Photograph © Claude Guillaumin, 1970.
My Memories. The '70's. "The French Mafia". Carnegie Hall. West 56th Street. Pierre Houlès. Babysitting Cassius Clay. Fun before Fame and Fortune.
Showing posts with label L'Oeil de la Photographie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label L'Oeil de la Photographie. Show all posts
11.25.2019
JONATHAN BLAUSTEIN: Extinction Party Kickstarter
© Jonathan Blaustein
© Jonathan Blaustein
© Jonathan Blaustein
© Jonathan Blaustein
© Jonathan Blaustein
© Jonathan Blaustein
Images and text by Jonathan Blaustein
Published by Yoffy Press, with an essay by Kevin Kwan
Published by Yoffy Press, with an essay by Kevin Kwan
A limited edition photo book about over-consumption
and its impact on the planet
Photographer, writer and educator, Jonathan Blaustein, is asking for your support to help publish his new limited edition photography book that is about to go into production with Yoffy Press in Atlanta.
Check out Jonathan's KICKSTARTER and View his Video for full details on how to support this project by purchasing a book and/or a limited edition print (images above) in the next 11 days.
Extinction Party
www.kickstarter.com
www.kickstarter.com
My 2014 Interview on L'Oeil de la Photographie / The Eye of Photography with Jonathan Blaustein about this project in it's earlier stage just before an exhibition of this work opened at The Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, New Mexico:
The Eye of Photography
Jonathan Blaustein Talks To Elizabeth Avedon
Jonathan Blaustein is an artist, writer, and educator based in Taos, New Mexico. His photographs have been exhibited widely in the US, and reside in several important collections, including the Library of Congress, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He also writes about photography for the New York Times Lens blog and APhotoEditor.com, and has taught at the University of New Mexico-Taos for many years.
His series, “The Value of a Dollar,” was published by the New York Times in 2010, and subsequently went viral on the Internet. Ultimately, the conceptual series was seen by millions of people around the world, creating dialogue about the manner in which food represents deeper issues of wealth, class, power and health.
Opening February 22, Blaustein‘s photographs will be part of a three person contemporary art exhibition, “The Mindless Consumption of Animals,” at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, New Mexico.
I spoke with Jonathan recently about his work and his upcoming exhibition:
Elizabeth Avedon: We first met several years ago during CENTER’s Review Santa Fe, while you were working on what eventually became your very successful series, “The Value of a Dollar.” Please explain your works point of view.
Jonathan Blaustein: My point of view is informed by my background and my experiences, like anyone else. “The Value of a Dollar” was a project that was born out of my obsession with food, many years in the restaurant business, my conceptual art training, and my economics education.
The Great Recession was imminent, as I was shooting the project in early 2008, and I began to pay more attention to how much healthy food costs. When I started buying less fruit, berries in particular, because my income was dropping, I felt that it was something worth exploring.
Furthermore, where I live in the American West, there are semi-trucks and billboards everywhere, showing these lacquered up, shiny Fast Food hamburgers. Everywhere, we see artificial visions of what we eat. And that visual language is a huge driver for America’s obesity epidemic.
Eventually, I got the idea to go shopping for food, as a part of my artistic practice. I’d buy things, based upon their aesthetic and symbolic potential, and then measure out $1 of each item, before photographing it on my stark studio table. I wanted to make up my own visual language that examined the incredibly complex underpinning of the global economy, via a simple and clean image style.
I photographed everything without any artificial lighting, packaging, or styling, so that the food items could stand alone and speak for themselves.
EA: And you followed this series with “MINE”?
JB: Sort of. I actually spent a year and half working on a cultural landscape project in Southern Colorado. But I had a hard time making the pictures what I wanted them to be, so I put that to the side.
In 2011, I got the idea for “MINE,” which felt like a proper follow up, once “The Value of a Dollar” had been so well received. Like a lot of artists, I wanted each project to make sense in an evolving continuum.
After commodifying my food, I wanted to take a look at another primary element of human existence: territory. I actually live on 3.5 acres of land at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and it’s filled with all sorts of nominally worthless natural resources. Rocks, trees, grass, flowers, snow, ice, and, of course, animals.
The concept of private property gives me the right to do whatever I choose with that which is “MINE.” So I decided to turn those natural artifacts into art, in my studio, and then photograph them. In that way, the process was much like “The Value of a Dollar”. I went shopping for free nature on my land, rather than food in a grocery store.
EA: How did that work lead to your latest project “The Mindless Consumption of Animals.”
JB: Well, I put a lot of effort into turning “MINE” into a solo show in Santa Fe over the course of 2012. And then, once it opened, I kind of abandoned my studio. I write from home, and teach at the University in town, so I began to spend less and less time in my photo studio after the massive production of the “MINE” exhibit.
Unfortunately, my studio was pretty expensive, for a small town. So eventually, I realized I needed to give it up. It was costing too much, and I’ve got two young children. It seemed like my priorities needed a re-ordering.
The studio was filled with crap. Piles and piles of waste paper, and worthless objects that I’d accrued over 8 years time. Facing it all, it seemed so daunting.
Then it struck me that I could photograph my junk, and imbue it with value through the artistic process. So it connected perfectly with the two previous projects, which were based upon presenting my own resources, and using them to make grander statements about life in the 21st Century.
Since I was excited about mining the trash for goodies to photograph, it made the process of culling through the clutter kind of a fun game. Each day, I forced myself to take at least one full trash bag out of there, so the piles gradually shrunk.
And then I was left with a blank space, and a trove of images to cull through.
EA: You studied Economics and History at Duke University. What led you into Photography?
