^lol
btw my reaction upthread to moma 'new photography' thing was a bit kneejerksetting aside issue of artist selection,am interested in those themes, seeing art in person i’d prob find it interesting(though think, like, in multiple threads on ilx you’d prob find better play on & insight into those themes)(& not huge fan of photography qua illustration of themes or theses anyway)
also kinda have bad leftover reaction to recent trend of after photography/ is photograph over/ end of photography/ post-photography thinkpieces, conferences, exhibitions (& assimilated this to that)
like, art-curatorial preference for overtly ‘conceptual’ photography, 'photo-based art' or 'post-photography', is understandable (because it seems more like ART obv, lends itself more easily to contemporary theoretical discourse), but it kinda bothers/bores me too(even though i really do like a lot of stuff that fits these categories)
guess what bothers me is not these genres of photo-art, theoretical discussion of or curatorial focus on them, but what seem like curatorial manifestos against (for lack of better qualifier guess i'll say 'documentary' but that's such a pathetically limiting term) photography as irrelevant/ reactionary/ not-artlol i'm 'old'
― drash, Wednesday, 29 July 2015 21:50 (nine years ago) link
(lol, but he does look handsome; imo film makes everyone look better :) )
― drash, Wednesday, 29 July 2015 21:56 (nine years ago) link
9/11 photos are beautiful & haunting, i wouldn't change a thing w/ them
― gr8080, Thursday, 30 July 2015 00:47 (nine years ago) link
agree
― drash, Thursday, 30 July 2015 02:12 (nine years ago) link
looking through whole set is fascinating: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/sets/72157656213196901
want to unpack, respond to schlump’s joke/zing & my attempt at joke back; maybe something worth disentangling here re complicated experience of looking at/ talking about these images (or images like these) as ‘photography’
(also relates in some way to quiddity of ‘documentary’ photography)
interpret joke to mean: there’s something funny (or worse) about aestheticizing these images, regarding or reading them through aesthetic categories (‘beautiful’ image, quality of film, grain—> ‘handsome’ cheney)
critic (not schlump but rhetorical construct) may argue that ‘aesthetic’ response somehow falsifies, masks, ignores (import of) content; that appropriate response/ interpretation/ critique shd not be aesthetic but political (if not political critique, at least some political or politically-informed feeling, e.g. of antipathy)
to start i’d say, my experience/response (e.g. what i find ‘resonant’) is not merely aesthetic, nor can aesthetic strand be abstracted from whole complex of feelings/thoughts, including political & historical & existential
there’s plenty of material here for explicitly political readings of various kinds, if that's what one is looking for, but mostly, probably, not v interesting ones. don’t see these images as providing ‘new’ evidence to prove or disprove a viewer’s already adopted political narratives & characterizations. viewer’s (political) judgment of these figures is already formed in advance: insofar as one is supposed to feel certain way about them, looking at (reading) images then is just exercise in corroboration.
what i find fascinating/ resonant/ haunting is more difficult to pin down & express. will try to later.
― drash, Thursday, 30 July 2015 16:53 (nine years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/8eOwmW9.jpg
IH
― 龜, Wednesday, 5 August 2015 12:38 (nine years ago) link
omg
― tender is the late-night daypart (schlump), Wednesday, 5 August 2015 19:39 (nine years ago) link
that's great. obvious horror movie poster potential with the right crop.
