“Sandi Haber Fifield’s photographs float on the colors of memory, mood, feeling, and suggestion. They combine the indistinctness of memory with the imperfections of photography to produce elusive, incomplete reconstructions of times, events, and sentiments at the far reaches of perception.”—Vicki Goldberg

Last November I was invited to review portfolios at PhotoNola in New Orleans. It was exciting to get out of New York to view interesting photography. It was something I needed, and of course, It also provided a new avenue for discovering photography and stories to publish in the magazine.

By the second day, I’d seen an impressive series of projects and met some interesting photographers that I’m sure I’ll collaborate with in the future. It was inspiring to be around passionate people dedicated to their photography.

The constant conversations and exchanging of ideas kept my mind swirling. I was starting to get mentally exhausted by the time Sandi Haber Fifield sat down across from me. With her was the dummy for her latest book After the Threshold (Kehrer Verlag).

We chatted for a minute and then I sat silently as she flipped through the book. I was quickly transfixed, intently focussing on the photographs that were flickering before my eyes. The photographs were sequenced in a series of four, sometimes three per page. So each time she flipped it was like looking at a new puzzle, or short story. I watched attentively, studying the way the images played off against each other. It was a real photographic treat.

When she finished I didn’t have much to say. I mustered up a few words of admiration but beyond that I couldn’t find anything to say. The first rush of seeing a good photobook is a wonderful feeling. The work resonated with me so strongly that my mind began racing, flooded with questions and ideas.

“How has diaristic photography evolved in the internet age? Are more photographers digging into their archives to re-interpret their photography? How are photographers using sequencing and multiple photographs to communicate their ideas? Do we focus too much attention on single images?”

The flashes of inspiration were coming quickly. It made me want to get to work. It’s impossible to know when you’ll encounter something that will crystallize ideas floating around in your head and force you to ask new questions. That’s what happened when I encountered After the Threshold. It was the right series of photographs at the right time. Another reviewer might have shrugged them off, but for me, they opened a creative door.

Sandi and I chatted for a few more minutes, and then she and the photographs were gone.

—

In the months after encountering After the Threshold, I managed to finish editing my first book, Genesee Ave. It changed the way I think about photography. Editing and sequencing are how you unlock the potential from a series of photographs. It’s an aspect of photography that I knew was critically important, but it wasn’t until after I did it myself that I realized how challenging it was to do in an interesting way. You have to make so many small decisions to assure the whole is unified body of photographs.

Sandi’s book and sequencing were consistently on my mind. We exchanged emails and planned a feature for the magazine but I couldn’t figure out the right questions I wanted to ask her. I started to feel that reading her words might change that visceral feeling I had about the book. I wanted it to remain a mystery. I was imagining the book in my head and after seeing some of the spreads I knew it would be one of those books that I look at over and over again for a few months.

A few weeks before the scheduled publication date for Issue 6, Sandi mailed me a review copy of the book. It was thrilling to hold it in my hands and look at the completed version. It’s a beautifully made object.

And this time I was able to page through it at my own pace. I could put it down and return to it a day later. I could live with the photographs for a few weeks. It’s strange how your view of a book changes once you own it. The photographs you live with are the most important.

With each viewing I started to learn more hints about the version of Sandi’s life she wants to show us through her photography. The version I view is serene, calm and meditative. We jump through her travels and daily life. The seasons change, sometimes in the same sequence of photographs. We catch glimpses of the people in her life but we’re never certain about the relationship. They are visually in harmony with the rest of her subject matter.

I laugh when she comes across the odd street scene. It’s not a big deal. It’s something that happens when you have a camera with you. A single photograph is never allowed to stand out. They all have their proper place as equals. Each turn of the book introduces a new story or memory. You want to stop and take a closer look but when you try the moment is gone.

Luck, 2012

White Sun, 2011

Sunday Morning, 2012

Montauk Blue, 2011

Improbable Night, 2012

Pained Smile, 2012

Hannah, 2012

Dreaming in Blue, 2012

“My work is born of collisions and alignments. I gather images from experiences exceptional and mundane, intentional and spontaneous. A visit to the Louvre might find its place alongside a glance through my kitchen window. I work from an inventory of images created and collected over time and am always looking for the small parts that make the whole. Through the process of combining disparate moments of vision, formal connections reveal themselves and suggest the reassuring possibility of meaning and order in the apparent randomness of experience.”

On the social web, the stream has become the default analogy for the way we view new information. Those of us that spend too much time on Tumblr have grown accustom to the seemingly random photographs that scroll through our dashboards.

Something I’ve been paying closer attention to is the diaristic way many photographers are using Tumblr. It can be fascinating to watch them work out their visual ideas in their stream over a series of months. It’s like breaking down a crucial aspect of their editing process. It might be good enough for the stream, but is it good enough for the portfolio or for the book?

It’s a critical editing question. What photographs do you choose to show, and where?

From one perspective, I view ‘After The Threshold’ as a stream. The subject matter of the photographs jumps around but the sequencing always demands that we view a series of photographs together. Meaning is created through this precision sequencing.

On the web, sequencing often doesn’t matter. It’s the bites, and the killer photographs, that gain traction, but this really isn’t a very interesting way to view photography, and I think most reasonable people in photoland understand this by now.

But there is something intriguing about the concept of the stream, and I think ‘After the Threshold’ is a good example of a photographer that either consciously, or unconsciously is engaging the way we consume photograph on the web.

After viewing the book several times now, I’m left wondering about the pace at which I page through it. I’ve been browsing through like I’d view a Tumblr. It’s a brisk pace. But the process of turning the pages slows me down enough to linger on the photographs. It’s almost perfect.

I pause long enough to reflect but not long enough to get bogged down. I’m still not sure why it resonates with me so strongly. When I think I have the right words, I turn the page and they suddenly slip my mind. I’m lost in the photography, and that’s a great feeling.

After the Threshold.

Photographs by Sandi Haber Fifield.

Text by Vicki Goldberg.

Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2013.

80 pp., 100 color illustrations, 11¾x9½”.

Will be released on April 16th

Book signing at AIPAD Park Avenue Armory

Park Avenue & 66th St Saturday, April 6th, 11:30-1:00

RWFA Booth #117

Exhibition opens at Rick Wester Fine Art

New Address: 526 West 26th St., Suite 417

May 2nd – June 15th

Opening reception: Thurs, May 2nd 6-8

 ©Sandi Haber Fifield and are courtesy Rick Wester Fine Art.