JB: In retrospect, I got a decent education at Duke, but I was miserable the whole time. Eventually, I learned I had enough credits to graduate early, so I came to hang out here in Taos, where my folks had moved. During that semester, I began to explore my creativity for the first time, and felt like there was something out there for me.
After college, I worked on a couple of movie productions in New York, before deciding to move back here to the mountains. Just as I was leaving on a solo, five day, cross-country drive, I bought a few rolls of black and white film for a little point and shoot I owned, but never used.
It was just a random idea, and I still don’t exactly know where it came from. But I was hooked within minutes, and shot hundreds of images along the way. By the time I got to Texas, I jotted in a notebook that I wanted to be a photographer. That was it.
So I threw myself into it, and studied undergraduate at UNM in Albuquerque, before a stint in San Francisco. Then I went to Pratt in Brooklyn, where I got my MFA. It’s been 17 years since I picked up a camera, and I still can’t believe how it all turned out.
EA: What inspired you to move to New Mexico?
JB: I was very fortunate growing up, in that my parents discovered Taos when I was still a child, and brought me here when I was 14. We came back once or twice a year, and then they built a house and moved here permanently, when I was still a teenager.
I loved it from the very beginning. I met my wife while I was in Albuquerque, and she was born and raised here. Her folks live here, as do mine, so it was a natural place to settle down and raise a family.
I’m glad I grew up in New Jersey, because the East Coast does impart a certain drive in most people. But since I came here at such a young age, it’s become home in a way that Jersey could never be. The sunshine and the landscape are most definitely addictive.
EA: Were you always so environmentally or economically concerned or has this developed since living on the land in New Mexico?
JB: That’s a great question, Elizabeth. The answer is that my time here has informed the way I think about the manner in which humans interact with the planet. It’s inescapable, as I see a two million year old extinct volcano out one window, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains out the other.
I’ve lived in cities on both coasts, and have found that the man-made landscape leads people to over-consider the power of humanity. It can’t be helped. When you’re staring at skyscrapers all day, and traveling via underground train or high speed elevator, it’s easy to overestimate our capabilities.
I definitely didn’t set out to make political work, or work with an environmental bent, but those themes crept in while I wasn’t looking. And then, when this exhibition opportunity arose, it gave me a chance to consider the deeper roots of my artistic practice.
EA: How did the upcoming exhibition come about?
JB: I spend most of my time showing my work, and engaging with community outside of Taos, because our art scene is a little insular, and perhaps regional. But I struggle with that, as I’m a big believer in the power of community in general.
Early last year, the Harwood curator Jina Brenneman reached out, and said she wanted to get my work on the wall, to introduce it to Taos. It’s the best museum north of Santa Fe, by a long margin, so I was very excited. They have an amazing collection of Agnes Martin’s work, and it draws a good crowd.
Once she told me the premise of the show, and the title, “Art for a Silent Planet,” it really forced me to think about what I’ve been doing. I read the title as a metaphor for the Lorax: we speak for the trees [Dr. Seuss — ‘I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues.’ ]
So I decided to find a through line in my work from the last six years, and lo and behold, the environmental themes were right there. As Jina pushed me to try do say something unique, I thought hard about how to best present what I’d been working on.
Eventually, I decided that as the new work was about “repurposing” my trash, I’d repurpose my older work alongside it. There will be a grid of four meat pictures from “The Value of a Dollar,” for instance, but for this show, it’s been retitled as a single piece called “Cow farts cause Global Warming.”
Subscribe to TheEyeofPhotography.com
https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/jonathan-blaustein-talks-to-elizabeth-avedon/
http://harwoodmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/129
http://jonathanblaustein.com
Help Support this Project
Buy a gorgeous print from the images above
Extinction Party : Jonathan Blaustein
Yoffy Press
4.17.2019
Notre-Dame de Paris : 100 Photos Published
Notre-Dame de Paris Photograph Lynn Saville
Édouard Baldus, Facade of Notre-Dame de Paris,
between 1851 and 1870
between 1851 and 1870
Photographs of Notre-Dame de Paris
In all Her Beauty and Glory
100 photos published
[nearly 1500 received from viewers]
100 photos published
[nearly 1500 received from viewers]
+ + +
3.25.2016
SUSAN S. BANK: Piercing The Darkness
Monograph Piercing The Darkness
Photographs by Susan S. Bank
Photograph © Susan S. Bank
Photograph © Susan S. Bank
Photograph © Susan S. Bank
Piercing the Darkness
Photographs by Susan S. Bank
Preface by Susan S. Bank
Essay Waiting for the Invisible by John T. Hill
Susan S. Bank
Preface by Susan S. Bank
Essay Waiting for the Invisible by John T. Hill
Susan S. Bank
3.24.2016
FOTOFEST BIENNIAL 2016: Portfolio Reviews Founders and Reviewers
FotoFest Co-Founders, Wendy Watriss and Frederick Baldwin
Photographer Rania Matar with Marta Sanchez Philippe,
FotoFest Projects Coordinator
Reviewers Robert Morton, Robert Morton Books
and James Estrin, The New York Times LENS
Christopher Rauschenberg, Blue Sky Gallery, Portland;
Reviewee; Ricardo Viera, Lehigh University Art Gallery;
Itala Schmelz, Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City
Texas Art-Insider, Clint Willour, The Galveston Art Center
Roy Flukinger, Harry Ransom Center, Austin;
Geoffrey Koslov, Foto Relevance LLP, Houston
Debra Klomp Ching, Klompching Gallery, Brooklyn;
Geoffrey Koslov, Founder, Foto Relevance LLP, Houston
"Over its 30-year history, FotoFest’s Meeting Place Portfolio Reviewshave been a launching pad for the careers of hundreds of photographic
artists. Many artists have been discovered by this program and many
reviewers have found new talent to exhibit, publish, collect, and
represent. In 2016, FotoFest brings 165 international, professional
reviewers to meet one-on-one with registered artists. They
include museum curators, editors, publishers, gallerists, collectors, and photo
agency representatives to review the work of 450 registered artists." (FotoFest)
I was honored to be one of the almost 50 Reviewers for the 1st of 4 Sessions
for FotoFest’s Portfolio Reviews from March 12–April 24th. These are snapshots of a few
of my colleagues during our short breaks. A complete list of Reviewers here.
