Aperture's Blog, page 154

Tokyo’s Spaces

By Kenji Takazawa

Tokyo is teeming with independent art spaces that present exhibitions, sell photobooks, and provide platforms for discussing photography. Journalist Kenji Takazawa provides an essential guide for your next photographic tour of Japan’s capital. This online-only piece is published in conjunction with the “Tokyo” issue of Aperture magazine.

This article originally appeared in Issue 11 of the Aperture Photography App.

Shelves at the Photobook Diner Megutama

 

The most experimental photography in Japan has more often than not been produced by photographers operating outside the mainstream. Before the Second World War, the scene was found in amateur photographer clubs; after the war, independent galleries provided spaces for reflection. Many of these independent galleries were set up in the 1970s by photographers who had studied at the Workshop School run by Shomei Tomatsu and Daido Moriyama, in a bid to overcome the otherwise limited options for presenting their work to the public. At this time, mainstream photography was dominated by galleries that belonged to camera manufacturers. It didn’t help that photography tended to be held in low esteem by the art world. For young photographers bent on innovative photographic expression, they really had no other option but to set up and run their own places. These independent galleries, and the amazingly original work they produced, are important to understanding photography from Japan.

This tradition is still alive in Tokyo today. As someone who makes a living interviewing the main players in Japanese photography, I spend quite a bit of time just walking the streets of the city and checking out the scene. Let me take you on a little photography-themed tour.

 

The Photobook Diner Megutama

The Photobook Diner Megutama

This café and restaurant serves delicious Japanese home cooking and is located near Ebisu Station. The wooden shelves that run along most of its walls are filled with photography books. The place is run by a trio of people—the photographer Kotaro Iizawa, the artist Tokitama, and Megumiko Okada, who is in charge of the food. What explains such an amazing collection of books? And why have them in a restaurant? “These are all photographic books that Iizawa has been amassing for over thirty years,” Tokitama explained. “We had more books than we could handle at home, so we thought we’d make them available in a collection here.” Iizawa is one of Japan’s most prolific photography critics, author of more than fifty books on photography. In the 1990s he worked as an editor for the photography magazine déjà-vu. “I’ve organized so many events that involved food in one way or another,” Megumiko added. “Food is just such a great way of putting participants at ease and helping things go smoothly—and visitors like it as well. But probably the main reason for this photobook restaurant is that the three of us just love to eat!”

Altogether the collection amounts to some five thousand volumes, including rare photobooks and collections by photographers Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Kiyoshi Suzuki. Amazingly, anyone can just take the books off the shelves and start reading—none of the stiff rules of public libraries apply. The idea is for visitors to look at the books, enjoy the photographs, and chat to each other about them. It’s a pretty laid-back place, and probably one of a kind.

POST

Keisuke Nakajima set up this independent bookstore, also located in Ebisu, in 2005. POST sells photography and art books, and most uniquely, features art books from only one or two publishers at time, with the idea of highlighting their particular character and vision. POST’s gallery space shows work by contemporary Japanese and non-Japanese photographers. The Tokyo-based photo-duo Nerhol and the American photographer Todd Hido have both exhibited here. POST has also begun publishing printed editions, for example, by Takashi Homma and Nao Tsuda.

Photographers’ Gallery

Photographers’ Gallery

Shinjuku is probably what comes to mind when anyone mentions Tokyo street photography, since the area has long featured in the work of Moriyama and Araki. In this area many small independent photography galleries can be found. The Photographers’ Gallery, located in the heart of Shinjuku Nichome, the gay center of Tokyo, is well-known throughout Japan. Photographer Keizo Kitajima has been the driving force behind this gallery since its establishment in 2001. Famous for photobooks such as Photo Express: Tokyo and USSR 1991, Kitajima was also a founding member of CAMP, the legendary independent photographic gallery and magazine publisher. “We photographers have always liked to run our own show. We value our independence, and we like to be in charge of everything we do,” Kitajima said. “CAMP was one expression of this. Being involved in photography means not only creating and showing your own work, and running your own gallery, but holding talks, putting out publications, the whole thing. It means doing it all.”

Photographers’ Gallery publishes its own magazine under the title of Photographers’ Gallery Press. Recent issues have featured little-known areas in the history of photography in Japan; Kenzo Tamoto’s photographs of the reclamation projects of Hokkaido, for example, and reappraisals of photographs of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sokyusha Photobook Store

This independent bookstore and gallery is located in Shinjuku Gyoen. Sokyusha published Masahisa Fukase’s 1986 Karasu (Ravens), as well as many other photobooks by figures like Moriyama and Miyako Ishiuchi. In much the same way as POST, Sokyusha stocks new publications as well as old ones, and it also releases privately published limited editions. The shelves of this bookstore, carefully curated by the owner and photobook editor Michitaka Ota, speak volumes about the fiercely independent spirit of Japanese photography.

