frenchman the other day and hearing him say that my work was not original was exactly the opportunity I was waiting for. My heart contracted only momentarily and I launched into a defence nearly instantly. It is worthwhile to start building a strong case for why these photos are unique and worth spending all the difficult time that I’ve been spending on them.
Most importantly,...
3 tags
Essay - On Not Being Able to Shoot In Europe
This has been a source of major heartache. I’m always worried when I’m not working. I don’t know if the tap will run dry. But I haven’t really been able to get excited about shooting in Europe for a number of reasons.
It is too familiar. I know these people. I know the streets. I know the pace of life. I know their secrets. All of this is what I grew up with back in Sydney and I don’t find it...
4 tags
Essay - Sell, Sell, Sell
“I’m really tired right now kid.”
I have been showing my work around like crazy. To anyone I meet who I have the opportunity to share 10 minutes with. People having a drink in bars, people on transport, girls I meet at museums, people in bookstores and sometimes I’m the one who is approached, like in Berlin.
These aren’t uncomfortable or awkward encounters. No really, they...
3 tags
New Work - Twilight of the Male Soul
0908-8575
0908-1205
0908-7874
Significant new work from my last month in Bangladesh. It’s called Twilight of the Male Soul and it’s presented in two parts:
Twilight of the Male Soul 1
Twilight of the Male Soul 2
For the first time, I’ve tried to put together a complex story in pictures. I suspected this was impossible. It’s a slow work but I’m proud of that. The work was whittled down...
3 tags
Dizzee Rascal Gives Great Career Advice →
Photo by Unknown
This is excellent advice for when I get really fucking famous and grossly rich. I wouldn’t have thought about the tax bit, but it’s all here.
[Hook:]
Hard back, stern face
Play your position and know your place
Only move when the money’s calling
Take my advice, you’ll be balling
You need a hard back, stern face
Play your position and know your...
4 tags
Essay - The Next Plan: Back to Australia
Photo by Unknown
This is an excerpt from an email to a friend explaining what I want to do for the next seven or eight months.
I walked the streets of Paris tonight thinking about what I should do next. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since leaving Berlin.
Bangladesh was a huge success, even if the fruits aren’t ripe enough to eat yet. I took the first steps in learning to work hard, and...
3 tags
Review - Flemish Masters (and everyone else) at...
Painting by Van Dyck
I don’t actually remember the name of the museum where I saw this amazing, life changing shit. All German words are the same to me. But it was huge and disappointingly I had to run to Mitte and I couldn’t really take my time with these amazing paintings. The Flemish masters especially will have a huge impact on any set up shots that I do but the older religious works were...
3 tags
Review - Helmut Newtown at His Museum in Berlin
Photo by Helmut Newton
I was pretty excited to go see Newton and I bought my hard-on along with me. But I lost that pretty quickly as I saw the amount of work he had done which depressed me in its vastness and the quality of his creativity, which was high. Also, still pictures of tits just aren’t that exciting sexually, nothing like a conceptual art action of a pair of tits.
There was a really...
2 tags
Review - Berliner Hamburger in Berlin (Beuys and...
Painting by Andy Warhol
The Berliner Hbf was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t really know what to expect but as I saw the Beuys stuff, and then the rest of the post 60s gang I was overjoyed because this was the art I knew least about and totally coincidentally had the least respect for. Finally here was my chance to look at Warhol in the face and spit on him. It didn’t really work out that way.
...
2 tags
Review - Albertina (Some Modernists, Naked Women,...
Drawing by Durer
The Albertina in Vienna is a lifeless showpiece of a mansion that you can tell was made to be lived in by the most boring people on earth. People who were far more interested in being impressive externally than internally. The exhibitions were small but interesting (modernists, naked women, and facsimiles of Austrian art through the ages).
I moved through the gallery very...
2 tags
Story - How to Pick Up a Bauhaus Expert and Fail
X
So you met this girl on the last day right? At a gallery?
Y
Yeah, a Bauhaus exhibition. The biggest one ever put together anywhere ever in the history of our universe.
X
Oh yeah? And how was she put together?
Y
It wasn’t like that. Well, it was. I really liked her nails. They were this electric orange. Shocking orange. But you could tell that she wasn’t shocking, that she liked to fit...
2 tags
Review - Bauhaus in Berlin
By the Bauhaus
I first went to the boring small Bauhaus Archiv and they pointed out to me that the largest Bauhaus exhibition in this history of the world was happening across town. So I cycled over to this monstrosity and was overwhelmed with knowledge. The Bauhaus was pretty fucking cool. It had people who were anti-hipsters, they were workers. WORK!
The Bauhaus were radically modern....
4 tags
Essay - On the Narrative Power of Detail in Faces
What is new about me as a street photographer is that I am getting closer to another human being on the streets than anyone ever has with a camera. There are some reasons why I’m doing that.
One is because by getting closer you feel more. Your senses perceive more from being closer. And feeling is a key part of understanding. Two, is that by using a short lens and using depth of field as a...
4 tags
Essay - The Impossibility of Becoming in Berlin
Earnest
If you do not come from Berlin, it will take you fair amount of time, and a fair amount of your will to resist Berlin. I mean, to avoid its Sirens of a good time, of good things, and good people. This is a great place to be, but not to become in because it is just too joyfully, too overwhelmingly distracting. Too seductively alien. This would be a place where you’d need to invest time...
4 tags
New Work - The Horse-like Mystery of Welding →
It’s that time again. A time we all awkwardly wait around for—new work! This time it’s some ‘seriously awesome’ pictures of dare-devils welding in Dhaka without following any safety procedures whatsoever. Well, they are wearing highly flammable ski masks, I guess.
Here’s some mandatory ejaculate (used as a noun) about the why:
We are all inclined to be...
3 tags
Review - Egon Schiele at the Leopold Museum
Today I was blown away by Egon Schiele. He died at 28 but was amazingly productive for about 10 years and produced some of the most expressive drawings and paintings that I’ve ever seen. I loved it. He seems to have silenced those who came after him into awe. Here are some notes:
He was masterful in shifting perspective to human scale, or human type. You see the human body at angles...
4 tags
‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and Spike Jones... →
Once again the whole secret seems to be sticking around. Fighting the war of attrition until success just gives up and hands itself to you on a platter. Or maybe not.
I did like the part about not compromising the vision even a little bit because that’s the start. That’s when they know that you will compromise, that you can. I’ve seen this strategy used by Bangladeshi wives on...
4 tags
Review - Thomas Ruff and Portraits at Kunsthalle...
Photos by Bechers
So, I didn’t die. In fact, I lived. And with life I walked over to the Kunsthalle Wien to be utterly disappointed. No it’s not a giant hall full of vaginas, it’s just a damn art museum. It’s currently photography month of some such madness and who should it be but our old friend Thomas Ruff (mentioned earlier on this blog) with a no holds barred...