Aperture's Blog, page 155

Takashi Homma’s Tokyo Obscura

The following is an excerpt from a portfolio in Aperture magazine #219, Summer 2015, “Tokyo.” This article also appears in Issue 10 of the Aperture Photography App, a new biweekly publication from Aperture: click here to download the free app.

 

Tokyo, 2013

Tokyo, 2013

Tokyo, 2014

Tokyo, 2014

Tokyo, 2014

Tokyo, 2014

Takashi Homma emerged in the 1990s as one of the leading photographers of his generation. After living in London, where he worked for the groundbreaking style and culture magazine i-D, Homma embarked on a number of projects of his own, resulting in a sequence of photobooks that engaged Japan’s capital, including Tokyo Suburbia (1998), Tokyo Children (2001), Tokyo and My Daughter (2006), and Tokyo (2008). He became known for his elegantly restrained compositions and understated color, and an aesthetic that seemed to have more in common with that of the American photographers Stephen Shore and Robert Adams than it did with previous generations of Japanese photographers, like Daido Moriyama, whose pictures looked intentionally blurry and distressed. Recently, however, in a radical departure from his earlier work, Homma has begun working with a camera obscura, the proto-form of photography in which an inverted image is projected by light passing through a tiny hole in a wall.

Homma tends to prefer hotels for his camera obscura process: he converts entire rooms in Tokyo into pinhole cameras, blacking out the windows with dark paper and sealing off light leaks with tape. “The concept was to use architecture to take pictures of architecture,” Homma explains. In this way, he’s photographed water towers, city streets, skylines, ordinary subjects that take on an aura of mystery. In some images, large dots eclipse part of the view, like a gothic Japanese flag; in others, the blur is enigmatic, the palette unusual. “Exposing color film to natural light, rather than light through a lens, produces tones I’ve never quite seen before.”

The initial idea, however, was inspired by the work of Nobuo Yamanaka, a conceptual artist working in Tokyo in the 1970s. “Yamanaka, over twelve years, devoted himself to transforming his apartment into a pinhole camera. It made me think of the first daguerreotypes made by Nicéphore Niépce, how they were landscapes visible through the window of his house.”

With this work, Homma is purposely conjuring the past, intrigued by the way the process slows photography down, especially in our digital age of instant-image gratification. Another important touchstone for the work is author Junichiro Tanizaki’s “In Praise of Shadows,” a classic 1933 essay on aesthetics, in which Tanizaki comments on how, in the past, darkness was more a part of everyday life. “Today the world overflows with light,” Homma says. “Creating darkness is itself special. When you make a whole room into a pinhole camera, you move subtly away from the idea that you are taking the picture. It’s not the result of your actions alone and it’s unclear how it will all turn out until the very end.” –The Editors

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Magazine: Takashi Homma’s Tokyo Obscura

The following is an excerpt from a portfolio in Aperture magazine #219, Summer 2015, “Tokyo.” This article also appears in Issue 10 of the Aperture Photography App, a new biweekly publication from Aperture: click here to download the free app.

 

Takashi Homma emerged in the 1990s as one of the leading photographers of his generation. After living in London, where he worked for the groundbreaking style and culture magazine i-D, Homma embarked on a number of projects of his own, resulting in a sequence of photobooks that engaged Japan’s capital, including Tokyo Suburbia (1998), Tokyo Children (2001), Tokyo and My Daughter (2006), and Tokyo (2008). He became known for his elegantly restrained compositions and understated color, and an aesthetic that seemed to have more in common with that of the American photographers Stephen Shore and Robert Adams than it did with previous generations of Japanese photographers, like Daido Moriyama, whose pictures looked intentionally blurry and distressed. Recently, however, in a radical departure from his earlier work, Homma has begun working with a camera obscura, the proto-form of photography in which an inverted image is projected by light passing through a tiny hole in a wall.

Homma tends to prefer hotels for his camera obscura process: he converts entire rooms in Tokyo into pinhole cameras, blacking out the windows with dark paper and sealing off light leaks with tape. “The concept was to use architecture to take pictures of architecture,” Homma explains. In this way, he’s photographed water towers, city streets, skylines, ordinary subjects that take on an aura of mystery. In some images, large dots eclipse part of the view, like a gothic Japanese flag; in others, the blur is enigmatic, the palette unusual. “Exposing color film to natural light, rather than light through a lens, produces tones I’ve never quite seen before.”

The initial idea, however, was inspired by the work of Nobuo Yamanaka, a conceptual artist working in Tokyo in the 1970s. “Yamanaka, over twelve years, devoted himself to transforming his apartment into a pinhole camera. It made me think of the first daguerreotypes made by Nicéphore Niépce, how they were landscapes visible through the window of his house.”