A gathering at Place M

Place M

Not far away from Sokyusha Photobook Store is Place M. Established in 1987 by the photographer Masato Seto, known for his photobook Heya/Living Room, Tokyo (1996), as well as the photobook Binran (2008), this must be one of the longest-running galleries in Tokyo. The place is now run by a team of four photographers, including Moriyama. “I was one of the first students to study under Moriyama,” says Masato. “But I wasn’t a member of CAMP. I went to view their exhibitions, but at that time I wasn’t independent. Once I became independent I wanted a place to show my own work, and that’s when Michio Yamauchi and I set up Place M.” Place M is a multifunctional space that combines galleries, darkrooms, a bookstore, and workshops. And of course, it’s also a publisher. Quite often lectures are held here.

Inside Bar Kodoji

 

Bar Kodoji

A short walk from Place M will bring you to Golden Gai (“Golden Town”). A maze of six or so streets crammed with shanty-style bars and frequented by any number of players involved in theater, film, and photography, in the 1960s and ’70s this was one of the hippest neighborhoods in Tokyo, functioning as a kind of cultural salon. Artists have never been able to count on support from the government here in Japan, so aspiring artists have always had to find their own makeshift meeting places, and here in Golden Gai you could get a cheap drink and a bite to eat. Photographers such as Moriyama and Araki frequented the dives and hangouts of this part of town, so it’s hardly surprising that the streets of Shinjuku feature prominently in their work.

One of the oldest and most famous of Golden Gai bars is Bar Kodoji, established in 1974. As its proprietress Shigeko Ono explained, “I opened this bar at roughly the same period as CAMP was begun. Lots of CAMP members used to come here to drink, and that was the start of the association with photographers.” In 2002 she began using the walls of the bar as a place to display photos, and at one time Moriyama had an annual exhibition here. Last year there were exhibits of work by Koji Onaka and the French photographer Antoine D’Agata. “At first I told him no, but Antoine kept begging and begging till finally I said yes. I’ve known him for close to ten years. I’m kind of nervous about what kind of photos he’ll want to show!” she joked to me last winter.

The shelves here are packed with photobooks that have been given to the bar by various photographers and editors. Among them are some very rare books–the photo-album Kazoku (Family, 1991), for example, by Masahisa Fukase. In fact, Golden Gai was one of Fukase’s favorite neighborhoods, and he used to come here to drink pretty much every night. (He died in 2000.)

That’s just a quick tour of some of the spaces in Tokyo frequented by lovers of photography. Needless to say, countless other places exist, even in Shinjuku alone. Over in Jimbocho, the booklovers’ paradise of a neighborhood, is The White gallery. On the east side of the city, near the Museum of Contemporary Art, is TAP Gallery, which combines a gallery and a bookshop. Even further east, in Higashi Mukojima, is Reminders Photography Stronghold. All of these places combine remarkable book collections, gallery space, and public programming-and they all share an intimate atmosphere, even if the spaces are sometimes cramped and the furnishings less than luxurious. The people who run them live, breathe, eat, and talk photography–it’s the most important thing in their lives.

Translated from Japanese by Lucy North. All photographs by Mie Morimoto.

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Genevieve Allison on Gillian Laub at Benrubi Gallery

By Genevieve Allison

This article originally appeared in Issue 11 of the Aperture Photography App. 

Julie and Bubba, 2002. All photographs Courtesy Gillian Laub/Courtesy Benrubi Gallery, NYC

The American South has been a fertile subject for photographers throughout the history of the medium. From the Depression-era urtext of FSA documentary photographers like Walker Evans to Eggleston’s in-color mapping of the suburban South’s desuetude-picturesque, as well as Martin Parr’s outsider representation of its contemporary character, our collective imagination is built around representations of a historical charm—and its difficult legacy. One finds a distinctly Southern vernacular in the horizontal milieu of backyards, languid architecture, and low, vacant landscapes. But most of all, photographers and documentarians have gravitated toward an expression of Southern culture through the human face, often with an emphasis on the familial and an eye toward the impecunious and the disenfranchised.

The Prom Prince and Princess dancing at the integrated prom, 2011

Mount Vernon, a small town in rural Georgia just inland from the coastal plains, is by most measures unremarkable save for one extraordinary anachronism that has persisted there well into the twenty-first century. Although Montgomery County High School was integrated in the early 1970s, for the last four decades it has held racially segregated proms, throwing two separate proms on separate nights and crowning two sets of prom kings and queens: one white, one black. Gillian Laub, perhaps better known for her work on the Middle East, began photographing the community in 2001 and, compelled by the complicated cultural landscape she encountered, kept returning for more than a decade to document the annual event and its matriculating teenagers. Her twelve-year visual study offers striking portraits of the student-subjects and glimpses of a society deeply inflected by religion and tradition. It serves as document of the prevailing issues of race and inequality still affecting the social and material conditions of education in the United States sixty-one years after Brown v. Board of Education.

Amber and Reggie, 2011

 

The selection in this exhibition mainly looked at the years that directly precede and follow 2010, the year the first integrated prom was held (a change that was finally effected after the national outcry following the New York Times Magazine’s publication of Laub’s work and the production of an HBO documentary). Following a “prom photo” convention of sorts, the images capture a prescriptive sequence of events: the congregation beforehand on back lawns, porches, and driveways; the slow dance; the seat in an empty hall at the end of a long night. The pictorial language is straightforward documentary portraiture. The accompanying wall texts, which offer quotes and context, lend the presentation a sense of journalistic intent. Individually and collectively, these accounts provide an unmediated entrée into the personal circumstances informing each experience. By virtue of this device, each photograph operates in specific and concrete reference to the underlying social context and unequivocally underlines the moral and political purpose of the work.

