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the State of the Art of Excellent PhotoBook Design SYB Sybren Kuiper

2012-01-27T23:15:00.000-08:00

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Interview mit dem niederländischen Fotobuch-Designer Sybren Kuiper

Dieses Interview erschien erstmals in Photonews Oktober 2011.

Peter Lindhorst/Photonews: Syb, welches Buch hast Du zuletzt erworben, das ein besonderes Design aufweist?

Sybren Kuiper: Eigentlich kaufe ich gar nicht so viele Fotobücher. Es lenkt mich zu sehr ab. Wenn ich bei einem Fotobuchfestival wie in Kassel an den Buchständen vorbeilaufe, werde ich immer unruhig und fühle fast ein bisschen Beklemmung. Derart viele und vor allem gut gestaltete Bücher! Je mehr Bücher ich entdecke, die gute Designideen und Konzepte enthalten, desto mehr entsteht das Gefühl, dass ich bestimmte Ideen nicht mehr anwenden kann. Ich bleibe lieber ein bisschen „ahnungslos“. Das gibt mir das Gefühl von größerer Design-Freiheit. Natürlich ist das eine Illusion, aber irgendwie funktioniert es nur so bei mir.

Auf Deiner Website erfährt man, dass Du in verschiedenen Bereichen des Grafikdesigns tätig bist. Kannst Du über Deine Ausbildung und Deinen beruflichen Werdegang berichten?

Heutzutage arbeite ich hauptsächlich in zwei Bereichen. Auf der einen Seite stehen Aufträge für die Plakatgestaltung von Theatergruppen und -festivals, auf der anderen Seite Fotobücher. Beide Bereiche sind sehr unterschiedlich. Plakate müssen ausdrucksstark sein, für die entwickle ich sehr eigenwillige Bildideen. Ich kann einen Fotografen beauftragen, meine Idee visuell umzusetzen (meist frage ich dann Niels Stomps). Ich kann mich auch entscheiden, bestehendes Bildmaterial zu nutzen, um eine Collage oder eine Illustration daraus zu erstellen. Das Design dient dazu, unmittelbare Aufmerksamkeit auf der Straße zu generieren. Die Plakate sollen den Betrachter fast ein wenig anschreien. Fotobuch-Design ist etwas ganz anderes. Sicherlich hofft man, ein Buch zu machen, dass die Aufmerksamkeit für die Designqualität erregt, aber das Design soll letztlich dem Inhalt dienlich sein, indem es die Qualität der Fotos bzw. das erzählerische Element hervorhebt. Es darf sich nicht gegen die Bilder stellen, soll also nicht schreien, sondern unterstützen.

Die Kunsthochschule besuchte ich erst, nachdem ich einen Universitätsabschluss in Niederländischer Sprache und Literatur gemacht habe. Daher war ich schon ziemlich alt, als ich mit Grafikdesign begann. Erst nach und nach entdeckte ich, dass mein Literaturstudium und meine Grafikausbildung viele Berührungspunkte haben. Meistens besteht mein Grafikdesign darin, Geschichten zu erzählen. Deshalb würde ich mich als einen erzählenden Designer bezeichnen. Und tatsächlich benutze ich auch oft Texte in meinem Design, die ein Wechselspiel mit den Bildern eingehen.

Wie kamst Du zu Deinem ersten Auftrag, ein Fotobuch zu gestalten?

Ich arbeitete bereits ca. 9 Jahre als Grafikdesigner, als mir bewusst wurde, dass ich noch nie ein Buch gestaltet habe. Der Gedanke gefiel mir nicht. So beschloss ich, die erstbeste Möglichkeit zu ergreifen, die sich mir bieten würde, um ein Buch zu designen. Die Gelegenheit ergab sich, als ich ein Mädchen sah, das in einem benachbarten Supermarkt hinter der Käsetheke stand und dort völlig fehl am Platze schien. Ich kaufte immer wieder bei ihr ein und nach einem halben Jahr kamen wir ins Gespräch. Es stellte sich heraus, dass sie eine Fotografiestudentin an der Kunsthochschule war und gerade ihren Abschluss machte. Nachdem sie mir ihre Arbeit gezeigt hatte, schlug ich ihr vor, ihr erstes und zweites Buch unentgeltlich zu gestalten, einfach um es mal auszuprobieren und vielleicht Aufmerksamkeit als Designer von Büchern zu erlangen und Aufträge zu erhalten. Und genauso ist es passiert. Das Mädchen war Cuny Janssen und die ersten beiden Bücher waren „India” und „Macedonia.”

Mit wem hast Du sonst bisher zusammengearbeitet?

Ich hab bis heute mit einer ganzen Menge Fotografen kooperiert, darunter auch einige, die noch nicht so bekannt sind. Neben Cuny Janssen waren das u.a. Niels Stomps, Viviane Sassen, Rob Hornstra, Judith van Ijken, Anoek Steketee, Gijsbert Hanekroot, dann noch Florian van Roekel und Carla van den Putelaar. In letzter Zeit habe ich einige Aufträge aus anderen Ländern bekommen, ein Buch des italienischen Fotografen Valerio Spada mit dem Titel „Gomorrah Girl“ und eine Zusammenarbeit mit Michael Kominek, mit Fotos des mexikanischen Fotografen Enrique Metinides, die ich wirklich sehr mag.

Deine meisten Bücher erscheinen in niederländischen Verlagen. Warum sind die niederländischen Verleger experimentierfreudiger als die deutschen Kollegen?

Das stimmt eigentlich nicht. Inzwischen sind einige Bücher außerhalb der Niederlande veröffentlicht worden. „Flamboya“ von Viviane Sassen wurde von dem italienischen Verlag Contrasto produziert. Ihr neues Buch, an dem wir gerade arbeiten, wird bei Prestel erscheinen. Die letzten drei Bücher von Cuny wurden von dem Kölner Snoeck Verlag veröffentlicht. „Dream City“ von Anoek Steketee ist bei dem deutschen Verlag Kehrer erschienen; Niels Stomps‘ „83 Days of Darkness“, wurde von der Kominek Galerie herausgegeben. Vielleicht sollte man den Spieß umdrehen: Warum sind deutsche Verlage experimentierfreudiger als ihre niederländischen Kollegen?

Erkennt ein Fotograf die Gestaltung als eine autonome Kunstform an? Inwieweit sind Fotografen bereit, ihr Material in fremde Hände zu geben?

Erst einmal: Ich bin kein autonomer Künstler, sondern arbeite im Auftrag. Mein Ziel ist es immer, ein gutes Buch zu gestalten, das die bestmögliche Form für das jeweilige Projekt darstellt. Und ein Buch ist nur ein gutes Buch, wenn mein Kunde das auch empfindet. Fotografen, mit denen ich arbeite, haben oft Riesenrespekt vor dem Designer und seinen Visionen, aber letztendlich ist es ihr Projekt, nicht meines. Die Projekte werden meistens als etwas sehr Persönliches betrachtet, und – abhängig von der jeweiligen Persönlichkeit des Fotografen – muss man unterschiedlich vorsichtig mit ihren „Babies“ umgehen. Es kommen aber auch Fotografen und sagen: „Hier sind meine Fotos, bitte mach ein Buch daraus.“ In solch einem Fall habe ich völlig freie Hand, das Material zu editieren und eine Struktur zu schaffen, um eine Erzählung mit dem vorgegebenen Material zu kreieren. Andere Fotografen haben eine ausgefeilte Vorstellung, wie ihr Buch aussehen sollte. Das ist zunächst zwar sehr schön und eine klare Angelegenheit für mich, wird dann aber sehr aufwendig, wenn ich zusätzliche neue Ideen einfüge. Ich muss sie also immer erst einmal überzeugen, dass es so noch besser funktionieren könnte. Letztendlich entsteht immer eine offene und respektvolle Diskussion.

Könntest Du konkret beschreiben, wie die Zusammenarbeit mit einem Fotografen aussieht? Das Buch von Gijsbert Hanekroot etwa ist sehr gelungen. Wie lief das in der Praxis ab?

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Witzig, dass Du ausgerechnet „Abba…Zappa“ herauspickst, das ist nämlich das einzige Beispiel, bei dem ich einen Fotografen inständig bat, sein Buch gestalten zu dürfen. Das Buch liegt mir sehr am Herzen. In gewisser Weise ist es ein gutes Beispiel, wo ich ein erhebliches Maß an Freiheit erhielt, vielleicht wie bei keinem anderen Buch zuvor. „Abba…Zappa“ ist eine Werkübersicht von Gijsbert Hanekroot, der in den späten 60er bis Mitte der 70er Jahre Hausfotograf bei Oor war, dem niederländischen Gegenstück zum Rolling Stone.