With this work, Homma is purposely conjuring the past, intrigued by the way the process slows photography down, especially in our digital age of instant-image gratification. Another important touchstone for the work is author Junichiro Tanizaki’s “In Praise of Shadows,” a classic 1933 essay on aesthetics, in which Tanizaki comments on how, in the past, darkness was more a part of everyday life. “Today the world overflows with light,” Homma says. “Creating darkness is itself special. When you make a whole room into a pinhole camera, you move subtly away from the idea that you are taking the picture. It’s not the result of your actions alone and it’s unclear how it will all turn out until the very end.”

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Issue 10 of the Aperture Photography App Now Available

The new issue of the Aperture Photography App is now available to download on your iOS device. Here’s a look inside Issue 10:

● An excerpt from Hellen van Meene’s upcoming photobook, The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits by Marin Barnes, senior curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

● A report from Carole Naggar about Images of Conviction: The Construction of Visual Evidence, an exhibition at Le Bal, Paris

● From The PhotoBook Review 008, Collecting the Japanese Photobook, Part Two: Leslie A. Martin in conversation with Manfred Heiting

● An excerpt from Aperture magazine: Takashi Homma’s Tokyo Obscura

● Aperture staff pick our favorite Instagram accounts

Every issue of the Aperture Photography App is free– subscribers have new issues delivered to their device automatically. Select articles later appear here, on the Aperture blog. Click here to download the app today! 

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Todd Hido: Sources and Influences

“Part of being a photographer is noticing surface details and how they represent something larger; it’s like being a detective or psychologist.” —from Todd Hido on Landscapes, Interiors, and the Nude (Aperture, 2014)

 

Cinematic structure, suburbia, Raymond Carver novels, ink-jet printers, Kodak film, and Lightroom: these are just a few of the dozens of topics photographer Todd Hido discussed throughout his two-day workshop, during which he presented personal influences, shared knowledge concerning photography as both fine art and a career, and explained his evolution as an artist. After presenting his work, he led participants in group conversations surrounding their photographs, offering generous, individualized critiques and valuable advice for the development and direction of their portfolios. Hido addressed the importance of following one’s own innate wisdom, explaining, “Work that is rooted in our own personal experience never disappoints.”

 

“The workshop exceeded my expectations. I received valuable information from both the discussion of Todd’s work and the critiques of the participants.”

 

“Getting feedback on my portfolio was helpful, but it was also valuable to hear about Todd Hido’s process; the way that he trusted his gut and developed his own unique style, and the ways that he built a career out of creating a particular mood.”

 

“Todd was open and super generous—answering all questions, taking a lot of time to go through our own work.”

 

“Todd was a great instructor. For me, it was good to know that everyone faces the same struggles when making and looking for images to photograph.”

 

—Workshop participants

 

Todd Hido (born in Kent, Ohio, 1968) is a San Francisco Bay Area–based artist whose work has been featured in Artforum, the New York Times Magazine, Eyemazing, Metropolis, the Face, i-D, and Vanity Fair. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among other institutions. He has published more than a dozen books, including Excerpts from Silver Meadows (2013). Hido earned a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Boston, and an MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California, and is an adjunct professor at the California College of Art, San Francisco.

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LaToya Ruby Frazier: Selected Works Walkthrough

In this video, LaToya Ruby Frazier walks us through her exhibition, LaToya Ruby Frazier: Selected Works at Aperture gallery in New York. In celebration of Frazier’s first book, The Notion of Family (Aperture, 2014), as well as in honor of her recent Infinity Award for Publication (presented by the International Center of Photography) and her Alice Austen Award for the Advancement of Photography, Aperture Foundation presents a selection of photographs and videos related to the publication and to Frazier’s ongoing work.

The 2015 Infinity Award–winning photobook, The Notion of Family is available from Aperture’s online shop.

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Report from the Shanghai Center of Photography

The newly opened Shanghai Center of Photography promises an ambitious array of photography exhibitions in its inaugural year, from landmark works of the twentieth century to a survey of Chinese contemporary photography. Situated on the West Bund, a new arts district being promoted by the city as a museum and gallery-going destination, the center hopes to introduce modern and contemporary photography of all genres to a city largely devoid of institutions to educate about the medium. Online editor Alexandra Pechman visited Shanghai this May, where the center’s director Rebecca Catching spoke to her about their ambitions, plans, and what it means to open a museum or arts center in China.

