Book review: Finnegan, C. (2015). Making Photography Matter.

Finnegan, C. (2015). Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression. 1st ed. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.

Since mid-20th century, students of art, literature, and education have been taught something that for a very long time would have seemed counter-intuitive, that the books and images that make up the subject of their studies have no embedded meaning. The reading of texts and images is conceived as a process of construction, of an interaction between the creator and consumer, with the culture, or perhaps cultures, acting as mediator.  Texts are understood to have particular meanings to particular readers in particular contexts at particular times.  What Cara Finnegan (an associate professor of communication at the University of Illinois) sets out to do in this book, and seems to achieve quite ably, is to demonstrate the particulars of how this process played out in the reading of photographs within four historical contexts in the late 19th and early 20th century United States.

Book review: Ihei, Kimura. Akita. 1978 (2011).

Mutsumi found this book at a beer bar in Ikebukuro Station.  We were slaking our thirst after a long day of walking, not there for the books.  In fact we were lucky they didn’t have a table for us when we came in.  We sat at the bar instead, near which is a bookcase with a small collection of mostly magazines.  When we found Akita, we cleared the bar, started at the front, and worked our way through what must have been around 200 plates, all black and white, and shot in the post-war period, from the 1950s-70s.  As the title indicates, the subject is the prefecture of Akita, still a rural area of Japan that from the looks of these images has changed drastically in the past half century.  Apart from the occasional bit of English – the word “post” on a postbox, for example – or a motorcycle or car in the background, it seems these photos could have been taken 100 years ago, or even 500 years ago.  There are no signs of mass produced anything – no TVs, radios, cell phones, watches, name brands, baseball caps, or even something as simple as zippers.  All the clothing appears to be hand-made, everyone walks or in winter uses sleighs, motor power is provided by animals, and home life appears to center around eating, drinking, talking, and smoking.  The images are absolutely amazing for revealing a way of life that when it was recorded neither the subjects nor photographer could have imaged disappearing within 50 years of having been recorded.  Sometimes we can’t see the significance of what photographers record until years later, after which we are incredibly thankful for the investment in time and effort, despite others not being able to see the value in the work as it was being produced. Thank you, Kimura-san.

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Review: Franklin, Stuart. The Documentary Impulse. 2016.

Franklin, Stuart. The Documentary Impulse. 1st ed. London: Phaidon Press, 2016. Print.

The publisher’s promotional text promises insights into “how we, as humans, are driven to visually document our experiences and the world around us.”  Taken together with largely laudatory reviews, my expectations were perhaps higher than could be satisfied by a text that turned out to be a fairly standard presentation of the history of documentary photography.  While ideas are presented succinctly and in clear prose, the conclusion is something of a letdown.  The author concedes that, in effect, there may be as many documentary impulses as there are documentary photographers and that ultimately the need to document may be a manifestation of an underlying need to understand what it means to be human.  For me, the book fairly begins where it ends.

Book and Film Review: Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (2009), Grab A Hunk Of Lightning (2014)

Gordon, Linda. Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits. 1st ed. London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009. Print.

American Masters: Dorothea Lange: Grab A Hunk Of Lightning. Dyanna Taylor, dir, 2014. DVD.

It’s not difficult to understand why this book was a prizewinner.  The writing is crisp, sufficient background is provided to contextualize the actions and behavior of the actors, and the main subject is presented as a complex, contradicted human, one who through her images expressed great empathy but was so driven in her work that she often took for granted the people with whom she shared her life.  This was my first extended exposure to Lange and so I had no preconceptions to be challenged or reinforced.  As presented by Gordan, I found her someone with whom I could sympathize in her curiosity about the working and living conditions of others, in her interest in exploring new surroundings, her sense of adventure, and her sensitivity to injustice.  I also appreciate her approach to photography as a method of communication and a tool for changing the world.  Lange was foremost a documentary photographer, one might argue even an ethnographer, who first honed her skills making commercial portraits and who took the portraitist’s sensibility, of making people look their best, into the field.  She was least interested in photography as a means of exploring self, though of course no conscientious image maker can deny the power of the process to affect the camera operator.  It is clear from comments made late in life that she was fully aware of the transformative potential of engaging in the visual arts.

