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It’s common knowledge that William Eggleston, Steven Shore and Joel Sternfeld were pioneers in making art based colour photography widely accepted within the art community. In a recent seminar, after watching a film on Eggleston, the question was raised as to which European photographers were using colour at that time? Furthermore why was European art photographic community more resistant to accepting colour photography than American’s?

Silence.

It seems that this is an area which isn’t so well known. Why? I honestly don’t know because there sure enough were European photographers using colour before and during the Eggleston and Shore eras. Kled Helmer-Petersen was using colour a decade before the arrival of the American colour masters, furthermore he was using the notion of banality as his subject. In fact in 1947 Helmer-Petersen published a book called 122 colour photographs, which focused on the mundane and everyday objects. Miles ahead of his time, yet not associated with the development of the acceptance of colour photography as an art form.

Kled Helmer-Petersen

How about Carlos Perez Siquier? Heard of him? Thought not. Virtually unheard of yet he was taking colour photographs that could pass for being taken in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and the 00’s. His body of work is so unique that he has unjustifiably gone almost unnoticed. His standard was so high, at the time, that he could easily be put alongside some of the greats (Okay he’s not a master but he certainly deserves recognition for his work). You could argue that he has been influential on the likes of William Klein and Martin Parr. In particular Parr, because to me Siquier’s work is so apparent in Parr’s. Take a look for yourself.

Carlos Perez Siquier

See any resemblance from Siquier’s work and Parr’s?

Lastly, Luigi Ghirri was an Italian photographer who focused primarily on the Italian landscape and architecture , he photographed beautifully and had a way of playing with the viewer, the mixture of a reality and mystery which is so typical in Eggleston’s work. His minimalistic approach was very unique at the time because again the viewer isn’t quite sure what they are looking at, is it real or not? Ghirri was a real genius of photography yet he has never reached the heights that some America colour photographers have, who have possibly gained influence from him.

Luigi Ghirri

Luigi Ghirri

What am I getting at here? Well first of all it was a simple exploration into my own interests but secondly I think that this period in photography history, which is so dominated by the development of the art establishment in America, is also an important period for European photography. Not only were there photographers using colour very successfully but they may have also been influential to some of photographies most well known colour photographers. William Eggleston has said that he was influenced by Ghirri in some way. You can read that right here.

Which brings me on to my next point. Why was European colour photography not accepted at the same time as American colour? I could attempt to answer this but I think, in a recent conversation with photographer Anthony Hopewell he has summed it up better than I could..

‘I think the reluctance of the art establishment to embrace photographic colour work has a lot to do with deliberately eschewing the values, and therefore look, of commercial practice. Again the arrival of the post-modern doctrine allowed the use of reference and irony not previously accepted. If you look at experimental film of the same period, it goes out of its way to avoid anything , in terms of production values, narrative etc, which may align it with Hollywood.

So I think things are defined, not only by what they are, but also by what they are not.’

I started watching Ingmar Berman films at a young age. Probably my mother’s doing. I believe a lot of my own emotional writings take note from Bergman’s sparse physical interiors functioning as symbolism for the vast internal landscape he was working through. Interiors have stuck with me, especially the pairing of chairs at an empty table, hence this blog and hence this portrait from Bergman’s home on the island on Faro as taken by Stephen Shore and recently published in W’s art issue.

Dogs, too, like to dress as hipsters

On my way to the Flea Market in Dumbo, I came across a little Halloween dog parade on the Promenade of Brooklyn Heights.

Costumed dogs parades are to Fashion what Outsider Art is to Art sold at Gagosian.

Graphic black & white

Pumpkin all-over

A studious jury

Banal entries

A poodle doesn't need a lot to look gorgeous

These nervous greyhounds remind me of young, timid Fashion editors

But outsiders are no less committed than professionals. They believe so much in their creations that they proudly walk next to their models instead of hiding backstage to only appear at the very end.

Rottweiller in satin cape

There were several photographers documenting the event, dangerously crouching at a pit bull jaw’s height. You might check for photos and a full report on Style dog com (skip this ad).

The Alice Cooper wig gives this pit bull a sweet look

I then skated down to the Flea market. There was a beautiful autumn light, which made the vintage cars in the parking lot looked even more like Stephen Shores. If you can’t own a print,  maybe you can drive an original.

I was in search of a vintage peacoat for the winter when I saw a great horse theater mask. It had a patient, melancholic expression, with a hint of craziness, just like a real horse.