3.21.2016
SUZANNE PAUL: Exhibition in Houston Texas Deborah Colton Gallery
Self Portrait. Suzanne and Bob Paul, 1960's, Houston, Texas
© Estate of Suzanne Paul / Deborah Colton Gallery
Edward Albee, 1999 Playwright
© Estate of Suzanne Paul / Deborah Colton Gallery
Dick Wray, Abstract Expressionist Artist
© Estate of Suzanne Paul / Deborah Colton Gallery
PROOF : Photograph’s by Suzanne Paul
Deborah Colton Gallery
2445 North Boulevard, Houston, Texas
2445 North Boulevard, Houston, Texas
to April 23rd, 2016
www.deborahcoltongallery.com
www.deborahcoltongallery.com
Read More:
March 14, 2016
Profile of Suzanne DeYoung Paul
April 2, 2012
12.14.2015
MONA KUHN: Stops Los Angeles Traffic With Art! Q+A With Mona Kuhn on Curating Billboards
Edward Ruscha's "Baby Jet" at Melrose by Paramount Pictures
Mona Kuhn, AD 6046 (2014)
at Highland North of Melrose, East Side, Facing North
Nathan Bell, Make It Rain (2015)
Highland South of Willoughby, East Side, Facing North
Highland South of Willoughby, East Side, Facing North
Geir Moseid, Untitled (2012)
Sunset S/L 240 E. Vine, Facing East
Sunset S/L 240 E. Vine, Facing East
LETS STOP TRAFFIC WITH ART!!!!
–Curator Mona Kuhn
The Billboard Creative (TBC) launched its second Billboard Creative Q4 Show, curated by photographer Mona Kuhn, this December on 33 billboards throughout the streets of Los Angeles. The billboards feature an outstanding number of emerging and established artists, from work submitted by the public over the last few months. Artist’s chosen include Jack Pierson, Andrew Bush, Shane Guffogg, Kim McCarty, Panos Tsagaris, among others, and double the size of its inaugural outing. I spoke with Mona about the process of choosing the final billboards.
Elizabeth Avedon: How was this project proposed to you?
Mona Kuhn: When Adam Santelli from TBC invited me to curate the 2nd Billboard Creative exhibition to be displayed all over intersections in LA proper, their main interest was to have an artist curate other artist’s works. FROM artist TO artist and FOR artist’s type of thinking!
EA: How many images did you receive or were submitted?
MK: We received twice the expected amount of submissions compared to last year. It was a great surprise to see the artist community awareness for the Billboard exhibition growing. I am excited to be involved as a curator and artist, because I believe it is a great deal for the artists. It is exciting to see your artwork reproduced large on a billboard, in a proper area of Los Angeles, where 100,000 to 200,000 pass by every day.
EA: What was the criteria you used for your edit?
MK: A billboard exhibition can be a challenging proposition, because we are competing for attention within a busy urban setting with an audience that is mostly driving by. My first step was to observed traffic in one of the main intersections and study the audience behavior while driving. There were two distinct moments observed: the audience would be either driving by or stuck on a traffic jam. In the first scenario my intention is to grab their attention by surprise with graphically strong artworks, pieces that are easy to read and understand in a relatively very short amount of time. That was the case with artworks from Panos Tsagaris, Jack Pearson, Andrew Bush, Ed Ruscha, Carolyn Douchette, among others. But I also saw a need to reach out to an audience who might be stuck on a traffic jam. I thought about what works of art would transport me momentarily away from that jam, what would inspire me to mentally escape the traffic. Some of the works selected were the delicate watercolors from Kim McCarty, the handmade knitted sculptures of Thomas Chung, and the emotional colors in Robert Zuchowski paintings. All works had a touch of sublime to me.
EA: How difficult was it to narrow down your choices?
MK: I had no idea we would receive a substantial amount of great artworks. It was also a very interesting process for me from the artist point of view. The artworks selected were based on the criteria mentioned to you earlier, but we still had at least 100 great works that needed to be narrowed down to 33 billboard placements. The final selection was the hardest, as all works were equally strong to me. It was all based on the artwork standing on its own. I did not have the name of the artists together with the works. The final selection was then based on bringing a balance to the final 33 group of artworks selected. It was not an easy task, but I would do it all over again.
EA: In the end how many choices did you make?
MK: Last year, TBC placed 15 contemporary artist’s works on billboards across Los Angeles. This year we were able to guarantee placement for 33 artworks. We have been talking about bringing this to a sister city in the U.S. or possibly Cuba! It has been an exciting project, great for artist’s exposure, and I am hoping we can expand it further.