Angel outside the black prom, 2009

 

Collectively, the images are a facet of a greater narrative: of young, formative identities brushing up against cultural and ideological obstacles. A mixed-race couple (Qu’an and Brooke) poses together outdoors in the late sunlight in a stiff but intimate clasp; two years back, Qu’an points out, he and Brooke would never have been able to go to the prom together. Included in the archival material and documentary ephemera also presented with the work is a handwritten letter from a student to a teacher. It was submitted in lieu of an assignment and plaintively addresses the iniquity of segregation at the school prom: it received a grade of 76 percent.

Qu’an and Brooke, 2012

 

Southern Rites was on view at Benrubi Gallery from May 14 to July 2.

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Kathrin Sonntag On Her Installation, This Was Tomorrow Once

Portrait Kathrin Sonntag at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, June 2015 © RAY 2015 Fotografieprojekte Frankfurt/RheinMain

This summer RAY 2015 Fotografieprojekte Frankfurt/RheinMain presents examples of contemporary photography and related media at twelve venues in Frankfurt am Main and the surrounding region. The Berlin-based artist Kathrin Sonntag (b. 1981) was commissioned to create one of twelve new productions for RAY 2015. Her site-specific installation “This Was Tomorrow Once” is one of the spaces of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, one of the three venues currently presenting the photography triennial’s central exhibition, titled IMAGINE REALITY (June 20– September 20 at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, Museum Angewandte Kunst and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main).  For IMAGINE REALITY, twenty-eight artists use fragments of reality to create imaginary and visionary worlds. Their images lead into a world in which reality and fiction, facts and illusions are inseparably woven together. The following interview was conducted by RAY 2015 organizers and is presented by MMK Notes (the MMK Museum blog) and RAY 2015. 

RAY: What is the origin of the title This Was Tomorrow Once?

Kathrin Sonntag: During my research on the topic of time travel, I discovered the quote in the film Portrait of Jennie (1948) and thought it fit well with the topic of my new project. When one thinks of a future moment from the present, and this very moment is temporally exceeded, the thought “this was tomorrow once” comes to mind. With its confusing effect, the quote describes what I wanted to deal with in my installation at the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt.

Kathrin Sonntag, This Was Tomorrow Once, 2015. Exhibition View from IMAGINE REALITY at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt. Photograph: Albrecht Haag © Kathrin Sonntag, RAY 2015 Fotografieprojekte Frankfurt/RheinMain

RAY: Can you say something about the beginnings of this project?

KS: The basic idea was to make the room in which the piece is shown the main motif of the installation—to photograph the exhibition space and insert these photos in the space as 1:1 photo wallpaper. Beyond that, I wanted to add an aspect of temporality. Photographs always capture a past moment. While developing the installation I asked myself: is it possible to  create images that look as if they come from the future?

I developed situations for the space that capture temporality. The idea of my new production for RAY 2015 is based on the question of whether photography can serve as a time machine.

RAY: With the question of ephemerality, you refer to a very characteristic theme of the medium of photography. Through capturing moments of action, such as photographing a fresh-picked bouquet of flowers to stand in contrast with a wilting bouquet in the room, you bring different layers of time to the piece. Can you explain these layers of time more?

KS: The passing of time becomes clear through the altering or shifting of individual objects within my installation. Differences between the objects depicted on the wallpaper and those in the actual space create confusion about the time sequence. For example, there is a broom in the space that appears broken on the wallpaper. There are marks on the broom that lead [one] to the conclusion that it must be the same broom. If the broom in the space is intact, how can the broom on the wallpaper be broken, unless one assumes that it depicts the future? All objects that are represented in this installation refer to the beginning or the end, the set-up or deconstruction of an exhibition. Meanwhile, the viewer will always perceive the moment in-between, the presence of the exhibition.

RAY: What about the other clocks in the image?



KS: How it is possible to photographically illustrate a time sequence? I play with objects in the installation, through whose change the passing of time can be grasped. The before-mentioned wilting flowers represent a classic motif, through which the the passing of time is illustrated. The mirror, on the other hand, is an object that reflects the present. In the installation it appears in printed form on the wallpaper and so creates the illusion that the current state of the room is displayed. Next to these objects, the clock is probably the most obvious symbol of time passing.

RAY: Can one say that a temporal state is created in your work that doesn’t exist for the viewer?

KS: On the wallpaper I myself am depicted, and on my wrist is a watch that also shows the date next to the time. The date is set to exactly half of the duration of the exhibition. So, for a while, this photograph displays the future, for a fleeting moment the present, and then the past. It is dependent on the time that the viewer visits the installation.

RAY: In some ways it seems as though you intend to create a confusion about the different temporal layers. Could there lie the possibility in this to see more than there is to see de facto?

