Photography

LONELY LONDON NIGHTS

The Editors — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:35:55 +0000

Sunday nights are a time of regrouping, of wandering, of staring into the abyss. The fundamental loneliness of a Sunday night, particularly one in winter, is beautifully captured by Peter Kindersley in our brand new slideshow. These are images of poetic desolation.

THE Q&A: PATTIE BOYD, MUSE, PHOTOGRAPHER

Laura Parker — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:08:38 +0000

She married one of the Beatles, divorced him, married Eric Clapton, hung out with the Rolling Stones, drank with the Who, toured with Cream. Pattie Boyd has some stories. Like other Beatles plus-ones early on, she kept to the background. She occupied herself by taking Polaroid pictures, serendipitously documenting one of the most important eras of music history (her photos can be seen on her website).

After years of struggling with her past—the broken marriages and knock-on effects of a rock‘n’roll lifestyle—Boyd was able to write about her experiences. Her biography, "Wonderful Today", which debuted at the top of the New York Times best-seller list in 2007, begins in Kenya, where she spent her early childhood. She then recounts her modelling career in London, her time with the Beatles and her role in inspiring such songs as “Something”, “Layla” and “Wonderful Tonight”. Lately Boyd has devoted herself to photography. "Through the Eyes of a Muse", a collection of personal photos from her years with George Harrison and Clapton, recently finished making a grand multi-year tour through America, Canada, Britain and Australia.

In a conversation with More Intelligent Life, Pattie Boyd spoke about her past and the way photography helped her heal.

More Intelligent Life: What convinced you to dig up the past and sort through your memories to put together "Through the Eyes of a Muse"?

Pattie Boyd: One day a friend of mine asked me if I had any photographs from my past because he was thinking of putting together an exhibition of English photographers in San Francisco. I was a bit reluctant at first to sort through the photographs, but in the end I didn’t realise I had quite so many that were interesting. I was quite pleased that I found as many as I did.

MIL: What do you hope people will get out of seeing these photographs?

PB: Most of the photographs are moments captured in time. It’s history. I was lucky and fortunate enough to be in a position where I could take photographs of these well-known people simply because they trusted me and we were friends. What people might feel [when they see these photographs] is some sort of nostalgia for their youth. Like when you hear a record you haven’t heard since you were young, and it takes you back. I think photography does the same thing.

MIL: What has photography meant to you throughout your life? Has it come to mean something deeper?

PB: It was a hobby to begin with. It wasn’t until I realised that I could actually take nice photographs that I started to become passionate about it. I then got a few jobs working for magazines in London and I would get terribly excited and intense about doing a job and taking photographs and looking through the lens to capture something amazing.

MIL: You released "Wonderful Today", your autobiography, in 2007. Why did you feel it was important to share your story?

PB: This was also to do with photography. When I had my first exhibition I was very nervous, and for many reasons it was difficult for me to look at the photographs from my past because I knew they would bring back memories, both happy and unhappy. I was also unsure of how they would be received. Would people think I was just taking advantage of the fact that I was married to both George Harrison and Eric Clapton? But what I found was that people were really happy to see these photographs and they thanked me for exhibiting them. I realised that it was a good time to write a book about the whole thing. I had been asked over the years by various publishers to write a book and I had always said no. I actually never thought that I would. But because of the success of the exhibition I thought that the time was right. It was difficult to write about my experiences, but it was also quite indulgent. It’s not often we can spend that much time thinking about ourselves and our lives. It was therapeutic as well.

MIL: You met George Harrison while the Beatles were filming "A Hard Day’s Night" (pictured above). You have admitted you didn’t know much about the Beatles before then. How much of your attraction to Harrison back then was based on the fact that he was part of one of the biggest musical groups of the time?

PB: I wasn’t really terribly familiar with the Beatles when I met George. They were just emerging. They certainly weren’t as big as they became later on. I just knew them as a pop group and that’s all. I was keener on George as a man and a person, as opposed to someone in a band.

MIL: Was it hard to keep a relationship going with someone who was in such high demand and always had a chaperone (the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein)?