EA: What are the locations?MK: The billboard exhibition is concentrated in intersections around West Hollywood and Hollywood. I thought it was important to provide a mobile map of the show. ArtMoi is an app anyone can download that shows the locations of the billboards and offer further info on the artists and their works. Similar to a museum audio guide, but outside of the conventional walls of an institution! The locations and intersections are pretty great: I asked them to concentrate most locations by the gallery/museum areas. It was not easy to guarantee space, as you can imagine, but it all worked out. Included are Santa Monica and Highland (by Regen Projects); Beverly and La Brea; Sunset and Western; Fairfax in front of LACMA; Melrose by the gates of Paramount Studio’s. You can see the list online
TBC is a non-profit organization. No one was paid for their efforts, it was literally a labor of love. In exchange for my time and advice (partnering with cultural institutions, expanding to new cities or possibly Cuba art scene, concentration of billboards by main LA areas, mobile application, etc.) they offered to place one of my artworks on a billboard. So I have a piece in this as well.
Elizabeth Avedon: How was this project proposed to you?
Mona Kuhn: When Adam Santelli from TBC invited me to curate the 2nd Billboard Creative exhibition to be displayed all over intersections in LA proper, their main interest was to have an artist curate other artist’s works. FROM artist TO artist and FOR artist’s type of thinking!
EA: How many images did you receive or were submitted?
MK: We received twice the expected amount of submissions compared to last year. It was a great surprise to see the artist community awareness for the Billboard exhibition growing. I am excited to be involved as a curator and artist, because I believe it is a great deal for the artists. It is exciting to see your artwork reproduced large on a billboard, in a proper area of Los Angeles, where 100,000 to 200,000 pass by every day.
EA: What was the criteria you used for your edit?
MK: A billboard exhibition can be a challenging proposition, because we are competing for attention within a busy urban setting with an audience that is mostly driving by. My first step was to observed traffic in one of the main intersections and study the audience behavior while driving. There were two distinct moments observed: the audience would be either driving by or stuck on a traffic jam. In the first scenario my intention is to grab their attention by surprise with graphically strong artworks, pieces that are easy to read and understand in a relatively very short amount of time. That was the case with artworks from Panos Tsagaris, Jack Pearson, Andrew Bush, Ed Ruscha, Carolyn Douchette, among others. But I also saw a need to reach out to an audience who might be stuck on a traffic jam. I thought about what works of art would transport me momentarily away from that jam, what would inspire me to mentally escape the traffic. Some of the works selected were the delicate watercolors from Kim McCarty, the handmade knitted sculptures of Thomas Chung, and the emotional colors in Robert Zuchowski paintings. All works had a touch of sublime to me.
EA: How difficult was it to narrow down your choices?
MK: I had no idea we would receive a substantial amount of great artworks. It was also a very interesting process for me from the artist point of view. The artworks selected were based on the criteria mentioned to you earlier, but we still had at least 100 great works that needed to be narrowed down to 33 billboard placements. The final selection was the hardest, as all works were equally strong to me. It was all based on the artwork standing on its own. I did not have the name of the artists together with the works. The final selection was then based on bringing a balance to the final 33 group of artworks selected. It was not an easy task, but I would do it all over again.
EA: In the end how many choices did you make?
MK: Last year, TBC placed 15 contemporary artist’s works on billboards across Los Angeles. This year we were able to guarantee placement for 33 artworks. We have been talking about bringing this to a sister city in the U.S. or possibly Cuba! It has been an exciting project, great for artist’s exposure, and I am hoping we can expand it further.
EA: What are the locations?MK: The billboard exhibition is concentrated in intersections around West Hollywood and Hollywood. I thought it was important to provide a mobile map of the show. ArtMoi is an app anyone can download that shows the locations of the billboards and offer further info on the artists and their works. Similar to a museum audio guide, but outside of the conventional walls of an institution! The locations and intersections are pretty great: I asked them to concentrate most locations by the gallery/museum areas. It was not easy to guarantee space, as you can imagine, but it all worked out. Included are Santa Monica and Highland (by Regen Projects); Beverly and La Brea; Sunset and Western; Fairfax in front of LACMA; Melrose by the gates of Paramount Studio’s. You can see the list online
TBC is a non-profit organization. No one was paid for their efforts, it was literally a labor of love. In exchange for my time and advice (partnering with cultural institutions, expanding to new cities or possibly Cuba art scene, concentration of billboards by main LA areas, mobile application, etc.) they offered to place one of my artworks on a billboard. So I have a piece in this as well.
EA: The location of Mona Kuhn’s Billboard is at Highland South of Waring, East Side, facing North – Los Angeles, CA
EXHIBITION
The Billboard Creative QA 2015 Show
Curated by Mona Kuhn
From November 30th to December 27, 2015
750 Highland Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90038, USA
United States
ArtMoi Public App:
https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id890538245?mt=8
LINKS:
http://www.thebillboardcreative.com
http://www.monakuhn.com
EXHIBITION
The Billboard Creative QA 2015 Show
Curated by Mona Kuhn
From November 30th to December 27, 2015
750 Highland Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90038, USA
United States
ArtMoi Public App:
https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id890538245?mt=8
LINKS:
http://www.thebillboardcreative.com
http://www.monakuhn.com
9.18.2015
JEAN-JACQUES NAUDET: The Hood Metal Awarded by The Royal Photographic Society
The Royal Photographic Society awarded Jean-Jacques Naudet, publisher
and editor-in-chief of L'Oeil de la Photography, aka The Eye of
Photography, the Hood Metal for his achievements in the art and
science of photography.
Jean-Jacques Naudet, above with wife Shiva, was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's Hood Medal. Past recipients of the Hood Metal include Lord Snowdon, Richard Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau among many others since 1933.
