pretend that you're actually alive

Leigh Ledare, a freshly minted Columbia MFA, has just produced a complicated and disturbingly voyeuristic book, Pretend You're Actually Alive. Published by PPP Editions, the book coincides with his solo show at Andrew Roth, who runs the press. The work is a dark collaborative exploration of Leigh's mother, their relationship, the damage of fame and victimization. As the press release states,

[PYAC] can be viewed as an archive of a mother and son’s shared, private moments amidst the desperate attempts to renew her identity as a dancer – this ­time working as a stripper in a club beside her parents’ apartment. Pretend You’re Actually Alive is also a mapping of Ledare’s mother’s efforts to commodify herself –initially through her precocious childhood talent, later through her overt sexuality, and eventually through the portrayal of herself as an archetypal victim – in efforts to find companionship, attention, financial security, and a benefactor before her youthful, marketable currencies expire.

Combining archival momentos and notes with frank and graphic photographs, the work continues in the intensely personal documentary tradition of Larry Clark (Ledare was the still-photo from Clark's film Ken Park), Nan Goldin, Richard Billingham and even Jim Goldberg. Coming home one holiday, Leigh visit his mom, who lived next door to his grandparents, and she answered the door naked -- dramatically announcing she was now a stripper. His mom, once a famous ballerina, was stripping at a local club and working through a series of abusive relationships in a desperate attempt to maintain and affirm her beauty and talent, and garner the attention and affection of wealthy patrons and boyfriends, who offered her the possibility of financial security.


© Leigh Ledare, All Rights Reserved.

I'm typically wary of personal photojournalistic work - because more often than not the peculiarities of the person's life (or their approach) rarely merit sustained attention. More recently, the trend for self-involved hipsters to document themselves getting drunk or cavorting about naked seems to offers little beyond the initial voyeuristic excitement. At the same time, the kind of self-destructive lifestyle and drama that fuels much similar work can also be a trap and misleading foundation that props up otherwise thin work. Ledare's work seems to avoid this danger and explores deeper issues of intimacy, the collapse and evolution of a mother and son relationship, co-dependency, performance and authorship. In many ways, the work is a performative investigation and collaboration btw Ledare and his mother about her and their relationship.


© Leigh Ledare, All Rights Reserved.

The book is quite beautiful and comes softbound in a slip-case. The book is divided into chapters with photographs mixed in with various typed and hand-written notes, archival photos, and diary entries that recount what are fictional and truthful events in Leigh and his mother's life. The show is up at Andrew Roth until mid-June and the book can be purchased there or here.

bye bye photography

© Daido Moriyamo, All Rights Reserved

Sometimes I think the Japanese got it right all along - f*#k the print, long live the book. Having to contend with limited gallery opportunities, the photo book industry flourished in Japan and they developed innovative ways to push the boundaries of the printed image. This thought crossed my mind again when I went to Christie's in anticipation of their photobook auction next week. The previews don't open until next week - but I wanted to take a peek at the catalog - and see a few of the treasures like Yutaka Takanashi's Toshi-e, Towards a City, issues of Provoke and William Eggleston's Morals of Vision.

After looking at the catalog, I walked through the Contemporary Art Auction previews - which reminded me why I don't like auctions. Art work in all states of disrepair hung with a loose effort to create a vaguely meaningful dialog - after all it is a sale, not a show. There are a few photographs for sale - and with a few exceptions they looked like sad rejects cast off by their owners before they faded into oblivion. A relatively early Gursky (1993) had not only faded and developed a sickly jaundiced pallor but also looked like it was barely clinging to its diasec mount. It reminded me of the shock I felt at the Thomas Struth retrospective at the Met, where most of the prints had a noticeable magenta or yellow cast - suggesting their owners had placed them next to their windows and long hours of sunlight.


© Daido Moriyamo, All Rights Reserved

Perhaps it is the willful disregard of the "fine print" that seems refreshing in the face of over-sized megaprints. Artist's such as Daido Moriyama, Kikuji Kawada, Yutaka Takanashi and others (including American artists such as Lee Friedlander and the incredible John Gossage), have all used the book to magnificent ends. Give me a copy of Moriyama's bye bye photography (Shashin yo Sayonara) (1972) or Kawada's The Map (1965) over a sickly Gursky anyday.


© Daido Moriyamo, All Rights Reserved

Mark Steinmetz - South East

Following up on his beautiful book South Central, Mark Steinmetz and Nazreali will be releasing South East in June 2008. Although I've written about Steinmetz before, he seems like one of those photographers who is consistently present (i.e., Blindspot, exhibitions etc...), but somehow eludes wider acclaim. Perhaps the fact that he works in B/W and in a more traditional social documentarian mode, has led some to dismiss the elegant and poetic beauty of his photographs and see his work as somehow less contemporary. Photographing mainly in the South - Tennessee, Georgia, and Louisiana - Steinmetz captures a life lived on the periphery of the American Dream, yet a life that is still touched by grace and beauty.