Irgendwann besuchte mich Gijsbert im Studio. Den Anblick werde ich nie vergessen, als er mit zwei riesigen Plastiktüten ankam, die bis zum Platzen mit Originalabzügen gefüllt waren. Ich sprach ihn auf die Menge der Fotos an, worauf er ein wenig abwesend antwortete, dies seien nur die ersten drei Buchstaben des Alphabets. Er breitete Stapel mit Fotos meiner Rockheroen aus, in zufälliger Reihenfolge, in verschiedenen Größen und Formen. Unter jedem Bild gab es immer neue Überraschung zu entdecken. Sofort hatte ich das Gefühl, dass es eine gute Idee sei, für den Leser eines Buchs einen ähnlichen Effekt zu simulieren. Als ob er einen Stapel von Fotos durchblättert, in dem die hektische Energie jener Zeit eingefangen ist. Aber es sollte natürlich ein richtiges Buch werden, gebunden und nicht nur ein Stapel loser Bilder… Die Schwierigkeit würde sein, ein Buch zu produzieren mit scheinbar zusammengewürfelten Fotos, die unterschiedliche Formate und Größen aufweisen. Wie ließe sich so etwas aufbinden, wenn nicht in teurer Handarbeit? Der Drucker sagte, dass es unmöglich sei, aber ich wollte nicht aufgeben und ging direkt zum Buchbinder. Zu meiner Überraschung schickte mir dieser wenig später einen Dummy mit einer Fülle unterschiedlicher Seitenformate und Variationen, der mechanisch gebunden war.

Eigentlich war ich überfordert, gleichzeitig ein Design auszudenken und die Fotos sinnvoll dazu auszuwählen. Ich versuchte also, mich auf 10-12 Varianten zu begrenzen und die Fotoauswahl so zu machen, dass sie in ein Schema passen würde. Ein Balanceakt wie im Zirkus, bei dem ich vor allem die Bindung im Auge behalten musste, wenn ich die Größen der Seiten variieren wollte. Gijsbert und ich waren beide der Überzeugung, dass es besser für das Buch sei, anstelle einer alphabetischen oder chronologischen eine intuitive Reihenfolge vorzunehmen. Er gab mir alle Freiheit bei der Zusammenstellung… doch irgendwo in der Mitte des Auswahlprozesses rief er plötzlich ein wenig besorgt an. Nach 35 Jahren als Fotograf sei er ziemlich sicher, welches das stärkste Bild einer Serie sei. Ich sagte ihm, dass ich das gut verstehe, aber nicht so recht sehe, worüber er besorgt sei, als er mir antwortete: „Nun ja, du hast immer genau ein anderes Foto als ich ausgesucht“.

Das war interessant für mich, weil ich sehr intuitiv arbeite und zu erkennen versuche, was ein Bild oder eine Kombination mit mir als Betrachter anstellt. So erklärte ich ihm die Gründe meiner Auswahl. Ich hatte erkannt, dass Gijsbert eine Reihe von Bildern gemacht hatte, die die Rockstars in sehr persönlichen Momenten zeigt. Keine vorgefertigten Rollenklischees, keine Posen wie bei den Kollegen. In Gijsberts Fotos wirkten sie viel menschlicher und zugänglicher. Wenn selbst Neil Young, der selbsternannte Einzelkämpfer, lächelt…

Doppelseite aus dem Buch "Abba...Zappa"

Wie lange arbeitest Du mit dem Material eines Fotografen? Ist der Fotograf in jeden Schritt des Entscheidungsprozesses eingebunden?

Es scheint so, als ob ich wirklich rasch und intuitiv Bildmaterial editieren und gestalten kann. Selbstverständlich sind Fotografen in jeden Entscheidungsschritt eingebunden. Er oder sie ist der Chef. Meine erste Herangehensweise ist, die Zusammenstellung des Fotografen (welche ich total respektiere) zu ignorieren, um möglicherweise zu erkennen, welche Art der Auswahl und Erzählung aus den Fotos selbst heraus entsteht. Manchmal klappt das ziemlich gut und mir gelingt, den Fotografen mit seinem eigenen Material zu überraschen, aber das ist natürlich nicht immer der Fall. In anderen Situationen kehren wir gemeinsam zur Anfangsidee des Fotografen zurück. Ich mag die Vorstellung, dass die Fotos selbst – nicht aber der Designer und auch der Fotograf nicht – das Buch gestalten. Man muss die Fotos fühlen. Jede Fotoserie verlangt nach einer eigenen Umsetzung, damit sie funktioniert.

Wann merkst Du, ob ein Buch abgeschlossen ist?

Man kommt an einen Punkt, wo jede kleine Veränderung oder Verschiebung das Buch schlechter macht. Und tatsächlich ist das etwas, was man eher fühlt, als dass man es rational begründen kann.

Wie ist Deine Intention bei der Gestaltung? Muss das Design immer den Inhalt unterstützen? Oder erzählst Du mit der Gestaltung Deine eigene Geschichte?

Natürlich dient das Design dazu, den Inhalt zu stützen. Meine Aufgabe ist es, meinen Klienten neue und hoffentlich bessere Lösungen anzubieten, um eine Geschichte herauszuarbeiten. Es gibt einige wenige Dinge, die ich für wichtig erachte. Ich mag ein Buch, das ein oder zwei markante, kühne Designentscheidungen enthält, die dann durchgehend im Buch angewandt werden, um es von anderen Titeln grundlegend zu unterscheiden und ihm eine starke Persönlichkeit zu vermitteln. Aber wie ich schon sagte: die Designentscheidung hat sich immer dem Inhalt unterzuordnen.

Als wie wichtig erachtest Du Texte in Fotobüchern?

Das kommt darauf an. Manchmal muss man richtig ringen, um einen passenden Text beizufügen und das ist eigentlich schon ein Anzeichen, dass das Buch diesen nicht wirklich benötigt. Manchmal will ein Fotograf aber auch keinen Text und ich komme während des Gestaltungsprozesses zu dem Schluss, dass die Fotos durchaus einen (Kon-)Text vertragen könnten. Ich habe selbst einige Texte für Fotobücher verfasst (meist unter einem Pseudonym). Mir gefällt es allerdings nicht, wenn ein Buch unmittelbar mit einem Text oder Essay eingeleitet wird. Ich will nicht, dass jemand die Arbeit schon interpretiert, bevor ich überhaupt die Chance habe, mir eine eigene Meinung zu bilden. Sicherlich gibt es Ausnahmen wie bei Viviane Sassens „Flamboya“, ein Text, den Moses Isegawa verfasst hat, und der sehr literarisch und weniger essayistisch ist. Übrigens ein sehr, sehr schöner Text!

Könnte eine gelungene Gestaltung so etwas wie die „Rettung“ für das Fotobuch bedeuten? Oder wird das Buch der Zukunft rein digital sein?

Ich glaube, dass auch zukünftig eine große Nachfrage nach Büchern sein wird, aufgrund ihrer physischen Qualität. Bestimmte Erfahrungen kann man nur mit einem Buch als physischem Gegenstand machen. Genau diese Erfahrungen versuche ich im Design umzusetzen, um das Buch von anderen Medien abzuheben. Andererseits bin ich schon gespannt, ein E-Book zu designen und die spezifischen Möglichkeiten des Mediums auszuloten und möglicherweise vorgegebene Grenzen in dem Prozess zu verschieben.

Hast Du bestimme Maximen, die Du beim Buchdesign immer wieder anwendest?

Ich habe „10 Golden Rules to Excellent Photo Book Design“ für einen Vortrag in Kassel 2010 entworfen. Der Titel war natürlich ironisch gemeint und um ein wenig Aufsehen zu erregen, aber tatsächlich gelten die Regeln für meine Design-Praxis, wenn man sie nicht zu ernst nimmt.

In Expertenkreisen bist Du mittlerweile ziemlich bekannt. Ein Buch mit dem Design von SYB bedeutet ein Qualitätsmerkmal. Gibt es so etwas wie ein verbindendes Element Deiner sehr unterschiedlichen Projekte?

Ein Charakteristikum könnte sein, dass ich jede physische Dimension eines Buches ausnutze, um eine Geschichte zu erzählen. Und dass ich immer versuche, bestimmte technische Einschränkungen soweit zu verschieben, dass ich etwas Neues erreiche.

Was würdest Du einem Debütanten raten, der sein erstes Fotobuch machen will?

Einfach loslegen. Nicht zu ängstlich sein, andere Leute/Designer anzusprechen und ihre Meinung einzuholen. Aber am wichtigsten: sei offen und beharrlich zugleich!

Weitere Informationen:

www.sybontwerp.nl

Belgium - a country scarred Belgicum Stephan Vanfleteren Photography

2012-01-26T00:31:00.000-08:00

Brussels, 2005 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

The neurotic fuss, rapid progress and drastic changes make me sad ...

From November 24th, 2011, to March 1st, 2012, Hilaneh von Kories Gallery in Hamburg will present a new exhibit titled BELGICUM with images by Belgian photographer Stephan Vanfleteren.

It began twenty years ago and became a one of a kind undertaking, which turned into an unusual hommage to his home country. The Latin title BELGICUM means “Belgian” and is the all-encompassing tag line to what Stephan Vanfleteren discovered during his many travels deep into his home country. Belgium was carved out of the southern provinces of the so-called Low Countries in 1830 in spite of the fact that the area had to merge two different cultural identities. One is french-speaking and Catholic, influenced by the southern neighbor country France. The other one is Flamish-speaking and Protestant adjacent to the Netherlands.

When Vanfleteren started his mission he was looking to discover meaningful moments in the daily lives of people. And so he went to every corner of Belgium, where he captured a multi-faceted and distinctive caleidoscope of portraits and landscapes and telling moments. 40 of these images have been selected for his Hamburg exhibit.