KS: In my work I play with everyday scenarios, in which subtle shifts cause confusion. For me, it makes sense to start at the familiar. It is moments like these that interest me, in which one starts to stumble visually and starts questioning our habits of perception. In this moment of delay lies the potential to view something that one has seen a thousand times from a new perspective. The medium of photography—which we trust to reflect an objective representation of reality and that we distrust at the same time, because we are aware of the corruptibility of photographs—offers an interesting starting point in this context.

Kathrin Sonntag, This Was Tomorrow Once, 2015. Exhibition View from IMAGINE REALITY at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt. Photograph: Albrecht Haag © Kathrin Sonntag, RAY 2015 Fotografieprojekte Frankfurt/RheinMain

RAY: In your work you play with relationships of proximity and distance. From your viewpoint, can a sentitive glance at photography be created, that can be upheld beyond the visit to the exhibition?

KS: Perception is always selective. However, through the great mass of images that we encounter every day, one could speak of a conditioning of the view that engraves the ever-same interpretation or reading. I like playing with conventions of seeing, and to momentarily create a change of perception mode through visual stumbling blocks.

Of course, it would make me happy if this shifted view would be upheld beyond the visit to the exhibition, if the visitor to the FFF came home and suddenly think that even the water bottle on [her] kitchen table somehow looked odd.

This interview was conducted by MMK Notes and RAY 2015  © RAY 2015 Fotografieprojekte Frankfurt/RheinMain, www.ray2015.de/ MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main. The interview on the websites for MMK Notes and RAY 2015.

 

 

 

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Staff Picks: 7 Instagram Accounts We’re Following

Members of the Aperture Foundation staff selected our favorite photography-related Instagram accounts of the moment, ranging from photographers to editors to public collections. Follow the Aperture Beat column on the app and online for regular staff picks about favorite readings, social media, and exhibitions.

This article originally appeared on the Aperture Photography App.

@thomas_prior

Thomas Prior, a New York–based photographer whose work appears in Outside, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the California Sunday Magazine, uses Instagram to capture moments from his travels and projects. I’ve been an avid fan-follower of his account since last summer, when he was shooting a series on handball courts in New York City. In Handball (2014), sculpted bodies play against white concrete, the shadows poetically quiet but full of tension; these naturally lit, uncanny images captured with a sharp eye quickly made this account unforgettable and one of my favorites. —Mariah Tyler, Editorial Work Scholar

@nyplpicturecollection

The Instagram for the New York Public Library is widely followed, but perhaps lesser known, and far more idiosyncratic and irreverent, is the account for the NYPL Picture Collection. The trove contains more than one million images from mostly pre-1923 periodicals, as well as original photographs, prints, and postcards. More than thirty thousand of these have been digitized and are available through the library’s website, and the accompanying Instagram features oddities such as vintage fabric samples, baseball cards from 1889, and FSA photographs by Dorothea Lange. Also notable is that the library currently has a major photography exhibition on view through September, of selections from its vast collection of 175 years worth of photography. —Alexandra Pechman, Online Editor

@ideabooksltd

The booksellers of Dover Street Market have an excellently curated selection of fashion books, kitschy architecture books, photography books, and design titles. Sometimes, rare Aperture titles will pop up! A must-follow for collectors. —Elena Tarchi, publicity and events associate

Sam Morrison’s feed invites followers to travel the world alongside him. A photographer and social media enthusiast who works at Kaltura, an online video TK, we originally studied photography together at the iSchool at Syracuse University. In 2011, his father challenged him 100 dollars to do a back flip every day of the year, so Sam posted his flip pictures online daily; after he won the bet, Sam made a life goal to do a back flip on each continent. Sam’s style has evolved since we were students photographing each other in banal settings while dreaming of travel. His passion for social media is inspiring to me; it’s no wonder that he found his job with Kaltura through Instagram. –Beatrice Schachenmayr, Development Work Scholar

@noahkalina

It’s rare to find a photographer whose work I like to have an Instagram that’s equally interesting. Noah Kalina’s feed is a mix of repeating landscapes and photos from behind the scenes of a traveling editorial photographer, all while not taking himself too seriously (it is Instagram, after all).—Max Mikulecky, Digital Marketing Assistant

@nothing_to_worry_about

Although I’ve seen people utilize “the grid” on Instagram, Melissa Spitz takes this to another level. Spitz almost always posts three or more photos at a time to achieve a grid of perfect larger photos. Sometimes the bigger picture is made up of twelve or more Instagrams: it’s well worth it in the gallery view. Her entire Instagram account is devoted to a single body of work documenting her mentally ill mother. —M.M.

@jenniferhiggie

When someone complains to me that Instagram is nothing more than a platform for narcissistic rituals or a frivolous trade in pictures of about-to-be-consumed meals and insipid feline adventures, I’ll point them to Jennifer Higgie’s feed. Higgie, a coeditor of Frieze, posts portraits of artists (all are women) on the day of their birth. Each is accompanied by a deep caption, rich in biographical detail, which includes a captivatingly compressed narrative of a fascinating life. Higgie’s posts on figures ranging from writer Flannery O’Connor, photojournalist Hansel Mieth, or the electronic music composer Delia Derbyshire—to name just three of her more than one thousand posts—often end with the command “Bow Down.” Instagrammers should be directed to do the same before Higgie, whose feed proves that this platform can be as rich as you want it to be. —Michael Famighetti, editor of Aperture magazine

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At the Opening of Aperture: Photographs

Installation view of Aperture: Photographs. All photographs by Max Mikulecky.