The American Masters film was directed by one of Lange’s grandchildren and provides a concise summary of the photographer's life and work should you not have the time to devote to Gordan’s biography.  The film is actually a suitable companion to the book, allowing the reader to hear Lange’s voice, to witness her gait (caused by childhood polio), to see her interact with grandchildren, and with photographic colleagues such as John Szarkowski, who aided her in preparing her retrospective at the MoMA.  The granddaughter’s presentation appears a bit more idolatrous than Gordan’s, but does not entirely overlook some of the less romantic aspects of Lange’s life.

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What book next?

In my studies of contemplative photography, I have now read and worked through the exercises in Karr/Wood’s The Practice of Contemplative Photography, and McQuade/Hall's Looking and Seeing.  As background I have read True Perception, Trungpa Rinpoche’s talks on dharma art.

Another workbook from McQuade/Hall is set to be released in fall 2016, but that project has already been delayed and may be delayed again. 

I have found two more books in this tradition.   From the reviews online, it seems Julie DuBose’s Effortless Beauty is more a collection of reflections on her practice, rather than a programmatic teaching text. Michael Wood’s Opening the Good Eye appears to be much the same.  DuBose’s text looks more interesting for including a discussion of editing, something largely avoided by Karr/Wood and McQuade/Hall.

Anyone have any personal experience with either text?

I am presently engaged with Hoffman’s Photography as Meditation, a collection of reflections on the intersection of Zen and photography (and not a workbook).  Also on my bookshelf is Gross/Shapiro’s Tao of Photography, as well as a collection of Minor White essays.

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Book review: McQuade & Hall. (2015). Looking and Seeing: An Introduction to Nalanda Miksang Contemplative Photography (Way of Seeing Book 1)

McQuade & Hall. Looking and Seeing: An Introduction to Nalanda Miksang Contemplative Photography (Way of Seeing Book 1). Drala Publishing, 2015

The preface makes no bones about the authors' focus:  "...we are really talking about Enlightenment."

The purpose of Miksang is not just to make pictures, but to reorient vision in order to wake up to the world beyond things.  "The most direct way to spontaneous creativity [is] not in “breaking the rules,” [but] in making contact with the world before there are rules at all.”  This can be accomplished, the authors believe, with just a short shift of orientation, or Enlightenment by a few degrees.  They compare the mind to a ship, whose destination can be radically altered by a course change of just a few degrees.

The authors are students of Sakyong Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the first Tibetan refugees of the early exodus to settle and build a Buddhist community of westerners within the United States, and of his disciple, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche.

This text promises to be the first of three outlining the practice of Miksang, a Tibetan word meaning "good eye."  While the authors feel Miksang is best taught, or transmitted, in face-to-face encounters, they realize as well the value of texts in being able to provide more detail than available in workshops, seminars, or lectures.

Book review: Trungpa, C., Lief, J. and Trungpa, C. (2008). True perception: the path of dharma art.

Trungpa, C., Lief, J. and Trungpa, C. (2008). True perception:  the path of dharma art. Boston: Shambhala.

This book constitutes the philosophical foundation of Miksang, sometimes known as Contemplative Photography, as taught by Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader and one of the first lamas to teach westerners in English vernacular.  His community proved to be long-lived and is known today principally as the center of a large Buddhist publishing concern, Shambala, and for a 4-year college, Naropa, the only accredited Buddhist institution of higher learning in the the United States.

This volume is not a treatise, but rather a collection of short texts, mostly transcribed talks on practice and aesthetics.  The book is comprised of 28 chapters, most only a few pages long.

The editor’s introduction summarizes Trungpa’s life, motivation, and goals, providing context for the texts that follow.  In essence, Trungpa was using a somewhat secularized version of Buddhist principles and practices to build an intentional community through which might emerge an enlightened society.  He was concerned with more than meditation or even art, but with all aspects of social engagement and management.

Book review: Abuthina, J. (2015). Dubai: Behind the Scenes; Memories of Satwa; The Best of Dubai Shop Names.

• Abuthina, J. (2015). Dubai: Behind the Scenes. Dubai: Inside Dubai.
• Abuthina, J. (2015). Memories of Satwa. Dubai: Inside Dubai.
• Abuthina, J. (2015). The Best of Dubai Shop Names. Dubai: Inside Dubai.

