Publish it Yourself

PiY
Publish it Yourself
is an event focusing on self-published photobooks

PiY is being held 9-11 September 2011, at Maison d’art Bernard Anthonioz in Nogent sur Marne

Laurence Vecten shows her selection of books, compiled in a catalogue.
This year PiY is focusing on artists Preston is my Paris, their work and publications.

Various events punctuate the week-end :
– a workshop with Preston is my Paris
– a workshop with Boehm Kobayashi
– a talk with Frédéric Teschner, Preston is my Paris, Boehm Kobayashi, Laurence Vecten, moderated by Rémi Coignet
– OFF-PiY : books out of the selection

If you wish your book to be presented in OFF-PiY,

publishityourself (at) gmail.com

PiY
Publish it Yourself
une exposition de livres de photographie auto-publiés.

PiY a lieu les 9, 10 et 11 Septembre 2011 à la Maison d’art Bernard Anthonioz, à Nogent sur Marne.
Laurence Vecten y présente une sélection de livres de photos auto-publiés, consignée dans un catalogue.
Dans cette deuxième édition, l’accent est mis sur le travail et les publications du duo d’artistes Preston is my Paris.

En marge de cette sélection, différents évènements ponctuent le week-end :
– un workshop de Preston is my Paris
– un workshop avec Boehm Kobayashi (avec le Bal)
– une conférence avec Frédéric Teschner, Preston is my Paris, Boehm Kobayashi, Laurence Vecten, modérée par Rémi Coignet
– OFF-PiY : la présentation de livres hors sélection

publishityourself (at) gmail.com

see also LOZ, Laurence Vecten’s blog

Nofound to New Documents

Nofound to New Documents #1 is a travelling exhibition (on-line/off-line) curated by young photography intensive seeker Emeric Glayse. The exhibition is based on the website Nofound he founded a couple of years ago. The idea was to show unedited, intimate and diary snapshots pictures, mostly of young emerging photographers, and from a few more established ones.

From the web to the exhibition space, the show will evolve with time and space, with a first stop in London  at Viktor Wynd Fine Art. This art gallery is also a place to find all sorts of travel discoveries and treasures from collector Victor Wynd, which reminds of Emeric’s work, spending extensive time seeking images on the internet. This first subjective retrospective materializes an obsessional relationship Emeric has with photography and photographers, based on sensitivity and a powerful desire to discover. A matter of feelings.

(Read these two interesting interviews of Emeric on Dazed Digital : this one on Nofound, this other one on Nofound to New Documents)

Installation view of the exhibition Nofound to New Documents, Victor Wynd Fine Art, London

 

The exhibition name is a wink to John Szarkowski’s exhibition New Documents, one of the first museum exhibition dedicated to snapshot photography, with the works Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand (Moma, 1967). The photos were exhibited as a line of small framed prints. A concept that shapes Nofound to New Documents #1 ‘s installation, and a way to link with the original blogroll structure of Nofound.

The new website dedicated to the exhibiton will also be an evolving space and a base for the future exhibitions. This makes Nofound to new document a refreshing in progress curatorial project.

Installation view of the exhibition New Documents, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1967. Photo Diane Arbus.

Participating photographers include Agnes Thor, Alexander Binder, Ana Kraš, Bjarne Bare, Chris Heads, Elena Chernyak, Elinor Carucci, Emanuele Cardesi, Erik Van Der Weijde, Giasco Bertoli, Henry Roy, Jackson Eaton, Jerry Hsu, Jonnie Craig, Keiichi Nitta, Lina Scheynius, Linus Bill, Logan White, Nicole Lesser, Noël Loozen, Olivia Malone, Peter Sutherland, Peter Zachary Voelker, Philippe Gerlach, Rasha Kahil, Ren Hang, Rikki Kasso, Roberto Rubalcava, Thobias Fäldt, Todd Fisher, Tod Seelie, Valia Fetisov, Vincent Delbrouck and Yi-Qing Liu.

Lina Scheynius, Untitled from Diary Summer 2009, 2009
Inkjet print on Baryta paper, 24cm x 16cm (9.4″ x 6.3″), Ed. of 9.

Vincent Delbrouck, 003 from A grass fire, 2009
Inkjet print on Baryta paper, 24cm x 16cm (9.4″ x 6.3″), Ed. of 9.

The exhibition runs through February 28, 2011
Viktor Wynd Fine Art
11 Mare street, E8
London, UK

Silver & Silver

Silverpoetics projects on a lighter form now also on tumblr, with daily posts of single images.

http://silversilver.tumblr.com/

Dérive

Guy Debord and Situationist the Theory of the Derive, and Pyschogeography.

I recently came across the essay “The Poetics of the Derive” written by Vincent Kaufmann. Not being that familiar with Debord’s Derive, and only slightly informed of its predecessor from the Surrealist Andre Breton and his walks through Paris, it quickly raised many questions to tackle. Most specifically the idea of looking at the early photographic works of Eugene Atget, and his systematic walks through Paris cataloging the ephemeral Paris of his time. One which was being demolished to make way for the Modern streets and boulevards that Debord and the Situationist would later lament in the same manner Atget did before. Yet, how might this theoretical construct of the Derive apply to the large amount of contemporary urbanscape photography found in the United States. And even more interesting the actual activity the photographer performs in order to find these locations.

Debord’s Derive is not simple a walk through the streets of the city, of chance encounters. Instead one must move rapidly and decisively through the urban space, with intention. When possible the practice should not be done alone, but in groups of two or three. They should be aware of their surroundings, of the “…ecological analysis of the absolute or relative character of fissures in the urban network, of the role of microclimates, of distinct neighborhoods with no relation to administrative boundaries, and above all of the dominating action of centers of attraction…” (link to essay) Thus the most talented photographers who’s oeuvre includes the investigation of the urbanscape. The walk itself, the interaction of operator, camera, and site breaks down the normal relationship we have with public urban spaces. Their activity alone is the Derive.

Breaking the rules of theory to return to Eugen Atget melancholic catalog of a ghostly Paris that is no longer. His photographs present to us the sites slated to be demolished, of the concrete reality of the demolition not just of squares and houses, but of the intricate means and subtle variations of the daily social realities created and maintained through public works and layout.

The pyschogeography. Atget’s photographs of a forgotten urbanscapes now stand like so many rectangular ghost, an archive of ephemera, of power structures that have morphed, shifted, become temporal and translucent. They function as nostalgic tombstones, racked nicely in a file, viewed sequentially, ordered and precise. Are Atget’s photographs any less powerful than they were in his time period? Or does the contemporary viewer see them only as quaint post cards, a romantic bygone era of a dirtier, grimmer, Paris leaving out the pychogeography of that site and the site that will replace it?

If Atget’s photographs have lost their power to be anything more than romantic nostalgic post cards and coffee table books, then what of the contemporary photographers working within the urbanscape. Their photographs present tangible realities, visual stand ins of the power structures, specifically in the United States. Yet is the mere representation of these sites enough, does it go far enough to instigate more than just chance encounters for the viewer looking at the photographs. And what of the Modernist aesthetic formal qualities laid over these sites. Atget’s Paris is grimy, dark, moody. Contemporary urbanscape photographs are made to be as beautiful as they are not in reality. The photographers activity of finding these sites is the derive, the photograph itself is the pyschogeography, the questioning. But unlike the gritty ghost of Atget’s Paris, their contemporary formal presentation, high gloss, bright colours, fends off the questions raised by their derive. Instead the viewer is left with one word, nostalgia. The photograph becomes a representation of the United States political landscape and the power structures in play as it slowly turns and morphs. Instead of critical action and engagement, we mourn. The United States is changing and morphing its political and social power structures while its identity as super power declines. Its intial status symbols and sturctures that came to represent power have shifted, take on new meaning. Like so many tombstones the contemporary photographic formal aesthetic and their beautiful rendering of the dynamic and shifting urbanscape moots any possible critical interaction. Instead we are presented with lovely nostalgia, and pretty memento mori.

Grant W. Ray

http://grantray.blogspot.com/2009/06/debords-derive-and-pyschogeography.html

see also :

http://www.lepointdujour.eu/fr/psychogeographie

Ruins of our world

A post from Mrs. Deane

Döbrököz

Dombovar

“… We could not immediately find out where the depicted ruins are (or were) located. The Hungarian names might just have been that: Hungarian versions of geographical names (and they have some funny ones: Lengyelorzsag for Poland, no one has been able to explain me this), but they could also have been names for places that once belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire or parts of Trans-sylvania, now Romania. I did a short web query and found out that, yes, there are many many ruins in Romania (see e.g. this web-archive), but I could not locate these particular ones. Not that it really matters, we are not planning to re-photograph them, and it is the photographs we are interested in, and how they can transform a place and give it a new presence. I don’t how this is for other people, but for me photography is so little about the what of the image and so much about the how it lets appear things, people, situations. Perhaps that is why it is not a problem for me to see, for example, twenty different portfolio’s made in another recent ruinous place, New Orleans. What could be a problem, is if they all look the same to me. It simply cannot be [or perhaps I should say: I refuse to believe] that a certain place appears the same to each and every photographer that comes along. It would be the death of plurality if a thing or a place has a singular mode of being present in the minds of its beholders, and that, to me, would be the real ruin of our world.”

Mrs. Deane : nothing is too amazing to be true

Mrs. Deane

“Nothing is too amazing to be true”

Hand tinted image. Otaue shinji (Rice planting rites) in Sumiyoshi taisha in Osaka.

visit Mrs Deane blog at :

http://www.beikey.net/mrs-deane/