 

This past Monday photographers and friends of Aperture gathered at the 1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery for the opening of Aperture: Photographs, a unique exhibition gathering decades of Aperture’s history into one space. The photographs draw from Aperture’s print and fundraising programs from more than fifty years by more than forty photographers. The exhibition spans from classic works by the likes of Robert Capa, Dorothea Lange, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand to contemporary photographers who work with Aperture today including LaToya Ruby Frazier, Richard Misrach, James Mollison, David Benjamin Sherry, and Penelope Umbrico, along with many more.

The exhibition will be on view Mondays through Fridays from 8:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m from now through September 18. Aperture: Photographs is sponsored by the 1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery, in partnership with Jones Lang LaSalle, as a community-based public service.

1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery

Artist Michael Flomen explains his process behind his print New Born, 2010

Colin Thomson and designer Linda Florio in front of Penelope Umbrico’s Suns from Flickr series, 2014

Michael Hejtmanek, President and CEO of Hasselblad Bron Inc. and Aperture Executive Director Chris Boot

A guest views David Wojnarowicz’s Untitled (Buffalos), 1988

Guests converse in front of Hank Willis Thomas’ Black Power, 2006

Aperture Trustee Celso Gonzalez-Falla with Chair of the Board of Trustees Cathy Kaplan and Executive Director Chris Boot

Artist Michael Flomen, guest and Aperture Paul Strand Circle Member Philippe Laumont

Aperture Deputy Director Sarah Anne McNear with Aperture Paul Strand Circle Members David and LaVon Kellner

 

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The PhotoBook Review: Collecting the Japanese Photobook, Part Two

Manfred Heiting is an inveterate and encyclopedic collector of the photobook. He began his career as a designer before gaining experience and acclaim as a curator, editor, scholar, and connoisseur of the genre. In 2013, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, added his library of books to their extensive set of four thousand prints from his collection, acquired in 2002 and 2004. This addition will include more than twenty-five thousand titles from around the world, including Germany, the Soviet Union, France, the United States, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and roughly two thousand volumes from Japan. As a committed outsider seeking insight via the Japanese photobook, Heiting’s interest in the form operates complementarily to historian Ryuichi Kaneko’s inside track [as discussed in App Issue 9]. In addition to the forthcoming volume Soviet Photo Books 1912–1941 (Steidl, 2015), Heiting is also at work on the book The Japanese Photo Book: 1912–1980. The following conversation with Lesley A. Martin, creative director of Aperture Foundation and publisher of The PhotoBook Review, appeared in The PhotoBook Review 008.

This article originally appeared in Issue 10 of the Aperture Photography App.

Lesley A. Martin: How and when did you first become interested in the Japanese photobook as a particular area of collecting?

Manfred Heiting: I started collecting Japanese photography in 1972 after a visit to Tokyo to meet with Goro Kuramochi, a curator and editor who later became a friend. He introduced me to a few photographers: Ikko Narahara, Eikoh Hosoe (who helped me a lot), Teiko Shiotani, Shoji Ueda, and others. I knew at that time that vintage prints were not part of the Japanese narrative, and during that visit I only bought a few contemporary prints from those photographers I met. I also acquired some books as part of my reference library, useful to understanding the work of the photographers; they were not seen as “collectible” at that time. It was only at the beginning of the 1990s that my interest in [photographers’] books became more focused. I see 1912 as a decisive starting point for my collection of Japanese books, based on a photobook by Kazuma Ogawa that documents the Meiji emperor’s funeral that year (which traditionally took place at night), Photographic Album of the Imperial Funeral Ceremonies. Floodlights had not been invented yet—just the magnesium flash for close range. The Japanese government purchased all the magnesium they could get and placed it alongside the road so that the long, nighttime procession could be photographed. The images are quite impressive, and I think that is a fitting beginning.

For now, however, I’ve stopped looking at books produced after the 1980s. I call most Japanese photobooks produced after that period “Eastern art for Western taste.” Before the 1980s (and in particular before the 1970s), publishing photobooks was an elaborate and expensive undertaking, and there was only a small market for them. In other words: before a publisher would take the risk, a book had to offer a very good value proposition, featuring the most acclaimed work from well-known photographers, and be well-designed and technically well-executed to ensure that the book would be a commercial success.

In the 1980s, more museums began to show photography, and more publishers saw the photobook as a new and attractive market. More buyers gave the publishers confidence to invest in photobooks, and English became the accepted language of choice for many of those publications. And when the museums rediscovered photography, the most common type of photobook became the catalogue, designed to replicate the individual print on the gallery or museum wall. You saw less diversity of printing and materials, less design, less individualistic layouts—just more and more color surrounded by more and more white paper. In my opinion, these are less “book” than just “printed, colorful paper.” This was the situation in the U.S. and Europe in the 1980s, which soon arrived in Japan and took away the most admired—and different—concepts of the Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and 1970s, with their unique design and photographic languages, and their high-quality printing. Photographers and publishers both had their eyes on the international market and adapted to our tastes in order to sell them to us. There are exceptions of course—but I shy away from most of the contemporary Japanese books.