PB: Brian was there on our first date yes, but that was actually very nice. George and I were very young when we met, 19 and 20, and Brian was the one who suggested we go to a club that he was a member of, and he came with us, and it was very nice of him. In fact, I was actually quite glad because George and I were both very shy people and it was really nice to have someone there who was quite chatty. Gradually we got to know each other better. Brian was very influential in the Beatles’ lives, and they really regarded him as an older brother or uncle; they respected him tremendously.

MIL: Throughout the breakdown of your marriage to Harrison and your involvement with and eventual marriage to Eric Clapton, did it ever bother you that the two remained very good friends?

PB: I must say that occasionally it did make me feel really nervous, because I thought: well, where am I in this situation? I was George’s wife and then I was Eric’s wife and the two of them were still really good friends. On the other hand I was glad that they were friends in a way; I’d much rather that than see the two of them break up—they had a very special friendship. They were both great guitarists and they loved playing together and being creative. I’m glad that the creative energy between the two of them wasn’t broken up by our personal lives.

MIL: Can you give us some insight into the respective songwriting techniques of Harrison and Clapton?

PB: Both of them would normally play guitar quite often during the day. Musically, they were looking to find a riff, a melody. Once they had that, they’d put the lyrics on top of that.

MIL: Clapton released his autobiography not long after "Wonderful Today". How did you feel reading his account of the way things happened?

PB: I didn’t realise that Eric was as unhappy as he believed [himself] to be in his book. I really thought that he was happier than he claimed to have been. I knew he was upset about being abandoned by his mother, but I didn’t realise it went as deeply as it obviously did.

MIL: In his autobiography, Clapton made particular mention of your description of a ‘guitar duel’ between himself and Harrison—what really happened that night?

PB: John Hurt, an actor and friend of ours, came over one night. So there we were—John, Eric, George and me—and as normal, George and Eric started playing guitar. But for some reason they were both playing amazingly. John Hurt, being an actor and having a very theatrical in manner, described it in his autobiography as feeling like both George and Eric were on stage together performing. It did feel as if they were trying to outdo each other, but on the other hand this is what guitarists do. It’s always up to interpretation of course, but this is how I felt at the time.

MIL: How does it feel knowing you’ve inspired some of the greatest songs written by both the musicians you married? Were there any disadvantages to being a muse?

PB: I can’t think of any disadvantages. Once a song is written for you, or about you, then that is it. Years ago, I remember feeling very flattered. With time, these songs have become even more iconic. I always feel really thrilled and happy when I hear these songs. Enough years have gone by for me not to get upset when I hear them.

MIL: In your autobiography you hint that you never actually wanted to leave Harrison for Clapton, but felt you had to because of the disintegration of the relationship. Do you have any regrets about leaving?

PB: I really didn’t want to leave George, but circumstances were leading us apart. I was a firm believer that if you get married, then that should be it. But it’s sadly not always the case; sometimes people can’t remain together for whatever reason. I don’t know about regrets. It’s difficult to look back and think about regrets. Sometimes I think I do, sometimes I think that it was meant to be that we weren’t to remain together. But who knows?

MIL: Paint us a picture of your life among the Beatles. What were the boys like personally? How did they feel about their fame?

PB: It was great fun to hang around the Beatles. They had amazingly fast minds, and they were incredibly amusing and funny and witty. They were great. There was a very high energy surrounding them.

MIL: Why do you think the Beatles went their separate ways?

PB: I think they split up because their time together came to a natural end. They had spent many intense hours and years together and it was a natural time for them to split up. Towards the end they began to get very cross and angry with each other.

MIL: Did you crave a normal life after your years married to Harrison and Clapton?

PB: I definitely craved a normal life. I wanted to know and experience what other people do. My life had become very hectic. My hours were very different to other people’s hours. I just thought it would be nice to have a taste of a different sort of life. I started seeing someone that was very sweet and I started having a relatively normal life.

MIL: What do you think of new generations discovering the music of Harrison and the Beatles through platforms like The Beatles: Rock Band video game?

