Pollock, NUG .. Steinert

                                              Jackson Pollock in action ....

                                NUG in relaxing mode .......

                                                  Otto Steinert, 1952

Couldnt resist Part 5 |  In the late 1940´s and early 1950´s, Jackson Pollock was noted for his so called "action paintings". Six decades later David Geffen sold his Pollock action painted "No5" canvas for $140 million. In 2009, graffiti artist NUG showed his video "Territorial pissing" on the Art Fair Market in Stockholm ... the video created some "short-lived" scandal in Swedish media but made NUG famous overnight. These action painting reminds me, of course..., of photographer Otto Steinert´s mystical light experiments where he tried to document a movement through time and space ... anyways, check these cool videos.

                                                 
                              

Hisaji "Balthus" Hara

                                       Photo|  Hisaji Hara

Don´t miss this show! The one exhibition not to miss in Feb./March is Japanese photographer Hisaji Hara´s show at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London. Hara, a graphic designer and film-maker by background, has over the last five years recreated some of artist Balthus most famous paintings into photographs. Not the most unique concept, but with Haras photographs I forget about the concept .... Maybe because his photographs are so beautiful and have a kind of timeless feel ..... Interview with Hara here

                                               Balthus

                                         Johann Heinrich Fusslis version, 1802

Tetsuo - The Iron Man

Couldn´t resist Part 4 | Film clip/trailer from Japanese cyberpunk masterpiece "Tetsuo- The Iron Man" by cult-film director Shinya Tsukamoto [1989]. This low budget film is extremely graphic, great photo/cinematography by Kei Fujiwara which bring me to mind of the aesthetics in Daido Moriyama books.

                                     Cinematographer and actress: Kei Fujiwara

Andy Warhol´s polaroids

It is exactly 25 years ago that, the man, the myth, the legend "for more than 15 minutes", died unexpectedly in New York after a routine operation of his gallbladder. Moderna Museet/Malmö is now showing some of his polaroids in an exhibition called "Ladies and Gentlemen". In this show, also featuring other stars like Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Samuel Fosso, Tracey Moffatt, Moderna focuses on Warhols obsession with celebrities, from movie stars, rock stars, industrialists, Factory-hang arounds to Studio 54 wannabies ... Warhol published three books on photography [one posthumously], Andy Warhols´s Exposure [1979], America [1985] and Andy Warhol´s Party Book [1988]. Maybe not the best photobooks I have .. if you need a Warhool book go for the fantastic "Index".

                                 | Index [1967]

                             | Exposure [1979] ...  feat. one celebrity from Sweden

Robert Adams ...

                                         Photo | Robert Adams

If one is interested in contemporary art, street art and photography, London is the place to be .. I guess. Tomorrow opens a show at the Timothy Taylor Gallery, simply called "Robert Adams, Robert Bechtle and Ewan Gibbs". Adams, the only photographer in the exhibition, is most known for his documentation of west Americas changing landscape and its disappearing wilderness due to human exploitation. On this exhibition he will be showing a selection of his black and white photographs from the 1970´s of the "sometimes brutal [?]" urban development in the Denver, Colorado areas.
Adams photographs became more or less famous through the book The New West [1974] and the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape [1975] at MOMA. Since then he has published fantastic books on regular basis, often with the same theme "the humans that altered landscape". Bibliography here.
I asked a collector about which Adams-book is most important in a collection, the instant answer was ... "The New West" and "Listening to the River" [of course, I don´t have River]. One other favorite Adams book is "Turning Back". This book is, as I read it, his most critical response to the timber industry when it almost act like a corporate warfare against the wilderness.

                                    Robert Adams | Turning Back [2010]

Pixadores

Couldn´t resist Part 3 |  Pixacao [aka Pixadores] - not photography but contemporary art on "high level" or ...created in the economic capitol of Brazil, Sao Paulo.... Check more about this unique art-movement in the excellent book "Pixacao: Sao Paulo Signature" [Xg Press].

Black Sabbath

                                         Get well soon, Tony!  | Photo: J.Angel

I've never worshipped anything ...... except for Daido Moriyama´s "third eye vision" and Tony Iommi´s [Black Sabbath] heavy melodic guitar-riffing, so I was looking forward to two big events during 2012 .. Moriyamas monster exhibition at Tate Modern [Oct.] "Moriyama vs Klein" and Black Sabbath´s reunion tour. Reading now that the Black Sabbath tour is cancelled due to Tony Iommi´s health situation [according to various rumours]. To be updated, I've just read Tony´s autobiography plus other Sabbath related books but I can´t find any book with "classic" Sabbath photo:s ... I´m wondering ... are there any "classic" photography books that illustrate rock [not related to magazines] at all? Genesis Publications published loads of nice books but any classics?

              Jimmy Page  "The photographic autobiography" | Genesis-publications

So, what about collecting vintage rock photos? Of course, there are loads of great photographers documenting rock ... Corbijn, Fin Costello, Bob Gruen, Gered Mankowitz - but buying vintage prints from them is currently an expensive hobby. However, there are of course cheaper alternatives for the average collector with a more modest budget. Check out Jorgen Angel´s site .. here you can find a couple of nice and affordable vintage prints. If you like Hendrix go to this site and browse around for cool photos that Bruce Fleming shot at the Monterey Festival 1967.



 Hendrix at Monterey Festival.|  Photo: Bruce Fleming







Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin |  Photo: Jorgen Angel

Peter Duggan´s Artoons

                                  Lichtenstein goes bezerk! ..... by: Peter Duggan

Couldn´t resist Part 2 : Borrowed this cool comic strip från The Guardian´s web. Artist is the highly talented  "artoonist" Peter Duggan. Hope he will do something on Garry Winogrand soon .. should be pretty damn brutal ....