Maria and Mark at the Flea market

I was contemplating the avant-garde productions in which the horse mask had been used  70 years ago, when I bumped into Maria Cornejo and Mark Borthwick. They have the free spirit, illuminated faces of real artists, and outshined everybody else around them with natural fantasy.  Mark was carrying a small, carved dark wood canoe he has just bought. It seems just like the right accessory for his pictures, or music.

Maria and Mark

From the forthcoming book, American Power, by Mitch Epstein

Holyoke born Mitch Epstein has a new book coming out this month. American Power is a clear eyed visual study of the what, where and how our country is powered. Here’s a quote from Joerg Colbergs review, “Photographically, American Power is nothing but the product of an artist at the prime of his own, yes, artistic power, large-format photography at its finest. It is hard to imagine the energy it must have cost Epstein to produce the different photographs, but the run-ins with law enforcement officials do not seem to have had any impact on the quality of the work.”

Joerg does such an erudite job of reviewing the book that I don’t have to say more about Mitch’s achievement. For my student’s benefit, I think it is more important to alert them to Mitch’s previous book- Family Business. This highly personal collection of pictures created in Holyoke won Epstein many awards, including the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.

From Family Business by Mitch Epstein

The book presents the story of Mitch’s father. To quote Mitch, “Crucial to his story is that of Holyoke itself. The commercial center died in the 70s, its customers gone to the new supermall. Holyoke became a crack-riddled, arson-wrought town. A recent wave of immigrants turned the formerly “white” downtown Hispanic. The culture clash resonates in the relationship between my Jewish American father and his Puerto Rican tenants and employees.”

By now Holyoke’s 21st Century story is unfolding with a new cast of characters. To better understand what we see as we walk the streets of Holyoke today, I implore students to check out these links and pick-up the book. It is a page turner with great writing and photography.

Now, to discover our personal “hour of power” I want to look at the two pictures above. The tenement buildings in Holyoke were photographed when the sun was low, at sunrise or sunset. The light feathers across the buildings to give their bricks a deep, dark texture. In a sense, the light suggests a romantic view that is quickly undercut by the boarded up windows. I think the balance of sweeping light over the emptiness of the whole scene is the key to the mournful demeanor of the picture.

The low light of the power plant picture (above) seems to be from an early morning exposure. The camera faces the dawn creating an almost godlike glow. The effect is also romantic, except the romance is with the power generating station. Again, Mitch creates a fresh response from the viewer by challenging our expectations.

This acknowledgement of  “a certain slant of light” is Mitch’s nod to 20th Century realism within a contemporary context. Here’s a painting from 1930.

Early Morning Light, 1930, Edward Hopper

In the later part of the 20th Century, Stephen Shore utilized this light in his pioneering color photography:

Holden Street, North Adams, 1974, Stephen Shore

Chevron, By Stephen Shore

Shore’s pictures celebrate the beauty in the everyday. Shore’s Chevron from the 1970s leads to Mitch Eptein’s studies of beauty in what could be construed as ugly. There are lots of examples of ugly beauty in 20th Century art. I want to move onto one more example of the power of light in Mitch’s work.

From American Power by Mitch Epstein

My students are prone to use the weather as an excuse. They often say they can’t photograph because the sun isn’t out. Ever since the publication of Robert Frank’s seminal book, The Americans, an overcast day has been the choice time to photograph with a bite. An overcast, or rainy, sky equals bleakness. Mitch Epstein’s power plant above would send a different message if it was framed by puffy clouds in a blue sky. As it is, the American Flag seems riddled with bullet holes.

Probably the greatest photographer of the American Flag is Robert Frank. I won’t show any of his flag masterpieces, but please read the spectacular New Yorker review of his current show on The Americans now in New York.

Butte, Montana, 1956, by Robert Frank

From the Stephen Shore exhibition at 303 Gallery NYC
Via The Silver Lining

On a related note, I would highly recommend renting the Andy Warhol episode of American Masters for anyone interested in a thorough and meticulous look at his career.

The Velvet Years.

Avec Stephen Shore et William Eggleston, la photographie couleur acquiert ses lettres de noblesse, au même titre que la photographie noir et blanc.

Alors que l’invention  de la photographie couleur remonte au début du XXe siècle et que son utilisation se répand dans la presse et la publicité partir des années 60, les grands photographes continuent de privilégier l’utilisation du noir et blanc jusqu’au début des années 80.  