PB: I think it’s absolutely fantastic. It means their music is still as powerful and inspiring now as it was back then. Hopefully it drives people to fall in love with their music all over again.

~ LAURA PARKER

TERRY O'NEILL: RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME

Helena Douglas — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:15:14 +0000

Terry O’Neill, a British photographer, is renowned for his images of stars such as Audrey Hepburn and Frank Sinatra. His work, recognisable for its candid informality, has appeared in magazines such as Life, Vogue, and Rolling Stone, and his access to high-profile subjects led him to become one of the most published photographers of the 1960s and '70s.

Now 71, O’Neill made his name when London was a swinging, creative and altogether chummier place. Evenings at Soho’s Ad Lib Club, a popular haunt for actors, models, musicians and photographers, brought him close to his subjects, and he became friends with the likes of Richard Burton, Michael Caine and David Bowie. His photographs reveal the conflicts, contradictions, desires and dreams that lurked beneath groomed surfaces. He amassed a vast collection of negatives over the years, but as with many photographers of the time, archiving and cataloguing went by the wayside.

Thanks to Getty Images, O'Neill's archive has been properly assessed, and over 40 previously unseen photographs have just gone on show at the Chris Beetles gallery in central London. They are a revelation. O’Neill has an eye for the moment when his subjects are comfortable enough to give something away. The relaxed feel of these images is a world away from those we see of celebrities today, either airbrushed to perfection or snapped on the run.

A particularly intimate shot features Brigitte Bardot, one of O’Neill’s favourite subjects, resting between takes on the set of “The Novices” (pictured top). Napping in an elegant, furry dressing gown, she is joined on the bed by the producer’s dog, mouth agape and tongue sprawled. Another notable image is a vintage print of Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, John Carradine and Peter Cushing on the set of “House of the Long Shadows” (pictured above); four crinkly, bright-eyed faces, stacked in two tiers, look intently into O’Neill’s lens. Humour bubbles beneath the surface, freezing the mischief of the moment.

Of the images on show three are in colour: a harassed Steve McQueen in his Hollywood office, Raquel Welch clad in cheeky cowboy chaps and red bikini bottom, and a magical, glowing picture of Audrey Hepburn in a swimming pool (pictured) taking a break during the filming of “Two for the Road”. With her damp, cropped hair falling over her eyes and her dazzling smile, Hepburn is relaxed and radiant. Though frozen in time, the moment feels full. We can practically hear her laughing.

“Terry O’Neill: New & Unseen” is at the Chris Beetles gallery, London, until March 6th.

~ HELENA DOUGLAS

Picture credit: Copyright Terry O'Neill

DON MCCULLIN'S IMAGES OF WAR

Emily Bobrow — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:26:51 +0000

Don McCullin spent a lifetime chronicling the brutality of war. His photographs, now on view in a career retrospective at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, are dark, bleak and arresting. Many capture people at their most primal, cowering like hunted animals or gasping with despair. Some subjects are muted by their certain doom, such as the starving children he photographed in Biafra, who wait patiently for death. McCullin's soldiers tend to be villains, but some look like shellshocked boys.

These pictures "live in my soul", McCullin admits in an interview with The Economist. He has made it his job to give a voice to the voiceless; to capture the furrowed brows and dirty fingernails of history's victims. The result is hard to look at, startling and gut-wrenching. "There's not a great deal of room for joy," he concedes with sad self-awareness.

His work is also remarkable, a product of courage and heart. He narrates the images of this slideshow with The Economist:

"Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin", is on view at the Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, until June 13th

HEFT AND WEIGHTLESSNESS

Emily Bobrow — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:21:14 +0000

Simon Croft took his camera backstage with the Lviv ballet. The result–our latest photo essay–is mesmerising, with colours like antique jewels in a dusty velvet case.

As Julie Kavanagh wrote, he captures "the lumpishness of swans on dry land alongside flashes of kingfisher-wing transcendence. Like ballet itself, the pictures combine earthbound reality with a glimpse of heaven."

