Category: Photography
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More on Attention
Following on from my last post, a couple more things crossed my radar on attention (yep, caught my attention): 1. Rick Rubin on the Ezra Klein podcast (timed link, about 8 minutes in), talking about the sensitive antenna that artists grow in order to perceive and draw on the world around them. From the show…
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Chris Killip
We went to the exhibition at the Photographers Gallery, and I picked up the accompanying retrospective (Amazon, Bookshop.org). I was expecting something of a diatribe, but I discovered his work to be far richer and welcoming. He certainly has an ideological point of view, and is not shy about it, but his empathy and deep…
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Giving attention
I’ve linked to Michael Sacasas’ newsletter, the Convivial Society, before. It’s a great read, and so it’s no surprise that this interview with him on the Grey Area is also full of insight. Whilst he and the interviewer, Sean Illing, talk about attention in the context of technology, society and human relations, I think it…
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What is photography?
I like all the videos that Alec Soth puts out. But most are rambling meditations on the form. This is more of a deranged supercut:
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Technological change is ecological
From the ever-insightful Convivial Society newsletter, an essay about the new AI image generation tools that are doing the rounds now, including the image posted above, which won an art prize and made everyone very hot and bothered. Lonely Surfaces: On AI-generated Images – by L. M. Sacasas It’s interesting not just because it points…
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l’ve absolutely no idea what I’m doing anymore
A recurring theme here – I mean the title could apply to life in general, but that’s another story – unlearning the things that accrete over time, to give yourself the freedom to act with freedom. If photography is an art of choice – choosing where to stand, what to frame, when to press the…
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What picture is worth taking?
This is a tricky idea to articulate, so bear with me… I think there is an interesting question of when it is worth making a photograph. (Perhaps the same is true of making a painting, or some other kind of representational art. I’m thinking of those kinds of practices, rather than those that relay on…
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Family photography
Since photography was invented, people have been photographing family for all the reasons photographs are taken: money; love; the desire to document what’s important or fleeting; to capture a snapshot in time; to tell a fiction or fantasy; to construct an identity, or produce propaganda. We all do it, whether we call it art, commerce,…
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Bernd and Hilla Becher
This is the best photography book I’ve read in 2022 (and I’ve read a few this year!). It helps if you like the work of the Bechers, but it’s also very well put together, with useful, clearly-written essays, and a surprisingly revealing, wide ranging interview with their son, Max Becher, at the end of the…
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Photography Cliques
For a long time I’ve been baffled by the invisible lines that are drawn by those in the business of art theory and criticism between different types of photography. And in particular the status of those types, the people who make them, and who gets to call themselves an ‘artist’.
Andrew Sleigh 