These images are touching, because Vanfleteren always takes his camera very close to the people he photographs, which bring out their character and their faces rather strongly. The results give the impression that Belgium has a huge reservoir of true originals, many of them rough and headstrong types. They look as if they are cut-outs from a time, when time stood still.

Vanfleteren’s exploration produces images that are timeless, melancholic and strangely distant. That is because he does not shoot in the capital city of Brussels but strives for regular folks in the rural parts far away from the paths that tourists travel and with no inkling to be folksy. Still, these images say much more about the country as a whole and the people call themselves Belgians than any tourism brochure.

Vanfleteren began his project when he worked for a newspaper. It became an ongoing “through a scarred country trapped in its perpetual search for a national identity”. His own search is moored in a personal traumatic story from his younger days, when he witnessed how small fishing communities were turned into concrete jungles. “I am saddened by neurotic fuss, hurried progress and drastic changes”, he says. So, with his camera, he slows everything down and brings the unique and whimsical to the fore, knowing full well that eventually it will vanish.

Stephan Vanfleteren was born in 1969 and studied photography at the Sint- Lukas in Brussels. In 1993 he started his career as a free-lance photographer working in a radical black-and-white style, much appreciated by national and international publications such as The New York Times, Le Monde, Paris Match and Die Zeit. His travels brought him to Colombia, the United States, Ethiopia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. He won numerous awards including the World Press Photo award and the Henri Nannen award in 2011. His images have been shown in many exhibits and published in a number of books, besides “BELGICUM”, like “Flandrien”, “Tales of a Globalizing World”, “Portret 1989-2009” and “Elvis&Presley”.

Brussels, 2004 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Georgette, Brussels, 2004 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Meldert, 2004 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Theofiel hanging staircase, Pajottenland | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Antwerpen, 2002 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Ombardzijde, 1990 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Pontje, Fisherman, Nieuport, 2004 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Theofiel with stick, Pajottenland | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Juanita and Albert, Antwerpen, 2003 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Bob, Antwerpen, 2003 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Edelare, 1994 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Madonna, 2001 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Oostduinkerke, 2006 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories

Extreme Modern, Cool & Strange Africa Parasomnia Viviane Sassen Photography Graphic Design SYB

2012-01-24T22:36:00.000-08:00

“Sleepwalking is a motor parasomnia: a category of disorders that involve anomalous movements, strange emotions and perceptions that take place while the body is captured between wakefulness and sleep. It begins in the first part of the night and lasts on average 15 minutes, then the person returns to bed or wakes up by himself, without remembering what happened. In Viviane Sassen’s latest book, we are woken by a violent, blinding African sun, a light that turns on colours up to supersaturation or dives into shadows that are so thick as to cancel all detail. Painting and sculpture, obsessive care for tones and visual sensations, design and fashion, blend in the images that the photographer has made work be her refuge, her home. She grew up in Kenya, she feels a foreigner in her homeland, Holland. In Africa she lived as an outsider. Maybe this is why Parasomnia becomes a journey between life and dream, between light and dark, between fact and fiction. The subjects are portrayed and frozen in a condition of timeless pause, suspension, where sensory confines dilate, perceptions alter and become confused. ‘ In Africa – says Ms Sassen – the doors of my subconscious open wide and my dreams are more vivid when I’m there.’ ‘I often go searching for images that can confuse me and also others.’ Thus the traveller goes astray, he no longer knows in which dimension of expression he was led: whether constructed memories or a daily moment stolen on the street. In the image that gives the title to the series, a man is on his back, in a chair: is he sleeping? Maybe not. The chair seems to rise and float in the air imperceptibly. Is it about to fall? Maybe not. And as I watch, am I awake? The parasomnia circle comes round again. Parasomnia includes a short story by the writer Moses Isegawa. [Pamela Piscicelli]

“Working in Africa opens doors of my subconscious more widely, my dreams are very vivid when I’m there,” says Viviane Sassen, whose photographs are on view as part of the New Photography series at MoMA. Sassen, who is Dutch, grew up in Kenya; lately she has used her medium as a form of self-analysis, creating graphic, color-saturated compositions that mine her childhood memories but also underscore her status as an outsider in a part of the world she will always consider home. In “Alpha,” two young men cross paths in the street, but one, completely darkened to a silhouette, could be viewed as the wayward shadow of the other. In “Parasomnia,” which is also the title of the series, a man who may or may not be asleep has tipped over in his chair, but Sassen has rotated the image so that he almost appears to be in free fall. “I try to make images that confuse me,” she says. “And I hope they confuse others, too.”

“New Photography 2011″ is at MoMA from Sept. 28 to Jan. 16, 2012. For more information, go to moma.org.

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Sybren Kuiper aka SYB independent designer since 1994. In recent years he has been a photobook designer for, among other Cuny Janssen, Niels Stomps, Rob Hornstra, Vivianne Sassen and Gijsbert Hanekroot. He also works frequently and closely with the DesignPolice photographers, and Thonik Dietwee for posters,brochures and annual reports.
His style can be characterized as an academic with many references to the analog world.

Fixed Forever Guantanamo Portraits Mathias Braschler Monika Fischer Photography

2012-01-20T07:46:00.000-08:00

A Guantánamo Portfolio

Of the nearly 800 prisoners who have been detained in Guantánamo for any period of time, the great majority are no longer there. Most have simply been released and today live in their native countries or in some other country that will give them a home. The award-winning photographers Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer, who divide their time between New York and Zurich, set out to take portraits of many of the former detainees, seeking them out in locales from London to Cairo, Tiranë to Sydney.

Sami al‐Laithi (Egyptian), I.S.N. 287.
Detained in 2001; transferred to Egypt in 2005.
Photographed in Cairo, 2010.

Lahcen Ikassrien (Moroccan), I.S.N. 72.
Detained in 2001; extradited to Spain in 2005; released in 2006.
Photographed in Madrid, 2011.

Omar Deghayes (British/Libyan), I.S.N. 727.
Detained in 2002; released in 2007.
Photographed in Brighton, England, 2011.

The Meta-Experience of Errata Editions “Books on Books” Set One by Luke Strosnider

2012-01-17T03:36:00.000-08:00

Last year on a spring day I made my way to the Richard and Ronay Menschel Library at Rochester, New York’s George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. One Friday per month a close friend and I would meet at “old man Eastman’s place,” as we called, it to peruse the most recently acquired photography books. As barely-employed recent MFA graduates, this was a way to get our hands and eyes on lavish volumes of beautiful images at a price we could afford: free.

The Menschel Library’s glass-walled reading room overlooks one of Eastman’s meticulously-kept gardens and green was just beginning to challenge brown’s dominance over the landscape after yet another punishing Western New York winter. As my pal and I grabbed a few books from the Recent Acquisitions shelf, I spotted another friend, immersed in what looked like more than casual research. Her hands were sheathed in white cotton gloves and before her sat a cloth-covered, v-shaped book holder cradling what appeared to be a very old volume.

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I made my way over to her table and when I found that she was looking at one of the library’s two original copies of The Pencil of Nature (1844-1846) by William Henry Fox Talbot a bolt of recognition shot through me. She explained her research but I could barely concentrate; before me lay the first photo book, the format’s origin; the second copy (a second copy!) rested on a cart a few inches away. I was rapt and she offered the gloves to me. My fingers approached the paper with tweezer-like precision; it felt like a photohistorical game of Operation™, complete with a virtual zapping vibration when my fingers connected with the page.

I recalled this encounter with The Pencil of Nature upon learning of Errata Edition’s “Books on Books” project. In essence, the project is a series of reprints of highly-influential photobooks. But these are far more peculiar objects than your run-of-the-mill reprints. The publisher calls them “complete studies of [the] originals.” Each “book on book” contains a page-by-page reproduction of the original photobook (images and texts) and adds a contemporary essay exploring the historical and artistic relevance of that particular volume. Also included is a short biography of the artist, a bibliography, and a brief but illuminating essay on the making of the original edition.

The project is the brainchild of Jeffery Ladd, a photographer himself, but perhaps more widely known as the publisher of the photobook-focused blog 5B4 . Thus far, the “Books on Books” series are the only titles from the Errata Editions imprint. As of this writing (March, 2010), there are two “sets” of what Errata calls an on-going publishing project: set one (#’s 1-4) consists of annotated reproductions of Photographe de Paris by Eugene Atget, American Photographs by Walker Evans, Fait by Sophie Ristelhueber, and In Flagrante by Chris Killip; set two (#’s 5-8), released in early 2010, features Life is Good …New York! by William Klein, Toshi-e by Yutaka Takanashi, In Boksburg by David Goldblatt, and Chili September 1973 by Koen Wessing. The series aims to make hard-to-find, expensive, and historically-vital photography books available to people of modest means. As Errata puts it on their website, “the series is dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts.” As such, the books are affordable: the trade editions retail for $39.95, while a limited edition of each “set” (featuring a reproduction tipped into the book’s cloth cover) is available for $200.

I was overcome when encountering Talbot’s seminal work. I’ve always been moved by “aura”, and to lay hands on an original copy of The Pencil of Nature created some sort of thrilling temporal disturbance; it felt like a form of time travel. How would the freshly printed volumes of the “Books on Books” series compare to the experience of the originals? Would these surrogate publications bring me closer to their subjects? Or were they merely less-expensive substitutes for rare objects I would never be able to afford. As I placed my order for the first four titles, my curiosity was piqued: what would be the “Books on Books” experience?