Much has been made of China’s museum boom– with hundreds of new venues opening each year–but few have been devoted specifically to contemporary photography, and in Shanghai, there are none at all. In May, the Shanghai Center of Photography opened along what is now called the West Bund Cultural Corridor along the southern bend of the Huangpu River. Here, a loose association of brand-new museums, art centers, and festival grounds have cropped up, devoted to contemporary art and culture. The inaugural exhibition at the Shanghai Center, Photography from the 20th Century: The Private Collection of Jin Hongwei, presents selections from the sixteen hundred-piece collection of Hongwei, a Chinese collector with a formidable trove of twentieth century photography. The small show includes classic works by Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Joseph Koudelka, Elliott Erwitt, and Ansel Adams as well as more contemporary selections from Robert Mapplethorpe, David Hockney, and Sally Mann (Jin primarily collected American photography). “It includes works from photographers who shaped the evolution of the medium from the early days of glass plate photography to contemporary explorations of digital photomontage,” a statement about the show announced.

“China doesn’t really have a dedicated photography center,” director Rebecca Catching said, who began her role just two months ago. “Everyone knows Stieglitz and Steichen as big names, but I don’t know that they know what they did.” There are even a few well-known photographers whose work has provoked conversation. “For instance, Sally Mann is not that well known in China and we have quite a few of her works in this show,” she said. “We had an interesting dialogue with a journalist about it who was saying about how her work is controversial in the States or at least it was at the time, and Mr. Jin said to the journalist said oh yeah it’s controversial because people found it inappropriate to have nude children but in China, a naked child is really not so much of an issue.”

The center does not have a collection but will show a wide range of work from diverse sources, in order to give a comprehensive view of photography to a city that has largely lacked an introduction to the world of photography. The building, designed by US-based architectural duo Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, features elliptical-shaped walls, a triangular courtyard, and skylights that allow slices of light into the white space. Originally intended as a showpiece for the 2013 West Bund Biennial, an architectural biennial sponsored by the city, the space was offered to veteran photojournalist Liu Heung Shing as a studio space, which he had no need for. He then decided to found a photography center instead.

Catching is planning the next show, a survey of Chinese photography, which will to include documentary, landscape, portraiture, conceptual photography, focusing on eight photographers who have a had an impact on the history of photography in China. The exhibition will open during Photo Shanghai in September, while, for 2016, Catching is planning exhibitions of William Eggleston and Boris Mikhailov.

Of the fact that many art exhibitions in China are subject to censorship, Catching said, “Unfortunately we do have to think about these things, especially when it’s our first show.” For example, a tamer selection by Robert Mapplethorpe appears in the exhibition. “If we’re going to do something controversial, we’d like to save it for something where there’s a really tough solo show that we want to do.” While the center’s entryway bears the well-known Susan Sontag quote, “Today everything exists to end in a photograph,” the contemporary embodiments to that statement– Facebook, Instagram, and Google image search, for example– are all blocked in China. Mainly, Catching said, the goal is educate a public that has been relatively isolated from the history of photography, while starting from scratch. “It’s been kind of fast and furious, dealing with roof leaks and renovations while also putting up the first show and also creating a huge amount of material,” said Catching. “It’s been quite an endeavor.”

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Inside Aperture’s Spring Patron Cocktail Event

On Monday, June 8, nearly fifty Aperture Patrons, board members, and photographers gathered for the second annual Spring Patron Cocktail Party. The evening included presentations by photographers Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao and Scout Tufankjian. Liao spoke about the complicated process that goes into making each of his photographs, as they are assembled by section, overlaying up to forty shots to create a distinctive landscape image. Tufankjian discussed her photojournalism work. Through anecdotes from the 2008 campaign trail—where she was the only photographer to follow the entire Obama campaign—to her most recent project documenting Armenian communities around the world, she gave the audience a taste of what goes into her profoundly human pictures. Following the presentations, guests mingled with each other as well as the featured photographers. Signed copies of Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao: New York (Aperture, 2014) were also available.

We look forward to future Aperture Patron events and thank all of our Members, trustees, and photographers for their involvement and support.

To learn more about Aperture’s Patron Program, click here or contact Emily Grillo at egrillo[at]aperture.org or 212.946.7103.

Images © Max Mikulecky.

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Rick Sands: Breaking The Light Barrier

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled from Beneath the Roses, 2004

 

 

 

 

“I always call him ‘the genius of light’. He puts all of the lighting scenes together. He thinks differently than everyone else I know. He just responds to light. It’s remarkable.”