The Royal Photographic Society awarded Jean-Jacques Naudet, publisher
and editor-in-chief of L'Oeil de la Photography, aka The Eye of
Photography, the Hood Metal. The Royal Photographic Society was founded
in 1853, to promote the art and science of photography, a mission it
continues to this day. RPS has announced the recipients of its annual
Awards at a ceremony held at the Royal Society, in London. The Awards
have been given since 1878,and recognizes achievements in the art and
science of photography.
"It came in the post one morning. The Royal Photographic Society has awarded you a medal for your outstanding contribution to the advancement of photography! I was absolutely over-the-moon - it was like Christmas, right in the middle of summer! I was even more delighted when I saw that the other winners included Maria Morris Hambourg, the legendary Founding Curator of the Met’s department of photographs, Wolfang Tillmans, Bryan Adams and Nadav Kander. The news came after a tough spring and summer spent waiting to get the new version of the website online. The award is not only for me but for the whole team of L’Oeil de la Photographie, headed by Ericka Weidmann. It’s been quite an adventure and after various different formats, we are now on the brink of success, thanks to our contributors and the backing of some wonderful supporters, especially Maja Hofmann.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the awards ceremony as a fortnight after the news came through, my eldest son Gédéon announced that he would be getting married in Tuscany on the same date!.” – Jean-Jacques Naudet
+ + +
Elizabeth Avedon: How did you first become involved in photography?
Jean-Jacques Naudet: Totally by pure coincidence. When I was a young journalist I started working at Vogue on movie reviews. It was very very badly paid. One day Shiva announced she was pregnant. We wanted to stop being extremely poor. Vogue was great because although I was not very well paid, we were invited everywhere, from cocktails to receptions, all kinds of social events. But it was not possible to bring a small baby to openings and cocktails, so I had to decide to work in another magazine and by pure coincidence I was at French PHOTO.
I didn’t know anything about photography when I started. I discovered photography and photography became a passion. Roger Thérond - who was, who is my mentor, and was the Director of Match, the Director of PHOTO, in fact he was the Director of the Hachette Filipacchi Publishing Company; for the second piece I had to write for PHOTO, Roger sent me to go and meet Romeo Martinez and make an issue about the History of Photography. So I went to see Romeo. I was really really impressed and Romeo gave me all the information I wanted and then he said, “What do you know about Atget?” I said, ”Atget. Great photographer, loved by the Surrealists and the one who made us remember the old Paris.”
He said, “Tell me about Atget and the prostitutes?” and I didn’t know anything about Atget and the prostitutes. “So, maybe one day we will meet again, but next time try to know better about Atget and the prostitutes. If you don’t know about Atget and the prostitutes, you will never know anything about photography. During the next five years I never met Romeo, then one day by chance I bumped into him at an opening and I said, “You know, I know better about Atget and the prostitutes.” So I gave him proof and that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. After Roger, he was my second mentor in photography. Read More of My Exclusive Interview with Jean-Jacques Naudet • here •
Jean-Jacques Naudet: Totally by pure coincidence. When I was a young journalist I started working at Vogue on movie reviews. It was very very badly paid. One day Shiva announced she was pregnant. We wanted to stop being extremely poor. Vogue was great because although I was not very well paid, we were invited everywhere, from cocktails to receptions, all kinds of social events. But it was not possible to bring a small baby to openings and cocktails, so I had to decide to work in another magazine and by pure coincidence I was at French PHOTO.
I didn’t know anything about photography when I started. I discovered photography and photography became a passion. Roger Thérond - who was, who is my mentor, and was the Director of Match, the Director of PHOTO, in fact he was the Director of the Hachette Filipacchi Publishing Company; for the second piece I had to write for PHOTO, Roger sent me to go and meet Romeo Martinez and make an issue about the History of Photography. So I went to see Romeo. I was really really impressed and Romeo gave me all the information I wanted and then he said, “What do you know about Atget?” I said, ”Atget. Great photographer, loved by the Surrealists and the one who made us remember the old Paris.”
He said, “Tell me about Atget and the prostitutes?” and I didn’t know anything about Atget and the prostitutes. “So, maybe one day we will meet again, but next time try to know better about Atget and the prostitutes. If you don’t know about Atget and the prostitutes, you will never know anything about photography. During the next five years I never met Romeo, then one day by chance I bumped into him at an opening and I said, “You know, I know better about Atget and the prostitutes.” So I gave him proof and that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. After Roger, he was my second mentor in photography. Read More of My Exclusive Interview with Jean-Jacques Naudet • here •
3.19.2015
NEIL SELKIRK: An Exclusive Interview with the elusive Photographer and Arbus Master Printer
Robert Kennedy Announces for President, 1968
Photograph © Neil Selkirk. All rights reserved
Arbus, Avedon, Selkirk
Poster for The Minneapolis Institute of The Arts, 1993
G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary for Interview Magazine
Photograph © Neil Selkirk. All rights reserved.
Neil Selkirk and Marvin Israel reviewing prints of "Masked Man at a Ball N.Y.C. 1967" in Diane Arbus's Darkroom, Spring 1972. Photograph by Cosmos Sarchiapone
Diane Arbus: Monograph. Edited and designed by Doon Arbus and Marvin Israel. Published by Aperture in collaboration with the landmark posthumous retrospective exhibition of Arbus' work at the Museum of Modern Art in 1972.
"If people know the work of Diane Arbus from the books, they have been looking almost entirely at reproductions of prints I made. All the books thus far are nearly 100% my prints. My philosophy has always been “if you can tell the difference between mine and hers, I’ve failed.”