La photographie couleur reste d’ailleurs un phénomène marginale lors de  la célèbre exposition “New Topographics : Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” (1) qui expose en 1975 le travail d’une nouvelle génération de photographes américains. Sur les 8 photographes sélectionnés par William Jenkins, seul un, Stephen Shore, utilise la couleur.

A 28 ans, Shore n’a pourtant rien d’un débutant. Il fait partie de ses jeunes photographes repérés par le Museum of Modern Art (MoMa). En 1971, Shore devient le deuxième photographe à être exposé de son vivant dans le saint des saints de l’art contemporain. En 1976, c’est au tour de William Eggheston dont l’exposition consacre définitivement la photographie couleur comme un art à part entière…

Article en cours de rédaction

A lire :

- interview de Stephen Shore réalisée en 2008, traduite par l’excellent blog www.histoiresdevoir.com : http://www.histoiresdevoir.com/2008/09/05/stephen-shore-en-video/#more-523

A voir :

- site de William Eggleston : http://www.egglestontrust.com/

- Photographies de Stephen Shore : http://images.google.fr/images?sourceid=navclient&hl=fr&rlz=1T4SNYK_frFR316FR316&q=stephen+shore&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=o5uESt_8KKmNjAf5xeCQCA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1

A little short documentary about colour pioneer Stephen Shore. He 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. 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 1972 Shore embarked on a series of cross-country trips and “on the road” photographs of the American landscape.

Among the first to work almost exclusively in color, Shore, in 1971, became the first living photographer to have a one-person show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

There is a great photography show up at Louisville’s Speed Art Museum called City/Country: Photographs from the Henry V. Heuser, Jr. Collection.  The show is up until September 13, 2009 and is free.  I was particularly excited about 3 photos in the collection by Stephen Shore, who is known for being something of a pioneer of color photography.  If you like these photos, there are a lot more of them on his gallery’s website.

Lewis Baltz, "Tract House #6, 1971"

Those who spend their caffeine-fueled dawns and beer-thirsting dusks swaying along the New York MTA subway organs are no doubt familiar with the quote, “History is like that, very chancy,” from the intrepid Samuel Eliot Morison, he of the Trains of Thought ad series lining train interiors. Which is a roundabout way to introduce that unlikely touchstone in the history of photography, the now seminal (gender appropriate) exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man Altered Landscape that opened in 1975 at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Featuring Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel, the exhibition became the brand name for a full-blown genre of photographic investigation.

Twenty-four years later, the exhibition is being recreated, and curators Britt Salvesen of the Center for Creative Photography and Alison Nordstrom of George Eastman House clearly have an art historical ax to grind. The press release is full of lofty prose and direct rhetoric. A selection of excerpts:

Arguably the last traditionally photographic style, New Topographics was also the first photoconceptual style…

As evidence of its influence, it is considered the second most-cited photography exhibition in the history of the medium… (Aside: What’s the first? Family of Man? Update: Upon further consideration, probably New Documents.)

The influence of New Topographics can be traced by looking again at the original pictures and at the circumstances in which the 10 artists were brought together. At the core of this re-examination will be the works from the 1975 show, which was curated by William Jenkins in collaboration with the artists. Jenkins’s concept achieved currency primarily through the exhibition catalogue (which today is being sold at rare-book sales for upwards of $1,000, far beyond its original $6.95 price tag). “By revisiting the photographs, we can assess their cumulative effect and consider their impact as objects,” Salvesen said. “This reprise also provides a unique opportunity to assess the original exhibition’s aims, consider its influence on young photographers today, and examine the international implications of an American impulse in photography.”

This presentation of New Topographics will also include prints and books by other relevant artists to provide additional historical and contemporary context. Timothy O’Sullivan appears in his role as a 19th-century precursor cited by both Adams and Baltz, while Walker Evans illustrates the idea of “documentary style” that he introduced to American photography in the 1930s. The conceptual aspect of New Topographics is illuminated by the photo-based books of Ed Ruscha, a key figure in Jenkins’s catalogue essay; Robert Smithson’s Instamatic snapshots of defiantly anti-monumental sites; and Dan Graham’s magazine layout/slide show Homes for America; and the groundbreaking 1972 study Learning from Las Vegas, by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour.