TINA MODOTTI, VIEWER AND VIEWED

Yael Friedman — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:44:08 +0000

Devotees of communism evoke a grim picture of stern and ascetic men and women in sparsely furnished rooms, free of bourgeois luxuries. And then there is the glamorous Tina Modotti, an Italian photographer and political revolutionary. An exhibition of 35 of her photographs now on at New York's Throckmorton Fine Art gallery, "Tina Modotti: Under the Mexican Sky", recalls the life and talent of this rare seductress.

Modotti was 16 when she left Italy for California, where she began her transformation from factory worker to bohemian ingénue. In Los Angeles, she met and modelled for Edward Weston, a pioneer of photography, who soon became her lover and mentor. He left his wife to be with Modotti, and in the early 1920s they ventured to Mexico, a country then brimming with artistic and political excitement.

Still reeling from a decade-long revolution, Mexico's politics were volatile. Painters and muralists such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros had joined with a host of radicalised expatriates to help lead the struggle for political and social reform. Modotti embraced this fusion of art and politics, and collaborated with the muralists in creating work with political intent. But Weston had little time for art in the service of politics. He rejected what he described as “too much sentimentality over the proletariat. Too much deification of the Indian.”

Taken between 1923 and 1930, Modotti’s sepia-tinted portraits of Mexican workers and expatriate revolutionaries are indeed romantic—beautiful, sturdy and idealistic. Yet we get the sense that her subjects aren't merely symbols—vacant and projection-ready—but real people. These photographs feel intimate and real.

Modotti could be heavy-handed in her political messaging, as with the still life "Bandolier, Corn and Sickle" (1927) and "Hands of a Washerwoman" (1928). But her elegant modernist compositions compensate for any overt symbolism. We are left with arresting shapes, forms and textures, the kind that are familiar to Weston's fans.

With time, Modotti's life grew more difficult and her health deteriorated. After she was falsely accused of helping to assassinate her Cuban revolutionary boyfriend, Julio Antonio Mella, she was expelled from the country. She lived in exile in Europe, and eventually made her way to Spain during its civil war. After the collapse of the Spanish Republican government in 1939, she returned to Mexico under an alias. In 1942, while riding in a taxi after a friend’s party, she suffered a heart attack and died. There were rumours of murder—was it the Stalinists? Her lover, Victorio Vidali? But most attributed her death to the hardships she had endured.

"Tina Modotti: Under the Mexican Sky" is on view until March 6th at Throckmorton Fine Art in New York City

~ YAEL FRIEDMAN

Picture credit: "Woman of Tehuantepec (Carrying Jicapexle)", 1929

ICONOGRAPHY, AUTHENTICITY AND SWEAT

Robert Lane Greene — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:34:16 +0000

“Who Shot Rock & Roll?”, asks a show at the Brooklyn Museum. It’s not a bad question. You’d have to be something of a specialist to have heard of most of the photographers on display in this "Photographic History, 1955 to the Present". Yes, there’s a rather nice snap by Linda McCartney of her husband’s eyes in a rear-view mirror. But unlike most museum portraits, these are mainly pictures of people we know made by people we don’t.

The show suffers little for that. It includes some iconic shots, many of which became album covers: the nude girls climbing a rockpile that got Led Zeppelin’s "Houses of the Holy" banned in Oklahoma and Spain; Paul Simonon of the Clash swinging his bass down towards the floor like a man furiously splitting logs–the image of rock rage that would front "London Calling".

But it is actually the lesser-known pictures that make "Who Shot Rock" worth the trip. Elvis Presley, so young he looks like he would have trouble growing a beard, nonchalantly lunches with a friend at a diner shortly before astronomical fame would make such a scene impossible. A long-haired Michael Stipe of REM grins for the camera from ear to ear–something he doesn’t seem to do much anymore–as he eats with bandmates at a barbecue joint. Bob Dylan, tribune of the people, looks vacant and unconcerned in his car as the faces of fans press desperately against the glass outside.