― Gorefest Frump (Doctor Casino), Thursday, 6 August 2015 01:04 (nine years ago) link
frank's editor laura israel made a film, don't blink: robert frank, playing at nyff, wow
― tender is the late-night daypart (schlump), Wednesday, 12 August 2015 18:46 (nine years ago) link
i guess i feel like my photos are better than every other dumb photographer's photos, but that everyone who is just taking photos's photos are better than my photos
― tender is the late-night daypart (schlump), Saturday, 15 August 2015 12:09 (nine years ago) link
i'm very very very in love with by311.tumblr.com
― 龜, Saturday, 15 August 2015 12:46 (nine years ago) link
^ have that "just taking photo's photos' vibe to it
i also totally recognize it's because it's presenting an environment that's very familiar and yet strange to me due to my living in china and strikes me in a way idk very good photos of istanbul or the continent don't
it's weird but i could spend hours scrolling through photos like those
― 龜, Saturday, 15 August 2015 12:48 (nine years ago) link
great tumblr"just taking photo's photos' vibethink i know what u meanun-tendentious, democratic (in eggleston's sense), unmanneredyet obv (to me) v sophisticated eye
street scenes great ofcbut also really like occasional closer, intimate, quiet photos of interiors, still lifes, etc
― drash, Thursday, 20 August 2015 12:43 (nine years ago) link
https://scontent-lax3-1.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xfa1/t51.2885-15/e35/11375261_1107788405915697_1535693033_n.jpg
― crime breeze (schlump), Thursday, 3 September 2015 23:01 (nine years ago) link
wowso much going on in this photo (especially given-- but not only bc of-- who took it)the pitch-black interior, nocturnal, of sumptuous leather, reflecting gleams of daylight; array of cut crystal glasses awaiting liquids; framing (from perspective of dark car's passenger) cloudy blue skies & RAINBOWit's lynchian (mullholland drive comes to mind), egglestonian--but no, forget comparisons, this is its own unique thing <3
― drash, Friday, 4 September 2015 02:36 (nine years ago) link
woah by311.tumblr.com btw
it's presenting an environment that's very familiar and yet strange to me -- the fact that there are no identifiable landmarks, kind of puzzle, where is it? somewhere in the north obv but its anonymity? is appealing (actually, it's changchun, i think) -- all those textures and angles in heaps -- i love it
― dylannn, Friday, 4 September 2015 08:53 (nine years ago) link
you kinda wonder what friedlander would do if unleashed in china but i think this blog is that
― 龜, Friday, 4 September 2015 12:54 (nine years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/vrte9W8.jpg
no frame of reference here
― 龜, Friday, 4 September 2015 12:55 (nine years ago) link
as much as i love the pictures, they also unsettle me because i've taken a thousand pictures in third tier chinese cities and these are probably the ones i wouldn't take and not the way i would have taken them but they capture exactly what i would have liked to capture.
― dylannn, Friday, 4 September 2015 14:39 (nine years ago) link
dayo do u knw anything about him(?)? http://c--x.tumblr.com/ texttumblr kinda heavy. i love these pictures.
― dylannn, Saturday, 5 September 2015 06:01 (nine years ago) link
https://steidl.de/assets/images/-UTQ3ZSWcJS+kcEk4W2RlJsJYaBCDXzH2Im02ztv2BkDNVpnln7b7q7qqUAfyTQeD5WNLZSDk918=/william-eggleston-the-democratic-forest-9.jpg.jpghttps://steidl.de/assets/images/-UTQ3ZS2dISzychs4BmBsfHQgD3RQ36ozB7zTguaDclKdZuPxr5G1RK7t+edLALLPRkxesWvE0zY=/william-eggleston-the-democratic-forest-08.jpg.jpg
https://steidl.de/Books/The-Democratic-Forest-2337475153.html
― crime breeze (schlump), Friday, 11 September 2015 18:30 (nine years ago) link
<3(- <3
― drash, Friday, 11 September 2015 19:03 (nine years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/6sLfgYm.jpg
― 龜, Wednesday, 25 November 2015 13:02 (eight years ago) link
beautiful
― drash, Wednesday, 25 November 2015 16:14 (eight years ago) link
wow ^^actual classic
hey soi am trying to trace an article i feel like i read here but must be misremembering some element of. it was about a new, ICP-esque photo museum opening in iirc japan. but i can't find it (i thought it was on lens) so maybe at least the japan part is wrong. does this ring any bells
― crime breeze (schlump), Tuesday, 1 December 2015 02:37 (eight years ago) link
http://internethistory.tumblr.com/image/135007771713
http://i.imgur.com/R62tkru.jpg
two scotch eggs at the edge of forever
― 龜, Saturday, 12 December 2015 13:18 (eight years ago) link
like one of those sci-fi scenes when we cut to a beguiling landscape shot of a planet with multiple moons
― CAROL (schlump), Saturday, 12 December 2015 18:49 (eight years ago) link
little known fact that tatooine's twin moons were in fact reflected scotch eggs
― 龜, Saturday, 12 December 2015 19:00 (eight years ago) link
long dvd featurette showing hairy man gingerly assembling scotch egg diorama in prop-strewn basement, slowly flooding scene with dry ice, taking occasional small bites while preserving eggs' full moon shape when viewed from the front
― CAROL (schlump), Saturday, 12 December 2015 19:34 (eight years ago) link
humming the weird ruminative star wars theme motif
― CAROL (schlump), Saturday, 12 December 2015 19:36 (eight years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/BXtTAQm.jpg
that little glitchy black dot in the middle
― 龜, Friday, 22 January 2016 15:49 (eight years ago) link
transit of Venus imo
― Clay, Friday, 22 January 2016 18:36 (eight years ago) link
my guess is its the annoying automatic red-eye correction that drugstore scanners add to files when they give you a CD-R with your negs
― gr8080, Monday, 1 February 2016 18:04 (eight years ago) link
I'm more concerned that the world through the front windscreen is mirrored.