I’m not really sure what I was expecting—shrink-wrapping is a standard aspect of mass-market book packaging these days—but the minor absurdity of the situation made me chuckle. These affordable recreations of rare, highly-sought-after, and powerfully-expensive objects were receiving more protective treatment at the time of their publication than the originals ever did.

Beyond the cellophane barriers were slim, plain volumes with stiff covers of clean black cloth. White ink debossing declared BOOKS ON BOOKS with the volume number in the lower right. A bellyband displayed the book’s title and an image of the original book’s cover. For a book published in 1938, Walker Evans’s American Photographs (Books on Books #2) bears a very minimalist, contemporary cover. Set in Evans’s choice (as I learned from John T. Hill’s essay “American Photographs: Legacy of Seeing,” included in the volume) of Caslon type, the cover plainly proclaims:

WALKER EVANS

AMERICAN
PHOTO-
GRAPHS

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Just beneath this image, the title is repeated:

Walker Evans
AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS

Looking closely at the typography of both the original cover and the “title” of the Errata Edition furthers my feelings of space-time disruption. Adding to the weirdness is the slight-but-noticeable rise and fall in the hand-set letters of THE MUSUEM OF MODERN ART on the original’s cover, versus the flawless, digitally set straightness of the title lying just below.

Studying the reproduced cover of Atget’s Photographe de Paris (Books on Books #1), my eyes zero in on the slightly rounded and worn lower right-hand corner of the cover. Another realization comes: this is not an old book re-published in 2009. Instead, this is a scan of one specific copy ofPhotographe de Paris, a copy that has survived the long, possibly harrowing, journey from 1930 to today. Overlapping spheres of time, of era, and object create a Venn diagram with this “book on book” at the center.

Moving beyond the reproduced cover, this object’s “objectness” confronts us even more strongly. The page layout of the series is sensible yet jarring: the page spreads of the original books are reproduced smaller than the pages of the book-on-book itself. A white border surrounds the images of the original page spreads. This is eminently practical as the Books on Books are all the same size (7 by 9.5 inches) and the originals they commemorate are not. Thus Killip’s In Flagrante, a more typical photobook size (11 ¾ x 9 ¾ inches) fills most of the spread, while Ristelhueber’s Fait(smaller but taller and narrower at 6 ¾ x 4 ¼ inches) floats in a pool of white with a 2 inch border on the book’s fore-edge. But this is only the case when one opening of the original is reproduced within one opening of the Errata Edition; some openings are reproduced 4-up to an opening (two openings on one page). The visual effect of this layout is not unlike the old schoolboy trick of clandestinely hiding an issue of “The Amazing Spider-Man” behind a wider, taller textbook.

The shrinking of these classic photobooks so that they’ll fit the format of this new series isn’t a fatal flaw, but it does deny a pure simulation of the experience of the original volumes. Errata Editions doesn’t seek to give us an exact reprint, and that is not the point of this project. But so much of what gives a photobook its specific character relates to its size and proportions. In my own meager photobook collection many if not most are larger than 7 by 9.5 inches and would need to be shrunk to fit within the confines of a “Book on Book.” Also, the placement and participation of one’s thumbs while reading is another peculiarity of the journey through a “Book on Book.” You see your thumbs holding a book, but they’re not holding the book you’re looking at per se. It’s an odd way to encounter a photobook. Another bit of the uncanny experience of this unique series.

In his essay that accompanies Photographe de Paris, David Campany introduces the concept of a photograph as an “intelligent document,” something which is simultaneously a soulless mechanical record and an intended expression of a creative mind. It is a fitting concept to apply to the entire “Books on Books” idea: accurate reproductions of photobooks, but with nuanced choices and viewpoints intended to inspire contemplation of the role of the book as a capsule for photographs. “Books on Books” go well beyond the muteness of a simple reprint: the annotations (essay, biography, bibliography, etc.) contribute vital information for understanding both a specific volume and the genre in general. Replacements of the originals they are not, but that was never their intent. They are accessible commemorations of the ideas and materials that make up these specific works.

Luke Strosnider is a writer, artist, and educator currently based in Chicago, Illinois. His words, images, and projects explore the photograph as a measure of time, a keeper of memory, and a conveyor of information. For more of his work, please visit www.lukestrosnider.com .

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Sweet Life, 122 Colour Photographs, The Banquet, Drum Errata Editions Summer 2012 Photobooks Photography

2012-01-16T04:25:00.000-08:00

2012 is an exciting year as Errata Editions becomes a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. One of the goals of the Errata Foundation will be to distribute our books to schools and public libraries for free through the estabilshment of library donation programs.

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Books on Books #13
Ed van der Elsken: Sweet Life
Hardcover w/ Dustjacket
9.5 x 7 in.
190 pages
120 Duotone illustrations
Essays by Ed van der Elsken, Frits Gierstberg
ISBN: 978-1-935004-25-7
$39.95

In 1960, armed with two magazine commissions and a stipend from Netherlands television, Ed van der Elsken and his wife Gerda set off on a fourteen month journey around the world. Six years after their return, he published his travelogue Sweet Life which exhibited a panoply of layout effects - double-page bleeds, crops, printed in deep gravure, and different cover designs for each of the six countries in which it was published. Books on Books #13 presents a study of this classic book with a contemporary essay by Frits Gierstberg.

Martin Parr and Gerry Badger : The Photobook: A History volume 1/ The Indecisive Moment: The 'Stream-of-Consciousness' Photobook

Ed van der Elsken Sweet Life

Out of stream-of-consciousness photography emerged several distinct genres - the 'personal' documentary, the diaristic photobook, the photonovel and so on. Another was the photographic odyssey, the photographer's quest to find himself (it's generally a boy thing), the photographic version of On the Road. The epitome of this genre is, of course , Robert Frank's The Americans, but not far behind is Ed van der Elsken's epic photojourney - Sweet Life. Whereas Frank criss-crossed the United States, Van der Elsken was even more wide-ranging. Sweet Life is the result of a 14-month world trip that he made in 1960-1, covering West Africa, the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, the United States and Mexico. Sweet Life was the name of a little tramp steamer in the Philippines, which makes its appearance in the book. Not surprisingly, modes of transport form one of the volume's major leitmotifs.

Van der Elsken's rationale for this freewheeling odyssey is typical Existential: 'I didn't understand one damn thing about it, except that it's enough to keep me in a delirium of deligth, surprise, enthusiasm, despair, enough to keep me roaming, stumbling, faltering, cursing, adoring, hating the destruction, the violence in myself and others.'

Although Sweet Life chronicles a journey, Van der Elsken's magnum opus has more in common with William Klein's New York than with The Americans. Like Klein, Van der Elsken designed the whole package himself, in an equally cinematic, improvisational, free-association way - there is no linear determinism in the narrative, though it does progress more-of-less logically from country to country.Like Klein, Van der Elsken brings into play a whole panoply of layout effects - double-page bleeds, crops, running pictures together and so on - and it is an unprecedented book in that a different cover for each of the seven countries in which it was published. Also like Klein's book, van der Elsken's was a big hit in Japan. His work consituted a significant influence on the young japanese photographers of the 1960s, about to be hit by the iconoclasm of the Provoke era.

Van der Elsken's words quoted above describe the tenor of the book as much as his journey. Sweet Life is a sprawing, exuberant cornucopia, a preview of the pure stream-of-consciousness, machine-gun approach that would soon come with the japanese Provoke aestetic, Van der Elsken's work has its dark and pessistic undertones, although in Sweet Life bold, frantic energies predominate.

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Books on Books #14
Keld Helmer-Petersen: 122 Colour Photographs
Hardcover w/ Dustjacket
9.5 x 7 in.
136 pages
75 Color illustrations
Essays by Mette Sandbye, Jeffrey Ladd
ISBN: 978-1-935004-27-1
$39.95

In 1948 the Danish photographer Keld Helmer-Petersen prefigured the work of Willam Eggleston and Stephen Shore by two decades with the aim to make pictures that would only work in color, and not in black and white. By concentrating on the mundane and the everyday 122 Colour Photographs deserves credit as a singular, remarkably early and largely successful attempt to make color photography work. Books on Books #14 presents Helmer-Petersen’s masterwork along with an essay by the historian Mette Sandbye called Colour Cool.

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Books on Books #15
Nobuyoshi Araki: The Banquet
Hardcover w/ Dustjacket
9.5 x 7 in.
136 pages
85 Color and Duotone illustrations
Essays by Nobuyoshi Araki, Ivan Vartanian
ISBN: 978-1-935004-29-5
$39.95

Nobuyoshi Araki’s “Shokuji” (The Banquet) is a tribute to his late wife Yoko through a ‘photo-diary’ of the food they shared together in the last months of her life. Resembling commercial food pictures that Araki had been making with a ring flash and a macro lens and combined with black-and-white images he photographed at home after doctors told Araki that his wife had only a month left to live. Books on Books #15 presents Araki’s deeply personal diary of loss in its entirety along with an essay by Ivan Vartanian.