“Photographer and bookseller Melissa Catanese has been editing the vast photography collection of Peter J. Cohen, a celebrated trove of more than 20,000 vernacular and found anonymous photographs from the early to mid-twentieth century. Gathered from flea markets, dealers and Ebay, these prints have been acquired, exhibited and included in a range of major museum publications. In organizing the archive into a series of thematic catalogues, she has pursued an alternate reading of the collection, drifting away from simple typology into something more personal, intuitive and openly poetic. Her magical new artist’s book, Dive Dark Dream Slow, is rooted in the mystery and delight of the “found” image and the “snapshot” aesthetic, but pushes beyond the nostalgic surface of these pictures and reimagines them as luminous transmissions of anxious sensuality. Through a series of abandoned visual clues, from the sepia-infused shadow of a little girl running along a beach to silhouettes of a group of distant figures pausing upon a steep and snowy hill, a dreamlike journey is evoked. Like an album of pop songs about a girl (or a civilization) hovering on the verge of transformation, the book cycles through overlapping themes and counter-themes–moon and ocean; violence and tenderness; innocence and experience; masks and nakedness–that sparkle with deep psychic longing and apocalyptic comedy.” – Dive Dark Dream Slow - The Ice Plant, October 2012

Melissa Catanese lives in Pittsburgh and is the founder of Spaces Corners, an artist-run photobook gallery opened in October 2011.  

Interview by Bryan Formhals

When did you first become interested in vernacular photography and working with archives? One of the first photography books I bought was Evidence, and it’s still one of my favorites. Was that one of the books you used as inspiration? Were there others?

My interest in vernacular photography began to really grow when I started working with Peter Cohen’s collection and until then, I didn’t have much interest in it, and certainly not within my own photographic pursuits. Although Evidence was definitely an early influence, I was drawn more to what happened when those images were removed from their original contexts. What really inspired me about this work was the simple pleasure of getting lost in those elusive images and the mysterious associations that arose from the edit and sequence. This experience has certainly shaped the way I began to put together my own photographs. As far as other books go, I’m always hunting for new books that inspire me, but the book that stands out the most during this time was The Mushroom Collector by Jason Fulford. I found the process of trying to ‘decode’ this work really engaging. In general, Fulford’s books are so playful and clever. I also revisited Floh by Tacita Dean. I think I was trying to figure out what I was doing and how it was different.

How difficult was it to find a ‘narrative’ and I use ‘narrative’ very loosely there. For me, the challenge with this type of work or working any large body of work is that there a literally endless different avenues you can pursue in an edit. Did you ever think you were creating a sequence that too obscure and abstract? Or did you find yourself gravitating MORE toward that direction?

I do gravitate to elliptical and abstract ‘narratives’, looking for pictures that are somehow incomplete and mysterious. It usually begins on a subconscious level and I try to let the pictures guide me. I’ll have a really simple visual idea, mood or atmosphere in mind and that’s the foundation for the ‘narrative’. If I didn’t use these abstract elements as a base, then there’s no doubt the sequence would have turned out much differently. An important part of the process is defining the tone and then playing around with the patterns that emerge. A lot of trial and error takes place and a lot of time is spent looking and moving pictures around – searching for the chord that you’re hoping to hit.

It’s strange how at times it seems as if the photographs are sequencing themselves. I’m curious about how you put an edit together. Do you just start with a pile of photographs and then start putting the puzzle together? Do you start the beginning? Or the end?

There are usually two or three photographs that I’ve been looking at for a while. Sometimes they are orphans from an earlier edit that I keep going back to. Thinking on those key photos is what helps determine the foundation. I’m usually guided by a few simple visual cues, like a color or a pattern, or something that I find beautiful in the content. Once a basic edit is compiled, usually in a stack of photographs, I’ll start the sequence. I work in small edits of three to five photographs. Threading those groups together, I sequence forward from the beginning and backward from the end and sometimes I start in the middle, working outward. But it’s always in a line. I’ll leave spaces where I feel there’s a natural break. I like to flip the ‘beginning’ with the ‘end’ once I’m close to completion. When I feel good about the sequence I’ve started, I start working in InDesign and depending on where I am in the edit, I’ll either import the images as a line on one long page or I’ll begin a book with many pages.

How does working with other people’s photographs as an editor impact the way you make photographs?

I think about this in reverse actually. My interest in making photographs and editing from my own archive has always been the driving force. When I edited Dive Dark Dream Slow, it was really important that the mood felt like an extension of work from my photographs and initially, when I started the project, I intended to include some of them as well. They’re inherently different ‘genres’ I guess, but I wanted to experiment with the possibilities. If I considered my snapshots as raw material that I would later build something from, then what happens if I try to do the same thing from this massive vernacular archive? I was told once that the hardest part of editing is the ability to remove your ‘self’ from the pictures, to create enough emotional distance from the work where you could see objectively. I think about this a lot when I’m looking at pictures and editing. But I’m not entirely sure if its ever really possible, no matter who the author is, and I’m not sure I would ever really want to do that anyway.

That’s very interesting about trying to remove yourself from the pictures. The dogma is that photographers are the worst editors of their work, but I question that to some degree. I’m probably wrong! I think with some or maybe most fine art photography, the edit is the vision, if that makes any sense. I don’t think I really started to evolve as a photographer until I really started to get my hands dirty in the editing process. It’s very difficult because you have no other option but to make choices: Yes, this photograph! Yes, these ten photographs! Once you start doing that, you begin to understand more clearly what you’re doing which I think helps you immensely when you’re out making photographs.

It does make sense to me that the edit is the ‘vision’ and I would completely agree. It’s become so easy to make pictures and accumulate huge archives that it’s interesting to see how others organize and edit their work. I think because it’s so common for people to have this challenge of figuring out how to manage hundreds of photos at once, they’re beginning to really appreciate the invisible art of editing now more than ever. There’s also a lot more dialogue about these concerns – in many online magazines like LPV and with publications out like Aperture’s The Photobook Review.

