...a photoBook is an autonomous art form, comparable with a piece of sculpture, a play or a film. The photographs lose their own photographic character as things 'in themselves' and become parts, translated into printing ink, of a dramatic event called a book...
- Dutch photography critic Ralph Prins
Urban exploration (often shortened as urbex or UE) is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities.[1] Urban exploration is also commonly referred to as infiltration, although some people consider infiltration to be more closely associated with the exploration of active or inhabited sites. It may also be referred to as "draining" (when exploring drains) "urban spelunking", "urban caving", or "building hacking".
The nature of this activity presents various risks, including both physical danger and the possibility of arrest and punishment. Many, but not all, of the activities associated with urban exploration could be considered trespassing or other violations of local or regional laws, including - but not limited to - invasion of privacy and certain broadly-interpreted anti-terrorism laws.[2]
Meet Captain Henk Van Rensbergen. Born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1968, Van Rensbergen is by trade an airline pilot. But although he has a very grown-up job, he stays true to his childhood by not only exploring every abandoned building he can find, he also photographs and catalogues them on his site,www.abandoned-places.com-- featuring dozens of sites and hundreds of photgraphs -- so everyone can take a stroll through creepy locations like Triage Lavoir du Roton, Castle of Mesen and the Coalmine of Cheratte. See for an interview ...
Photographer Brian Duffy dies. Duffy helped to define the 60s with images spanning celebrity, reportage and advertising.
Brian Duffy, whose photographs helped define the mood of the Swinging Sixties, has died aged 76. Together with David Bailey and Terence Donovan, Duffy formed part of the trinity of photographers who became as famous as the models, musicians and film stars they worked with.
He had been suffering from lung disease.
Like Bailey and Donovan, Duffy was born in London's East End. He studied dress design at St Martin's School of Art and worked as a fashion artist for Harper's Bazaar before turning to photography. He was one of just a handful of photographers to shoot two Pirelli calenders, and was credited for his inventive approach to fashion photography.
His work also spanned reportage and advertising, including two award-winning campaigns for Benson & Hedges and Smirnoff in the 1970s. He shot three David Bowie album covers, including Aladdin Sane.
In 1979, Duffy decided to give up photography and burned many of his negatives in a bin. But he resumed taking pictures in 2009, and in January the story of his career was the subject of the BBC documentary The Man Who Shot the 60s.
He is survived by his wife, June, two sons and two daughters.
Photographer Brian Duffy dies. Duffy helped to define the 60s with images spanning celebrity, reportage and advertising.
Brian Duffy, whose photographs helped define the mood of the Swinging Sixties, has died aged 76.
Together with David Bailey and Terence Donovan, Duffy formed part of the trinity of photographers who became as famous as the models, musicians and film stars they worked with.
He had been suffering from lung disease.
Like Bailey and Donovan, Duffy was born in London's East End. He studied dress design at St Martin's School of Art and worked as a fashion artist for Harper's Bazaar before turning to photography. He was one of just a handful of photographers to shoot two Pirelli calenders, and was credited for his inventive approach to fashion photography.
His work also spanned reportage and advertising, including two award-winning campaigns for Benson & Hedges and Smirnoff in the 1970s. He shot three David Bowie album covers, including Aladdin Sane.
In 1979, Duffy decided to give up photography and burned many of his negatives in a bin. But he resumed taking pictures in 2009, and in January the story of his career was the subject of the BBC documentary The Man Who Shot the 60s.
He is survived by his wife, June, two sons and two daughters.
An exclusive photo essay from China's red heartland.
Documentary photojournalist Tomas van Houtryve has spent much of the past five years photographing the few countries still under Communist Party rule. It is the sense of "counterculture, of swimming against the tide" of history, that interests him. His 2009 photo essay for FPon North Korea, "The Land of No Smiles," was nominated for a National Magazine Award. In this issue, he captures the earnest dissonance of modern-day China's reverence for Mao.
An obscure masterpiece is chosen in our critic’s poll of the best photobooks of the past 25 years
Few readers will have heard of – let along seen – Masahisa Fukase’s 1986 book, Karasu (Ravens), first printed by Sokyu-sha, a Japanese publisher based in Tokyo. The original, and two further editions, are out of print, yet many regard it a modern masterpiece, and copies of the first edition change hands for more than £2000.
And now it has been named the best photobook of the past quarter century in BJP’s critic’s poll, run in conjunction with the And/Or Book Awards, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
Photographed 10 years before it was published on a trip to his birthplace in northern Japan following a recent divorce, the book is a mournful reflection on Fukase’s past relationship, but has also been interpreted as a allegorical critique of modern industrialised society.
Largely shot through the windows of a train, focusing obsessively on the flocks of ravens he observed along the way, the images are described as “an aesthetic tour-de-force” in The Photobook: A History, Volume 1, edited by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger. “Even though Fukase made his pictures in bad light and bad weather, never bothering with technical niceties, the results are both luminous and beautiful,” say the authors. “He enlarges tiny portions of his negatives, pushing for the limits of legibility. One climatic image of silhouetted birds in formation, wings outstretched against a grainy sky, metamorphoses into a wire news service image of overheard warplanes, a significant, and traumatic image for postwar Japan.”
Adding to its cult status is the tragic fate of the photographer, who fell down a flight of stairs five years after the book was published and has remained in a coma ever since.
Karasu was republished by Bedford Arts in the US the same year, 1991, under the title of Solitude of Ravens, and more recently in 2008 by Rat Hole Gallery in Tokyo. Mark Hayworth Booth showed images from the series in the 1989 show he curated for Victoria & Albert Museum, Photography Now.
It was one of four books that received two nominations in our critic’s poll, for which we asked Chris Killip, Ute Eskildsen, Gerry Badger, Jeffrey Ladd and Yoko Sawada to select their top five choices (presented below). Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency, also published in 1986, was a close runner and, as Killip points out, it was a remarkable year for photobooks, which included the publication of Martin Parr’s The Last Resort and Beyond Caring by Paul Graham. Fait: Koweit by Sophie Ristelhueber (recently named the winner of the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize) and Waffenruhe by Michael Schmidt were also nominated twice in the five lists, which provide an eclectic choice of reading, from Sawada’s all-Japanese selection to Eskildsen’s focus on more recent publications.
The winner of our critic’s poll was recognised at this year’s And/Or Book Award ceremony on 29 April, alongside the winner of the 2010 award, Edward Burtynsky. Sight & Sound magazine also conducted a critic’s poll, focusing on books on cinema. Its winner is A Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson, most recently published by Random House.
Critic's Poll
We asked five experts to select their top five photobooks from the last quarter century (1986-2009) to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the And/Or Book Awards.
Chris Killip
Karasu (Ravens) by Masahisa Fukase
Published by Sokyu-sha, Japan, 1986
...Photography is the visual medium of the modern world. As a means of recording, and as an art form in its own, it pervades our lives and shapes our perceptions...
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