Eyemazing: The New Collectible Art Photography

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never seen their children again. But there were also stories of widows who came from well-to-do families and had children that wanted them to remain at

In turn, the vulnerability inherent in Mills’ methods and his indifference to any established market-mentality qualify as his greatest “art weapons.” They aid his fervent acts of selection and their impossible to anticipate outcome. They help him to ignore the conventional world in favour of exploring the boundaries of an alternative realm made up of changing densities. Ultimately, they allow him to put one of Max Ernst’s axioms to the test: “When an artist finds himself, he is lost.” Even today, Joseph Mills continues to give a face to the underlying suspense in the irrational and the purely imagined, and he remains a relentless searcher. Delano does not view this series as being in any way a comprehensive study of street prostitution—it does not try to explain the sociological or political reasons behind the phenomenon, nor does Delano suggest that his photos explain the lives of the women. “This is not as much a documentary project as a silent movie,” he says. “It is a drama play without dialogue. It is intended to raise more questions than deliver answers. Most people engaged in such work are not going to open up. Life can be that way. It can be exceedingly unfair but still there is a distinctive grace to these women.” Art communicates truths or ideas that cannot be described by any other form of language. For this reason, the most stirring art can also be the hardest to write about. Germán Herrera’s work presents such a challenge. Herrera’s captivating photomontages unravel directly into the topography of the psyche. They strike personal notes, resonate deeply, and do not easily resolve into answers or translation. Herrera’s work is striking in how it immediately tugs at the mind on a subliminal level. Below the shadowy, luscious surfaces lurk ephemeral manifestations of philosophical concerns. Many of Herrera’s works seem to be palimpsests of unknown origin, teetering evocatively on the brink of obscurity. Cave formations draw on the same principles, but they tend to be three-dimensional so usually include more depth. There is no sky and often no sense of place.

Consider two of the subjects whose portraits appear repeatedly in the series: Juliette, a Haitian working on Rue St. Denis in Paris, and Angelica, a Nicaraguan working in Guatemala City. They do not speak the same language and work half way around the world from each other. But these two women, like many in Delano’s photographs, are single moms working to support their children. Juliette’s marriage to an American man in Miami fell apart and left her without financial recourse. Angelica takes clients to her hotel room, walking past her son watching television upstairs. Delano was allowed to spend time with them and got a glimpse into their lives. His images convey a sympathetic message: They are doing the best they can. BR: I think you are right. The key word is respect, if I were disrespectful for five minutes I would take down my camera and stop. I have a very moral attitude about that. I push them or I can be a bit of a thief, but I am only a crook with crooks. I have to have someone strong and powerful in front of me. CM: I think that comes through and makes your work different from a regular fashion shoot. Your subjects do seem powerful and, like you said, in charge. There seems to be a respectful intimacy that comes through your images.