I do think it’s an interesting time to talk about editing. I know it can probably seem hermetic to outsiders but I’ve found most photographers get excited when they can talk about it because editing opens up creative doors. With the ease of self-publishing it feels like we’re living through a period of great experimentation. Of course, only time will tell if that’s true or not. It could also be a great period of homogenization. The way the internet brings people together often means we’re all looking at very similar work. Do you look at much photography on the web? How do you balance your consumption between online and offline? What are some of the aspects of the web that you find problematic for photography?

I spend a lot of time on social media, like Tumblr and Facebook, and I enjoy it, but it’s often hard to break out of the voyeurism of it all and actually participate in the dialogue. Everything online moves really fast and adapting to this constant recycling of images and ideas takes visual dexterity and can be exhausting. It doesn’t feel totally natural or fluid yet. This is why it’s nice to take refuge in a book.

You founded Spaces Corners in Pittsburgh, which you call “an artist-run photobook gallery and project space.” I’m also interested in how people describe their activities these days because most of us are engaged with the medium on multiple levels. It’s hard these days to narrowly define people. What made you want to open up Spaces Corners? How has the reception been in Pittsburgh?

We love our city, but there’s nothing like Spaces Corners here. We saw this as an opportunity to fill a void, cultivate local curiosity, and maintain some international resonance. We wanted our experience as artists to reflect our approach to curating the shop, but we also wanted to be able to integrate our own work. We’re constantly evolving and redefining ourselves which I think is an important part of the learning process. Right now, we’re in the early stages of beginning a small publishing program. Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes by Ed Panar was printed here in Pittsburgh in January and is our first experiment with this. We have a pretty small local audience and a growing online community, but all-in-all support has been overwhelming and a source of great energy for us.

Dive Dark Dream Slow

88 pages, hardcover, 7.5′ x 9.25′
57 photographs
The Ice Plant, October 2012

Photographs ©Melissa Catanese.

Running With Tabitha Soren

Essay by Bryan Formhals

It’s 90 degrees out and sweat is dripping down my face. I’m tired and anxious. I only slept a few hours the previous night and now, I’m standing under the elevated N/Q line in Astoria, Queens, a few blocks from my apartment. I’m getting ready to sprint, Rangefinder slung over my shoulder, Addidas tied tightly.

Standing a few feet in front of me is my friend Katie Friedman. She’s holding a jimmy-rigged pole with a strobe attached to it. A few feet behind her, Tabitha Soren is crouched down looking straight at me through her Phase 1.

“Anytime Bryan,” she says.

I look directly into the camera and start sprinting.

There’s something primal about running. The cliche “running for your life” is one that I don’t really like to contemplate. I can’t run very fast so I’d rather my life not depend on it. But regardless of the circumstance, at this point in my life, there’s nothing about running that sparks my interest. This hasn’t always been the case, however. I was a jock as a kid. I ran around all the time—not very fast—but I was running. It was part of my daily routine.

Then, in my twenties, after adding a few post-collegiate pounds, I started a jogging routine in the hopes of getting back into shape. But I eventually stopped when I discovered the Hollywood apartment I moved into had an exercise bike.The convenience was too inviting. It was around that time, too, that I started taking long walks with my camera, exploring Los Angeles, the first place outside of Minnesota that I’d ever lived.

Tabitha’s “Running” portraits have appeared on dozens of blogs and websites this year. When I first saw them, they didn’t initially grab my interest primarily because they felt too staged. As they continued to appear on my radar, I saw different selections of photographs, and began to look at them more closely.

The act of running had forced emotions out the subjects that we typically don’t see in portraiture. In most portraiture, the subject is directly confronted with the camera. They are, in many cases, intimately aware of its presence, and the exchange they are having with it, and the photographer.

In Tabitha’s portraits, the physicality of running disrupts this intimacy, leaving the subjects more vulnerable and emotionally exposed. But what emotions do people experience when they’re running? For me, that question is dependent on why they are running, and that’s where Tabitha’s portraits add the element of mystery and ambiguity which are the signatures of really great photography.

There are no answers in the photographs. That mystery, and the emotional state of the subjects, is what drew, and continues to draw, me deeper into these images.

It was only after seeing the photographs on a few blogs that I decided to Google the artist to see if she was the Tabitha Soren of MTV News fame.

I quickly found out that yes, indeed, it was the same person. I was in high school in the early 90s and watched MTV like most people. My memory has faded, but I definitely remember Tabitha as an MTV News anchor. Mostly I have a vision of her with her red hair staring at me on the TV that was in my basement as a teenager.

One morning a few weeks later, I rolled over, grabbed my iPhone and saw I had an email from Tabitha with “submission” in the subject line. The majority of submission emails I receive are cut and paste template jobs. Tabitha’s, however,was one of the rare that was personalized and showed that she follows LPV, and wasn’t simply trying to use it to gain more publicity for herself.

Near the end of her message, she made a suggestion that caught me off guard. She asked if I would want to run for her next time she was in town.

“That could potentially make for an interesting article,” was the first thought that crossed my mind. The next , however, was something along the lines of, “Yeah, but you’re going to look like a fool.”

I accepted the offer anyway, and she told me she’d be in touch next time she was in New York. I figured it’d probably never happen so I forgot about it. A month later, however, she sent an email letting me know that she was going to be in town for a group show at Klompching Gallery. It dawned on me that there was no backing out now.

In the days leading up to the shoot I helped her find specific locations and she provided me with wardrobe guidelines (no logos, have a camera, a hat). She needed an assistant, so I put her in touch with Katie, whom I figured would probably be amused.

After the first take, Tabitha gave me a few specific instructions. She wanted me to exaggerate the swinging of my arms, show more emotion on my face, and rather than looking directly at the camera, I was to look off into the distance, as if I were running toward something or someone.

I shook my head in agreement and made a quip, which impressed no one, about taking improv classes a few years earlier. I don’t want to spoil the illusion of the photos, but I will say I wasn’t required to run any long distances. We busted off about 25 frames at that location. The first few were a bit awkward. I reckon the site of me sprinting caught the attention of a few jaded New Yorkers who are accustom to seeing just about everything.

The next location was the exit that leads onto the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (first photo above.) Tabitha set up on the elevated N/Q station so she had nice a birds-eye view of me. The plan was for me to run into the middle of the street when the light turned red and there were no cars. Katie and I waited on the shoulder, and she signaled to me when it was time to go. I’d sprint and then veer off back onto the shoulder.