In the coming weeks and months I hope to examine many of the topics and concerns that the exhibition raises, including the following:

• What is at stake in “re-creating” an exhibition? How might this be compared to the revival of the theatrical play or dance? In other words what are the temporal dimensions proposed by an exhibition as a specific time and place, and what does the contemporary viewer then bring to the re-creation?
• What relationship can we decipher between the “style” of the New Topographics and the “artists using photography” of Conceptualism? Text to revisit: Jeff Wall’s “Marks of Indifference.”
• Was New Topographics truly a paradigm shift, a full aesthetic break, or rather a form of atavism to the land surveys of a century before? in which case, what are the power dynamics implicit in the photographic “critiques” and strategies of refusal employed by the Topographic photographers? In other words, what are the politics of style at work? In this regard I will consider Jenkins’s original catalogue essay as well as the writings of artists included in the exhibition.
• What might is the influence of New Topographics today? How might we identify another generation of artists expanding upon the legacy of that exhibition. In particular can we expand the horizons to include greater diversity in gender and topography? How might globalization be considered to affect this aesthetic condition? What is a “Man-Altered Landscape” in the 21st Century?

Frank Gohlke, "Grain elevators, Minneapolis, 1974"

My interest in New Topographics is largely personal. Raised in the West, I was imbued with a certain reverence for the natural world, but a Romanticism leavened by pragmatism and eventually cynicism. My own journey through photography retraced the steps of many of the Topographic photographers, rejecting the sublime landscapes that came before me, the equivalences and transcendentalisms that defined American photography for at least half a century. Even as I no longer make pictures of my own, I certainly see photographs as codifications of social values. No image is innocent or blank: they each belie a world of biases and valuations. In framing the world they saw developing before them, the Topographic photographers gave form to ideas they had about the landscapes they lived in. Landscape, as a physical thing in a world, but more particularly through their aesthetic representation, tell us a great deal about who we are.

In the interests of full disclosure, outside of this blog I have professional relationships with several of the photographers in the exhibition; I hope that if anything this will clarify and illuminate certain ideas rather than cloud them–my intentions certainly aren’t promotional in this setting.

I’ve laid the groundwork with a lot of questions that have been stirring in my head over the past months since I learned about the forthcoming exhibition. New Topographics will be touring for the next three years, so this may be a discussion that comes and goes. The publication is slated to arrive in September.

George Eastman House (June 13–Oct. 4,2009); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Oct. 25, 2009–Jan. 3, 2010); Center for Creative Photography (Feb. 19–May 16, 2010); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (July 17–Oct. 3, 2010); Landesgalerie Linz, Austria (Nov. 10, 2010–Jan. 9, 2011), Photographische Sammlung Stiftung Kultur, Cologne (Jan. 27–April 3, 2011); Jeu de Paume, Paris (April 11–June 12, 2011); and the Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam, the Netherlands (July 2–Sept. 11, 2011); and Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, Bilbao (November 2011–January 2012).

© Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore’s images have exerted a lot of influence on my current ways of working. I’ve had a look through a couple of really interesting videos/interviews with the man on YouTube recently. Shore uses a 10×8 view camera giving extraordinary detail. He looks at how elements within an image work with each other and searches for  balance. When approaching a scene he will look for a central point to an image, which will designate where his camera will go.  As the large format camera records extraordinary detail he is able to include elements within a frame without making them the centre of focus.  For a person to see the scene with as much detail as the camera can record may take several minutes, but the photo allows people to view the whole scene in seconds. Time is effectively compressed into the length the shutter is opened.  The camera for Shore is a tool for communicating what the world looks like in a state of heightened awareness.

Shore is primarily a photographer, but when he came into teaching he found it difficult to articulate his thoughts. Teaching himself photography and working alone, there was no need to explain images. For there is a visual communication going on without words, not just spoken words, but those in your head. Most believe thinking is involved with speech and an internal dialogue, however a lot is visual.

A lot of his time is spent looking at, handling and organizing space. He stands by the tripod and looks at the scene exploring it and everything in it. For Shore every element in a scene is there for a reason. If he stops looking at 50ft there would be a wall at 50ft to stop the viewer from looking. From this and his exploration of the scene he would make tiny adjustments to the scene.

Exhibition dates: 28th March – 28th June, 2009

Recently discovered color images of California and Mexico taken during the 1940s and 1950s by the late visionary photographer Paul Outerbridge, who was considered “a master of color photography,” will be exhibited at the Central Library’s First Floor Galleries, 630 W. Fifth St., downtown, from March 28 through June 28.