I don’t usually rush out to buy books, but I was eager to see these.  I take the same kind of photos of the same places as the photographer whose work is presented here, Mr Jalal Abuthina, though so far as I know I haven’t yet run into him in any of the neighborhoods in which we work.  Two of the three books feature Forwards and Introductions, but are of such a general nature as to be unhelpful in learning much about Abuthina’s approach, method, philosophy, or the history of the work presented.  A more informative profile of the photographer can be found at The National, a leading UAE newspaper, or at the photographer’s website.  From these we learn that Abuthina has been active for a little over a decade, though many of the images in these books appear to be of more recent vintage.  The Burj Khalifa, a building that was completed only in 2008, for example, features in the background of several of the Satwa photos.  I’ve also taken images of some of the same graffiti, which doesn’t typically remain for very long in Dubai.

Notes: McQuade & Hall. Looking and Seeing: An Introduction to Nalanda Miksang Contemplative Photography: Preface, Sections 1 and 2

McQuade & Hall. Looking and Seeing: An Introduction to Nalanda Miksang Contemplative Photography (Way of Seeing Book 1). Drala Publishing, 2015

“John McQuade is one of the founders of Miksang Contemplative Photography, which he has presented for thirty years. He is the most senior teacher of the Nalanda Miksang school. John is a long time meditator, meditation instructor, and Shambhala Training director in the Shambhala tradition. He practices Daoist Qi-gong and writes on the contemplative arts. He holds an M.A in Phenomenology and a PhD in Social and Political Thought.

Miriam Hall is a contemplative arts teacher who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and travels internationally to teach Nalanda Miksang, Shambhala Art, and contemplative writing. She is the second most senior teacher under John McQuade in the Nalanda Miksang School. She has been teaching these practices for over ten years...."

For a text explicating an alternative means of image making, the pedestrian cover image is unlikely to to inspire many to inquire further.

Book review: Nagar, T. (2012). Any camera anywhere: The new street photographer's manifesto

Nagar, T. (2012). Any camera anywhere: The new street photographer's manifesto. Lewes: Ilex.

Think of this book as Street Photography for Dummies. It provides a suitable introduction for those with no background, or those who have just started and may be curious about some of the problems they have encountered in their practice.  Anyone interested in topics of art, aesthetics, history, or philosophy should look elsewhere.

As befitting an introductory text, it has been designed for the least informed audience.  Each page is a self-contained topic, with little chunks of text and lots of images.  It's like a book made from a slide show.  Fortunately, page design and image selection is quite good, so even if you don't get much from the text, it looks good and has quite a high quotient of interesting images.  Topics covered include practical matters of practice, such as how to dress and behave when photographing strangers on the street, camera selection, subject matter, location, and composition, among others.  By far the best section is the gallery of photographers that makes up the last quarter of the book.

Regarding the manifesto, it is fairly well summarized in the title:  any camera, anywhere.  Nagar subscribes to a democratic conception of street photography in which no special technology is required and in which all subjects are image worthy, though at one point she makes the rather exaggerated claim of street photography being a way of life.  I wonder what that might entail?

Tanya Nagar is a 20-something, London-based amateur photographer.  You can read an interview with her here.

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First publication?

As a result of my last blog post about making a photobook, I've been contacted regarding the use of my images for an upcoming book project on Dubai neighborhoods.  This is the first expression of commercial interest in my images and right now I'm feeling very good about my myself and my work. Let's see how this develops.  

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Book review: Wilson, R. (2013). Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation.

Wilson, R. (2013). Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation. New York: Bloomsbury USA.

Brady is perhaps one of the most well-documented photographers of the 19th century, perhaps even in the world, so it’s not entirely clear why this volume was necessary.  I’m not a Brady scholar, nor a scholar of 19th century American photography, but I don’t recall the author drawing the reader's attention to major findings, something he would surely do if he had something worth reporting.  The Afterward speaks of the necessity for a “reliable biography,” so perhaps it was just a matter of compiling facts and ideas scattered here and there among numerous sources.  If such is the case, then job well done on a readable account of an important figure in photographic and American history.  Wilson sets out his subject’s relevance early on:

Enough is known about Brady’s life and work...to argue that he was the single most important person in nineteenth-century American photography. His Broadway portrait galleries in the 1840s and ’50s helped popularize photography in its early days and establish the photograph as a thing of value in itself. He helped make being photographed (at least by him and others with fancy studios) a mark of prestige. His efforts to collect portraits of every important American helped create a unifying sense of one American nation, a goal he pursued up until the very moment the Civil War blew it apart. His photographs of the famous, from the Prince of Wales to General Tom Thumb, helped invent the modern idea of celebrity, and his photograph of the presidential hopeful Abraham Lincoln on the day of his Cooper Union speech helped make Lincoln president.