We repeated this several times and by tenth run I was starting to get tired and losing both my stamina and enthusiasm for being a subject. Tabitha was wearing me down. I’d basically forgotten about the camera. I was focusing on my sprints and my now aching body.

Tabitha wasn’t getting the shot she wanted, so I continued to run. She would give Katie some instructions, which were then relayed to me. I was certain a cop was going to stop us. As I ran, I started imagining being arrested for breaking some obscure law, and perhaps getting locked up in psychward. I was having a tough time convincing myself that I really wasn’t a bit crazy.

Why was I doing this again? In the name of art? Those were futile questions though because I knew the answers already. I was living in New York and a fantastic photographer wanted to push me outside my comfort zone. Why the hell wouldn’t I do it?

We wrapped it up and decided to head to East River Park in Greenpoint for one last setup. On the way Tabitha, and I talked about photography. In that conversation, I realized that she was a bona fide photography addict. We could have talked for hours about the creative process and what we thought about different photographers.

At one point she asked me about my work. Before this year, I would have had a tough time discussing it primarily because I wasn’t comfortable articulating my ideas, or what motivates me to make photographs. Within the last year though, as I’ve studied more and been more disciplined with my editing, I’ve become more confident in speaking about my photography.

“When did you realize you were good at it?” she asked.

“Well, that I’m not sure about,” I said with a grin. “I do know that I’m motivated primarily by the need for creative fulfillment, and ever since I left Minnesota for California I’ve felt this need to document my experience.”

As we parked and walked to the park I started to think about my role as a subject and how this experience will inform the way I interact with subjects in my own work.

Having a camera pointed at you is uncomfortable, and it makes you self conscious. I’ve always tried to maintain the fly on the wall approach as a photographer because I want to capture unscripted moments. But now that I’ve had the camera pointed at me, I’m starting to understand that there’s an entirely different world of photography to explore, one where photographer and subject collaborate to create something together.

As we arrived at the shores of the East River, the setting sun was barely peeking through a mountain range of clouds, which created an ominous sky over Manhattan.

I was instructed to run toward the water, run toward the city, run toward the setting sun. The metaphors were racing through my mind as the hipsters gawked at me. I didn’t care. I was in the moment.

I’d just had the privilege of working with a talented photographer and a generous human being. Tabitha brought me into her creative world, broke me down, and then made me reveal a part of myself I hadn’t recognized before. I don’t know why she chose me as a subject. That part of the process will remain a mystery. But she did, and she made me run. I’m still trying to figure out where I was running to that day. When I get there, I’ll let you know.

Tabitha Soren is a Berkeley, California based photographer. You can view more photographs from her ‘Running’ series on her website.

You can view the magazine through the ‘web viewer’ below. If you want to BUY a physical copy, or download the PDF, click HERE. The features will also be published right here on the web over the next few days. Special thanks to Alexi Hobbs for all his hard work designing this issue. Thank you for supporting LPV!

LPV 5

By LPV Magazine in LPV Magazine

110 pages, published 11/9/2012

Featuring work from Amani Willett, John MaClean, Nicholas Calcott, Alexi Hobbs & Tabitha Soren. Including an introduction and essay by Bryan Formhals

As a photographer I am not necessarily interested in staging reality so to speak — instead, what I am interested in is someone else’s idea of a staged reality. This very thought brought me to the highly constructed rooms that are meant to replicate the consumers “ideal home” in IKEA. Everything within the space is meticulously planned, and items are intentionally placed to create a certain effect. This simulation of the home not only sells the product, but more importantly, lends itself to the idea of selling a possible life. The rooms in IKEA are built for the sole purpose of interaction; what I am interested in photographically are these interactions.

As part of one of their most recent campaigns, IKEA conducted an experiment titled Herding Cats where they released one hundred cats loose overnight in their Wembley location. Cats live their lives in the pursuit of comfort, so this experiment was to see how exactly the cats reacted once they were released in the constructed environments. What
did the cats do? They climbed on sofas, pranced throughout the rooms, slept on beds — treating the space as if it were indeed their own home.

In this day and age, similar to these cats, we too actively live our lives in the pursuit of comfort in any given situation. This possible life that I had mentioned — it’s sleek, it’s desirable, it is an aesthetic all on its own — needless to say, we are drawn to it. This shell of a room has the power of giving you a very real sense of privacy in a very public setting. So, we act just as these cats do: We treat the space as if it were our own.

Full statement here

amylombard.com

A couple of months ago I was in Macy’s buying clothes. I was trying my best to make it as quick a trip as possible because I don’t like being in department stores. I get anxious and want to leave. I’m not a good shopper. I haven’t been to the Ikea in New York but I vividly remember visiting the one in Burbank while I lived in Los Angeles. It’s a bizarre experience. The buying options are mind-boggling and the whole place has an unsettling vibe.

What I enjoy about Amy’s photographs is that she captures that vibe but with a twist. Without her statement we most likely wouldn’t be able to tell the photographs were made in Ikea. It’s a good example of how a statement changes the context of the photographs. Do we need to know they take place in Ikea? That’s a good question. I think we’d still get the feeling that something wasn’t quite right with scenes. But how? What gives it away?

As I’ve written in the past the relationship between words and photographs is complicated. It’s one of those topics that nearly every photographer will have an opinion about, and more often than not, a very strong opinion. That’s partly what makes the dynamic so interesting.

One to Nothing depicts an Israel we do not see on the news. These images go beyond politics: they do not defend a side or critique the conflict. Here, Israel is seen in an unexpected light, a mythological backdrop to the age long struggle between man and the dusty, sun bleached landscape of his origin. The score to this existential battle is locked at 1– 0, with no finish line in sight. A loose, subtle, and open-ended narrative One to Nothing describes a historic tension with striking and unusual observations.

irinar.com

I had the chance to meet up with Irina a few weeks ago to take a look at her book One to Nothing which was published by Kehrer Verlag. As I paged through it, I asked her how long it took her to make the photographs. I’m not sure why that came to mind, or why it matters, but she told me that it was made in a pair of two week trips to Israel. I was a bit surprised. Why? Despite knowing better, I think I’ve come to expect that projects are generally created over a few years time. This probably comes from repeatedly hearing photographers talk about how it’s necessary to take a few years to finish projects. I’m not really sure there’s much to debate on that issue. A project is completed when it’s completed. There are no rules. But it was refreshing to hear Irina was very economical in the time she spent make the photographs.