"If people know the work of Diane Arbus from the books, they have been looking almost entirely at reproductions of prints I made. All the books thus far are nearly 100% my prints. My philosophy has always been “if you can tell the difference between mine and hers, I’ve failed.”
L'Oeil de la Photographie
edition March 18, 2015
edition March 18, 2015
Neil Selkirk, born in London in 1947, is an accomplished portrait photographer and masterful documentarian. He studied Photography at the London College of Printing, graduating in 1968; later studying with photographer Diane Arbus in her 1971 Master Class. Selkirk worked as an assistant to many of fashion photography’s most iconic figures (Richard Avedon, Hiro and Chris Von Wangenheim) before his own distinctive style succeeded in drawing editorial assignments from major magazines that include Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Interview, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, among others.
I spoke with Selkirk in his New York studio last week about his upcoming exhibition, Certain Women, at Howard Greenberg Gallery and the history of his career through the decades. He is the only person ever authorized to make posthumous prints of the work of Diane Arbus.
Elizabeth Avedon : What year did you come to America?
Neil Selkirk : Before the end of school in London, I came looking for a job during the two-week Easter vacation. March, 1968. While I was here, Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the Presidency, Martin Luther King Jr. is shot, Newark erupts in riots. I had just interviewed with Irving Penn, I’m walking east on 40th Street towards Fifth Avenue, passing the New York Press Club. The door opens and Bobby Kennedy walks out. He’s just announced for the presidency. With cameras on him, but no crowd, he’s shaking hands with imaginary people so it would look as if he was engaged. I’m standing there with my camera snapping away thinking, “This is Bobby Kennedy!”. So incredibly much happened in the two weeks I was in New York, there was just no question of not coming back.
EA : You once told me some advice you were given about looking for a job in New York. What was it again?
NS : David Montgomery, a fashion photographer in London, said, “Don’t call first. Arrive at the door.” And it was fantastic advice.... My first real day looking for a job in New York I got job offers from Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Melvin Sokolsky, and Bert Stern. All four of them. I was on a tourist visa and I had to go back to London. I accepted the job at Penn, they applied for my visa, but were turned down. They never appealed, and they never informed me that I didn’t have a job.
I worked for Avedon in London a few weeks later as a local assistant. They had just banned cigarette advertising on television in England and the advertising agencies were trying to find someone to do still photographs that would cost as much as a TV commercial so they could mark it up 15%. So they hired the most expensive photographer in the world, Richard Avedon, to come to London and take pictures of dog’s heads; a hand holding a cigarette by the head of the dogs, Red setters, Golden Retrievers and some Labs. And that’s what we did for a week. I can’t imagine what they must have paid him.
The great thing about the job was that in the evenings when we weren’t doing these ads, we photographed Anjelica Huston and Julie Driscoll. Polly Mellon, the fashion editor was there - it must have been for Vogue. Julie Driscoll was a pop singer with Brian Auger and Trinity. Musically they were a very hot band at the time. At the end of the shoot, Dick (Avedon) gave her a kiss and she, being very, very English, said in her slightly Cockney accent, “Oh, I bet they’ll be awful,” which is a totally English way to say “Thank you.” He just froze. He sort of straightened, and said, “When I take pictures, they’re good.”
Anjelica Huston was photographed in her father, director John Huston’s house, which is where without knowing it I encountered my first Arbus photograph, an image that shattered me in a way that I had never been affected by a work of art before or since.
We were driving back from the house in a taxi and Dick received a message that said something like, “Mick Jagger can’t do it tomorrow, but he can do it Thursday,” Dick said, “We are shooting on Thursday. If he wants his picture taken, he can come to New York.” I don’t think he ever photographed Jagger. Never did.
I became the Avedon studio guy in Europe. As a result of that, I worked for Hiro in Paris, shooting the Collections for Harpers Bazaar.
EA : What did you do when you couldn’t get a visa to work for Penn?
NS : When I finally found out that my job in New York with Penn had fallen through I took a job working for Adrian Flowers in London. Flowers was a big name in London’s photography scene in the 1950s through the early 90’s. His studio in Chelsea’s Tite Street was the place to be photographed for advertising and editorials for actors, celebrities and artists.
We’re on the set in Adrian’s studio photographing. I’m off to his right, and I’m probably a pretty good assistant, but he is really uptight about me having worked for Dick and he said, “Neil, I know you’ve worked for all the greatest photographers in the world, and you’re an intimate of Richard Avedon’s, but would you please pass the film holder!” I must have been behaving like a complete jerk. Later, when I approached him with “They want me to go to Paris to work for Hiro for two weeks.” He said, “What if I say no?” I said, “Then I’ll quit.” He should have said, “Get out,” but he folded.
So now I’m in Paris with Hiro and he hires me to work in New York. They had an immigration lawyer and I was able to get a trainee visa. I worked for Hiro for about 9 months in New York. Then Michael O’Neil, who was Hiro’s assistant, left to go on his own and I became the first assistant. I worked there until I left abruptly in July 1971.
EA : What did you do after you left Hiro?
NS : The day after I was fired I got a call from Tina Bossidy, the stylist for Chris Von Wangenheim, who was a rising star in the fashion photography world at that time. She said, “Hello, my name is Tina. I work for Chris Von Wangenheim. We are looking for somebody to assist Chris in Europe.” And I said, “Well, how about me?” She said, “But you work for Hiro” and I said, “Not since yesterday.”
We immediately shot off to Rome and Paris. When we were in Paris, we were in the Harpers Bazaar studio where Chris was shooting the Collections. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Avedon came in the studio and confided to Chris that Diane Arbus had killed herself. Chris then took me aside and broke the news to me. That was July of 1971. I had done Diane’s class the previous winter.