Kazuma Ogawa, Photographic Album of the Imperial Funeral Ceremonies, Top: standard edition; bottom: palace edition. Privately published, 1912

LAM: What were your criteria for buying books when you started to collect in this area? Has that criteria changed over time?

MH: The criteria has not changed much—I am always interested in “complete-as-published” volumes—but the understanding and knowledge of what that means regarding Japanese photobooks has increased, and with the network of trusted local advisors, I now know more of what I am still missing.

LAM: Beyond its completeness and condition, what is it you look for when you buy a book, especially a Japanese photobook?

Are you interested in the design, in the quality of the pictures? Perhaps the real question: do you need to fall in love with a book in order to buy it?

MH: Of course, all of the above. As I have explained before: I am talking about the printed B-O-O-K (I have collected original photographic prints before and have closed that

chapter). Therefore, I am interested in a “book” with all its unique parts and attributes: for its particular photographic language and authorship, its design, layout, size, printing, and binding quality—and that’s for each period and country. If I like a photographer’s work or think that the subject and style warrants “preserving,” I look for every book from a photographer, from every period and most subjects—provided that the book and all its attributes are of a high quality. I think this is a different way of falling in love with a book, but also an admiration for the complete result intended by the makers.

LAM: Are there any particular themes or motifs that you have found of interest or that especially define the Japanese photobook?

MH: Yes. Without being dogmatic, I categorize twentieth-century

Japanese photobooks in four distinct periods.

The pictorial period: This includes publications from amateur photo clubs (which have played an important role in Japan). Also, pictorialism extended longer in Japan than in Europe and the U.S., lasting until the beginning of the 1930s.

The avant-garde: Including the surrealist advertising and Bauhaus-influenced photobooks and advertising of the 1930s (these are not easy to find).

Propaganda: Many books and magazines were published by the imperial government, the military, and the occupying authorities in Manchuria and elsewhere. These materials are quite substantial and more “impressive” than European fascist-propaganda photobooks—but fall a bit short of the creativity

seen in Soviet propaganda photobooks.

The 1960s and 1970s: This is the best-known and most widely admired period of Japanese photography and photobook making. During this period, books were it! And the quality of the photography, aesthetics, and production (mostly in sheet-fed gravure) are unmatched in other parts of our photobook culture.

LAM: The canon of the photobook has begun to solidify in the past ten years. Are there any Japanese photobooks that you feel have been left out of the surveys or best-of listings?

MH: Best-of listings are very bad for collectors who want to do more than just invest in the top/best/rarest of books. The market aspect has certainly helped to focus on a particular period or culture and has brought a lot to light, but other than “the top ten”—or, in particular, prewar photobooks—we are still mostly in the dark, or the books are unrecorded. The Japanese protest photobook is certainly on everyone’s radar, but that does not mean that we know much of what we are after. Robert Hughes, the most celebrated art critic of the later twentieth century,

famously stated, “What strip mining is to nature the art market has become to culture”—this fits perfectly into our field as well.

LAM: How would you define the relationship between connoisseurship and scholarship in your role as a collector?

MH: In my particular situation, my quest and my goal cannot be separated: I seek to combine both connoisseurship and scholarship. I basically collect the twentieth-century photobook (more precisely the “printed photobook,” from about 1886 until 2000). Because of the two world wars, the twentieth century is a difficult period for the photobook—so much was produced and so much is lost forever, including most of the subject matter, and history needs to be preserved. I see the photobook in the twentieth century as one of the most important mediums in our culture and of that part of history, and recording it as a very important task for scholars, libraries, universities, museums, and collectors alike.

I also think that only a private collector is more “privileged” and can do both—if he or she is prepared to spend the time and money to accomplish both of these tasks. At the outset, one has to decide for whom and where the results will be made, deposited, and placed to keep it all together. In my case, I decided that some time ago. No one can take things with them.

Tap here to find The PhotoBook Review on the Aperture Foundation website.

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Images of Conviction at Le Bal, Paris

By Carole Naggar

Built on the site of a popular 1920s ballroom in the eighteenth arrondissement of Paris, Le Bal is an innovative space dedicated to documentary photography and video. Images of Conviction: The Construction of Visual Evidence, which opened on June 4, presents ten case studies that demonstrate how photography and video have functioned in the evidence of death: how were these protocols invented? How did they become legitimate? How were they applied in legal settings? This exhibition, conceived by Le Bal director Diane Dufour, offers viewers access to documents that had until now been either lost or overlooked. The following are a few examples of the ten case studies that appear in the exhibition.

This article originally appeared in Issue 10 of the Aperture Photography App.

Left: Alphonse Bertillon, Murder of Monsieur Canon, boulevard de Clichy, 9 December 1914; center: Alphonse Bertillon, Murder of Monsieur André, boulevard de la Villette, Paris, 3 October 1910; right: Alphonse Bertillon, Murder of Madame Langlois, Puteaux case, 5 April 1905 © Archives de la Préfecture de police de Paris.