Looking at the work naturally, there’s not way to tell anyway. The book is a mix of landscapes, candid moments of humans and animals in public, vegetation, etc. Basically, they type of mix that I’m generally drawn too. There’s a good amount of subtle humor involved as well which I appreciated. Sly visual wit you might call it. Was I thinking much about Israel or any subtext? Not really. It’s there but not obvious which I think is one of the strengths of the book.

After finishing the book it left me with that good feeling of wanting more. I’ve probably said this numerous times but for me he best photography books require multiple viewings and allow you find new nuances each time. I look forward to viewing One to Nothing again, if I can get my hands on it.

The book was on Alec Soth’s Top 20 Photobooks of 2011 , as well photo eye Magazine’s Best Photo Books of 2011 . You can read an extended interview with Irina on fototazo. Jorg Colberg also did a video review. And lastly, her latest project, In Plain Air, about Prospect Park in New York City was recently featured in Ahorn Magazine.

This project explores the restless lives of adolescents growing up in Finnmark, the northernmost part of Norway. To a large extent Norway’s increasing wealth is due to fish, oil and minerals from this part of the country; yet several small communities are left as nowhere lands were local prospects may be limited. Privatization of the fishing industry in the 70’s made unemployment, the abandonment of fish factories and depopulation a part of reality.

andreagjestvang.com

I discovered Andrea Gjestvang’s project through PDN 30 (Congrats!) and was intrigued by the moody photographs from Norway.

The photographs of “Jennifer’s Family” share my experience with Jennifer, a 27 year-old first-generation Puerto Rican woman, whom one day I approached in South Providence, RI. Jennifer lives with her Native American life partner and their four children in a run-down three-bedroom apartment at or near the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder. South Providence is an urban neighborhood with a large African-American and Hispanic population, high unemployment and crime rates, and where many families live well below the poverty line. In spite of difficult living conditions, poverty, and illness, Jennifer manages to maintain optimistic while thoroughly caring for her children.

For more than two years I have been portraying the daily life of Jennifer and her family and developed a close relationship based on mutual understanding, respect, and trust. Being a victim of the current economical crisis the family has been evicted from their apartment beginning of this year.

http://www.louisasummer.com/

Willhide dedicates “To Adrian Rodriguez, with Love” to the individual who broke into her home and stole various things. Her computer was recovered by the police, but the hard drive had been wiped clean. Willhide attempted to recover the erased data but found her digital photographs corrupted. Rather than delete the images, Willhide considered these corrupted files a collaboration with her machine. She refined them and made additional ones inspired by the mess. – New Yorker: Photo Booth

Sometimes I think we forget the role that serendipity plays in photography. Melanie Wilhide’s project is a great example of finding inspiration in the random twists and turns life throws at us while we work on our photography. Typically when we think of corruption, we think of it in a negative way, Wall St. for example, but in the context of Wilhide’s project corruption becomes transformative and an inspiring force.

Instead focusing on what she lost, Wilhide decided to use her talents to create something new and alive. Sure, we could easily say that these are simply photo-collages, the type that we’ve seen before, but when I was walking through the gallery looking at the photographs I could oddly sense the serendipity that lead to their creation. That’s something that’s hard to quantify naturally, and perhaps the back story put me in a suggestive mood, I’m not sure, but regardless I found the photographs visually interesting.

Even if the photographs don’t necessarily resonate with you, there’s still insight to be gleaned from the project, and the role that surprise and serendipity play in the creative process. Perhaps those obstacles we’re confronted with on our journey are actually signs that we need to move in a new direction.

Melanie Wilhide – ‘to Adrian Rodriguez with love’
February 23 – March 24, 2012

Von Lintel Gallery
520 West 23rd Street
Ground Floor
New York , NY 10011

Around 2006, back when I was living in Los Angeles, I became aware of Fette after reading an interview with her in LAist. She’d started a popular art blog and was making a name for herself as a curator. I didn’t know much about the LA art scene at the time (still don’t) but I was interested in it, as it was around the time I started to get more interested in photography.

Through social media I found her again a few years ago when I was first starting out in New York. Her tumblr quickly became one of my favorites because of her clever visual juxtapositions. Perhaps due to my own ignorance I wasn’t aware that she was also a photography until her portraits started appearing on her Tumblr. She was one of those people that you follow on the internet but don’t really know much about. So one day I decided to send her an email about her portraits. I’d planned on showing some of the work but as is often the case it never materialized.

A few months ago she visited New York. We met up for coffee and had a wonderful conversation about photography, Los Angeles, art, the internet, portraiture and Berlin. She showed me her handmade book, Rehearsed Lies which I enjoyed for its intimacy and mystery. I’m showing a few photographs from the book (the presentation on her site is much better), a few portraits and some work from an ongoing series called Silent March which is the body of work that resonates with me most.

From the series ‘Silent March’

From the series ‘Silent March’

From the series ‘Silent March’

From the series ‘Silent March’

From the series ‘Nanou’

From the series ‘What would I want’

From the book ‘Rehearsed Lies’

From the book ‘Rehearsed Lies’

From the book ‘Rehearsed Lies’

My photography aims at questioning authenticity and the precious.

In the ongoing series ‘Rehearsed Lies’ I confront intimate portrayals of men with elements of architecture and living spaces stripped off their context. These spaces become clues, they function as mere decors to the performances at play.

Discussion of intimacy addresses one’s innermost self, the core of one’s being, the truth about who one really is. ‘Being intimate’ can also be an euphemism for having sexual relationship.

I search for representations of intimacy with the idea that the quest is delusional, and conflicting, since I have agreed that photography is a lie. Yet, there is a casual authenticity to the actions of the characters represented. The men show familiarity, they often directly gaze at the camera/me/ the viewer, and boldly show their existence, in a way, acknowledging their true presence with me / the camera. Both candor and deceit are critical for the narrative to take effect.

Fette Sans lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles.