—Gregory Crewdson on Rick Sands

 

Join master illuminator Rick Sands for “Breaking the Light Barrier,” a workshop for photographers who would like to improve their understanding of lighting—from conceptualization through execution. For nearly fifteen years, Sands has created elaborate lighting for the narrative photographs of artist Gregory Crewdson. The class will cover varied philosophies of lighting technique, working under a wide range of conditions (day as well as night, interior as well as exterior), and studying separation through use of contrast via intensity and color. The class will also cover practical aspects like scheduling and budgetary concerns.

       Over the course of six days, “Breaking the Light Barrier” will cover contextual light, interior lighting, exterior lighting, and project flow as separate units of study. Each unit will be comprised of conceptual overview, study of examples, equipment demonstration, training exercises, and experimentation. Students will be asked to complete four assignments, the last being a comprehensive production exercise taking place over three days. Additional concepts reviewed will include the motivation of light, the study of ambient light, light plots, the importance of time-of-day, and the set environment and its effect on lighting.

        Participants will then form teams to produce projects employing the techniques covered by the curriculum. The main objective of the class is to create and extend a lighting vernacular that allows you to design and execute diverse projects. Participants will gain comfort and confidence, enabling them to work adeptly throughout the lighting design process.

 

 

Rick Sands is a film technician whose roots are in cinema production. His portfolio includes thirty-five theatrically released motion pictures with directors such as Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, forty-seven television movies, and countless one-hour television episodes. His work in advertising has won him several ADDY awards. Through his unique collaboration with Gregory Crewdson, Sands’s lighting has been featured in six books and several international exhibitions.

 

Tuition: $950 ($875 for currently enrolled photography students and Aperture Members at the $250 level and above)

 

Register here

 

 

Contact education@aperture.org with any questions.

 

 

General Terms and Conditions

Please refer to all information provided regarding individual workshop details and requirements. Registration in any workshop will constitute your agreement to the terms and conditions outlined.

Aperture workshops are intended for adults 18 years or older.

If the workshop includes lunch, attendees are asked to notify Aperture at the time of registration regarding any special dietary requirements.

 

Release and Waiver of Liability

Aperture reserves the right to take photographs or videos during the operation of any educational course or part thereof, and to use the resulting photographs and videos for promotional purposes.

By booking a workshop with Aperture Foundation, participants agree to allow their likenesses to be used for promotional purposes and in media; participants who prefer that their likenesses not be used are asked to identify themselves to Aperture staff.

 

Refund/Cancellation Policy for Aperture Workshops

Aperture workshops must be paid for in advance by credit card, cash, or debit card. All fees are non-refundable if you should choose to withdraw from a workshop less than one month prior to its start date, unless we are able to fill your seat. In the event of a medical emergency, please provide a physician’s note stating the nature of the emergency, and Aperture will issue you a credit that can be applied to future workshops. Aperture reserves the right to cancel any workshop up to one week prior to the start date, in which case a full refund will be issued. A minimum of eight students is required to run a workshop.

 

Lost, Stolen, or Damaged Equipment, Books, Prints Etc.

Please act responsibly when using any equipment provided by Aperture or when in the presence of books, prints etc. belonging to other participants or the instructor(s). We recommend that refreshments be kept at a safe distance from all such objects.

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On Philip Gefter’s Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe

 

Philip Gefter’s new biography of Sam Wagstaff examines the life of the influential curator and collector, and his romantic relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. Gefter argues that there is a relationship between the queer gaze and a particularly influential period for the history of photography, as told through Wagstaff’s story. Here we feature writer Kira Josefsson’s review of Gefter’s book. 

In 1970s New York, when homosexuality was still punishable by law, it was an especially risky act for a man to let his eyes linger on another man in public. But photographs enjoyed privately could be a safe space for the queer gaze. As author and critic Philip Gefter argues in his biography Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe, it was not an accident that so many photography collectors active during this period were gay men. The book charts the life of Sam Wagstaff, best-known as the lover and patron of Robert Mapplethorpe, and sets out to show that his importance extends beyond that relationship—that he was a critical force in photography’s elevation to an art form, on par with MoMA curator John Szarkowski in influence.

Born into the repressive, patrician circles of the 1920s Upper East Side, Wagstaff always had a keen eye. But it was not until he went back to school for art history at age thirty-six that he was able to fully explore his interest in the visual. From 1961 to 1971, Wagstaff worked as a curator, first at the Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford, Connecticut, then at the Detroit Institute of Arts. During this time, he immersed himself in contemporary art, spending most of his free time with young artists in Hartford, Detroit, and New York, championing those—often men—whose ideas, talent, and, frequently, looks attracted him. In this way, Gefter argues, Wagstaff came to be at the forefront of new ideas; he was responsible for the first exhibition of minimalist art at a major museum, with Black, White, and Gray at the Wadsworth Atheneum in 1964.