© Mark Steinmetz, All Rights Reserved


© Mark Steinmetz, All Rights Reserved


© Mark Steinmetz, All Rights Reserved

these birds walk

© Mike Brodie, All Rights Reserved

these birds walk, the excellent series of books published by Paul Schiek, has announced the next round of books in the kin series. The next round promises an exciting mix of familiar and new names - Alec Soth, Todd Hido, Marianne Muller and Abner Nolan. They aren't taking subscriptions yet, but it should be up soon.

I still love looking at Mike Brodie's book from the first round, which featured Polaroid snapshots and portraits from his trainhoppin' adventures around the US. Jim Goldberg's book is coming out shortly and I can't wait. The series received a lot of attention when it first came out, but it is worth revisiting since the next round is coming up. While much DIY efforts can be self-aggrandizing and largely forgettable, it is nice to see a project producing exciting new work that skirts the edges of the ever expanding photo publishing world.

the idea of order

© Robert Adams, All Rights Reserved

The form the photographer records, though discovered in a split second of literal fact, is different because it implies an order beyond itself, a landscape into which all fragments, no matter how imperfect, fit perfectly. -Robert Adams

a shimmer of possibility

From A-1: The Great North Road to Empty Heaven, Paul Graham has been incredibly adept at exploring and expanding the potential of social documentary practice. As an artist who has continually reinvented and pushing himself to explore the potentials of the medium, Graham's latest work, a shimmer of possibility, is an amazing contribution not only to his complex body of work, but to the medium as well. In a time when the photographic default, not only critically and institutionally, are often monumental images that blur the lines between cinema and the still-image, Graham's complex and subtle work has reinvigorated the tradition of social documentary photography.

At once sumptuous and nondescript, the gorgeous rainbow hued volumes contain sequences of such quiet grace that it would be easy to initially dismiss them as casual throw offs that any "serious" photography would have either never printed or deleted from their digital camera. While containing their own individual strengths, the real beauty comes from the ways in which the images are woven together in what the photographer has called "filmic haikus." Each book contains a short sequence of images that are connected thematically - from a book that only contains one amazing image of a decaying Camero to the complex ballet of a New Orleans street corner spread out over 60 images. Influenced by the short stories of Chekhov, each book is a gem of a short story that reveals the often complicated, disturbing, and at times beautiful, reality of America in the 21st century.

To read more about the books, check out these reviews: here and here.


© Paul Graham, All Rights Reserved

Hyena Men and Honey Collectors

© Pieter Hugo, All Rights Reserved

Pieter Hugo, an incredible photographer based in South Africa, is having his first NY solo show at Yossi Milo Gallery from Nov. 29 to Jan. 12. The opening is tonight from 6-8pm. The show draws on two amazing bodies of work - Hyena Men and Honey Collectors. The Hyena Men, which was shot in Nigeria documents roaming troupes of animal charmers/performers, who use wild baboons, hyenas and snakes. The Honey Collectors was shot in Ghana and documents men, who don cassava leaves and climb the up into the rainforest canopy to collect and sell the honey. Pieter has produced a number of great documentary series on Africa and is beginning to get much deserved international recognition.


© Pieter Hugo, All Rights Reserved

Not Yet Titled

In my final year of grad school, I picked up a postcard with the Susan Lipper image below and was entranced - in fact, it still sits on my bookshelf. At the time, I was working on a series of large scale diptychs and had not resolved all the issues of the work. While my work wasn't really succeeding, I was attracted to the messy, problematic inconsolability of the images. Although radically different, Lipper's work offered hope that the differences, ruptures and questions that arose from the pairing could become part of the work and enrich its meaning.


© Susan Lipper, All Rights Reserved

Lipper's series, Not Yet Titled (1999-2004), is a fascinating and thorny exploration of post-cold war angst. As she states,

Functioning as a time capsule of associations, this series is perhaps more defined by its dates than by words. The images began as a loose narrative in 1999. At the time, I found myself drawn to military and Cold War references. Equally I was seeking an unembodied vantage point, one not set in a specific geographic locale.


© Susan Lipper, All Rights Reserved

Although well-known for her book Grapevine, a portrait of rural West Virginia, her work can also be found in the excellent book Trip, which is readily available and criminally cheap. Paired with the short fiction of Frederick Barthelme, the book is a "fictional non-narrative" and follows a enigmatic road trip through the arcane corners of America. It rare to find a smart take on the exhausted road trip genre and Lipper succeeds.