Her photos will be in the next issue of Abe’s Penny in collaboration with NY based writer Melissa Gira Grant. Tokyo based publishers Booklet Press will be releasing a book/fanzine her work in May, and there will be a solo show at Infernoesque in Berlin around May about an ongoing exquisite corps project she’s working on with writers (Tommy Smith, Charlotte Shane (aka Nightmare Brunette), Melissa Gira Grant, Sasha Frere-Jones, Jennifer Fuchs, Leah Dieterich)

Laura Stevens (b.1977, UK) received a Master’s degree in photography from the University of Brighton, England, in 2007. Her work has recently received an Honorable Mention in the Lens Culture Exposure Awards and won a Julia Margaret Cameron Award. In 2011 she exhibited in the Foto8 Summer Show, the Peaches and Cream exhibition in London, and at The Greenlane Gallery in Paris. Recent projects of conceptually led portraiture and constructed narratives base their subject matter on personal relationships, intimacy and the domestic space. Stevens currently lives and works in Paris.

laurastevens.viewbook.com

There are several strong series on Laura’s site. After looking through photographer websites the last few years, I’ve come to really appreciate consistency and nice tight edits. I find it difficult to evaluate portraiture which is why I always look for consistency. I like to see that the photographer can make portraits in different settings, under different circumstances. More often than not I see younger photographers generally making portraits of their peers. That’s fine, but to take the work to the next level I believe you need to move outside of your comfort and raise the stakes. I’m not sure where Laura’s comfort zone maybe, and that’s a good sign for me.

From ‘Us Alone’

From ‘Exiled’

From ‘Exiled’

From ‘Exiled’

From ‘A Woman’s Realm’

From ‘A Woman’s Realm’

From ‘A Woman’s Realm’

I’ve enjoyed following Hannah’s journey’s across the globe on Flickr over the last few years, so it’s exciting to feature her photographs and words in Issue #3. After her insightful response to my first question, I decided that this ‘interview’ might turn out a bit different. To me, she’s written three very interesting essays on photography, creativity and her practice. You can view her work and connect with her on her website.

You’ve done quite a bit of moving around the last few years, China, Miami, Texas, Taiwan, back to China. How has this inspired your photography? Do you feel that you use photography to connect with the places you’re living?

To write of forming connections to all of my various places–China, Taiwan, in and around the southern States– I would have to write of my passions for learning languages, travelling, teaching, reading about culture and places, having long conversations, finding and listening to new music, eaves-dropping, eating new food, and ultimately being and moving about outside. For me, connecting to a place, even making thread-bare connections to transient places, requires bits of all of these things and more. The short answer is that photography happens once those connections have already been fired-up.

Here’s the longer answer. I’m a digital, point and shoot picture-taker. I always carry my camera, but that doesn’t mean I’m always about to take a picture, although it does mean the possibility lies dormant in my bag, which is more of a comfort, if anything. As of the last few years, my picture taking has become like a whistling habit. Who whistles when they’re mildly disgruntled? Maybe you know someone, but not me. I “whistle” when I’m happy, when I’m open and receptive. Making pictures is an indicator of that feel-good relationship to my world, rather than a practice I employ to connect me to my world. This hasn’t always been the case.

I used to whistle my way to the connection. In 2006, my first year in China, and my first year taking pictures, almost every day, I’d put on my headphones and go on Beijing walkabouts, crunching over intermittent rubbly landscapes either toward or away from the new glimmering, monolithic ones. I took photos, followed whims, and tried out my Chinese on people. Taking pictures was my primary daily practice, and it was formative. It helped me learn some Chinese, provided momentum to explore Beijing, and eventually other parts of China. That was the year I inadvertently became a photographer; that is, I came to know that I had to mediate my world with picture-taking. And as a habit, it wasn’t going away.

But as a practice, my photography has changed. In 2007, I met Michael Julius; and as our first faces, we fell in love with each other’s photographic visions. Photography was the initial bond, and although the role was never defined as such, he became my mentor. He showed me photography books, told me stories about his life so far spent making pictures. I was only a couple years in, but he had been taking pictures since childhood. He had worked through so many ideas, challenges, projects, and creative stages thus far. And at some point, by nature of our creative personalities, inevitably our approaches to making pictures changed, and it still changes. We are each other’s biggest fan, critic, and mentor, and those aspects of our relationship are the bedrock of everything we make. I’m no longer working alone proving to myself that “I am a photographer,” rather I just am one. Photography is no longer a daily practice, but a non-removable other facet of a very creatively- explored life. It’s both habit/personality and a part of me, like dancing and singing, like playing music when I have instruments, like writing when I get the occasion, like adventure-seeking when there is time, and like telling a story when someone decides they’d like to listen. Photography will be there when the moment materializes and calls for it.

I will not necessarily find my connection by doing any one of them, but by never stopping the ways of seeing and engaging that underlie all of them. What is potentially scary is not not-taking-pictures, but getting mired in daily life minutia, where one’s head in burrowed down in insularity and emotional indifference, endless disgruntled-ness, to the extent that one stops seeing the world in any kind of potentially mutable way. This would be one symptom of some loss of connection to the things that make me me. I haven’t stopped taking pictures so everything must be fine.

I really like how photography seems to have become just one of the many things that you do. So often I feel that people are consumed with photography where that’s all they really think about and how they see themselves. I guess I’m curious about what it is about photography that you’re really attracted to. I mean, why not drawing or painting? What do you think photography communicates that perhaps other mediums can’t?

I’ll go with my gut, and it’s saying that making pictures makes me a better, kinder me. I think I’m seeking empathy when I take pictures of people. I’m drawing ties to them, me and them. I’m gentle to people in pictures in a way I’m not always so outwardly gentle in person. I smile a lot and I’m nice, but, of course, I’m more complicated too- sometimes I can give in to stereotypes (something I’ve learned about myself while living in East Asia), I can harbor disdain, and I don’t always give people the benefit of the doubt, although usually I try.

Perhaps, the people in my pictures don’t deserve my gentle characterization of them. Maybe they’re miserable, bad people, but that’s the “magic.” A photo can recast a person into an anonymous, archetypal role– an “any person” worth being dignified, seen as beautiful, and soft, capable of knowing their own of humor, even knowing their own peculiarity. My photographic world is a fabrication of the world I like to be in, with the characters I like to encounter, despite not knowing who the real people are, despite their complexities being totally un-explored, and despite me giving them a role that they have little say in directing. This small fabrication, a single image, is of course only for me and the people who end up seeing it. If my subjects ever saw a picture of themselves could they even understand their role? Wouldn’t they only see their own face and body, and be distracted by it? I think they’d be incapable of seeing themselves within the whole fabric I’m creating. My subjects hardly get anything so large from the exchange. I get so much more, and incrementally it really affects me.

