Tim Davis has a show coming up in Zurich, Switzerland at mitterrand+sanz that features some interesting new photographs of his from a project entitled Kings of Cyan, a body of work that is not even on his website yet. Since Tim is a rare breed of photographer – that is, one who is equally great at putting ideas into words – I’ll leave it to him to describe the work:

Who is the first politician you remember? It was likely a white man with a large face, hovering there in the world. You might have glimpsed some mayor or local alderman pass by in a parade, but you probably remember his image on an advertisement, staring out, trying to reach you. At age six I preferred Gerald Ford even though my parents were for Jimmy Carter. Carter’s huge smile was terrifyingly vivid, and Ford seemed like an innocuous uncle, unlikely to ask much of you. What you probably don’t remember is your politician’s ideas. You remember his face.

Pretty Boy, 2008 [from “Kings of Cyan”]
© Tim Davis

Rusty, 2008 [from “Kings of Cyan”]
© Tim Davis

We’ve been carrying faces of leaders in our pockets since at least the Ptolemies, closer to our crotches than almost anyone will ever get. I can draw Abraham Lincoln’s and George Washington’s profiles perfectly from memory—even writing this from Rome, I can feel their diverse American noses under my thumb. Contemporary politicians aim for repetition rather than proximity, pasting their faces on city walls and underpasses, hoping to fix their images in our memories. But printing a poster and minting a coin do not have the same staying power. The dyes in inexpensive CMYK offset printing can be fugitive, with rain and snow and sun tending to swallow the magenta and yellow dyes first. The cyan dyes stay. After a few months, these full-color images look like ghosts of themselves, still standing in some eery twilight, trying less to reach us, and more desperately to just be seen.

Bangladeshi, 2008 [from “Kings of Cyan”]
© Tim Davis

Two Faces, 2008 [from “Kings of Cyan”]
© Tim Davis

When I first noticed this faded blue, I thought of it as the blue of disappearance, of atmospheric perspective in Netherlandish painting taking the landscape back, back, into the infinite. It reminded me of the ectoplasmic blue of faked séance cyanotypes, a naked blue never intended to be seen alone. But in its universality it became more sinister, more like Bataille’s Blue of Noon, where the light of the midday sky is seen as a sign of the inevitable slip into the darkness of perverse tyranny. For although the politicians seen in these pictures espouse a full spectrum of political positions, from Communist to Neo-Fascist, their ideas fade even faster than the ink they are printed with.

Little Strong Jaw, 2008 [from “Kings of Cyan”]
© Tim Davis

Magenta Forehead, 2008 [from “Kings of Cyan”]
© Tim Davis

Portraiture remains, its tropes and aspirations. This generation learned from Jimmy Carter. Their smiles are the subtle smirks that Archaic sculptors figured out could make their rigid marble figures look alive. Their poses and clothes are as conventional as Baroque popes’. The lighting hardly eclipses your average passport studio in subtlety or invention. And yet, through this fence of conventions, a sense of self shines through. You see in their faces a desire to be seen, a giddy stroke of ambition here, a smirk there that says I can’t believe my luck, a squint that is trying too hard. There are hints of fear and rage. “Portrait” comes from the Latin, portrahere, to draw forth, and though no photographic portrait can really capture anyone’s inner essence, (cameras see only surfaces), these guys emit will. They may be all surface, but their surfaces —faded, degraded, familiar, scraped away— have something to say.

See more from Kings of Cyan here.

Oh, and while I’m talking about Tim, did anyone notice his shot of Obama for the cover story of this past week’s NYT Magazine? If not, take a look.

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Apple of Knowledge, 2007 [from “Mavericks & Daydreamers”]
© Boru O’Brien O’Connell

If you haven’t already seen Boru O’Brien O’Connell’s lovely series of photographs entitled Mavericks & Daydreamers, then now is the time. Actually, I’d just go ahead and look at everything on his site.