 

Bertillon’s Metric Photography

Ten years after Alphonse Bertillon was appointed head of the Paris Préfecture de Police Photography Department in 1882, he developed a scientific means of recording crime scenes: metric photography. The photographs were taken using a wide-angle lens fitted on a camera that stood on a two-meter-high tripod, giving a precise representation of the crime scene that was not only useful for the police enquiry, but also for the judge and jurors during the trial. Bertillon thought that such photographs could be a powerful tool in the justice system: they would have an emotional effect on the accused, inciting him to confess his crime, and on the judges, giving them a sense of the atmosphere and all the details in a way that words alone could not address. All the elements of the scene were recorded: position of the body, situation of the weapons, of the objects and traces. Bertillon’s photographs form the base of modern criminal proceedings, which still use his methods, and are ancestors to contemporary 3-D reconstructions of crime scenes.

Two enlarged views of Secondo Pia, The Holy Shroud, 1898.

 

The Shroud of Turin

Secondo Pia, an amateur photographer, was the author of the first photographs of the Shroud of Turin as it was displayed in 1898. As he developed his photographs, he discovered on the picture negative an imprint of a face and body, which he thought were those of Christ. Strangely enough, face and body were positive imprints, as if the shroud itself, which has been dubbed “the first photograph of crime,” was the negative. This was the start of a long-lasting debate on the authenticity of the relic. In 1902, the biologist Paul Vignon published a detailed study of the photographs. In 1986, the shroud was tested with carbon 14 and the test revealed that the fabric only dated back to sometime between 1260 and 1390. Today the shroud still remains an object of veneration for the faithful, fascinated by the image and unconvinced by the scientific proof.

Left: Marfa Ilinitchna Riazantseva, Russian, born in 1866 in the village of Kosafort, close to Makhatchkala, Daghestan, knowing barely how to read and write, no party, retired. Domiciled in Moscow, 1re Mechtchanskaïa 62, apartement 26. Arrested 27 August 1937. Sentenced to death 8 October 1937. Executed 11 October 1937. Rehabilitated in 1989; right: Alekseï Grigorievitch Jeltikov, Russian, b. 1890 in the village of Demkino, Riazan region. Primary school. Left the VKP(b) in 1921, indicating his disagreement with the Party’s New Economic Policy (NEP). Locksmith in the Moscow metro workshops. Domiciled in Moscow, Sadovaia-Tchernogriazskaia 3, apartment 41. Arrested 8 July 1937.Sentenced to death 31 October 1937. Executed the next day. Rehabilitated in 1957. © Central Archives FSB and National Archives from the Russian Federation GARF, Moscow, copies published from the Archives of the Association internationale Memorial, Moscow.

 

The Great Purge in the USSR 1937–38

Twenty years after the October Revolution, Joseph Stalin initiated a large-scale campaign of terror—the first genocide in history conceived by a state leader against his own people. Approximately 1.7 million people were arrested, and from August 1937 to November 1938, 750,000 people (one adult out of 100 in the Soviet Union) were executed after being tortured into confessing to crimes they had not committed. More than 700,000 were condemned to the gulag and would die in the following years. Le Bal’s exhibition includes portraits of those sentenced to death taken by the NKVD, the Soviet law enforcement agency, just moments before their execution. The mug shots followed the style inherited from Bertillon’s identification system. The same system was later used by the Khmer Rouge to photograph victims.

In 2008, Polish photographer Tomasz Kizny obtained permission to rephotograph 250 portraits directly from the NKVD files. These haunting photographs give back a face and a memory to innocent people that have been annihilated by a dictatorial regime.

Images of Conviction is on view at Le Bal, Paris, through August 30.

Carole Naggar has been a regular contributor to Aperture magazine since 1988.

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Tonight: The BlowUp Hosts Live Storytelling Event in NYC

Stefan Ruiz, Michel, Monterrey, Mexico from The Cholombianos series, 2011

The tales behind the making of a photograph can be legendary, and these stories of intimate, insane, and oftentimes-unimaginable moments can be heard at New York’s newest photography event series, The BlowUp. Presented and produced by the photography blog Feature Shoot, The BlowUp brings together a curated selection of influential photographers each telling the story behind one of their favorite photographs they took. The themed events first started in April and are now held quarterly in New York City.

Tonight from 6:30pm to 9pm, ROOT Drive-In Studios, in Chelsea, will play host to the second installment, which focuses on photography that documents subcultures, featuring Larry Fink, Martha Cooper, Deidre Schoo, Andrew Hetherington, Gillian Laub, Chris Arnade, Stefan Ruiz, and Danny Ghitis. Fink has done iconic documentary work, from capturing the Beats of the 1950s to the blue-blooded society of 1970s Manhattan. Before Ruiz began work on his current series, Cholombianos (about a teenage Mexican countercultural group that styles itself to Cumbia music and culture), Aperture published his book of telenovela photographs, The Factory of Dreams in 2012.

Gillain Laub has spent her career giving voice to diverse and multifaceted communities through photography and filmmaking. Her critically acclaimed book, Testimony, was published by Aperture in 2007. Most recently, Laub has been documenting racially segregated proms of Montgomery County, Georgia in a book and documentary titled Southern Rites.

