Sally Mann - The Family and the Land

Going to this Sally Mann exhibition felt like a trip down memory lane, for as a photographic lecturer I have become so familiar with the images of Jessie, Emmett and Virginia, that it feels more like looking at pictures of my extended family. I’ve read so many essays on the ethereal qualities, captured innocence and deliberate provocation, that I am now incapable of decoding these images, it feels like an argument that has gone on to late into the night, the origins of which have long been lost. This early work of man, Immediate Family, now feels to me like stills from a favourite film, filling me with a warm nostalgic reminiscence for the first time I experienced them.
If you are anything other than completely familiar with this early work of Mann’s, then I urge you to go along and see this show, which remains at The Photographer Gallery, London until Sept 19th.
Also on show are her truly engaging ‘Civil War’ landscapes, entitled, Deep South, these images record significant sites from the war; only in true Mann style, there is a sense of narrative, of a visual journey to be had when looking at these images. They feel like gateways to a story, as if they might open up and allow you to step into the world beyond.
The final series on display is What Remains, a set of images or portraits of decomposing bodies; Mann seems to take the same sensitive, loving approach to these macabre images as she employs when shooting her children at play. Ultimately, despite their beauty, I found it difficult to dwell in this part of the gallery and headed back out for one last moment with Emmitt, Virginia and Jessie.
For more details on this show click here.

Henryk Ross - Lodz Ghetto

April 30, 1940. Today marks the seventieth anniversary of the Nazis sealing off the Lodz Ghetto from the outside world, with 230.000 Jews confined within.
One of these Jews, Henryk Ross, has provided us with a unique perspective of what life was really like within the confines of a ghetto.



In these pictures taken in the Lodz Ghetto, we see the holocaust from some unfamiliar perspectives; this Jewish photographer, employed by the Nazi statistics department to document the production of goods for the Nazis, created the broadest portrait of life during one of mankind’s darkest hours.
Although there is an ultimate sadness in these images, for the simple reason that we have the knowledge that almost all of those portrayed lost their lives in the holocaust; the emotions felt when looking at the scenes portrayed are complex and many; there is the unfamiliar depiction of moments of joy, a wedding or bar mitzvah, yet I feel a sense of unease sharing these moments with those depicted, for it is difficult to comprehend the idea of happiness or joy in a ghetto that acted as a staging post to the death camps; there are depictions which show complicity with the Nazis and hints at a surviving order of social status within the ghetto; all things which momentarily confuse my desire for a black and white sense of what is right and wrong, but these images merely show us the complex nature of being human and of the ability to seek out moments of joy in situations where it is almost incomprehensible. I have heard tale of a passenger in a lifeboat watching the titanic sinking who commented on the beauty of the moon lit scene. These images of Ross’ remind me that we are complex creatures, capable of complex behaviour, emotions and responses.
Click here for more images.
On Aug 6th 1944 the 60.000 remaining Jews at Lodz were sent to Auschwitz as the ghetto was liquidated. Henryk is one a handful that where to survive, he returned to Lodz to reclaim the negatives he had wisely buried; affording us this unique portrait.

Una Corda, by David Creedon

As photographers we’ve all stumbled upon locations which make the heart race, the kind of environments where you could trip up with a camera and still end up with a good shot (in fact I did just that in Hungary a few years back, whilst belly flopping to the ground, camera in hand, I saw that I was about to loose the shot to an oncoming bus, so managed to keep the camera straight, I released the shutter and snapped a rather good shot, just prior to my elbow bruising landing). This seeking out and transposing of locations is at the heart of what so many photographers do, so I am in no way taking anything away from the David Creedon’s work, which does this with such aplomb.
Entitled “Una Corda” after the unique arrangement between Ireland and Cuba, where visitors from Ireland take piano pieces to the trade embargoed tuners of Cuba. Creedon visited and photographed the piano-tuning workshops in the heart of Havana, where once all the tuners had been blind, a communist matching of skills to ability that is unthinkable today. These images which imbue in me the kind of romanticism I first felt, when aged fourteen, as I looked at a small reproduction of ‘from the Back Window, 291’, By Alfred Stieglits, 1915, NY (right).

They transpose you to an almost mythical place, that were you able to visit, could only fail to live up to the beauty captured so precisely and soulfully by such artists as Creedon and Stieglitz.
David Creed sets out to illuminate a story about Irish compassion and the musical heritage of Cuba; but these images are far more than illustrations of an international pact, these depictions of deserted workshops speak of a different world before the iron curtain fell, of tropical sunlight and soulful musicians, who’s only presence is now to be found in handprints left in the dust.
This and other work by David Creedon can be seen here:
Click here:

New Trees by Robert Voit, a typology of sorts

As a man with a few typologies to my name, I am always on the look out for intriguing new examples, and in this set by Robert Voit, we find a real treat; over a period of seven years he has collected image of ‘disguised’ telephone masts from around the globe, from one in the guise of a cactus in Arizona to the rather less obvious choice of a withered tree in Hundon Haverhill, UK; these modern day portals of communication hide their true ‘nature’ as they pretend to be just that. New trees, is worth a view.

Click here

Adobe Photoshop hits 20!

It was in the ignogral year of Photoshop in 1990, that I was taken into a small college computer room, at Exeter College. The room was equipt with black and white Apple Mac classics. I did not know then that I was using cutting edge software, but the now familair names of Thomas Knoll and John Knoll greeted me on the loading page with the words Photoshop Copyrigh 1989-90 Adobe Systems Incorporate.
Bewitched by the ability to grafitti my name on a picture of a wall, or add a third eye to someones head, I started a long romance with PS. Layers came along in Photoshop 3, followed by an extensive range of Blending modes etc. Photoshop itslef has become so powerful a creative tool, that of late I have switched to its brother application, the more work load friendly Adobe Lightroom, to manage and subtly manipulate my files; but Photoshop is still the daddy.
I raise a glass to you Photoshop, may the romance continue.