Afterward, take a moment to read Noel’s interview with Boru from back in March.

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I can’t remember what magazine it was in, but I saw an excellent editorial spread a few weeks back by Nadav Kander. I payed a visit to his site today and found his personal work to be quite strong as well. One of my favorites was Yangtze, The Long River, a series of photographs made along a body of water that stretches 4,100 miles across China.

Chongqing VII (Bored Girl) [from “Yangtze, The Long River”]
© Nadav Kander

Yibin III [from “Yangtze, The Long River”]
© Nadav Kander

Restaurant near Source [from “Yangtze, The Long River”]
© Nadav Kander

Frozen River [from “Yangtze, The Long River”]
© Nadav Kander

Old Feng Du I [from “Yangtze, The Long River”]
© Nadav Kander

Mountain and Mist [from “Yangtze, The Long River”]
© Nadav Kander

Shigu I (Fishing below Cloud Mountain), Yunnan [from “Yangtze, The Long River”]
© Nadav Kander

See more of Kander’s work here.

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Without Frontiers, 2005-06 (from “Border”)
© Mitra Tabrizian

Take a look at Mitra Tabrizian’s projects. I’d start with Border.

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I absolutely loved Bianca Brunner’s dark, beautiful portrait that was in the reGeneration exhibition and book. Rather recently, I came across some images of hers that are a bit of a departure from her earlier work, but perhaps conceptually connected – her projects, Wood and Star.

Untitled 2, 2007 (from “Wood”)
© Bianca Brunner

Untitled 1, 2007 (from “Star”)
© Bianca Brunner

For an explanation and interpretation of the work, I’ll pull from a piece written by Tan Wälchli (as seen on the Grusenmeyer Art Gallery website):

Bianca Brunner challenges the notion of photography as a ‘realistic’ media mimetically picturing the world. Although she takes actual pictures, the viewer is confronted with an imaginary scenario, which the artist constructs herself before she photographs it. She builds objects out of wood, which she sets in scene either in her studio or in studio-like outdoor environments.

The objects have the quality of models, insofar as they are too abstract to be realistic, lacking any details. It appears that they were not built to be used, but rather to be depicted. The abstraction might even go as far as to cause estrangement. It is not evident what the objects represent; they seem to be rather figures of thought than actual things. The uncertainty is aggravated as the angle of the camera allows us to see only a minor part of the scenario, and we might even begin to speculate about what lies ‘behind’ the scene. What does the background of the picture hide?

Untitled 3, 2007 (from “Wood”)
© Bianca Brunner

Untitled 3, 2007 (from “Star”)
© Bianca Brunner

All this highlights the imaginary character of Brunner’s pictures – so much that imagination itself becomes one of their major topics. They deal with the question of what an image is by asking what it needs to construct it. Indeed, the repetitive act of construction (and implied deconstruction) asserts itself as the series progresses. More particularly, Wood (2007) emphasises the materiality of the picture. It seems as if the branches in the background (which remain unchanged trough out the series) were ‘transformed’ into a new wooden object with every picture. Star (2008) explores the role played by light in the constitution of an image. The silver foil curtain in the background reflects the strong flashing light, which is then reflected a second time on the wooden objects in the foreground, slightly delineating their forms within the numerous flickering stars.

Given this occupation with the topic of the image, it is not astonishing, that the constructed wooden objects sometimes come close to ‘scenes’ in a literal sense. We might make out a stage, a stand for an audience a. o. Yet these are not the only references the pictures play with. As for Star, we might remember the importance philosophy of art has attached to the concept of ‘reflection’ (from Hegel to Lacan, a. o.), or we might be aware that the silver foil curtain was an important design item in Warhol’s factory. And with Wood, Heidegger’s understanding of the work of art as a ‘clearing’ [Lichtung] comes to mind – as well as his way of thinking ‘off the beaten track’ [auf dem Holzweg, which literally means ‘on a track in the wood’]. Whatever weight the viewer might put on such references, they indicate that Brunner’s pictures, which on a first glance might appear formal and strict, at a closer look also have a playful, even ironic side.

