Allard and Eggleston

Whew, it has been more than 2 years since my last post. I have been thinking about it for some time, and now is the time for a new post. It was plain fun to write the last time, and I am going to try for that again.

This Christmas holiday came with an urge to revisit some of my photo books, and for some reason I wanted to look at color photographs. I don’t really know how many photobooks I have, at least 40, and many are all or partly in color. But I was going for something very specifically in color. Something where the color is a big and conscious part of the photographs, and where the compositions of colors means at least as much as the compositions of shapes and of tones.

I knew right away which two books I was going to revisit. The first is by William Eggleston and the second is by William Albert Allard. Eggleston is of course one of the most famous photographers ever; Allard is famous, but not quite as much as Eggleston is. There are quite a few similarities. They both became well-known when they began shooting exclusively in color in the 70’ies. The 70’ies was (I think) the first century where color film really became common and with good quality. And it took some new photographers to bring color into photography as not just a coloration of a black and white photography.

The photo above by Allard is at the same time just perfect and (I think) iconic and then also almost too much. The yellow and the red letters are perfect together and the yellow against the green is so cool; the woman’s dress is an echo of the colors on the wall! Allard writes about the coincidence of color: "Time and again I would see examples of how the colors of this place and the appearance of its people were virtually interwoven". I just love that! I can be so good it is too much, but heck, it is pleasing. Such coincidences of colors is a big part of what makes a color photograph something extra. Eggleston does it a lot as well, of course, just usually not quite as obvious.

I only have one early book of Eggleston while I have a tome with a five decades retrospective of Allard so I may be pushing my conclusions, but I think there is another big similarity between the two: they use their photography to show something about a place. And color is part of that tool. They show landscape, but usually the cultural landscape, and they show people.

This photo by Eggleston is one of my favorites. Not that much color really, but still so much a color photograph. There are coincidence of color, but as often with Eggleston, there is also coincidence of shape. It is just great as they stand alike, and how the car door mimics the arms, and how their legs mimics the threes. Again almost too much, but this is for sure an iconic image.

I also think there is a distance in this photograph as there is in most of Eggleston’s photographs. That has nothing to do with color, of course, but is something specific about Eggleston. A bit more about that at the end of this blog post.

My book by Allard is “William Albert Allard: Five Decades”. It is a fantastic book! Choke full of fantastic color photographs and some really great essays by Allard him self that introduces each chapter. Allard mainly shot for National Geographic for almost five decades although he also was a member of Magnum for a few years. I remember reading National Geographic (for the pictures, what else?) in the eighties, but don’t really recall any of Allard’s photos. National Geographic is almost a cliché nowadays I think, but Allard is no cliché. His photographs are an experience in the best possibly way and they are engaging and usually shows a lot of compassion. Each of the many photographs adds to that a visual richness and some great compositions – he calls it coincidences, but it is clearly no coincidence that he has been able for find it again and again.

My book by Eggleston is “William Eggleston’s Guide”, and was published together with the exhibition at Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1976. This is big art and it was one of the most influential exhibitions; the book is a classic. Just look at the tricycle photograph at the cover of the book – you probably have seen it even if you don’t know Eggleston. The colors a cool, the composition simple and centered. The tricycle is an object - it rules the world even more than the big American cars that are on several photographs inside the book. The book is small and neat and one of my favorites – the foreword is the usual babble that is so common in many photo books, especially if published by a museum.

What do I like most, Allard or Eggleston? There are lot of similarities, and they are all about colors, but they are also completely different photographers. Allard is about compassion, instinct and intellect. Eggleston is about observation, expression and intellect. It has been just so great to rediscover both the two books!

Andreas Gursky at Luisiana

Gursky currently holds the record for having created the most expensive photograph (auctioned at $4,338,500 US $).

Of course this is by any measure an absurd price for any photograph, but many seems to think that this is a boring or even bad photograph. And knowing that it has been heavenly photoshoped makes it even worse for many.

I liked it right away, and after googling some of his pictures - and even more after seeing the Ben Lewis documentary - I even think that I understand it a little. But can you judge a picture on a web page when it is meant to be seen more than 3 meters long? Yesterday I went to Louisiana together with my brother to see the large Gursky exhibition - time to look for my self.

The Rhein photograph is the first one in the exhibition - Louisiana is clearly not above a little record bashing. It is however at bad choice to have it first; it is a very "distilled" Gursky and it is much better appreciated after having seen the many other photographs in the exhibition.
Most photographs in the exhibition are printed very large and I am pretty sure that not many can see them without been totally impressed and without being drawn into at least some of them.

I think that the most immediately fascinating photographs are the ones with a lot of repeating yet different patterns - like Untitled XIII; Hamm, Bergwerk Ost; and Nha Trang (you can google them your self). These photographs works when being seen in smaller sizes but they knocks you socks off when being seen more than 3 meters high or wide. They work in many different ways. When being see from a distance it is the pattern that fascinates you - because of the large format you can both sense the pattern as something abstract and still quite fast grasp what the motif is. Often there is something disturbing about this first view - even though they clearly are photographs of something real, they have a viewpoint and perspective that is not real at all. This is because most photographs are a collage of several photographs taken from somewhat different places, and this really makes you look at things in a new and fascinating way.

When moving closer - or sometimes it is the main theme - you see that the objects (often persons which are usually more object-like than person-like) are all different. And all are perfect in some sense. This "works" in a way I do not quite understand, but it clearly makes you appreciate the photograph in a different way. I think it is something common about all Gurskys photographs, that they make you very intensely aware that you are looking at something.

