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Martin Parr‘s been incredibly productive and published a ton of books. I love his sense of humour and the way he captures the ordinary and the extreme, a sort of concentrated englishness. Looking for the point of vulnerability of society, as I think he puts it here:
“Martin Parr (born 23 May 1952 in Epsom, Surrey) is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take a critical look at modern society, specifically consumerism, foreign travel and tourism, motoring, family and relationships, and food.
Parr wanted to become a photographer from the age of 14 and cites his grandfather, an amateur photographer, as an early influence. From 1970-1973 he studied photography at the Manchester Polytechnic. In 2008 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Arts at MMU (the former Polytechnic) in recognition for his ongoing contribution to photography and to MMU’s School of Art. He married Susan Mitchell in 1980 and is father of a daughter named Corinne Manion (born 1986).
Parr began work as a professional photographer and has subsequently taught photography intermittently from the mid-1970s. He was first recognised for his black and white photography in the north of England (Bad Weather (1982) and A Fair Day (1984) ) but switched to colour photography in 1984. The resulting work, Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton, was published in 1986. Since 1994 Parr has been a member of Magnum Photos. Recent work has included a collaboration with designer Paul Smith in Ilford, capturing people wearing Smith’s Autumn/Winter 2007 collection.”
I first became aware of Joel Sternfeld when he was shortlisted for The Citigroup Photography Prize at The Photographers Gallery in London, in 2004. They were showing some very odd travel sceneries, like this one of an exhausted renegade elephant, from June 1979.
Later I went and got Stranger Passing signed by Sternfeld.. I felt so nervous as I was waiting in line, when I finally got there, I managed to tell him, that I wanted to copy him. He wrote in my book: “To Alex, with all good wishes for your photography. Picasso said, “I never borrow – I steal.”
“Joel Sternfeld, (b. 1944, New York City), is widely regarded as one of the most influential and important fine-art color photographers in the world, noted for his large-format documentary pictures of the United States and establishing color photorgaphy as a respected artistic medium. He has many works in the permanent collections of the MOMA in New York and the Getty in Los Angeles. He has also “raised” and influenced an entire generation of color photographers including Andreas Gursky who borrows many of Sternfeld’s techniques and approaches.
Sternfeld earned a BA from Dartmouth College and teaches photography at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. He began taking color photographs in 1970 after learning the color theory of Johannes Itten and Josef Albers. Color is an important element of his photographs.
Another book, On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam (1997), is about violence in America. Sternfeld photographed sites of recent tragedies. Next to each photograph is text about the events that happened at that location. From 1991-1994 Sternfeld worked with Melinda Hunt to document New York City’s public cemetery on Hart Island [1]. A book, “Hart Island” was published in 1998 [2]. Sternfeld has also published books about social class and stereotypes in America (Stranger Passing [2001]), an abandoned elevated railway in New York (Walking the High Line [2002]), and a book titled Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America ([2006]). A new book containing close-up portraits of delegates debating global warming at an United Nations conference in Montreal, titled When It Changed, is currently slated for publication in July 2007.”
This short film about photographer Stephen Shore is part of the reason I decided to start a blog, even though I’m years behind, the blog is dead and long live the micro-blog. You should watch the film if you have any interest in photography. It was made by Jay Cornelius & Donna Golden/ Docere Digital Studios.
“Stephen Shore (born 1947 in New York City) is an American photographer known for his deadpan images of banal scenes and objects in the United States, and for his pioneering use of color in art photography.
Stephen Shore was interested in photography from an early age. Self-taught, he received a photographic darkroom kit at age six. He began to use a 35mm camera three years later and made his first color photographs. At ten he received a copy of Walker Evans’s book, American Photographs, which influenced him greatly. His career began at the early age of fourteen, when he made the precocious move of presenting his photographs to Edward Steichen, then curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Recognizing Shore’s talent, Steichen bought three of his works. At age seventeen, Shore met Andy Warhol and began to frequent Warhol’s studio, the Factory, photographing Warhol and the creative people that surrounded him. In 1971, at the age of 24, Shore became the second living photographer to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Growing up in a home which was full of designer furniture and modern, abstract art, and being so fond of comic books, I guess it’s no wonder, that some of the first art I felt attracted to was the drowning Ophelia of Waterhouse and Millais and the Pre-Raphaelites.
The Pre-Raphaelites are hard to place on the art map – they have some of the hallmarks of a modern art movement, while at the same time being rather old fashioned, into mimesis, myths and nature. They were supposedly inspired by romantic poetry.
I think I used to be of a very romantic nature (maybe it was from watching too many Errol Flynn movies) – but finding myself increasingly disillusioned with the world, it was also the clash between romanticism and realism that interested me the most when I was studying literature at university. I wrote about Flaubert & Madame Bovery for that same reason.
This movie still is from the Czech movie “Tri Orisky Pro Popelku” (Three nuts for Cinderella) by Vaclav Vorlicek. It was another one of my favorites when I was a child. It’s a fairytale with a twist, since Cinderella pretends to be a man for the greater part of the movie.
Irony is supposed to be a central thing for my so-called post-modern generation. To me it made perfect sense that being a fan of Monty Python and the Knights who say Ni! would extend itself into appreciating DADAism once I reached university. I’m still a big fan of Tzara‘s dadaist manifesto.
I think I could perhaps explain myself best in the guise of postmodernism, since I have never really stopped jumping genres. In a way I feel like certain things are best told in a specific style – like I express different thoughts, ideas or parts of myself depending on what media I work in, and how I go about it; straight/ documentary photography, studio setups, photo illustration or video edited with music. I don’t believe anybody’s able to be objective, what we see is always edited many times over, and what we show even more so. Each way of working poses problems and limitations. I like to just find something on my way and capture it as is, but I also like to change things and turn them into something different.
There was one thing the family albums could not compete with, and that was comic books. It probably started with Carl Barks wonderful Uncle Scrooge adventure stories – and for a while I wanted to be a detective like Mickey Mouse. Tintin was good. Then I had a thing for Prince Valiant, but Aleta could not compete with Modesty Blaise. For a while I also dreamt of becoming some sort of spy. But mostly I just wanted to make comic books.
Later on I discovered Will Eisner‘s quirky stories which took an exaggerated, ironic look on urban realism and pulp fiction. Then there was Milo Manara and Hugo Pratt who both did what you might call romantic adventure novels, with a main character who was driven by some sort of restless longing.