Untitled 4, 2007 (from “Wood”)
© Bianca Brunner

Untitled 4, 2007 (from “Star”)
© Bianca Brunner

See the rest of the images from Wood and Star here.

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Samantha in Her Bedroom, June 2008 (from “5 Days Lucky”)
© Glen Erler

I received another e-mail about a website update, this time from Glen Erler (previously mentioned on the blog here). Take a look at 5 Days Lucky, a series of photographs that he shot during a recent heat wave in Southern California.

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Untitled, 2008 (from “Haenyo”)
© Ian Baguskas

I was really pleased to see that Ian Baguskas updated his website with new work. I’m particularly fond the images from South Korea: Sansarum (Mountain People), Haenyo (Female Divers) and Below Line 38 (The Border).

Take a moment to look around.

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I was chatting with Michael Bühler-Rose (who, if you haven’t noticed, is currently holding down the fort for Laurel) and we got to talking about this installation piece posted on VVORK. “You just can’t look away,” Michael said. Seeing Mai Hofstad Gunnes’ piece made me think of the work of French photographer George Rousse. Which reminded me… Georges Rousse’s work is pretty incredible.

Russelheim, 2003
© Georges Rousse

© Georges Rousse

A nice description of his process, via Wikipedia:

Rousse’s work, from the 1990s to today, generally appears at first glance to be photos of desolate or abandoned spaces (buildings, rooms, parking garages or streetscapes) often on their way to the wrecking ball, on which the artist has superimposed precise geometrical shapes or squiggly graffiti.

However, this is an intended illusion: what Rousse does is to paint these designs onto the abandoned spaces before taking the photo, correcting for such things as the slope of floors or the interruption of beams, so that the painted designs come together to produce the illusion of a simple, flat design floating on the surface of the photo.

A few more examples:

Réel, 2003
© Georges Rousse

Köln, 2002
© Georges Rousse

Dravert, 2007
© Georges Rousse

© Georges Rousse

Take a look at more of his photographs here (in a film about his work), here, here and here. I also highly recommend picking up Contacts (Vol. 3) to hear him talk about his work. And if you’re into Rousse, you’ll probably like Felice Varini.

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My one-month residency here on the Western coast of Ireland has come to a close and so I’m off to spend a few days in Dublin before my return to the States. I expect to be without internet for that time and to be busy with some things when I get home, but I’ll be bloggin’ again before September rolls around.

Until then:

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One of the most beautiful, honest, well sequenced, downright lovely photography books ever made in my opinion is Tom Wood’s Photie Man.

cover of Photie Man, 2005
© Tom Wood

For 25 years Tom Wood lived in New Brighton, just across the river Mersey from Liverpool. He became known locally as “photie man” because everyday he was out on the streets with his camera. Most of the pictures collected together in this book were taken within 5 minutes walk from Wood’s home. The work focuses on the inhabitants of the town and its regular visitors, from Liverpool day-trippers to clubbers who attended the Chelsea Reach nightspot. Wood’s images are a dazzling selection of cocky youths, friends, lovers, fathers, mothers and babies that provide insight into the area, it’s inhabitants and the rites of passage inherent in growing up.

Here are a few spreads from the book:

spread from Photie Man, 2005
© Tom Wood

spread from Photie Man, 2005
© Tom Wood

spread from Photie Man, 2005
© Tom Wood

spread from Photie Man, 2005
© Tom Wood

spread from Photie Man, 2005
© Tom Wood

spread from Photie Man, 2005
© Tom Wood

spread from Photie Man, 2005
© Tom Wood

spread from Photie Man, 2005
© Tom Wood

spread from Photie Man, 2005
© Tom Wood

spread from Photie Man, 2005
© Tom Wood

Pick up a copy for yourself here.

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