"Shokuji (The Banquet) is another tribute to Nobuyoshi Araki's late wife Yoko...A 'photo-diary' of the food they ate together in the last months of her life, the book is divided into three sections. Two parts are double-page photographic spreads of food, enclosing a middle section that is a written 'food diary'...Araki was making commercial food pictures on a regular basis, and the color section of the book represents a selection of these, beginning in 1985, and shot with ring flash and a macro lens. The black-and-white section was photographed using available room light at home, and was started when doctors told Araki that his wife had only around a month left to live...The obvious metaphor is to suggest that the color was leaving Araki's world, but his intentions are not quite so simple. The retreat from color is a retreat from realism to romanticism, where what were clearly images of food now become images of matter, like micro-photography, echoing the viral landscape of the cancer that was destroying his wife."--Parr & Badger, The Photobook, A History, vol. I

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Books on Books #16
Krass Clement: Drum
Hardcover w/ Dustjacket
9.5 x 7 in.
120 pages
55 Duotone illustrations
Essays by Rune Gade, Jeffrey Ladd
ISBN: 978-1-935004-31-8
$39.95

Photographed in a single evening with only three rolls of film, Krass Clement’s Drum is now considered one of the most important contributions to the contemporary Danish photobook. Concentrating on one principal character – a hunched, weather beaten old man who sits alone with his drink, Drum comments on community, the outsider, alienation and the terrors of being alone. Books on Books #16 presents every page spread from Clement’s masterwork with an essay by the photo historian Rune Gade called Halting, Without Halting: On Krass Clement’s Photobook Drum.

Ed van der Elsken Color Snapshots Tokyo '80s Japan Photography

2012-01-15T02:38:00.000-08:00

In the last years of his life Ed van der Elsken worked on what should have been his audiovisual magnum opus: Tokyo Symphony. The installation was meant to be his homage to Japan – a land that had embraced him personally as well as as a photographer and author.

The installation was never finished due to his early death at age 60. It was thought that the collection of 1,600 images, which is currently stored at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, was all that remained of this ambitious project. In 2007, researcher Frank Ortmanns discovered five audiotapes belonging to the project. Fascinated by this missing piece of the puzzle, Ortmanns approached Paradox to discuss the possibility of posthumously realizing Tokyo Symphony. Taking into account Van der Elsken’s fascination with AV technology, it was concluded that a contemporary approach to this installation would be most appropriate. In other words: to make an installation as if Van der Elsken were still alive.

The immersive installation based on hundreds of unknown colour slides confronts the viewer with various traditional as well as contemporary and little known aspects of Tokyo: from demonstrations in Shibuya to weddings and memorial celebrations, from girls wrestling and karaoke in Harajuku to the Tsukiji fish market. Van der Elsken switches constantly from intimate portraits to lively street scenes. The spatial multi-screen design of the installation, which is accompanied by a soundtrack based on his original recordings, adds to the dynamic experience of the strange mixture of tradition and modernity that characterises the metropolis of Tokyo. Through the harmonic as well as disharmonic interplay of various audiovisual elements, the installation can be seen as a true modern symphony about urbanism and eastern culture – a symphony that reflects the notion of the all absorbing and omnipresent urban environment.

Ed van der Elsken´s photographs are represented worldwide in the collections of several renowned institutions including the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Chicago Art Institute, the Kawasaki Modern Art Museum, the Special Collections Department of the University Leiden and the Museum of Modern Art (New York).

Ed van der Elsken and Eikoh Hosoe: A 30-Year Dialogue by Russet Lederman
A year ago in this blog, Matthew Carson highlighted some of the lesser-known classics in the ICP Library collection. One of the books he wrote about was Ed van der Elsken’s Sweet Life (1966). As one of my all-time favorite photobooks, Sweet Life is an incredibly beautiful collection of rich inky high contrast gravure images taken in 1959-61 during van der Elsken’s 14-month journey around the world. It is also an invaluable resource for drawing attention to van der Elsken’s role as a “photographer’s photographer” – a visionary whose raw cinematic stream-of-consciousness aesthetic found only a limited following during his lifetime, yet is now cited for presaging the contemporary diarist work of photographers such as Nan Goldin. Travelling with his wife Gerda van der Veen to West Africa, the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, the United States and Mexico, Sweet Life also documents van der Elsken’s initial photographic exchange in what would become a 30-year ongoing relationship with Japan and the postwar Japanese photographic community. Read for more ...

Even before his 1956 breakthrough with Love on the Left Bank, Van der Elsken attracted attention in international exhibitions such as Edward Steichen’s The Family of Man (1955). Further important exhibitions followed, such as Sweet Life (Amsterdam, 1968), Masters of European Photography (London, 1973), Van der Elsken´s Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1979), L´Amour à Saint Germain des Prés (Tokyo, 1986) and De ontdekking van Japan 1961-1988 (Amsterdam, 1988/1989). Also posthumously: Once Upon a Time (Amsterdam /Tokyo, 1991), Long Live Me! (Paris /Amsterdam /Porto /Modena /Antwerp, 1996 - 2006), and Documenta X (Kassel, 1997). His most influential photo books include Een liefdesgeschiedenis in Saint Germain des Prés(1956), Bagara (1958), Jazz (1958), Sweet Life (1966), Amsterdam! (1979), De ontdekking van Japan (1988) and Once Upon a Time (1991).

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a Set of images that would later become The Americans U.S. Camera 1958 Robert Frank by Walker Evans Photography

2012-01-12T21:42:00.000-08:00

U.S. CAMERA 1958 (1957)

Maloney, Tom

One of the most sought after years of US Camera because of ROBERT FRANK's 24 page portfolio of The Americans, accompanied by a short essay by Walker Evans. Other portfolios are by Brassai, Andreas Feninger, Michael Wolgensinger, Harold Feinstein, and more; Fashion by Avedon, Irving Penn, Bert Stern, Munkacsi, etc. and many fine pictures by over 50 photographers incl. Bill Brandt, Dorthea Lange, Winquist, and so on. Special Reports on Hungary's bloody Fight for Freedom as well as Rockets and Missiles. Most photographs are in black & white, one section of Color. 302 pages, the last pages contain advertising.

Robert Frank

BY WALKER EVANS, PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 8TH, 2008 Photo-Eye

Robert Frank, in his house in Nova Scotia, 1969-1971, photograph by Walker Evans

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker Evans Archive, 1994 (1994.252.119.1)
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Assuredly the gods who sent Robert Frank, so heavily armed, across the United States did so with a certain smile.

Photographers are often surprised at some of the images they find on their films. But is it an accident that Frank snapped just as those politicians in high silk hats were exuding the utmost fatuity that even a small office-seeker can exhibit. Such strikes are not purely fortuitous. They happen consistently for expert practitioners. Still, there remains something mysterious about their occurrence, for which an analytical onlooker can merely manufacture some such nonsensical phrase as "the artist’s crucial choice of action."

But these examples are not the essence of Frank’s vision, which is more positive, large, and basically generous. The simple picture of a highway is an instance of Frank’s style, which is one of the few clear cut signatures possessed by any of the younger photographers. In this picture, instantly you find the continent. The whole page is haunted with American scale and space, which the mind fills quite automatically—though possibly with memories of negation of violence or of exhaustion with thoughts of bad cooking, extremes of heat and cold, law enforcement, and the chance to work hard in a filling station.

That Frank has responded to America with many tears, some hope, and his own brand of fascination, you can see in looking over the rest of this pictures of people, of roadside landscapes and urban cauldrons and of semi-divine, semi-satanic children. He shows high irony towards a nation that generally speaking has it not; adult detachment towards the more-or-less juvenile section of the population that came into his view. This bracing, almost stinging manner is seldom seen in a sustained collection of photographs. It is a far cry form all the woolly, successful "photo-sentiments" about human familyhood; from the mindless pictorial salestalk around fashionable, guilty and there fore bogus heartfeeling.

Irony and detachment: these are part of the equipment of the critic. Robert Frank, though far, far removed from the arid pretensions of the average sociologist, can say much of the social critic who has not waylaid his imagination among his footnotes and references. Now the United States, be it said, will welcome criticism, and use it. At its worst moments, the U.S.A. today may seem to think it is literally illuminated by the wide smile of one man, and saved for something-or-other by energy and money alone. But worse moments are the province and the mainstay of the daily newspaper.

For the thousandth time, it must be said that the pictures speak for themselves, wordlessly, visually—or they fail. But if those pictures chose to speak, they might well use the words George Santayana once wrote in a small preface about the United States:

"…the critic and artist too have their rights… Moreover, I suspect that my feelings are secretly shared by many people in America, natives and foreigners, who many not have the courage or the occasion to express them frankly… In the classical and romantic tradition of Europe, love, of which there was very little, was supposed to be kindled by beauty, of which there was a great deal; perhaps moral chemistry may be able to reverse this operation, and in the future and in American it may breed beauty out of love."

WALKER EVAN'S (1907 -1975) essay on Robert Frank was first published in U.S. Camera 1958, an introduction to a set of images that would later become The Americans.