Some photos are telling; others feel forced. An image of Kurt Cobain huddled and crying outside a show tells us something about the man. His wife, Courtney Love, writing FUCK YOU in thick marker on a Polaroid of herself, tells us mainly what Courtney Love wants us to think about her. Here is Björk enjoying some quality time in bed with her hand thrust down her pants, and we think “Isn’t that just like Björk.” Then Amy Winehouse does the same thing, only this time it feels staged. We like our rockers authentic, and many certainly try to seem so. Its an enjoyable provocation to try to sort out which is which.

Besides being genuine, the best photos in the collection are surprising too. Come for the iconography--sure, you can see the original of John Lennon in his New York City t-shirt. But stay for the fun--the shot is displayed on the contact sheet of all the other pictures from that shoot, and you can also see the pacifist jokingly putting up his dukes like a boxer. Rock isn't all noise and sweat and the urgency of youth; it's also bandmates joking with each other, bored on a bus or idly sharing a smoke. As this show reveals, you can't always judge a band by its album cover, even if that's exactly what they want you to do.

"Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present" is at the Brooklyn Museum until January 31st

~ ROBERT LANE GREENE

Picture credit: Henry Diltz (American, b. 1938). Tina Turner, Universal Amphitheater, Los Angeles (detail), October 1985. Chromogenic print. © Henry Diltz

THE Q&A: DAVID HLYNSKY, PHOTOGRAPHER

J. Gabriel Boylan — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:53:48 +0000

1989 marked the end of the cold war, and much attention has been paid to the 20th anniversary of velvet revolutions and walls coming down. But what about the days and lives spent behind that wall?

In the mid- to late-1980s David Hlynsky ended up travelling to the eastern bloc. What began as a brief jaunt to publicise an exhibition of his photographs ended up becoming a longstanding project–one that resulted in thousands of photos. In years spent chronicling the mundanities of daily life under communism, Hlynsky was most mesmerised by the shop windows, which offered the greatest contrast between east and west, capitalist and communist. Here were spare displays, drab colours and a disregard for acquisitiveness unlike anything he had seen before.

In recent years Hlynsky’s images have been exhibited in art galleries in Prague and Berlin. Some reacted with nostalgia or a renewed sense of relief at the end of that era. Younger viewers saw mainly communist kitsch, an impossibly quaint sense of the recent past, so remote as to seem almost imaginary. Many have seen and responded to Hlynsky’s shop-window photos via his website. This is how I came to know of them, after a music blog linked to his arresting photograph of a restaurant window in Yugoslavia, in which a small set table for two sits patiently beneath streamlined decals of a knife, fork and plate.

The images yield a quizzical coded signage. A photo of a Moscow post office features an illustrated poster of a steam engine, a modern train, a clipper ship and a modern ocean liner. Other images are achingly direct, such as an illuminated sign of a T-shirt for a child's clothing store, glowing wanly against an evening sky.

Hlynsky's photographs capture the way the ordinary details of our surroundings, those we rarely notice, can contain so much life in them. Over the phone, he spoke about his travels and his photographs, about the power of the banal and the limits of cultural memory.

More Intelligent Life: So how did you end up spending all this time in the eastern bloc during the 1980s?

David Hlynsky: I grew up during the cold war in the ‘50s and ‘60s. My ancestors were all from Eastern Europe but they all came at the turn of the last century. During the cold war there were these stereotypes about Russians and Poles and anybody from the East. My grandmother didn’t have much of a command of the language so I learned about the old country, as she called it, in very vague terms. And it seemed to me that it was just very backward and rural. Anyway, in 1985 I had an exhibition in Toronto and a young Polish curator asked me if I would like to show it in Krakow. I had no idea that Krakow was the city that it is. I took the opportunity to jump on a plane and go over there to represent the work, and it turns out that Krakow is where Copernicus taught at the oldest university in Europe. I travelled to Prague at the same time, and Prague just knocked me out, architecturally. I took a Hasselblad with me thinking I was going to take pictures of other artists there, and it just turned up that I ended up shooting on the streets. Then when I came back to Toronto I looked at the images and I started noticing store windows in the background. I decided that I would make another trip there and get some more store windows. And then I got the bug.

MIL: Where else did you go?