I sent a postcard to Marvin Israel, art director and intimate friend of Arbus’, that just said, “If anything is going to be done in the way of a show or book, I’ll be back in November and I will be happy to help in any way I can.” I spent the rest of the summer and fall in England and when I got back in November of ’71, Marvin and Doon Arbus, Diane’s daughter, asked me to work on what became the monograph Diane Arbus and the 1972 posthumous Arbus retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art.
They needed someone to go through all of her photographs to find the negatives because there was no indication on any of the prints of the associated negative numbers. It still remains a complete mystery how she found her own neg when she wanted to make a print. So I spent the winter going through all her contact sheets looking for the negatives of all the photographs she had ever printed. Finally, in the spring, I started to print for the book and the show.
The show opened at the Museum of Modern Art in November of 1972. It was incredibly successful. I think it was the most successful one artist show the Modern had ever had in any medium, not just photography. It was estimated that over seven million people worldwide saw the exhibition.
Initially, nobody wanted to publish the book. Just before the show was scheduled to open, Michael Hoffman at Aperture said he would publish it, and it immediately went to seven printings. Now it’s one of the most successful photography books of all time. It’s sold half a million copies or so.
[“Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph” Fortieth-anniversary edition, 2011. “The monograph of eighty photographs was edited and designed by the painter Marvin Israel, Diane Arbus’s friend and colleague, and by her daughter Doon Arbus. Their goal was to remain faithful to the standards by which Arbus judged her own work, and to how she hoped it would be seen. Nearly fifty years has not diminished the impact of these pictures; they penetrate the psyche with the force of a personal encounter, and transform the way we see the world. This is the first edition in which the image separations were created digitally; the files have been specially prepared by Robert J. Hennessey using prints by Neil Selkirk.” – Aperture ]
EA : While you were printing for the show, did anyone realize that it was going to change the face of Photography?
NS : No, it was being done because everybody involved had a sense of mission and commitment to do it, because we cared.
I have a couple of memories:
Marvin came down to Diane’s darkroom every morning to look at the prints, which was in the basement of an apartment building. I would finish printing at 2 or 3 in the morning and then meet him four hours later at like 7 o’clock in the morning. I remember he came in one morning and pushed the door open and said, “They shot Wallace!” He was jubilant.
I remember walking down 7th Avenue from her darkroom and there was a bar called The Buffalo Roadhouse. It was always on the other side of the road. I remember watching people at 2 or 3am in the morning, just when I finished printing, and thinking, “One day I’m going to be able to buy a beer.“ I literally never went in. I remember cracking open a penny jar to get on the subway which was 35cents and taking 35 pennies. They told me they wouldn’t take pennies.
Nobody had any money, its incredible how little money there was. I was paid something like $3,000. for the year – for the total year – I believe it came from the Museum of Modern Art, plus I got all the film left in Diane’s closet. I got a bunch of 120 film and $3,000. for the year.
None of us could afford anything. We needed one more 16 x 20” processing tray and we couldn’t buy it. We didn’t have the 15 bucks or whatever it was. So I called the Avedon Studio and said, “Have you got a tray you don’t need” and I wound up with this beaten up ancient developer tray of Dick’s which I then used to print the Arbus museum exhibition prints and is now one of the star trays in the book “Developer Trays" (powerHouse Books, 2014).
EA : You are and have been the connecting link to Diane Arbus for all of us through your prints of her work.
NS : I’m very conscious of that as a responsibility. I have always been obsessive about matching every aspect of the character of her prints whenever possible. If people know the work of Diane Arbus from the books, they have been looking almost entirely at reproductions of prints I made. All the books thus far are nearly 100% my prints. My philosophy has always been “if you can tell the difference between mine and hers, I’ve failed.”
They try to get as many original prints as they can for the exhibitions. About 40% of the 1972 MoMA show were my prints. Many more of Diane’s prints have been found since then; there were whole troves of prints that no one knew existed at the time of the MoMA show.
EA : Tell me about the Master Class with Diane Arbus. Is that how you met her?
NS : No, I’d already met her at Hiro’s and Avedon’s studio. She and Marvin would sometimes drop by. In fact she came into Hiro’s one day and asked, “If I give a class would you come?” Paul Corlett, another Hiro assistant, and I said, “Sure!” She asked a lot of people around Westbeth, the artist’s building where she lived, too.
She interviewed and ultimately accepted everybody who applied. My girlfriend, she was probably my wife at that point, had a really, really awful Shepherd mix which I dragged around everywhere. I didn’t know that Diane hated dogs. She later said - essentially that everybody’s work was so bad that she was afraid if she did the class she’d get contaminated. It was so great. She said wonderful things.
Diane’s last Master Class was at Westbeth. Marvin sat in with her on a lot of occasions. Anne Tucker, subsequently photography curator at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, was in that class; Paul Corlett and Cosmos, a widely known eccentric Greenwich Village photographer, were in that class. I think the assignments were based on a class she did with Lisette Model ten years before; and she just reviewed stuff and talked.
A lot of the text in the Aperture monograph is taken from Ikkō Narahara’s recordings of the class. Marvin said the trouble was his English was so bad that he always turned the tape recorder off when she was just about to say something fabulous. You could see something great coming and “plunk” he turned the recorder off.
I felt at the time I didn’t know if I was getting anything out of it. I always thought that I would find out years later. The thing is, I was, subsequently, after her death, so completely swamped by being totally immersed in all of her photography within a year, that I would never know. The immersion in her work completely changed everything for me because I was trained in England as a commercial photographer.