Robert Frank: A Statement

U. S. Camera Annual, p. 115, 1958

I am grateful to the Guggenheim Foundation for their confidence and the provisions they made for me to work freely in my medium over a protracted period. When I applied for the Guggenheim Fellowship, I wrote: "To produce an authentic contemporary document, the visual impact should be such as will nullify explanation"

With these photographs, I have attempted to show a cross-section of the American population. My effort was to express it simply and without confusion. The view is personal and, therefore, various facets of American life and society have been ignored. The photographs were taken during 1955 and 1956; for the most part in large cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and in many other places during my Journey across the country. My book, containing these photographs, will be published in Paris by Robert Delpire, 1958.

I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love. It is important to see what is invisible to others—perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness. Also, it is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.

My photographs are not planned or composed in advance and I do not anticipate that the on-looker will share my viewpoint. However, I feel that if my photograph leaves an image on his mind—something has been accomplished.

It is a different state of affairs for me to be working on assignment for a magazine. It suggests to me the feeling of a hack writer or a commercial illustrator. Since I sense that my ideas, my mind and my eye are not creating the picture but that the editors' minds and eyes will finally determine which of my pictures will be reproduced to suit the magazines' purposes.

I have a genuine distrust and "mefiance" toward all group activities. Mass production of uninspired photojournalism and photography without thought becomes anonymous merchandise. The air becomes infected with the "smell" of photography. If the photographer wants to be an artist, his thoughts cannot be developed overnight at the corner drugstore.

I am not a pessimist, but looking at a contemporary picture magazine makes it difficult for me to speak about the advancement of photography, since photography today is accepted without question, and is also presumed to be understood by all—even children. I feel that only the integrity of the individual photographer can raise its level.

The work of two contemporary photographers, Bill Brandt of England and the American, Walker Evans, have influenced me. When I first looked at Walker Evans' photographs, I thought of something Malraux wrote: "To transform destiny into awareness." One is embarrassed to want so much for oneself. But, how else are you going to justify your failure and your effort?

More than Robert Frank's The Americans: American Photography in 1960 ...

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Puzzling Netherlands the Netherlands – Off the shelf Hans van der Meer Photography

2012-01-10T02:14:00.000-08:00

THE NETHERLANDS – OFF THE SHELF

Photographer Hans van der Meer depicts the Netherlands of today - opening January 21

Boskoop, foto: Hans van der Meer

Exhibition | NAI Rotterdam - | 21/01/12-01/04/12

What makes shopping streets and squares in our country so typically Dutch? How are they designed? To find out, photographer Hans van der Meer made a series of photos of town centres. He skipped large cities such as Amsterdam, The Hague and Eindhoven, preferring the shopping streets of Boskoop, Winschoten and Raalte. Why? Because the character of a country is most clearly visible in medium sized cities. What at first glance seems like an ordinary street, has often taken years of planning, multiple designs, debating and - also typically Dutch - seeking compromises. From January 21 until April 1, 2012, the photographs of Hans van der Meer are on show in the exhibition The Netherlands – Off the shelf in the NAi. A catalogue by the same name accompanies the exhibition.

A great deal has been built in the Netherlands in recent decades, particularly outside the major cities. In places like Heerhugowaard, Hellevoetsluis or Hoofddorp the population has in some cases increased tenfold. As a result, the country's appearance has changed dramatically; urban culture has slowly but surely been pushed into the country. Nowadays, a ciabatta with mozzarella and sundried tomatoes can be ordered just as easily in a small town like Nijverdal as in Utrecht.

Hans van der Meer’s photos show what is so unmistakably Dutch about the Netherlands. Over the years, the squares and streets have been repeatedly redesigned and rearranged, yet they remain familiar and at the same time interchangeable. Chain stores are popping up everywhere, just like street furniture and pavement signs. This is where regulations, coincidence and ambition coexist uneasily. The result is a fascinating compromise between different approaches and interests.

The furniture on the streets and squares can be ordered from a catalogue, on whose pages fashionable benches, tree grilles, street lamps, bicycle racks and rubbish bins are neatly displayed. Architects have never had such a wide range of paving stones and bricks to choose from. Behind this choice lies a desire for originality and identity: every city tries to distinguish itself with a different look. But the similarities between the designs, repeated in endless small variations, mean that everything starts to look the same again. This is the Netherlands off-the-shelf.

The Netherlands - Off the shelf has been co-produced by Paradox. The exhibition is designed by TomDavid Architecten, the graphic design by Kummer & Herrman. To accompany the exhibition, YdocPublishing is releasing a Dutch/English publication under the same title, with photography by Hans van der Meer and texts by Hans van der Meer and Ole Bouman.

‘Hoe zijn die straten ontstaan?’

Volkskrant Van onze verslaggever Wim Bossema − 11/08/09, 02:45

Hans van der Meer legt in foto’s het Nederland van nu bloot.

Fotograaf Hans van der Meer heeft ooit een paar stappen teruggedaan. Zo kreeg hij de achtergrond in beeld. De omgeving, de gebouwen, de landschappen eisten hun plaats op. De mensen en gebeurtenissen op de voorgrond geeft hij zo hun ruimte. Drie meisjes zitten te keuvelen op een bankje, maar Van der Meer laat meer zien: ze zitten in een decor van gebouwen rond een plein in Raalte. Die meisjes horen ergens.

Decor is een woord dat Van der Meer graag gebruikt. ‘Ik ga te werk als in theater.’ Hij struint voor zijn nieuwste project middelgrote plaatsen af op zoek naar die typisch Nederlandse straatbeelden met oude en nieuwe panden zij aan zij. Daarin figureren de spelers, toevallige passanten zoals de meisjes in Raalte. Of babbelende vrouwen op een straathoek, of een man die geld in een parkeerautomaat wil stoppen met een blik van ‘hoe gaat dat ook alweer’.

Zij bevolken Het raadsel Nederland, de werktitel van zijn sprokkeltocht. ‘Hoe konden die vreemde combinaties in die straten toch ontstaan? Dat is het raadsel.’ De contrasten zijn soms gruwelijk, de nieuwe gebouwen vaak foeilelijk. Omdat Van der Meer die graag in één beeld vangt met mooie oude huizen, is het effect een gevoel van weemoed: wat zou er zijn gesloopt? Hij wil niet te veel oordelen over mooi en lelijk. ‘Ik werk niet vanuit: getverdemme. Het staat daar zoals het is, dat wil ik laten zien.’

In het Nederlandse Fotomuseum in Rotterdam is tot 23 augustus een overzichtstentoonstelling te zien van zijn carrière. Van de eerste serie uit fotogeniek arm Boedapest in 1984, via de serie velden van amateurvoetballers waarmee hij internationaal furore maakte (1995-2005), tot de eerste goed bevonden foto’s uit Het raadsel Nederland.

Bij de voetbalvelden paste hij het terugstappen voor het eerst met succes toe. De sportfotografie voor de krant stelt scherp op de sterren, op spannende momenten in de wedstrijd. Van der Meer zocht velden in de provincie en liet die juist helemaal zien, plus een deel van de omgeving. Eerst in Nederland, later in allerlei uithoeken van Europa, van Hongarije tot Portugal. Voetbalvelden naast weilanden, omgeven door bergen, met uitzicht over zee. Zo groeien de velden uit tot iets groters, tot een tijdsbeeld.

‘Ik zocht in Hongarije soms wel twee dagenvoor ik een geschikte plek zag. Maar die vind je uiteindelijk altijd. Als ik het decor goed had, was het wachten op de dag dat de spelers het podium betraden.’ Het andere leven gaat door, dat moet je kunnen zien op zijn voetbalfoto’s.

Na tien jaar had hij alles over zijn velden gedaan – ook korte films gemaakt die in Rotterdam worden vertoond. ‘Een speler die ligt te creperen, kun je beter op film laten zien dan op een foto.’ Vermakelijk zijn de scènes waarin de camera een grensrechter, een Italiaanse supporter of een keeper volgt. Het was genoeg, nu wil hij geen voetbal meer fotograferen.

Maar de methode past hij nu toe in de beelden uit Nederlandse plaatsen. Geen afgebakende details, maar een wijde blik, met alles erop en eraan. Hij laat zien zoals het werkelijk is. De compositie op de foto moet wel goed zijn, natuurlijk, in balans. Dat betekent bij hem dat voor- en achtergrond evenveel aandacht vragen.

Dit project doet hij naast opdrachtfotografie, voor de lange adem. Hij wil het Nederland van nu vastleggen. ‘Televisie en kranten brengen nieuws in beeld, er blijft veel over dat niet onder de categorie nieuws valt, maar dat wel een verhaal vertelt over wie we zijn.’

Het zijn niet de foto’s die het fraaist zijn of het pregnantst waarnaar wij twintig jaar later zoeken in schoenendozen. Maar die van gewone taferelen, van straatbeelden die voorgoed zijn veranderd. ‘Als wij een foto terugzien van onszelf als kind, dan zijn we niet geroerd door het kind dat we waren, maar door dat fietsje dat erop staat en dat er niet meer is.’

Zal deze serie ‘de kern van Nederland’ raken? Dat is misschien wat te veel gezegd, vindt Van der Meer, maar toch raken de taferelen aan iets dat wij meteen als Nederlands herkennen. ‘Ja, alles in Nederland is gepland. Maar een aanklacht vind ik te gemakkelijk. Ik wil geen clichés, niet alleen een vinexwijk. Ik zoek een 19de-eeuws burgemeestershuis naast een bank uit de jaren zestig en daaromheen die cultuur van de middenstand.’