Wagstaff’s love for photography coincided directly with his love for Mapplethorpe. Mapplethorpe had already begun his move from collage to photography when the two men—born the same day, twenty-five years apart—began their relationship in 1972. Wagstaff had a ferocious belief in Mapplethorpe’s talent. He supported him financially by buying him a loft in New York and pushed his career in myriad other ways. Their deep bond, forged as much by intellectual and artistic exchange as by attraction, was often complicated, and they each took other long-term lovers; but their symbiosis would last until Wagstaff died of AIDS in 1987. (Mapplethorpe was taken two years later.)

In 1973, the two went to see the exhibition The Painterly Photograph at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Wagstaff had a revelation in front of Steichen’s The Flatiron (1904) which led him to shed his skepticism about the medium. He turned to photography with the enthusiasm of a religious convert, trawling auctions, flea markets, and estate sales all over Europe and the U.S. He soon had a vast, idiosyncratic collection, encompassing everything from work by Nadar to cat pictures, and he showed it to everyone who would listen, rhapsodizing over light and composition, pointing out parallels to classical painting. These photographs ended up in shows, were edited into a book by Wagstaff, and, eventually, joined the Getty Museum collection.

Gefter argues that Mapplethorpe benefited by learning about the largely uncharted aesthetic history of photography as Wagstaff drew its outlines for himself—and the medium benefited, as well. The fact that a person with Wagstaff’s by-then considerable weight in the art world took such an interest in photography, not widely accepted as a fine art, helped spark the attention of others. No doubt the large sums Wagstaff and his fellow enthusiasts spent on their collections helped, too.

A curator engaged in art investment can fall into conflicts of interest; the profit motive risks muddling curatorial judgment. Wagstaff was certainly not in it for the money, but this slippery slope was nevertheless sometimes manifest in his actions. Gefter, clearly enthused by his subject, tends to breeze past such inequities. His conjectures about the link between Wagstaff’s homosexuality and his habit of collecting can also come across as slightly tenuous. Such missteps aside, the biography draws from a treasure trove of materials and paints a rich, detailed portrait, including two short inserts with images of the (human, as well as inanimate) objects of Wagstaff’s affection. Wagstaff is a loving and inquisitive cultural history of the New York art world in the twentieth century.

The PhotoBook Review is Aperture’s biannual tabloid-sized newspaper dedicated to photobooks, with reviews, opinion pieces, artist selections, and publisher profiles. Pick up a free copy at the Aperture Gallery and Bookstore or subscribe to Aperture magazine and get PBR delivered to your door.

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Magazine Work

Camera Mainichi, November 1968, photograph by Kishin Shinoyama

Camera Mainichi, December 1967, photograph by Haruo Tomiyama

Asahi Camera, October 1969, photograph by Kishin Shinoyama

Asahi Camera, June 1969, photograph by Daido Moriyama


Asahi Camera, January 1976, photograph by Masahisa Fukase

Asahi Camera, January 1976, photographs Nobuyoshi Araki

Shashin Jidai, March 1983, photograph by Daido Moriyama

Shashin Jidai, September 1982, photograph by Keizo Kitajima.

Shashin Jidai, November 1981, photographs by Nobuyoshi Araki

Camera Mainichi, April 1965, photograph by Yoshihiro Tatsuki

By Ivan Vartanian

Is the history of Japanese photography also a history of magazine publishing? In the new issue of Aperture magazine, Tokyo-based curator Ivan Vartanian offers a look through the pages of the popular technical and erotically minded magazines of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, revealing some the most significant photography produced during those decades. He writes, “In 1950, in the midst of Japan’s postwar economic recovery, the Ricohflex III premiered on the market. The world’s first mass-produced twin-lens reflex camera was met with phenomenal sales and catalyzed what would become a prolonged boom market for cameras. Magazines like Asahi Camera (1949–present) and Camera Mainichi (1954–85) emerged to educate this new demographic of photo-enthusiasts. While the bulk of content consisted of articles on technique, equipment reviews, and pictures submitted by amateur snappers, these magazines also published some of the most important photography of postwar Japan. Editorial stories by Shomei Tomatsu, Kishin Shinoyama, Daido Moriyama, Yutaka Takanashi, and Issei Suda may not have driven sales, but these photographers effectively challenged established ideas about the nature of the medium. Through their work, they argued that photography had the power to provoke thought and possibly exceed written language in its capacity to communicate.” Here we feature a selection of images from Asahi Camera , Camera Mainichi, and Shashin Jidai (1981-87), which is also discussed in the article. This article also appears in Issue 9 of the Aperture Photography App, a new biweekly publication from Aperture: click here to download the free app.

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