Photo ... montage.

                                      Photomontage by:  KennardPhillipps

What is photography? Could you consider a photo-montage as real photograph or... Well, I´m certainly not a photography critic or photo-philosopher attempting to analyze photographs and to give big "Dinosaur" theories here and there. Sadly, but when it comes to theories about what is photography [i.e. photo-montage] I always feel bored, dazed and sometimes confused ... Basically, who cares if Andreas Gursky is a photographer or visionary .. or both. Anyways, if you never seen the photo-montage art by the duo KennardPhillipps before, you need to check this ..KP . Furthermore, in 2011 Peter Kennard published a nice book entitled @ earth [Tate Publishing]. At last, .. if you want to know what photography is you can try to read this text by James Elkin or Francois Laruelle´s book "On the Concept of Non-photography [Urbanomic]". Good luck!




@earth | Peter Kennard

"I take my hat off to you Sir, @ earth looks great" [BANKSY].

Liu Zheng !!

                                 Photo | LIU ZHENG

Sergio Larrain [1931-2012]

                                  
The Chilean photographer Sergio Larrain passed away last week at his home in Chile. He became a member of the prestigious Magnum Agency in the early sixties. During a very short and intense period he produced some high quality works [magnum] before entering the world of mysticism in a small village somewhere in Chile. At the age of 35, he finally decided to give up on photography to fully concentrate on his study of Eastern culture and mysticism.
Unfortunately, as in the case with the Swedish photographer Kenneth Gustavsson, there´s not much written about this remarkable talented photographer. And, of course, its also more or less impossible to find most of his short list of published books. I guess his last book, "London" [Dewi Lewis]/"Londres" [Hazan ed.] is the easiest to find. To find out more about Larrain and his published "hard to get" books, click here

Stray Dog in Santiago ..... ? Photo |  Sergio Larrain

Anders Petersen | "City Diary"

Copyright |  ANDERS PETERSEN.SE

During this weekend the exhibition "City Diary"  opened at Abecita corsettfabrik Konstmuseum in Borås by one of Swedens finest, Anders Petersen. The exhibition consists of images that was photographed between 2004-2008. Petersen uses the title of this exhibition as some kind of collective name for his cityscapes images. In this version [Borås, that is] he includes photographs taken in Paris, Rome, Nice, St.Petersburg, St Etienne and Stockholm.

Petersen has also published more than 20 very collectible photography books that are often perceived as personal diaries. Recommended titles:

@ Cafe Lehmitz                               @  From Back Home                                

Yasuhiro Ishimoto R.I.P.

                                            Photo | Yasuhiro Ishimoto [1921-2012]

The highly renowned Japanese-American photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto, who was one of the participants in John Szarkowskis legendary exhibition "New Japanese Photography" at MOMA [1974],  died yesterday at the age of 90. Ishimoto published loads of "a collectors dream" books ....

                                         

Someday, Somewhere [1958] .... High End collectors dream

Exhibition catalogue | New Japanese Photography [1974] ... more affordable

Billy MONK on the edge!

                                                Billy Monk [Dewi Lewis, 2012]

It seems that 2012 will be a good year for collectors of photobooks. I have just received Gerry Johansson´s excellent Öglunda-opus and now two new interesting titles are in the pipeline. Both released through Dewi Lewis Publishing, "Les amies de Place Blanche" is a re-released [originally published in 1983] "hard to find in antiquarian book-shops" title by Christer Strömholm where he focused on the transsexual community living around the Place Blanche arrondiisement of Paris in the late 50´s and early 60´s, the second is a book simply entitled Billy Monk. According to the publisher Billy worked as a "quite hard and brutal" nightclub bouncher at the "sleazy" Les Catacomb Club in Cape Town during the 60`s. One day he suddently decided to make a living taking photographs instead of bounching. "He originally began taking pictures in the club with the intention of selling the photographs to the customers - the people he was photographing. His aim was not to make a social statement, but his money-making scheme quickly turned into something else as he increasingly captured the raw energy of the club, its decadence and tragedy, its humanity and joy". He stopped taking pictures at the club in the late 60`s. His work was many years later exhibited at Market Gallery in Johannesburg. Sadly, he never saw his photos on his first exhibition .. two weeks after the exhibition opened, he was going to see the show when he became involved in a devastating argument which resulted in a fatal fight. Monk was shot dead in the chest.
Monk-pictures here

Öglunda by Gerry Johansson

Öglunda | Gerry Johansson [2012]

Just released: Öglunda by Swedens best photographer, Gerry Johansson. Highly recommended ..... Look inside here.

BEST PHOTO ON PLANET: DAIDO MORIYAMA

Daido using his Ricoh | Photo borrowed from here

 DAIDO Moriyama has always been my photographic hero, but I often find myself in hopeless discussions about why he is so good and sometimes I feel it´s difficult trying to explain his complex philosophy on photography. For example, how can you defend some images in the "homage to Holga" book T-82? Not that simple and I´m not going (or trying) to summarize his thoughts here because I guess the best way to approach Daido (to understand his art) is simply to buy a copy [DVD] of the documentary "Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog of Tokyo", which give some good in-depth discussions/thoughts about his philosophy on photography. "Memories of a Dog", his self-biography book, is also excellent reading. Is there any originality in photography ... or not?

                                          Daido Moriyama |  T-82