I see Liulitun now through inri's eyes, its rambling, riot of greenery—vine tendrils reaching out into space, grasping for each other, like the new lovers united after a nine month separation of agonising, mute phone calls—and bohemian ambience offering a delicious space in which to breathe freely. I see the sensuality of their half-eaten dragon fruit, suggestive, moist and magenta-skinned; the shy declarations of their bare feet touching; inri's wonder at the unfamiliar foods in local stores, the rows of strange meats in plastic wrap, culinary mysteries to lay on their table; red roses, hot crimson and belligerent with fragrance; carnal-ethereal moments of the sort we pray never to end, those moments of corporeal discovery in which the tangled limbs of self and other become momentarily indistinguishable, and in the eyes of one's mate you see your own soul; the journeys and homecomings; the mundane rituals of the everyday that make the string of moments hold together in the irreducible chain of subtle repetitions and variations that you come to call your life. What better role can photography play than that of the compassionate voyeur—allowing us to step out of our own limited lives and, at least for a moment, and pull us into someone else’s very different existence? The possibility of stimulating our understanding and compassion for another human’s condition, pushing the boundaries of our own contained world—this is ones of the most valuable roles that photography can fulfil. One of Delano’s strengths is that he moves nimbly and gracefully in the worlds he photographs, altering them as little as possible with his presence. Photographing sex workers is a delicate endeavour; not only must Delano have the confidence and calm required to snap a photo in culturally sensitive moments, but he must have the quiet respect needed for people to let you into their worlds, disrupting them as little as possible when lifting his camera. AS: For me, the spirit of Little Red Riding Hood is like that of a newborn, or like the mind of a child. It is a new and feminine spirit. It is “mature” innocence. Why did I want her to visit the Louvre? I want her to confront life through art. I believe that the concentration of life can be found in art. I’ve understood more about history by looking at paintings than by reading books! This Little Red Riding Hood goes to the Louvre and looks at the paintings, and because she’s still a child, she imagines herself as the Infante Margarita in Las Meninas by Valasquez or as Suzanne in portraits by Rubens. I've always wondered how the medium of photography, the medium which cannot avoid its reference to the real, may be used in metaphysical purposes, as for example Victorian photographers did to represented ghosts. The answered lies deep in the history of photography, at its very first steps in Rijlander's and Robinson's representations of allegories which were manipulated in a darkroom. These images were surreal before there was a Surrealist movement in photography. They describe the non-existing, the fictional world of literature. Similarly, Hammam uses complicated methods to revise the original photo. Images are recorded and processed either by film manipulation or via the generative tool of a computer programme. They are taken away, stolen from reality. So, they are paradoxically illustrative, but not representational at the same time. These images form an oasis in which no political message or social drama is hidden, and it is at this place that photography is shifting from the given banality of the real into a more mystic and allegoric representation of the non-given and untold. Hammam is fully embracing the paradox of a medium that isn't capable of recording the unknown.When I came to this understanding of kōga, the way I looked at Shidomoto’s photography transformed completely. Brainchild of Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the performance art known as Butoh (“dance of darkness”) inspired the great photographer of darkness, Eikoh Hosoe. The power of Eikoh’s and Butoh’s art stems from the very fear, disgust, rancour, hate, stress, and powerlessness which lives in the shadows of repressed memory. Consequently, Butoh dancers move like marionettes, contorted and faltering beneath Death’s fingers. Butoh is the image of light’s cancer and bruise, its final death rattle. Shidomoto begins where Butoh ends. What slips away from us into the dance of darkness, a new dance with light revives. HS: The main character in your work has often been described as lonely or isolated, but it seems that viewers connect to the situations your “everyman” is experiencing, so that your work is more about shared humanity than isolation. Do you agree? Or do you feel that isolation is at the core of human experience? I see Liulitun now through Inri's eyes, its rambling, riot of greenery—vine tendrils reaching out into space, grasping for each other, like the new lovers united after a nine month separation of agonising, mute phone calls—and bohemian ambience offering a delicious space in which to breathe freely. I see the sensuality of their half-eaten dragon fruit, suggestive, moist and magenta-skinned; the shy declarations of their bare feet touching; Inri's wonder at the unfamiliar foods in local stores, the rows of strange meats in plastic wrap, culinary mysteries to lay on their table; red roses, hot crimson and belligerent with fragrance; carnal-ethereal moments of the sort we pray never to end, those moments of corporeal discovery in which the tangled limbs of self and other become momentarily indistinguishable, and in the eyes of one's mate you see your own soul; the journeys and homecomings; the mundane rituals of the everyday that make the string of moments hold together in the irreducible chain of subtle repetitions and variations that you come to call your life.

the object retains the potential of its previous existence, be it music, a story, an image or some manufactured element. Its history remains there in some way, only in a new context.” Douglas’s photography stops the viewer for a more detailed moment adding further dimension to the stories. He creates the images to begin the process of his storytelling allowing him to study the environments She spoke no Chinese and RongRong no Japanese. Their initial dialogue was almost solely visual—they spoke to each other through their works. For almost two years, before inri moved to Liulitun, their love subsisted on the sharing of images and rudimentary linguistic communication. They invented a secret language of gestures, expressions, and smatterings of English, Mandarin and Japanese, and collaborated on photography art projects. Their debut collaboration took place during inri's first visit to China, almost ten months after they met. Naked together on the Great Wall, before the majestic silence of nature, they used a timer and let the camera bear witness.