But ultimately, I have spiritual goals. I’m trying to bring my creative capacity to bear on the goal of finding that allusive sense of peace, and figuring out a way to “just be” in environments that I feel are inherently peace-depleting. The City Broke My Heart is my on-going photo trail of that pursuit. And the pursuit is in how to see everything as potentially “nice” and to not take it for granted. Why strive to see everything as potentially “nice”? I think for me it’s the hardest thing to do. Right now, for instance, I’m looking forward to moving on from China, but I’m really trying to actively appreciate the last months of what has been years of a stops and starts acclimation, but what now feels like a gradual falling out of love. I’m trying to be here and now, and I’m trying to make nice with the present, which brings me to my next point.

Photography is a good present-moment activity; and it has a low-bar of entry—it’s portable; and if you’re shooting digital, it’s instant; and yeah, it’s democratic–it’s the guitar of the visual arts. Photography, at least the way I do it, requires a physical experience to precede an emotional-intellectual one. It involves walking and looking, and hopefully exploring and engaging. But sometimes it happens when I’m doing something quotidian. Suddenly, I see a picture, right in front of me and I stop what I’m doing, or I do two things at once, and I try to get it. I step to the right of my constantly chattering inner monologue. I’m slightly more present. I’m there just trying to make a physical experience, including its associated emotional and intellectual dimensions, fit “right” into a rectangle. Other visual arts start with the mind going out– the image materializes into the world through the hands, which, I guess, is very different than photography. The photographic process is both derivative and transformative– there needs to be a physical space and moment from which to draw on, and then transform. From the photographer’s perspective, it’s one present moment, forever.

Photography can be an incredibly frustrating medium. We fail much more often than we succeed. Sometimes it takes years to finish a project or body of work. Not to mention, once you do finish, the odds of the work reaching a wide audience are very slim. There aren’t many financial rewards. And yet, it seems that more people than ever are making photographs, and going on this journey. There are blogs and zines and Tumblr’s and self-published books. At times, it seems that we might be creating all these photographs for ourselves, or a very small group of friends. Beyond the pleasure of making the photographs, and sharing them with your peers, do you have other ambitions? How do you see your work evolving in the future? Do you envision your work and Michael’s work to continue to merge into one body of work? Is that possible?  

As far as my work evolving, I will, at some point, make more digital movie assemblages. Right now, I’m playing with my off- the-shelf, low-tech tools; and with more time, I’ll figure out what I need to do to take it to the next level, but I need to play more. I need to make more digital camera assemblages like Presentiment, which was my first attempt to evolve outside of still images so far.

A while ago, before I came to China, around the time I was graduating college, in a period when I was figuring out that I wanted to be a teacher of something (geography or English?) and that I wanted to live abroad, I came across a Dorling Kindersley Press book called Children Just Like Me. It’s a reference picture book about how children live around the world. Each page is little glimpse of the material life of a child living in the countries of every continent– a picture of the child in his/her everyday clothes, their school, home, and favorite foods and toys. It’s a simple, uplifting little collection, and it shows how children pursue what’s good in their lives. And for some reason, this book was immensely inspiring. Before I even knew how to make a picture, I thought wouldn’t it be great if I turned my travels-to-come into something as valuable as this.

The photographer and writer of that series are a husband and wife team, Anabel and Barnabas Kindersley. In the same milieu, there are some other coffee-table books that I love, Hungry Planet, Material World, and Man Eating Bugs, which were also created by a husband and wife photographer-writer team, Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio. They travel and make books that educate about the lives of the people who live in the heart of, on the edges of, and downstream from the engines of globalization. It’s a subject I’m very interested in, too. I’ve used Menzel and D’Aluiso books in my teaching, but someday I’d like to use my own photography to create something as valuable to the everyday, non-photography-affiliated person as their books. I like the idea of making something that’s like a visual encyclopedia or a pseudo-textbook, but draws on my style of lyric photography. Oddly enough, I haven’t bridged the divide between my photography and my everyday life as a teacher. They’re too separated at this point.

I had always thought wouldn’t that be cool to find a partner and husband to travel and make art with. By golly, that’s what happened! But Michael and I are not necessarily going to make work that , like for instance Menzel’s and D’Aluiso’s work. Rather, when I look at my work and then at his, it’s true that our aesthetic sensibilities are similar, the cameras are the same, et cetera, but the content and mood are very different. In our daily work, and in the work that we eventually create for our individual portfolios, we are working towards separate ends and we’re inspired by different inputs. It’s only when we anticipate experiencing the same event that we will plan on collaborating to make a single story.

Xinjiang Time is the most recent and best example of our combined efforts. That trip in particular was extremely stimulating and vivid. Sitting on 10 hour buses, and in boisterous Uyghur restaurants, walking through markets, crunching over inner-city burial grounds, we were always talking about and processing the exoticness that we were experiencing. From that constant conversation a thread emerged which ran itself through the images we happened to take. Once at home, from the pile of images, we pulled out those visual threads that seemed to cohere and complicate our unique takes on the same experience. Rather than a merge into one vision, we see our collaboration more as a duet of two visions. Duets and solos, that’s what we’ll continue to make. As I get better at story-telling, I’ll make grander plans to get my work seen by an audience that is larger than what I have now.

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Even the simple and mundane should be celebrated.

Photographs ©Tanya Zani

Tanya allowed me to create these diptychs of her portrait work and interiors of abandoned buildings. Whether or not they accurately represent her work, I’m not sure. That’s why you should take a stroll through her website.

Tanya Zani was born and raised in Rochester, NY where she was exposed to photography from an early age. After spending most of her teenage years in various darkrooms, she moved to San Francisco in 1994 to complete her BFA. Feeling momentarily disenchanted with the prospect of entering “reality” after college—she moved to Italy indefinitely with a suitcase, her camera, and 50 rolls of film to document her stay. Returning to the dot-com boom in S.F. in 1999 she pursued a successful career in Graphic Design until rediscovering her passion for photography. Tanya currently lives in Upstate NY, where she works peacefully on her Fine Art photography.

tanyazani.com

Country roads
When we are young, we want to be adventurous, we want to explore the world,
See new places, try to live differently for once and be far from our home.
Still, we’ll always be attached to this our home, regardless of it being a place,
A feeling or a person.