Wat is dan het verschil tussen Nijverdal of Dalfsen? Kan hij niet net zo goed naar één zo’n plaatsje reizen? ‘Nou, nee.’ Het is waar, alles wordt eenvormiger, daarom legt hij het juist vast, maar hoe meer hij in de provincie rondloopt, hoe meer details hem opvallen. Zelfs een Maggi-stelletje in een eetcafé vind hij op die manier leuk en treffend.

Hoeveel plaatsen hij nog zal bezoeken, hoeveel inwoners hij nog zal aanspreken, hoeveel jaar hij in dit project zal steken – Hans van der Meer heeft nog geen idee. Dit avontuur is nog maar net begonnen.

Raalte, photo: Hans van der Meer

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Photo essay Norman Granz Jam Session 1952 Charlie Parker Esther Bubley Photography

2012-01-08T01:04:00.000-08:00

Norman Granz Jam Session on Mercury label. Released 1952.
Ballad Medley featuring Charlie Parker, Charlie Shavers, Oscar Peterson, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, Ray Brown, Flip Phillips, Barney Kessel.

In 1952 Esther Bubley was in LA, and her friend, illustrator David Stone Martin, was in LA to make sketches at a Charlie Parker Jam Session, and he invited Bubley to come along. So it happened that she was the photographer at the Norman Granz Jam Session recording in 1952. This book is the ultimate Charlie Parker photo essay, showing him in a variety of moods: attentive, jovial, exhausted, nervous, and most of all, respectful towards Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter, both of whom were Charlie's idols. It features timeless pictures of Bird, Benny Carter, Ben Webster, Flip Philips, Johnny Hodges, Charlie Shavers, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Barney Kessel, and J.C. Heard.

For more Jazz & Photography ... William Claxton ... Ed van der Elsken ...

Go Back to your Future Irina Werning Photography

2012-01-06T01:05:00.000-08:00

Alexandra 1970 & 2011 Paris

Irina Werning

I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today... A few months ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.

Andy 1964 & 2011 Los Angeles

Lea B 1980 & 2011 Paris

Johannes 1994 & 2011 Hambourg

Maartje 1990 & 2011 Amsterdam

Christoph 1990 & 2011 Berlin Wall

It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument Eve Arnold Magnum Photojournalism Photography

2012-01-05T22:48:00.000-08:00

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.”—Eve Arnold

Photographer Eve Arnold, who died Thursday morning at the age of 99, is probably best remembered for her celebrity photographs of Marilyn Monroe, made over the span of a decade from the early 1950s to those taken on the set of the movie star’s final film, The Misfits. But Arnold also traveled the world to make equally exceptional photographs of the poor and disposed.

Arnold, the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1912. In the late 1940’s, she studied photography—alongside Richard Avedon—under inspirational art director Alexei Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research in New York. Her first photo story documented African-American fashion shows in Harlem and the project would lead directly to her being granted unprecedented access by Malcom X to document the Black Muslims and the way they worked over the next two years.

In the early 1950’s, she began working for the photo news publications of the day, first for Picture Post, then Time and Life magazines. And in 1957 she became the first woman photographer to join Magnum Photos.

She will perhaps be best remem bered for her exceptional photo graphs of people: the famous, politicians, musicians, artists —among them Malcolm X, Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Jacqueline Kennedy and Monroe. “I look for a sense of reality with everything I did,” she once said. “I didn’t work in a studio, I didn’t light anything. I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn’t have to frighten people with heavy equipment, it was that little black box and me”

But it is the long term reportage stories that drove Arnold’s curiosity and passion. She traveled extensively to make work on regions that had been off limits to the west—to China, Mongolia, the Soviet Union, and also to Cuba, South Africa and Afghanistan. In 1971 she made a film, Women Behind the Veil, going inside Arabian harems and hammams.

Arnold continued to work for respected publications, most notably the Sunday Times color supplement. In 2003 she was honored with an OBE in recognition for her services to photography. Her work is renowned for its intimacy. Whether photographing celebrity or the everyday, Arnold’s portraits are magical, memorable and enduring.

Ladylike and Learned the Photo essays Esther Bubley Life Magazine Photojournalism Photography

2012-01-04T02:42:00.000-08:00

Esther Bubley A protégée of Roy Stryker at the U.S. Office of War Information (Tender Moments in the Maelstrom of War ) and subsequently at Standard Oil (New Jersey), Esther Bubley (1921-1998) was a preeminent freelance photographer during the "golden age" of American photojournalism, from 1945 to 1965. At a time when most post-war American women were anchored by home and family, Bubley was a thriving professional, traveling throughout the world, photographing stories for magazines such as LIFE and the Ladies' Home Journal and for prestigious corporate clients that included Pepsi-Cola and Pan American World Airways. See for Esther Bubley’s Erotic Photography ...

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One of Americas greatest artistic legacies FSA:The American Vision Photography

2012-01-02T01:05:00.000-08:00

Memphis, Tennessee. October 1939.
Marion Post Wolcott, photographer.

FSA:The American Vision BY JIM JOHNSON AT 12/11/2006

I was looking through this new book - Gilles Mora and Beverly Brannan. FSA:The American Vision (New York, Harry Abrams) - at the bookstore yesterday. It is a nice, fairly comprehensive compendium with many lesser known images by a large number of well known photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Ben Shahn, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Walcott, and Gordon Parks. I also noticed that you can buy it for $53 US from Amazon ,while it is listed at $85 US on the cover. So, I may decide to use Amazon rather than the local bookseller on this one. Or maybe I will simply bite the bullett.

One of the interesting things about the FSA photographers, as I have mentioned here several times before [1] [2] [3] [4], is the predicament they raise in their work of relating to government agencies and assignments and agendas. I admire the work of many of the photographers associated with the FSA, but the admiration is hardly unambivalent. What if their liberal-left leaning politics were different? Would I still admire the images they made? What if their politics had been more transparent? What if their politics had been more consistently leftist rather than liberal? (If only we had something like New Deal Liberalism as a live option today! And if only that liberalism had been less thoroughly anti-socialist.)

The photographs produced by the FSA during the Great Depression constitute one of Americas greatest artistic legacies. The project launched a stellar group of young photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Walcott, and Gordon Parks, who fanned out across America and created images of intense power and poetry. Thousands of FSA photographs have been exhibited and published, and we may feel that we know them well. For this remarkable volume, however, Gilles Mora and Beverly Brannan immersed themselves in the vast archive at the Library of Congress and emerged with unknown treasures. Theirs is a new view of the achievement of the FSA photographersthe most comprehensive in printthat finally gives them their due as the creators of a new American photographic vision. The photographs produced by the FSA during the Great Depression constitute one of Americas greatest artistic legacies. The project launched a stellar group of young photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Walcott, and Gordon Parks, who fanned out across America and created images of intense power and poetry. Thousands of FSA photographs have been exhibited and published, and we may feel that we know them well. For this remarkable volume, however, Gilles Mora and Beverly Brannan immersed themselves in the vast archive at the Library of Congress and emerged with unknown treasures. Theirs is a new view of the achievement of the FSA photographersthe most comprehensive in printthat finally gives them their due as the creators of a new American photographic vision.See for an interview with Roy Stryker (1972) ...

These vivid color photos from the Great Depression and World War II capture an era generally seen only in black-and-white. Photographers working for the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI) created the images between 1939 and 1944.

The FSA/OWI pictures depict life in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, with a focus on rural areas and farm labor, as well as aspects of World War II mobilization, including factories, railroads, aviation training, and women working.

The original images are color transparencies ranging in size from 35 mm. to 4x5 inches. They complement the better-known black-and-white FSA/OWI photographs, made during the same period.

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division preserves the original photographs and offers the digital copies to ensure their wide availability.

For more information about the collection and to see the approximately 171,000 black-and-white photos, visit: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/f sac/

Roy Stryker's shooting scripts for the FSA photographers :

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Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyards, Baltimore, Maryland. A drinking fountain

Durham, North Carolina. May 1940.

Memphis, Tennessee. September 1943. Esther Bubley, photographer. " People waiting for a bus at the Greyhound bus terminal."

the Year 2011 According to Magnum Photojournalism Photography

2011-12-31T07:17:00.000-08:00

Magnum

2011 in beeld

artikel | Zaterdag 31-12-2011 | Sectie: Overig | Pagina: S01

Geen gewoon jaaroverzicht, maar een bloemlezing uit de collectie van 's werelds bekendste fotoagentschap, Magnum. NRC Weekend mocht een selectie maken van het werk van Magnum-fotografen uit 2011. Het jaar van Fukushima, van het kamermeisje en DSK, van William en Kate. En vooral: het jaar van de demonstrant.

Op dit artikel rust auteursrecht van NRC Handelsblad BV, respectievelijk van de oorspronkelijke auteur.

Chris Steele-Perkins

De wereld vanuit de breedhoek

Evert Hermans, Chef fotoredactie NRC Handelsblad

artikel | Zaterdag 31-12-2011 | Sectie: Overig | Pagina: S02 | Evert Hermans

Er bestaat geen vergeten continent. Iedereen is fotogeniek.