He even says his “definition of art” is being able to see “the face of the Divine” which then leaves us “gratified, even healed as we enter again onto the streets of the world and engage our destinies.” After moving to New York in the 1920s, Steichen became Chief Photographer for Condé Nast Publications, defining the modern look of fashion and celebrity photography at Vogue and Vanity Fair. Following four decades of working as a photographer, Steichen turned his hand to curating, becoming the Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His groundbreaking, travelling exhibition, The Family of Man, which opened in 1955, has been hailed as the greatest photography exhibition of all time. Featuring 503 pictures by 273 photographers from 68 countries, it belongs to UNESCO’s World Register for archive holdings and library collections, and is on permanent display at the Château de Clervaux in Luxembourg. UNESCO describes the exhibition as a “cult object” and “one of the major cultural creations” of the 20th century. Saul Leiter, was a very humble man who would rather talk about artists and writers he enjoyed than himself, he was happy to share his memories of other photographers he knew well such as Diane Arbus, or his passion for French photographers such as Boubat or Lartigue who he admired. TH: I choose to leave my works untitled because I would like the spectator to have his own thoughts, make his own story and fantasy about what is seen.Those are not necessarily the same thoughts that I had when making the work. She spoke no Chinese and RongRong no Japanese. Their initial dialogue was almost solely visual—they spoke to each other through their works. For almost two years, before Inri moved to Liulitun, their love subsisted on the sharing of images and rudimentary linguistic communication. They invented a secret language of gestures, expressions, and smatterings of English, Mandarin and Japanese, and collaborated on photography art projects. Their debut collaboration took place during Inri's first visit to China, almost ten months after they met. Naked together on the Great Wall, before the majestic silence of nature, they used a timer and let the camera bear witness.

For many years, Euro Rotelli had the need to express his feelings and emotions towards the phenomenon of immigration through photography. Not wanting to make a display of suffering and tragedy but more of hope and a successful living together. His new project started when an architect friend who lived in Paris suggested him to visit Saint-Denis and Aubervilliers, two districts that were protagonists of a phenomenon of constant change and movement. FS: I think that a few decades ago, time and support was given to a journalist going to a place and understanding it from the ground up. Financial imperatives cast aside. This sadness was often countered by the heartening bonds and sisterhood that the widows created amongst themselves, bolstering one other and empowering the community in a way that I hadn’t expected.

Herrera exercises an alchemical imagination, sampling freely from classical painting, devotional iconography, and his own photographs taken from the natural world. Fragmented figures and ghost-like apparitions undermine the picture plane and con Barbara Oudiz (BO): Life for you as a student and an artist in Communist Ukraine was not particularly difficult, you say. Isn’t that surprising? AS: I’ve only been doing photography seriously for about fours years. While my daughter was at art school, she used to criticize me and say that I spent all day with my paintbrushes and never looked around me, never noticed what was going on in the outside world. It was a joke between us, but one day I took it to heart and made a decision: everything I hated most, I would study! And since I hated photography, I decided to take it up. At first I did it especially to flirt with women. I’d make portraits of women to get to know them. I used to save the images to use later for my painting. Then the Director of the Russian Photography House – which is like the Maison Européenne de la Photo in Paris – came to my studio one evening. She looked at the dozens of slides I had taken and told me: you have to become a photographer! So I started forging my path. Over the past four years, I’ve been in at least 70 group or solo exhibitions. That’s almost an exhibition every month. For a gallery owner, representing a painter is like marriage. Whereas the relationship between a gallery owner and a photographer is like adultery. It’s just a fleeting affair, a much “lighter” relationship.