DH: I made a trip to Berlin and went into the East, just for a short trip. I made special trips to Budapest, and one time to Belgrade and across Bulgaria to the Black Sea, a kind of solo driving trip. I was most interested in being quiet and documenting what I saw, so it was fine not to be able to talk to people. Crossing borders was always an adventure. Each one posed different problems, [but] they were never insurmountable. I was entertained by them. I then went to Cuba and to communist Europe twice more, and to Moscow before it all fell, all the while carrying this camera, and by then I had developed a kind of shooting methodology, and I was concentrating more on the store window. I have about 8,000 images, mostly of street scenes and people, but the store windows seem to be the ones that are the most unique.

MIL: You had been shooting mainly portraits prior to this, so why the shift to street photography?

DH: I went to Ohio State in the mid-‘60s during the anti-war movement and I was photographing there after the race riots in Cleveland. So between civil rights, the anti-war movement, and the women's movement I sort of honed my craft with a lot of left-leaning photojournalists. When I went to Toronto in 1970 I got involved in the literary and art scene there so I kind of moved away from street photography toward more art-based photography.

MIL: You have said you purposely avoided the “dramatic and newsworthy.” Why?

DH: Over the course of my career I’ve grown to understand that photography has the kind of unique ability to capture banality. You can also capture dramatic things, but I find that the banal is much more interesting and informative. So if you take a picture of somebody walking down the street in communist Europe it’s interesting to see the person but it’s even more interesting to see that their shoelaces are untied. All my photographic practice I’ve tried to accentuate that banal aspect.

MIL: So shop windows struck you as representing this banality?

DH: Yes, the shop windows were this thing that I saw all over the landscape, and the more I looked at them the more interesting they got. Not just from a historical view, which I couldn’t have known then, but also from a design sense, a social science point of view because these windows didn’t represent all the things that we consumed in the West. The material culture was entirely different. The display of products was different. The lack of advertising was a significant change from what I’d grown up with, and I began to see these things as one really interesting representation of the difference between East and West.

It’s one thing to have a photo of a woman with chubby cheeks and a babushka, and it’s another thing to see what she buys, and that became a real focus for me. Now bear in mind that we were looking at dramatic pictures in the West of a bread line or people struggling, and because those were so pervasive you began to think that was what life was really about. And once I got there I realised that was just one aspect and not even a large aspect. I saw lines for cigarettes and some things. The shops had many fewer goods, at less quality and variety, but they had things for people to buy. It was not a struggle to get a meal or buy a shirt.

MIL: Have you been back since the fall of communism?

DH: I went back a number of times, to Poland and the Czech republic in 1991. I took many photos but haven’t printed a single one. Since then I’ve been back to Prague three more times, mostly in the context of exhibiting this work. I’ve had a couple million hits on my website, most of them from the former eastern bloc. There's been a full generation since the wall came down. Anyone who’s 27 or younger sees these pictures as really funny, kind of quaint, and silly. Anyone who’s older than that sees them as a representation of a harder time, but [also] just a different time, and they’re nostalgic for some of that difference, the quietness of their lives and the cityscape.

Now things are overrun with fast food and sports bars. Some people are nostalgic for a simpler life in general, when they didn’t have to hustle so much. When I would visit my friends in Poland we would have these gatherings that would go on for hours, with great food and drink, singing and playing music, talk about books. After the change [this friend] moved into a condo with a Jacuzzi, but he was working 12 to 15 hours a day, he had barely any time to talk. So that shift from a slowed down pace during the communist era to a very aggressive pace in the capitalist era has been very impactful to people.

MIL: Why haven't you chosen to keep documenting the changes that have taken place?

DH: If I photograph a McDonald’s in Moscow, it will not only look very much like one anywhere else, but people won’t be surprised by it. We definitely have lost something. I don’t know if one would have wanted to live there under that system, but it’s lost. Wenceslas Square in Prague was always fairly dark at night and at the tops of all the buildings were neon signs that represented state industry on the tops of these elegant old buildings. Now you go to that same strip and it’s pizza joint, strip club, sports bar, people selling liquor in the street, discos, casinos, jammed with people and buzzing with lights. Is that good or bad? I don’t want to make that judgment, but something has changed, and changed kind of radically.