Paul Outerbridge
‘Laguna Beach, California’
c.1950

Paul Outerbridge
‘Balboa Beach, California’
c.1950

“Art is life seen through man’s inner craving for perfection and beauty–his escape from the sordid realities of life into a world of his imagining. Art accounts for at least a third of our civilization, and it is one of the artist’s principal duties to do more than merely record life or nature. To the artist is given the privilege of pointing the way and inspiring towards a better life.” 

Paul Outerbridge

Paul Outerbridge
‘Reclining Nude’
c.1937

“So wrote Paul Outerbridge, rather exaltedly, about his chosen profession. He was a designer and illustrator in New York before turning to photography in the 1920s. In 1925, having established himself as an innovative advertising photographer and graphic designer, he moved to Paris and worked for the French edition of Vogue magazine. There he met Edward Steichen, with whom he developed a friendly rivalry. Around 1930, having returned to New York, Outerbridge began to experiment with color photography, in particular the carbro-color process. He focused primarily on female nudes – striking, full-color images that were ahead of their time. The growing popularity of the dye transfer process lead to cheaper color photographs and Outerbridge, who stuck fast to the carbro process as superior in its richness and permanence, saw his commercial work dry up, leaving him without a regular source of income. In 1943 Outerbridge moved to California, where he photographed only intermittently.”

Text from the Getty Museum website

Well if he only photographed intermittently what photographs they are. Perhaps some of the most important colour photographs of their generation were made after he moved to California influencing the next generation of colour photographers as noted below. His aesthetic sensibility is scintillating what else can one say – so far ahead of his time, so prescient of future colour spaces in photography. I know how no regular income feels as an artist but he still had the courage and vision to make the work. I am in awe of the man; the visual complexity but eloquent simplicity of his photographs is just that – simply amazing.

Perhaps the Getty needs to ammend their text especially the last sentence!!

Paul Outerbridge
‘Airport Cafe with Band, Mexico’
c.1950

Paul Outerbridge
‘Airport Lounge, Mexico’
c.1950

Paul Outerbridge
‘Gas Station, Mexico’
c.1950

Paul Outerbridge
‘Self-portrait on Lounge, Oceanside Resort, California’
c.1950

“Outerbridge, who died in 1958, built his reputation in the early 1920s in New York and Paris making elegant black and white photo abstractions primarily of nudes and still lifes that rivaled those of his peers, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Edward Weston. In the 1930s, Outerbridge mastered the exquisite tri-carbro-color print process and went on to make some of the most important color photographs in art and advertising of that time.

Moving to California in 1943 and taking up residence in Laguna Beach, Outerbridge made his last important body of work throughout California and Mexico. Between 1948 and until his death in 1958 he codified a new language in color photographs that anticipated the work of William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld and others known for their “New Color” work in the 1970s.

“The curious position of prosperous American tourists amid the daily poverty experienced by some Mexicans is one of the recurring themes in the work, but with Outerbridge there is no political polemic,” says co-curator Phillip Prodger. “Outerbridge was thinking of his photographs as jig-saw puzzles made up of many different highly colored pieces, each placed with meticulous care.”

Among Outerbridge’s subjects are carnival carriages with passengers dressed and headed for a grand party; a group of fashionable men relaxing in an outdoor hotel lobby drinking Coke and beer while a small orchestra plays; a girl in a lime-green dress and white sweater walking past a gas station whose painted-red details add a vibrant flourish to the scene.”

Text from the Downtown Central Library press release

Paul Outerbridge
‘Model with Satin Dress, Laguna Beach, California’
c.1950

Paul Outerbridge
‘Party, Laguna Beach’
c.1950

Los Angeles Central Library

630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071 – (213) 228-7000
Mon. 10-8, Tue. 10-8, Wed. 10-8, Thu. 10-8, Fri. 10-6, Sat. 10-6, Sun. 1-5

Central Library website

Although I love photography, I also love paintings, especially Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keeffe.  What really pleases me is when the two intersect like they did last week at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco.  Edward Hopper drawings and paintings along with a group of photographers who made art with their camera much like Hopper did with his paintbrush.  

After I returned home, I found this great site while perusing another blog, and in doing so, I found two videos. I can get the one on Stephen Shore to show up, but the one on William Eggleston would not work correctly here so can be found on the Photo Editor site.

And here is the photograph I took of all those Edward Hopper books I own, the bottom one being the one I purchased at Fraenkel Gallery: