Category Archives: Photography

On Portraiture by Teju Cole

There’s Less to Portraits Than Meets the Eye, and More

By Teju Cole

Portraiture existed long before photography was invented. And for more than a dozen years after photography’s invention, it was practically impossible to make a photographic portrait: the required exposure times were too long. But the two eventually came together, and now their pairing seems so natural that it’s as though photography was invented for making portraits…. read more

Carte de visite of Sojourner Truth, around 1864.CreditFrom the American Antiquarian Society

Meryl Meisler: Vintage 70s Self-Portraits 

Playing dress up and shooting self-portraits at her parents’ house in the suburbs coaxed Meryl Meisler out of the closet and into herself.

Vintage 70s Selfies Show an Artist Discovering Her Sexuality

“Growing up in Long Island during the 1950s and 60s, Meryl Meisler had the typical suburban life: girl Scouts, ballet and tap dance lessons, and prom. But while she loved her family and friends, she didn’t quite fit in. She quickly realized she didn’t want to be a housewife, teacher, nurse, or a secretary—pretty much the only options available to young women at that time…” [read more]

{They should be referred to as self-portraits! http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/whats-the-difference-between-a-selfie-and-a-self-portrait/}

Regarding the Pain of Trump

Regarding the Pain of Trump – Los Angeles Review of Books

by Rebecca Chace

A brilliant reflection on re-reading Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others and the power and danger of images and need to be more than passive witnesses.

Images of suffering and atrocity now have unparalleled access to our most intimate spaces. Most of us keep that connection open in our pockets or in the palm of our hands….

We are vulnerable to images just as we are vulnerable to propaganda. Our visceral experience of violent and disturbing images has changed not only because of the unprecedented speed of their transmission but also because there is no longer any mediation between these images and the viewer. Media outlets used to edit what images were permissible to share with the public. Now, if we have access to the technology, we can share directly with each other in real time. There is true political power in the removal of the mediator, but as there is more to respond to, there is proportionally more emotional instability.

Read entire essay >

 

The Forms and Functions of Photobooks


“A book in an object, and its very properties cannot be approached without considering its content.”
The Forms and Functions of Photobooks (1)

The Forms and Functions of Photobooks (2)

The Forms and Functions of Photobooks (3)

The Forms and Functions of Photobooks (4)

The Forms and Functions of Photobooks (5)

from Joerg Colberg’s online photography magazine, featuring photographer profiles, interviews, articles, and book reviews.

Cindy Sherman: ‘Why am I in these photos?’

Cindy Sherman: ‘Why am I in these photos?’| The Guardian

Photographer Cindy Sherman talks about a difficult childhood, her compulsion to dress up, growing older – and why she now prefers to live alone.

…”A flick through the photographs in her current retrospective exhibition in LA reveals her transformed into 20 kinds of matinee starlet, Hitchcock lead, pneumatic Monroe, terrified centrefold, crime-scene corpse, old master muse, cut-up sex doll, Republican wife, clown; both as determinedly absent and iconically present in her work as Andy Warhol once was in his.” [read entire article]

Cindy Sherman in front of her work at the Broad museum, Los Angeles, where a major retrospective of her work is taking place. Photograph: Dan Tuffs for the Observer

Frederick Douglass’s Faith in Photography

Frederick Douglass’s Faith in Photography
How the former slave and abolitionist became the most photographed man in America.
By Matthew Pratt Guterl, New Republic

“New, cheaper techniques of reproduction, Douglass believed, allowed for a truer, more precise impression of the person on display. They also made it possible for the subject of the photograph to determine, to some extent, how people read and understood the image. Frame by frame, the authors of the volume show how carefully Douglass tried—in an age where, for so many people of color, this was simply unimaginable—to control meaning.” [read complete article]