MIL: So are you concerned that the world you documented will disappear from the cultural memory?

DH: I’m not sure if it’s fading from memory. That will take another few generations. I hear word that East Berliners and West Berliners are still two distinct societies. Prosperity is all over the city but there are subtle cultural differences, and they experience it more than is evident to us. It will take a long time for this to vanish entirely. I have always noticed that these people are completely like us, [with] the same needs and curiosities that we have. It wasn’t that they were all brain-dead from indoctrination. There was amazing art happening there under those systems, incredibly subtle and engaged with political struggle. Lots of things that never got a chance to enter the Western mindset. So then when the walls came down I saw all this rewriting of history, and it surprised me. Suddenly the people who were our sworn enemies–overnight those differences don’t mean anything anymore. And it was an interesting problem for the US to deal with. How do you function without an enemy?

MIL: What then is the legacy of communism, or of its disappearance?

DH: What’s been lost is philosophical diversity. That doesn’t mean I’m endorsing communist philosophy, but when you clip off one end of the spectrum it becomes inherently more conservative, no matter which end gets clipped off. There’s also a loss of difference which is essential for comparison. And when I walk through those countries now I also get a sense that the colours have all changed. Gone are the soft earth-tone colours of bare buildings. They've been upstaged by the loud, primary colours of advertising.

~ J. GABRIEL BOYLAN

THE Q&A: JEFF WALL, PHOTOGRAPHER

Melissa Goldstein — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:14:44 +0000

Jeff Wall has been credited with validating photography as contemporary art. For his large-format works (he calls them “prose poems”, borrowing the term from Charles Baudelaire), he routinely employs actors to help realise his vision. Roles range from deceased soldiers who converse in the afterlife ("Dead Troops Talk") to weekend warriors who preen outside a nightclub ("Outside a Nightclub"). Wall then digitally manipulates the images and presents them as back-lit phototransparencies, so that the photographs glow. These arch, staged tableaux have a dreamy effect, odd and cinematic.

Phaidon just released a definitive account of Wall’s work to date— "Jeff Wall: Complete Edition", a 280-page monograph that includes Wall’s own writings as an art historian and theorist. In the days before the book's release, we struck up an e-mail correspondence with the Vancouver-based conceptual artist. While he was content to leave some answers at "Yes" or "No" (including an inquiry into his decision to not carry a camera), he also succinctly held forth on such topics as the tiresomeness of film, the trouble with historical references and how art can teach us about survival.

More Intelligent Life: Considering that your work usually appears in a large-scale format, how well do you think it translates on paper in a monograph?

Jeff Wall: I don’t think my pictures look very good in books, but still, the better the book, the better they look—or the less they seem inadequate. They are made to be a certain size and scale and that can never be captured on a page. I like the new book very much, but I prefer to look ahead, not back.

MIL: Part of your process involves not carrying a camera—has there ever been a time when you’ve regretted not having a camera with you—even if it’s not for professional reasons?

JW: No.

MIL: You have often commented on your attraction to the commonplace. Is there something less appealing to you about focusing on the extraordinary?

JW: I don’t prefer one or the other. I think I have paid attention to the "extraordinary". But in general I think it’s more interesting to recognise the interrelation of what is ordinary and what is extraordinary, rather than seeing them as two separate entities, or ways.

MIL: Your laborious work habits have become something of a trademark. Has there ever been a point where you’ve stopped and questioned the lengths to which you’ve gone in order to achieve your vision?

JW: I don’t see it as laborious and, also, I’ve made most of my pictures with relatively less effort. There are only a few that have gotten complicated and taken a long time—like "A Sudden Gust of Wind" (pictured, detail), or "A View From an Apartment". Each picture is different, each requires some kind of commitment, and I simply do what is required each time.

MIL: Some of your work contains historical art references—how important to you is it that the audience recognises these references?

JW: Only a few pictures have those references, and in those cases the references are very overt. But most of my pictures have nothing to do with making those references—or any references. When I make some reference, I do it because it seems necessary for that picture. Necessary to me, but not to the viewers. If the picture is any good, people will be able to appreciate it and not recognise any similarity to another picture.