The series country roads tells a story about georgian youth,
Their desire to leave the country for some time, but always knowing that they
Want and will return to mother georgia. Some day.
And it shows the rawness and the beauty of this country, in it’s landscape and in it’s future.

Roman Bezjak, one of my professors was working on a longterm project about socialist architecture, that by now is published in a book called “Socialist Modernism – Archeology of an Era”. Most of our field trips went to eastern Europe, thanks to Roman’s project. Last year he met Wato Tsereteli, a photography professor from Tbilissi Art Academy and eastablished a connection to Georgia. In December 2010 me and 14 other students accompanied Roman on a trip to Tbilissi, Georgia. We visited the Art Academy a couple of times and exchanged works, thoughts and of course contacts with Wato and his students and we went out for dinner and drinks almost every night. We all spent a lot of time together, which was a very nice experience, as it gave us the opportunity to not just be a tourist or photographer, but to really see how life is in Georgia. I try to meet locals anyway, when I’m in another country and in this case this came naturally, as i did not need to search for contacts.

I remember talking and spending time with Gala. He showed me the city and the countryside and told me story, that caught my attention: One of the most popular plastic surgeries in Georgia is making girls virgins again. In Georgia, as in all caucasian republics traditions are held high and pre-marital sex is looked upon very negatively. It’s the 21st century though and Internet and TV have done their best to loosen many girls’ the rigid adherence to tradition. That leads to two things: a lot of early marriages or being revirginized. This movements background is on the other hand very brutal. During the secession wars a lot of virgin girls have been raped. The aim was to do an installation with statements from teenage girls about their wishes and desires. According to my research, the answer of most of them would be I want to be married. I would have cut out just this sentence from all interviews, given that it was were very likely to be uttered and I would have displayed a picture of the actual surgery room along with the interviews and the title “revirginized”.

I haven’t done the interviews. I was very sick and weak during my stay, because of a fever virus I must have gotten it from the odyssey of a journey we’ve been through to arrive in Tbilissi, with a two day delay. I felt a little down, because I thought I’m not able to realize a project. But still I did a couple of trips, one time for example we rented a car and drove up to the russian border and back, passing some extraordinary mountains and landscapes. And I collected some phonenumbers of local youth, I found interesting and met them to talk again about their lives and their dreams and to take their portraits. I even managed to take the photo of the surgery room. On my last day, as it happens so often. I came home with the feeling, that I wouldn’t have sufficient material. But after reviewing my pictures and discussing them with my friends and professor, I changed my mind. I combined the landscapes with the portraits and named it “Country Roads”. The series tells a story about georgian youth, their desire to leave the country for some time, but always knowing that they want and will return to Mother Georgia. Some Day. And it shows the rawness and the beauty of their country, in it’s landscape and in it’s future.

All photographs ©Maria Sturm

Big congrats to Gabi for being one of the Critical Mass Mass 2011 winners. I’m excited to show a selection of new work she made over the summer at Martha’s Vineyard.

Summer has always been sacred in my family. In grade school my siblings and I were shipped off to the island of Martha’s Vineyard the day after graduation and were not allowed to leave the island until labor day weekend. As a child, leaving ‘the mainland’ for such an extended time seemed a bit like punishment, as we looked longingly at all of our friends getting to experience the indulgences of summer camps. As an adult, of course, I see that this choice was the best possible one my parents may have ever made. Summers for me meant spending every waking day with my ‘summer sisters’ playing cards on the beach, driving down dirt roads listening to Judy Blume novels, and rotating between each other’s houses for homemade meals and heated games of Monopoly each night. As soon as I picked up a camera freshman year in high school, from then on, I consistently captured images of summer life. Sometimes staged productions, other times mere documentation, my earliest photographic explorations mainly took place on this special island. The connection to a place, bonding with a community and vibrant outdoor life are qualities that have since defined my photographic path.

gabrielaherman.com

For the last few years I have been photographing the New York City nightlife in its different incarnations- clubs, lounges and bars, as well as parties – both public and private. During this time I observed the focus of the events shift from partying to photographing the partying and became fascinated by the often exhibitionist behavior of women in this changing social context. This project is my exploration of how public behavior and personal representation have been influenced by the accessibility and availability of electronic media, specifically digital cameras, iphones and networking sites. – from the artists statement 

dinalitovsky.com

Photographs ©Dina Litovsky

I’m fascinated by our collective compulsion to document what seems like every moment of our lives. I know for some people it’s kind of strange but I don’t think it’s much different than what we’ve always been doing, with the big exception that more and more of us are choosing to do it very publicly. In a few weeks Facebook will launch Timeline which I think will really crystalize the notion that many people are using social media to tell the story of their life, and these stories will be presented and archived on Facebook.

I think it’s important we collect and organize this data, but where it becomes a bit problematic and perhaps interesting is that what we’re doing is really crafting the story that we want to tell about ourselves which in many cases is probably far from reality. I think we all present this idealized vision of ourselves on the web which could be having a serious impact on our interpersonal relationships. Do we always need to be in ‘character’? Are we creating unreasonable expectations by trying to live up to this ideal, virtual self? Is our culture expecting each of us to stay true to these idealized selves?

I’m not going to pretend to really understand how this impacts women but my sense is that it must be anxiety inducing. There’s already tremendous cultural pressure to look a certain way, and now that all women, not just models and actresses, can have camera’s focussed on them, it seems that there might be this pressure for women to project themselves the way models, actresses, pop stars and other celebrities project themselves.

Dina wrote a few words about promoting this project through social media. We hope to continue the dialogue going as this is an ever changing, ever evolving topic.

Since Untag This Photo deals with digital culture, I thought the Internet would be a perfect vehicle for both viewing and promoting the series. I envisioned an audience participation in the work, a fluid exchange of ideas rather then a passive viewing of the photos. The project took off thanks to Darren Ching who published it in PDN Photo of the Day back in May. Since then it has appeared in magazines and photoblogs around the world, from Turkey to China. But what is even more exciting is that the series did create the kind of active, sometimes heated, discussion that I had hoped for.