Most (but not all) of Gursky photographs have a very architectural element. Something about space and objects. This is in many of the "repeating" photographs but it is the (almost) sole element of some photographs, most purely in Prada II. Now we are getting nearer the Rhein photograph. However one of the fascinating aspects of the Rhein photographs is, that although it is a photograph of something that is spatial, then it also mostly appears as flat areas on the vertical canvas. This again strengthens the sense that you are looking at something and makes you think about what it is that you are looking at. In many photographs this flatness has the very architectural sense, but in some even this is distilled away - like in Bahrain photographs and even more in the Bangkok photographs.

The Rhein photograph is kind of repeating without repeating anything else than sameness. It makes the Rhein an object of water flowing through the cultivated landscape.
There is the extra aspect of the Rhein photograph that it is taken near Düsseldorf. I do not (yet) know that much about the Düsseldorf school of photography, but I have seen and been fascinated by the Bernd and Hiller Becher photographs of industrial structures in repeating patterns. The Rhein photograph of course has some of the same German industrial bleakness as the Becher photographs, but also in many other ways it is clearly in this tradition, yet at the same time is is something much more modern.
The Rhein photograph for me is immediately fascinating and impressive seen in real "life". It is very obviously an archetypical photograph taken by a great artist. Even an artist that is immediately understandable by most. And it is exemplifying the influential Düsseldorf school in a great way. I can not understand the price of this photograph, but I can understand that it is something special!

I bought the exhibition catalog at Louisiana at it is a quite nice hard bound book. The format is big enough that most of the Gursky photographs realy work. The print is OK, although a little to contrasty. Some photographs is printed as spreads, and although this usually is totally destroying for any photograph it is actually OK for some of the Gursky photographs. The repeating patterns work even if a slice in the middle is missing and the large size of the spreads is great for these types of photographs.The text in the book is a total bore - uninformative pseudo-intellectual babbling.

PHOTO:BOX

Taking photographs started as a hobby more than 20 years ago when I bought my first SLR. After some years the hobby faded away until it was revitalized 7 years ago when I got my first DSLR - after that the hobby was as much about editing photos as it was about taking them. But again it faded away until 2-3 years ago when I began to get really interested i looking at photographs - and of cause looking at the masters is a lot more interesting than looking at my own mediocre family snapshots.

Photography is fantastic! It spans documentary, journalism and many kinds of art. It has an intense history of less than 200 years. It both shows something of the real world and something of the photographer, and sometimes even magically of many other things. We all know photographs, and look at them as a natural thing even though they are always a strange two dimensional and distorted slice of some time ago. Most photographs are understandably immediately but the good ones have many subtle mechanisms that make them work.

The book PHOTO:BOX, edited by Roberto Koch is a book that at the same time

• Shows 250 fantastic photographs that you can spend hours looking at
• Tells about the history of photographs and also some about the history of many great photographers
• Learns you something about looking a photographs - mostly just by the selection in the book, but also from the many comments about the photographs in the book

The book is organized in themes like War, Portraits, Travel, etc. This organization does not matter at all. What matters is that the layout is a repetition of one page of text about the photographer and about the photograph that is shown full on the opposing page. The print quality is so-so, but that is not what matters in this book

Ansel Adams: Classic Images

I started my collection of photograpic books about 3-4 years ago. I basically have books in three categories:

1. Books about - and sometimes by - a single photographer
2. Books that are collections of photographs by different photographers
3. Books about understanding or about taking photographs

The first book I will write a little about is "Classic Images" by Ansel Adams.

This book is the catalog of an exhibition that also visited Copenhagen. Unfortunately I never my self got around to visit the exhibition, but I got the book as a gift from a friend that did.

If you are just the least interested in photographs you of course know Ansel Adams - many of his photographs have been iconic for more than three quarters of a century. When I visited New York for the first time some 25 years ago I bought a large poster with the same "Moon and Half Dome" that is on the cover of this book - it still makes me mad to remember how the poster was badly curled by a porter at the hotel, so I never got it on my wall.

Adams is mostly know for his majestic pictures from the US national parks in the first half of the previous century, and then of cause for his invention of the zone system.

Most of his pictures has an immediate beauty and drama that makes you want to travel to the US and visit the parks right away. The book has a great introductory essay, and as it describes, the feeling was something that Adams was very aware about; the reason was of cause that he him self loved the parks. For me though the most interesting about his pictures is the fantastic drama combined with usually a very simple composition. This drama and the simple composition is actually more interesting in some of his pictures that are not from the parks. It is not hard to understand, and if you like taking photographs it will make you want to mimic some of that drama. Not that easy to do though.

You have probably only heard about the zone system, if you are interested in black and white photographs. A very, very simplified description of the system is, that a photographic print should contain an equal amount of the very darkest tones, of the very lightest tones, and of all the zones of gray tones in between. This technique it part of the reason of the great drama of Adams photographs, and for many it was a guiding technique to use in the dark room when printing black and white photos.

It can be used with color photographs, and I my self invested in the LightZone program some years ago. It is build around editing with focus on the 11 zones. It was very interesting and invited to a new and different view of you photographs. It was also kind of frustrating and my conclusion some 4-5 years ago was that the zone system was not for me and probably not very rewarding for that many color photographs. I think that most photographers agreed, and despise initial good reviews the company that made LightZone eventually folded.

The book is hard bound and of quite good print quality. You really can see the zones although the blacks could be blacker. If anything the book would improve if printed in a larger format.

But with the book in hand you will immediately immerse yourself in all the great and stunning photographs. This is what a good photo book is about!