MIL: Early in your career you collaborated on a film with Ian Wallace and Rodney Graham [both Vancouver-based artists]—after which you shunned the genre entirely. What turned you off to film?

JW: Films have to have a beginning, a middle and an end. I find that tiresome. Pictures just have a middle.

MIL: When was the last time you were surprised or impressed by a work of art?

JW: Just right now, looking across the room at a Walker Evans. It's a picture in my collection—the one of the photographer's studio window with dozens of little portraits and the word "STUDIO" printed across the image. I'm impressed by works of art all the time.

MIL: Do you think that photography makes it possible to capture an authentic moment?

JW: Yes.

MIL: Though you are interested in everyday moments, you have also expressed an interest in artifice. Do you find any inspiration in places that are overtly artificial—Las Vegas, Disneyland, Dubai?

JW: I might. But I don’t think "artificial" places are particularly artificial, or particularly different from other places.

MIL: Of the decision to use light boxes in your work, you’ve said, “It’s really important to me that art gets old”. Can you explain why?

JW: I have gotten so much enjoyment and inspiration from works of art since I was a child, and most of the art that I saw was decades or centuries old. So, the ageing and surviving of art seems a central aspect of its value to us. It tells us how we both are and are not contemporary in our own time, and how such a thing as survival is possible, and how we can relate to it, even though we are all mortal.

"Jeff Wall: Complete Edition" (Phaidon Press), out now

~ MELISSA GOLDSTEIN

SUSCHITZKY'S LENS ON LONDON

Helena Douglas — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:39:21 +0000

Vienna’s 1934 February uprising was a turning point for 21-year-old Wolfgang Suschitzky. When troops loyal to Austria’s fascist chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, turned their artillery on the housing estates occupied by left-wing opponents, Suschitzky knew it was time to leave. Arriving in London in 1935 he took a job as a cameraman for Strand Films, where he soon earned renown as a cinematographer and photographer.

Now 68 of Suschitzky’s acclaimed black-and-white photographs are on show at London’s Chambers Gallery. As a photographer, Suschitzky is best known for his portrayal of London in the 1930s and 40s. His series of pictures taken on Charing Cross Road provides an evocative social history of the area. A photograph from 1935 of a milkman pushing a hand-cart in a cold, driving downpour, his breath clouding in front of him, the road slick with rain and reflection, captures the hardship of many people’s lives at the time (pictured above). In contrast is a shot of a bowler-hatted gent with time on his hands, standing outside Foyles bookshop, immersed in reading (pictured below).

Suschitzky, jaunty, twinkly and now 97, pointed his lens at a range of subjects. Animals were a favourite; his 1958 portrait of Guy, London Zoo’s famous gorilla, behind the bars of his cage, his face wise, sad and indelibly human, is particularly poignant. Powerful portraits are also on show: Nehru in Delhi in 1955, his brow furrowed, cigarette smoke drifting from his mouth; a thoughtful Ben Gurion in Jerusalem in 1957; a profile shot of Michael Caine on the set of “Get Carter” in 1970 (Suschitzky was the film’s cinematographer). And the closeness of child siblings is a touching theme: his portrayal of a young child embracing another in Burma is a joyful reminder of the close relationship Suschitzky had with his sister Edith Tudor-Hart, also a photographer.

Of all the photographs being exhibited it is the affectionate, observational shots of people that are most notable. “Spectator”, taken in Trinidad in 1960 shows a man in pale suit and panama hat, his chin in his hand, lost in a world completely of his own. And Suschitzky’s favourite? A portrait of a Trinidadian girl in a white dress looking out of a window, her soft features contrasting with the rough wood of the window frame, curtain fabric floating above her head, her eyes drawing the observer in. When asked why, Suschitzky stands thoughtful for a moment. “Because she’s dreaming”, he says.

“Wolfgang Suschitzky: Photographs” is at the Chambers Gallery, London, until January 29th

~ HELENA DOUGLAS