Photographs by Stephen Gill
- Had a look at Stephen Gill’s A Book of Field Studies put out by Chris Boot. I was predisposed to not like him. And the introduction is written by an idiot. But looking at the pictures I realised that there was a deep sweet intelligence and restraint with them. They are very basic exercises in looking.
- Gill is looking at many of the things that I look at everyday across the cities I’ve been to: construction sites, gallery attendants, people who are lost. Constructions sites were especially interesting and his portraits of people have a such a tense calm about them. You can feel the picture vibrating.
- The participants are aware that their photos are being taken and this result in an authentic woodenness. It is as they would be considering the situation.
- There is a naive confidence in Gill’s choice of subjects and a soft touch in titling them. For example he titles the photos of personal stereo listeners with the song they were listening to when the photograph was taken, or for his extensive set of photos of billboards (from behind! genius) he puts in the caption the text that’s in the front. Working in colour on grey English days he does very well. A very English look, but sweet, like afternoon tea.
- He’s not trying to prove anything, but in the end proves everything. He has the balls to be who is. That is not a small thing in these very competitive times.
- Took up Friedlander’s MOMA book and have a third go at finishing the Galassi essay.
- Galassi talks of photographer such as Robert Adams, Tina Barney, Richard Benson, Lois Conner, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, Tod Papgeorge, Thomas Roma, Judith Joy Ross, Stephen Shore, and Joel Sternfeld making the move in the 80s to medium or large format cameras which “offered a fuller and more subtle rendering of surface, volume, and light—a capacity that dovetailed neatly with a developing aesthetic of patient observation.” He goes on to say as Frank’s influence waned, Atget and the old master’s became more important and are the prevailing aesthetic of the moment.
- Exteded, extended explanation of Friedlander’s use of Hasselblad Superwide for the Desert Seen pictures. It apparently regenerated his art. He went about making the same pictures that he had always made but now with a lot more detail. Made me feel depressed for some reason. It shouldn’t.
- “Even as he has staked an unarguable claim for the artistic [and technical] prowess of his medium, he has celebrated its mundane democracy, dissolving its princely independence into the familiar duties of a reliable servent.”
- Timothy O’Sullivan
- Quotes a brilliant poem by Billy Collins Consolations: How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer, wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hill towns. How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets, fully grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard, and all of a sudden hand gestures of my compatriots. … Instead of slouching in a cafe ignorant of the word for ice, I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning paper, all language barriers down, rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way. And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner. I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window. It is enough to climb back into the care as if it were the great car of English itself and surrounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even to Bologna.
- “The language of photography is intimately dependent upon the local idiom of whatever it seems to describe, and a master of the former is adrift without an intuitive grasp of the latter.” Mentions that only HCB was comfortable everywhere he went.
Posted 2 years ago