I basically went where Diane had gone, because they were the places that were interested in good photographs. So I went to Esquire and then very gradually, actually started using stuff that I learnt assisting in the commercial world to make glitzy pictures. Then Marvin told Ruth Ansel at the New York Times Magazine she should be using me. I took a portfolio up there of all the stuff I’d been doing for Esquire. She looked through all the work and said, “What’s this in the back of the box?” I said, “It’s just stuff I’ve been doing on the street.” She pulled it out and said, “This is great! Will you do this for us?” So then I started working for the New York Times Magazine and taking unembellished photographs.
The first job I did for the Times, I think it was Maurice Nadjari, Governor Rockefeller's Special Anti-corruption Prosecutor. I got the photograph I wanted, I made a beautiful big print, I dry mounted it, I overlaid it, I did the whole thing to make it look incredible, took it in and Ruth said, “Wow, this is fantastic” and she ran it in to the editor, and the editor said, “Fantastic” so they ran the picture. After that for a period of years, I delivered a single photograph for each job, and they printed it. It was so amazing, and it lasted until eventually I shot Henry Kissinger who looked in the portrait as if he had doubt. They wanted something a little more heroic so then they asked for the contact prints....I was never able to work the old way again.
So one’s magazine career turns out to have been an endless struggle to get good work published…
Marc Balet, who was Creative Director at Andy Warhol’s Interview came to me and said would I shoot for them. I did a lot of quite good political stuff for them. It was mostly political stuff for the Times Magazine as well. I did all the Watergate people, I would keep getting these calls from Vanity Fair saying photograph this person, photograph that person, photograph the next person, and I did. A lot of them were really good pictures but they rarely ran the stories.
I used to say, “The best magazines only lasted six months.” What I think I was trying to get at was the idea that quite often, really smart people manage to launch a magazine with very high ideals and standards, but frequently they simply fail, or are so radically watered down in order to survive that they cease to be anything but a shadow of their original concept. The first six months can be an exhilarating time for everyone involved.
The Village Voice did a fashion supplement called View and that lasted six months. The Movies lasted six months. Spy lasted longer but succumbed. Paper and Wired and Colors have survived by adapting, but working on the first issues was thrilling.
There was a magazine that started up by David Bruel called Avenue. It was delivered by limousine to all the doorman buildings between Fifth, Madison, Park from like 57th Street to 86th Street. It was super, super high end, and they just wanted great photography, there were no restrictions whatever.
I found myself doing this wonderful shtick. Everybody I photographed, and they were all people of social significance in that area…. I suddenly realized, after a couple of assignments, that I had hot dog vendors in the picture, so I started deliberately including them in subsequent shoots; the shadowy figures actually delivered real substance. Then someone from Time Inc took over from David Bruel and he said, “Wait a minute. There’s a hot dog stand in the background!” I said, “Yeah, there’s always a hot dog stand.” I never worked for them again.
At around that time, I had two young children, I started doing corporate work. It paid ten times as much as magazine work. It was almost all traveling. I used to get up in the morning and go to the airport for years. But I simply did not have the time, and in fact could not afford to do all the editorial work. I had a really good gig working for corporations, doing annual reports and things like that. It was completely steady for almost twenty years. I made plenty of money, owned two houses, it put the kids through college. And that business died just as I was ready to get out. In the meantime I had been able to pursue and finance projects of my own devising that are turning into books.
EA : OK, we’ve turned the recorder off several times to tell each other some great stories from the past. Can’t we do a book of everything we can’t say on record?
NS : Isn’t it amazing what isn’t said? For ten or twelve years I did the Dow Jones Annual Report, the Wall Street Journal’s annual reports basically. My favorite place to have lunch was the cafeteria at the Wall Street Journal because everybody who worked there knew everything. I was so aware of how much we never hear about because for various reasons it isn’t published - it can’t be published. It was just amazing all the things these people knew! It’s incredible what you can’t say. I can’t remember what it is I just realized I couldn’t tell you.
It is an indication of how you can’t trust most books that are about anyone in the form of a biography. I don’t know if you are familiar with Heidegger on Aristotle, but I have a great quote that I saved. “What was Aristotle’s life?’ Well, the answer lay in a single sentence:
‘He was born, he thought, he died.’ And all the rest is pure anecdote.” ― Martin Heidegger
Biography presented as truth is bullshit. That’s what’s so great about the “Slide Show and Talk By Diane Arbus” which is essentially a film record of an event. The soundtrack is an original audio recording of a 1970 slide presentation by Diane in which she speaks about photography using her own work and other photographs, snapshots and clippings from her collection. It was compiled and edited by Doon Arbus, Adam Shott and myself.
Even though it was essentially recorded on only one evening – in other words it’s not legitimate to say that this is “her” in the broadest sense – but it’s so much closer, just to hear her voice. It’s so important. You get a clue, where as everything that’s been written doesn’t give you anything like the sort connection…. the attachment one feels from a little bit of somebody talking to someone else about something that interests them.
EA : Is the slideshow a DVD?
NS : It’s not on a DVD. It would be, could be. It’s on hard drives - because it was too big – it’s very complicated - we’re inept. We would schlep around the world with these hard drives and computers and have back-ups ready and all. It was always deeply stressful making sure it showed up on the screen. There’s a lovely story here.
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Neil Selkirk’s Certain Women are on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery from March 19 – May 2, 2015. A hand bound, limited edition book containing forty-four original, individually signed prints accompanies the show.
March 19th to May 2nd, 2015
Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street, New York
41 East 57th Street, New York
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