De fotografen van agentschap Magnum zijn aanwezig bij het nieuws, maar ze hebben ook oog voor de kleine dingen. Er is grote liefde voor verdieping, maar evenveel aandacht voor het alledaagse. Van schooljeugd in Medellín tot grote conflicten in het Midden-Oosten. Rebellie en honger, maar ook huppelende kinderen en hoogbejaarde fotomodellen. Foto's van een verdwaalde toerist maar ook van grimmige wereldleiders. Geluk en verdriet, vaak op één en hetzelfde fotorolletje (en tegenwoordig misschien nog wel vaker op de geheugenkaart). Het agentschap fotografeert de wereld met een grote breedhoek.

De fotografen van Magnum stonden dit jaar vooraan om te kijken naar de Arabische lente, ze waren bij de hongersnood in Afrika maar ook op de mondaine skipistes van Sankt Moritz en (zoals op deze pagina's) prettoeristen in de Gobi-woestijn. Magnumfotografen richten hun lens op het leven.

Dat is eigenlijk net als de redacteuren van NRC Handelsblad, alleen hebben wij geen kantoor in Parijs, hartje Montmartre, in de schaduw van de Sacre-Coeur. Kronkelende straatjes brengen je tot aan de hoek van de rue Hégésippe Moreau en rue Ganneron. Het geurt er naar croissants en espresso. Een verdwaalde toerist passeert, op zoek naar de basiliek. Het voelt als wandelen door een oud fotoboek. In een uit rode baksteen opgetrokken pand, achter een metalen poort, huist het agentschap. Een cijfercode opent deze kluis van herinneringen, fotogetuigenissen in zwart-wit en kleur.

Dit is het grote fotoalbum van de naoorlogse wereld. De honderden boeken tegen de wand zijn de spiegel van ons leven. Hier wordt de wereld bewaard en bewaakt. In de lade van het jaar 2011 zit veel kommer, maar ook uitgelaten momenten. Ellende conflicten en heldendom.

De redactie van NRC Handelsblad biedt met plezier en trots de allerbeste foto's van het afgelopen jaar aan. Dit is niet zomaar een nieuwsjaaroverzicht; de lezer zal vergeefs zoeken naar grote nieuwsevenementen als de moordpartij van Anders Breivik in Noorwegen of nationale gebeurtenissen als de zaak van de Angolese jongen Mauro en de ruimtereis van André Kuipers. Deze pagina's zijn niet meer en niet minder dan een bloemlezing uit de donkere kamers vanMagnum 2011. Wij wensen de lezers veel kijkplezier.

Het agentschap Magnum is in 1947 opgericht door fotografen als Robert Capa en Henri Cartier-Bresson. Het idee was een agentschap te stichten als coöperatie van de aangesloten fotografen. En dat idee heeft tot de dag van vandaag standgehouden. In de 64 jaar van zijn bestaan sloten zich zeer uiteenlopende fotografen aan, zoals W. Eugene Smith, Raymond Depardon, Sebastião Salgado, Martin Parr, Carl De Keyzer. Gedragen door hun talent groeide Magnum uit tot het meest prestigieuze fotoagentschap ter wereld. Vanuit de vier kantoren die Magnum heeft - in New York, Parijs, Londen en Tokio - en een netwerk van agenten levert het bureau foto's aan pers, galerieën en musea. In Nederland wordt Magnum vertegenwoordigd door Hollandse Hoogte.

Info: Deze bijlage kwam tot stand met medewerking van Rosan Hollak, Eva de Valk, Maartje van Ours, Milly Lems en Clement Saccomani.
Foto-onderschrift: Chinese toeristen in een thema-pretpark in de Gobi-woestijn in Mongolië. Thema van het park: zand. Het Xiangshawang Desert Tourist Resort ligt aan de rand van de Gobi, vlak bij de stad Baotou. Aangemoedigd door het Chinese Fotografie Magazine komen toeristen hier om op quads of op kamelen door het mulle zand te rijden, om te vliegeren en zandkastelen te bouwen, om Mongoolse dansen en feesten te bewonderen, en vooral om van dat alles foto's te maken.

Op dit artikel rust auteursrecht van NRC Handelsblad BV, respectievelijk van de oorspronkelijke auteur.

Dominic Nahr

Martin Parr

Dominic Nahr

Thomas Dworzak

Dominic Nahr

Tim Hetherington

April De laatste foto's van Tim Hetherington

artikel | Zaterdag 31-12-2011 | Sectie: Overig | Pagina: S14

Een getalenteerd fotograaf, een bijzonder mens. Fotograaf Christopher Anderson, buurman van Tim Hetherington in New York, struikelt over zijn woorden als hij iets wil zeggen over de dood van zijn collega. Ik heb vooral een goede vriend verloren.

Op 20 april werd de Brits-Amerikaanse fotograaf samen met zijn collega Chris Hondros gedood bij een mortieraanslag in Libië. Anderson kreeg de spullen van de overleden fotograaf toegestuurd en zag als eerste de laatste beelden die zijn vriend maakte in de buurt van Misrata en Ajdabiya. Over die opnamen heeft Anderson zoveel mogelijk informatie verzameld van journalisten en fotografen die met Hetherington in Libië op pad waren.

Rond 11 april fotografeerde Hetherington in en rond Ajdabiya, vanaf 18 april was hij in de buurt van Misrata. Het beeld van het lijk in het mortuarium maakte Hetherington vermoedelijk in Misrata. Op de laatste foto die hij maakte, staat een Libische legerhelm met een kogelgat. Dat was luttele minuten voordat hij bij een mortieraanval om het leven kwam. Ook een zelfportret voor de spiegel zat bij de laatste beelden. Op verzoek van de nabestaanden heeft Anderson het archief bij fotoagentschap Magnum ondergebracht. Voor zijn overlijden was Tim daar al mee bezig. Ik vind het een troostende gedachte dat zijn wens in vervulling is gegaan. Foto's Tim Hetherington

Op dit artikel rust auteursrecht van NRC Handelsblad BV, respectievelijk van de oorspronkelijke auteur.

Christopher Anderson

Mei Nafissatou Diallo, kamermeisje

artikel | Zaterdag 31-12-2011 | Sectie: Overig | Pagina: S16

Nafissatou Diallo was het kamermeisje met wie voormalig IMF-topman Dominique Strauss-Kahn in het Sofitel van New York seks had. De van oorsprong Guinese Diallo diende een klacht in wegens aanranding. De arrestatie van de Fransman in mei werd wereldnieuws, zijn presidentiële aspiraties waren in één klap voorbij. Hoewel hij toegaf seks te hebben gehad met het meisje, ontkende hij dat het onvrijwillig was geweest. Het openbaar ministerie zag in augustus af van vervolging omdat het kamermeisje in haar verklaringen te veel gelogen had. Magnum-fotograaf Christopher Anderson was de eerste die haar na de affaire mocht portretteren.Foto Christopher Anderson

Op dit artikel rust auteursrecht van NRC Handelsblad BV, respectievelijk van de oorspronkelijke auteur.

Christopher Anderson

Martin Parr

April Walsall

artikel | Zaterdag 31-12-2011 | Sectie: Overig | Pagina: S22

Inwoners van Westbourne Street in het Walsall bekijken de bruiloft van William Windsor en Kate Middleton. Op 29 april trouwde de Britse kroonprins met zijn bruid en 28,4 miljoen landgenoten keken mee. Het koninklijk huwelijk was tevoren aangekondigd als een mega-evenement. Er werd voorspeld dat 2 miljard mensen wereldwijd de plechtigheid op televisie zouden bijwonen - in Nederland viel dat wel mee: 2,2 miljoen kijkers. In de dagen ervoor en erna werden souvenirs als koffiemokken en theeservies bij vele duizenden verkocht. Foto's Martin Parr

Op dit artikel rust auteursrecht van NRC Handelsblad BV, respectievelijk van de oorspronkelijke auteur.

2012 Narcissus

artikel | Zaterdag 31-12-2011 | Sectie: Overig | Pagina: S22

Fotograaf Stuart Franklin heeft zich voor deze serie afgezonderd op het eiland Øtroya in Noorwegen. Ik heb geprobeerd te kijken naar wat ik om mij heen zag. Écht kijken, naar één plek, en die plek net zo lang op mij laten inwerken tot ik er een relatie mee kreeg. Telkens ontdekte ik nieuwe dingen. Ik ben intuïtief te werk gegaan, ik heb geprobeerd een emotionele band met de omgeving op te bouwen. De foto's gaan over de relatie van mensen met hun omgeving, de psyche van het landschap.

Ik sta in de traditie van het landschapsgenre, maar ik heb mij ervan geprobeerd los te maken. Dat is de basis van goede kunst: het moet ruimte openlaten, dubbelzinnigheid toestaan. Dat heb ik ontdekt op Øtroya : hoe meer je ontspant, des te gemakkelijker het is om ruimte open te laten.

Exposities van Stuart Franklin vinden plaats in 2012 in museum lesund in Noorwegen en in de galerie van Magnum in Parijs. Het boek Narcissus komt uit in de herfst van 2012 in een Engelse en Noorse editie. Foto Stuart Franklin

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Why Photojournalism must Get Modern by Martin Parr Magnum Photography

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