Book Review: Photography Holidays & Courses - Ultimate Guide 2016

This guide is a great idea but not worth the titular adjective “ultimate.”  The most useful feature of any such publication would be a set of tables sorted by date, location, cost, and content.  No such thing to be found here.  The book is in essence an advertising supplement from Outdoor Photography magazine with full-page spreads from mostly UK-based landscape and nature photographers.  The publication is available on various peer-to-peer sites.

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Book Review: Karr, A. and Wood, M. (2011). The practice of contemplative photography.

Australian edition cover

Karr, A. and Wood, M. (2011). The practice of contemplative photography. Boston: Shambhala.

This book was something of a revelation when I bought it at the start of my formal photography education, but as I quickly became immersed in projects, assignments, and academic reading requirements, I never had much time to devote to it.  Eventually it came to take up space in a box from which it was retrieved only a few months ago after saying an at least temporary farewell to the photography program to which I have been a part for the past three years.  The emphasis there was on conceptual practice, photography work that is planned, preconceived, and placed within an appropriate academic context.  Such work is rarely devoted to discovering the sensorium, but is instead devoted to depicting how one conceives the sensorium.  There might be some disconnect, some disjuncture between one’s concept and what one was able to depict, and to that degree there might be room for discovery, but the work proceeds from the idea that the sensorium is best understood through concept rather than experience.  Given that this kind of practice takes place within an academic context, a world that trades on words and ideas, it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise.  

This book - and others like it - offers an approach that seeks to connect to the experience of the sensorium before it is overlaid with words and ideas, of discovering life in its most essential form. To do this requires giving up the need for stimulation - for entertainment - and learning to relax the mind, the practice of patience and returning one’s attention to the unfolding of experience.  The method described here is not confined to photographic practice, but is available in all places and at all times to those who begin with the intention to see clearly.  By learning to do so, the mind is freed from expectations and learns to experience the world afresh, as it appears before layered with words and ideas. “Seeing things as they are is also accepting them as they are, which leads to appreciating them as they are.”  

And what more could we possibly ask from photography?  

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Book Review: Turner, P. (2012). A Field Guide for the Contemplative Photographer.

Turner, P. (2012). A Field Guide for the Contemplative Photographer. 1st ed. [ebook] Denmark, Maine, USA.

This 46-page book looks in its electronic version more like a Power Point presentation.  Each page is an image, a quote, or bulleted text.  As such, it's quite easy to read, so perhaps it fulfills its function as a field guide reference.

What might you refer to?  Turner's approach is weighted toward process rather than product, of using photography as a means of exploration, both of the subject and the photographer. Minor White seems to have been a major influence, but no specific religious or philosophical orientation is revealed.  Her method involves equipping the mind to engage with the photographic subject:  sitting quietly, relaxing the mind to prepare it to receive.  The contemplative photographer does not take photographs or shoot images, but waits respectfully for the subject to reveal itself.  To engage in this process, the photographer must be prepared to put aside expectations, as well as figuratively and literally to take back roads and lose his or her way.  The book is illustrated with several of Turner's dramatic landscape images, and the text with examples from the practice of landscape photography.  The same principles could presumably be applied to other genres with some modification.  While Turner's ideas are worthy of exploration, she offers little in the way of guidance about how one might start out along the way, surprising for someone who was a professional educator for three decades.

Book Review: Weeks, C. (2006). Street Photography – For the Purist.

If you're perhaps interested in leaning something about street photography, this is not a text you'll wish to consult.   It is neither investigation, explication, nor reflection, but more manifesto.  The title gives a clue as to what to expect, a "pure" form of street photography embodied in a set of a canonical images, makers, and practices.  The masters are largely French photographers of the first half of the twentieth century who shot in black and white and often with range finders.  Author Chris Weeks believes that "real" street photographers maintain this style of practice, furthermore eschewing artificial light (Weegee is singled out for his deviant use of flash), street portraiture (which no matter how well done is always contrived), or urban landscape (as street photography is always about people).  There is no marshaling of evidence in service of argument, only a list of tenets to which one must subscribe, presented in one-sentence paragraphs intended to impress the reader with the author's authentic, "raw edge," hipster essence.  The book, as it were, also features a collection of the author's images, few of which were inspiring enough to convince me to give up my digital compact.