The first installment took music photography as its theme; as Janette Beckman, Michael Levine, Amy Lombard, and others spoke of photographing musicians and fans, from the early days of hip hop to juggalos. For five to seven minutes, each photographer presents one specific photograph and talks about the moment and story behind their shot.

For more information about the event and ticketing visit theblowupnyc.com.

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Announcing the 2015 Summer Open

Monika Sziladi, Untitled (Passing by), 2014

For this year’s Summer Open, Aperture’s annual open-call exhibition, we asked photographers to consider the ways in which our current reality might outpace outlandish narratives of science fiction. The twenty-four projects here, culled from more than 500 and representing diverse subjects and photographic approaches, reflect our current moment. Their concerns run the gamut, from how technology increasingly permeates daily life to off-the-grid communities, the misused landscape, utopian architecture, and the vocabularies of science and science fiction, among other concerns.

Included are photographers Farah Al Qasimi, Fabrizio Albertini, Emmanuelle Andrianjafy, Tine Bek, Arnau Blanch, Anaïs Boileau, Philippe Braquenier, Antoine Bruy, Felix R. Cid, Ben Freedman, Yaeli Gabriely, Alexander Gehring, Aras Gökten, Jeremy Haik, Balarama Heller, Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt, Vivienne Luo Wang, Jim Mangan, Sarah Meyohas, Dylan Nelson, Brandon Nichols, Eva O’Leary, Martine Stig, and Monika Sziladi.

The exhibition will open on July 16 at Aperture Gallery in New York.

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Zoë Lescaze on Candida Höfer at Sean Kelly Gallery

By Zoë Lescaze

Benrather Schloss Düsseldorf V, 2011.

Benrather Schloss Düsseldorf I, 2011

Neuer Stahlhof Düsseldorf III, 2012

Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf I, 2012

Neuer Stahlhof Düsseldorf I, 2012

Neuer Stahlhof Düsseldorf II, 2012

Sankt Maximilian Düsseldorf I, 2012

Julia Stoschek Collection Düsseldorf IVa, 2008. All photographs © Candida Höfer, Köln / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Courtesy Sean Kelly, New York

For more than thirty years, the German photographer Candida Höfer has composed scrupulously symmetrical shots of lavish libraries, museums, opera houses, and churches, cataloguing the poetics of interior space over the course of her career. In her first show at Sean Kelly Gallery, From Düsseldorf, Höfer offered an array of palatial rooms from the title city, printed in color at an enormous scale.

 

Höfer allows her viewers to see these rooms more clearly and coherently than if they were actually there, and the fixed perspective and stillness captures minutiae otherwise missed. One can count the feathers on St. John’s eagle painted on the stairs leading to the elaborate gilded pulpit in Dominikanerkirche Sankt Andreas Düsseldorf (2011), or study the carvings on the ceiling of that vast, visually cluttered church. The absence of human beings makes one uncomfortably conscious of the figurative sculptures adorning these rooms; bare-breasted caryatids smile blankly, while creepy cherubim clutch bouquets and their own plump little bodies. In some cases, Höfer’s exclusion of living subjects makes her viewers acutely aware of their own participation. In Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf I (2012), she shoots the opera house from center stage, putting us in the position of a performer standing before an invisible audience in hundreds of empty red seats.

 

The artist’s coldly documentarian impulse sometimes saps her images of their impact. Perhaps such spaces ought to be recorded for their historical importance, but, as works of art, these photographs don’t explore conceptual territory that Höfer hasn’t already covered in this series. When Höfer plays with the formula, however, the photos sing. The Benrather Schloss, a powder-pink rococo pleasure palace overflowing with frilly decorative details in southern Düsseldorf, looks as though it was spun out of confectioner’s sugar. In one photograph, Höfer lets—or makes—the blinding light blow out part of a polished, intricately inlaid wooden floor. By erasing some of the fussy detail she normally records, Höfer subtly sabotages the decadent space, and her purposeful slip from technical perfection defies our expectations.

 

Alongside Höfer’s signature shots of fussily decorated rooms, the show also includes a markedly different body of work, in which she focuses on spare architectural forms in modernist buildings. In place of vast, elaborate chambers captured in all their excess, these works present small portions of windows distorted with reflections, or bits of walls and floors. Several of the wider shots offer asymmetrical glimpses of austere, minimalist spaces, such as an empty German art gallery. Many of these don’t work. A photograph of a few beige steps bearing blue strips of tread in an institutional stairwell feels overly straightforward and banal. Photographs of a spiral staircase, however, are fantastic; other photographers have been drawn to this subject matter for its Fibonacci-fueled grace and seductive vertigo, but Höfer’s pictures abstract the architecture so dramatically that the spiral barely reads as part of a building. Neuer Stahlhof Düsseldorf I (2012), in which the stairs are shot from below, is profoundly disorienting: bright light bathes the smooth white underside of the steps, and the near-monochrome is punctuated only by the serpentine metal banister coiling up to an empty center. The image provides a counterpoint to the artist’s usual practice, introducing a welcome complexity to her understanding of space.

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