― Michael Jones, Monday, 1 February 2016 18:06 (eight years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/magazine/a-too-perfect-picture.html
― 龜, Thursday, 31 March 2016 12:49 (eight years ago) link
http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzAxOTY5NzI1Nw==&mid=2649953157&idx=1&sn=c6fbda98ecc253f1b0287e7bedfddac3&scene=2&srcid=04165oojVHc8JIekOEy7mEOd#rd
― 龜, Sunday, 17 April 2016 11:55 (eight years ago) link
so rad to look through these thinking 'this is a modern thing' while not being able to say 'this is a modern thing i can neatly slot into a category of trite contemporary tropes'. really lovely & hey i forgot abt this site
― 1st Amendment absolutist in favor of the unltd publication of sextapes (schlump), Sunday, 17 April 2016 14:44 (eight years ago) link
i like that the encouraged background music is shoegaze
― 龜, Sunday, 17 April 2016 14:47 (eight years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/magazine/the-digital-afterlife-of-lost-family-photos.html?smid=tw-nytmag&smtyp=cur
― 龜, Wednesday, 27 April 2016 18:21 (eight years ago) link
Thought-provoking. I've been working on some family photos, all taken by the no-longer-living. There are certain related, if less super-thorny, questions about privacy and how people choose to define and represent their own lives. Right now I'm dealing with a (woefully incomplete) binder of negatives my mother compiled in the 1970s, before I was born. Did most of these never get printed because they were crummy exposures, because she didn't like them, or because they just didn't have time to futz around with the darkroom stuff after my brother got born?
There's also an amazing letter, in a different box, where she describes to her sister her first, partially botched, experience with loading film onto a reel, with her and my dad seated on the edge of the tub in a blacked-out bathroom, with the closed toilet for a shelf. Just like my first reels thirty years later, she ended up with some frames touching each other, big blobby undeveloped areas. My delight in recognizing this moment as a crummy little stressful incident that my mother and I both experienced in our respective youths is commingled with my wanting the negatives to all be just fine and perfectly preserved. Nothing so heavy as what this article is dealing with, but interesting to think about. Meanwhile I just wish I knew what had become of all my grandmother's slides...
― sisterhood of the baggering vance (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, 27 April 2016 22:12 (eight years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK19vsJCMBM
― 龜, Wednesday, 18 May 2016 12:46 (eight years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/nGS20jQ.jpg
need 2 cop
― 龜, Wednesday, 8 June 2016 11:47 (eight years ago) link
http://shihlun.tumblr.com/post/146626203984/hsieh-chun-te-1968-69
― 龜, Wednesday, 29 June 2016 13:01 (eight years ago) link
wd love to see-http://imaonline.jp/exhibition/sentimental-journey-the-complete-contactsheets.html
― schlump, Friday, 8 July 2016 04:41 (eight years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/04/magazine/where-have-you-gone-robert-frank.html?pagewanted=all
this '90s frank profe rly on a part w/ beloved leiter interviews in chronicling Peak Grouchso juicy
― schlump, Saturday, 9 July 2016 21:35 (eight years ago) link
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/loneliness-belongs-to-the-photographer?mbid=rss
― 龜, Sunday, 17 July 2016 15:37 (eight years ago) link
https://www.instagram.com/p/BIF0P00jGfA/
― 龜, Thursday, 21 July 2016 11:39 (eight years ago) link
feel like maybe the photo editor who commissioned martin parr to photograph trump voters shd be executed
― schlump, Thursday, 21 July 2016 22:42 (eight years ago) link
I really love looking at photog's contact sheets. It's like hearing the demos of songs or something; reminds me too that not every shot's a keeper for them either. (Except Capa, the bastard — his sheets are like hit, hit, hit, hit, alternate take, hit)
https://shop.magnumphotos.com/collections/contact-sheet-prints
― stet, Friday, 29 July 2016 15:20 (eight years ago) link
https://67.media.tumblr.com/9a54c5b1ec3d8eb26677d9f3abaa36b8/tumblr_o7crj6wBye1tdmbcso1_540.gif
― 龜, Tuesday, 23 August 2016 12:24 (eight years ago) link