Weeks, C. (2006). Street Photography – For the Purist.  [ebook] Available at: http://blog.papirontul.hu/photobooks/street_photography_for_the_purist.pdf [Accessed 12 Mar. 2016].

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Book review: Tucker, A., Iizawa, K. and Kinoshita, N. (2003). The history of Japanese photography. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Image from:  http://photographybooksforsale.blogspot.ae/

This volume was produced as part of a 2003 exhibit of 207 images curated by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.  The book runs to just over 400 pages and includes 356 color illustrations.  Text is provided by six authors, beginning with an overview of scholarship in Japanese photography by Tucker, who organized 40 major exhibits as curator at the Houston museum.  She has also authored studies on female photographers, Brassai, and Korean photography. The remaining six essays are from five Japanese scholars, and a sixth from another American curator.

Book review: Sella, V. and Adams, A. (1999). Summit.

Sella, V. and Adams, A. (1999). Summit. New York: Aperture.

If I collected photobooks, I would buy this.

It features what are perhaps the earliest and certainly most sublime photographs of the upper reaches of our planet ever made.  The images are even more remarkable given they were produced between 1879 and 1909 with heavy camera equipment on glass plate negatives.  Imagine hauling that kind of gear into the Alps, the Himalaya, the Caucasus, Alaska, and the Rwenzori, all locations documented in this collection.

I have read quite a bit in photographic history, but I didn’t run into Sella until finding a reference in The Ghost of Freedom, an introductory history of the Caucasus (quite a good read, for those that might be interested in more about that corner of the world).  Looking at this collection of images, it's difficult to imagine why Sella has been so largely ignored.  Not only was he the first to document many of these environments, but he did so with great technical skill and aesthetic sensitivity.

Fraser, K. (2011). Photography and Japan. London: Reaktion Books.

This volume on Japan is one in a series of short texts exploring various aspects of Photography and ..., such as Literature, Science, Death, Anthropology and Cinema.  Among the country specific titles are Australia, Egypt, Ireland, Italy and USA.  The Japan volume contains no information on its author, Karen M Fraser, apart from her being an Assistant Professor in Dept of Art and Art History at Santa Clara University.  Her university page does not list publications and a search of her name at Google Scholar is empty.  An internet search reveals she is an American scholar with a BA, MA and PhD in Art History, the last at Stanford, and that she teaches a course on the very subject of her book, suggesting it may function as a class text.

At 170 pages and containing a generous 104 images, the actual text is quite short.  Given Fraser’s direct and unaffected writing style, the book is easily and quickly digestible. If you are reading with or near an internet connected device, however, you may find your reading experience greatly lengthened by searches for images from the many photographers introduced within its pages.

Book Review: Ross, K. (2015). Photography for everyone: The cultural lives of cameras and consumers in early twentieth-century Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Although an academic text, this is an easily readable account of popular photography in Japan in the two decades prior to World War II.  Where the work of this period is typically characterized as dominated by modernism, Ross is interested in exploring the wider practice of hobby photographers and their practice of geijutsu shashin.  The Japanese word can be literally translated as art photography, and is typically taken to mean pictorialism, photos that mimic the standards and conventions of painting, particularly impressionism.  Ross argues that the term as used in Japan encompassed a number of styles, including realism, but cites only one prominent text (Saito Tazunori’s 1932 How to Make Art Photographs) as evidence while admitting that most images in reader contests employed “lyrical or expressionists modes,”  and as elsewhere in Europe and North America, the historical trend was away from pictorialism towards realism.  Nevertheless, the text is chock full of interesting information on how cameras were sold (in large department stores and a wide network of second-hand shops);  how they were marketed (professional-level kit to men, easy-to-use gear to women);  and the role of clubs and photo contests in the dissemination of aesthetic (and democratic) values.  Included are a generous selection of period advertisements and how-to illustrations.  Perhaps of most interest is the question of why photography was so popular among the Japanese middle class, a question Ross answers with reference to JB Jackson, editor of Landscape magazine, on the dignity and self-affirmation of craftwork in the industrial age.  (Kerry Ross has a PhD from Columbia University and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at DePaul University.  A short professional biography from a 2009 conference is available here.)

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