What i read…

Exclusive: Nadia Lee Cohen’s Powerful Portraits of Strong Femininity, Ted Stansfield, AnOther Magazine… Nadia Lee Cohen turns the idea of Male/Female gaze into something quite different…

Power is the key word here – these images vibrate with the stuff. They confront you. Command you. Compel you. Meet your gaze head on. And they are full of contradictions, too: simultaneously retro and modern, they draw on a legacy of British and American cinema, but feel new and current. Likewise they are staged and stylised, but at the same time real and irrefutably raw. Meanwhile, the women themselves display both a vulnerability and a strength, presenting a fictional character and also their true self, or at least a version of it. It’s hard to look away and even harder not to feel something.

… i read that this project took six years to accomplish… i admire the discipline of a woman in her 20’s… i imagine they have fierce ambition and incredible focus…

Inside Nadia Lee Cohen’s New Book of Chameleonic Self-Portraits, Ted Stansfield, AnOther Magazine… not a unique idea, but a unique execution of the idea…

Place: Ikea Parking Lot, Anelise Chen, Believer Magazine… i plunge in to reading the article and immediately like it… as i am reading, i get the strong impression that i am inhabiting the thoughts of a woman… i knew, without having seen who the author was, that it was a woman…

For me, extended time in parking lots has always signified an emergency, precise moments of narrative dissolution: one version of the good life has come apart irretrievably, and you must, humbly, construct another. Outside hospitals and motels, breakups and breakdowns. I paced because pacing feels like the good, primal thing to do when a body is penned in. It’s what lions and tigers do in their zoo enclosures. Back and forth, up and around, prowl, prowl, repeat. I organized my movements by row: up and down the parking rows toward the now-dim signs for exchanges, returns, exit, enter. The circularity of the movements, plus the weird, abstract commands, felt cosmic. I was in an undetermined space of pure matter, performing a ritual of eternal reincarnation, living many lives.

… didn’t love the way this piece ended, but i love the idea of pacing in super large parking lots to clear one’s head, and then, beginning to pay attention to what is in that lot, which is way more than one would think…

Stuff I’ve Been Reading: Rickie Lee Jones, Emma Dabiri, and More, Nick Hornby, Believer Magazine… a set of well written and compelling impressions of the books in question… impressions seems the right word, because i don’t read these as critical reviews, just an accounting of a book enjoyed thoroughly… also, in the course of reading these impressions i encounter the author referring to themselves as ‘he’ again… it happened in the article above, which led me to search for information on the author and confirm that they present as female and refer to themselves as ‘she’… so now i am wondering what is going on… is being gender confusing a thing and i am out of the loop? Hmmm…

… and now i discover that Summer Thomad is not the author of the articles i am reading, but for some reason comes up with the byline when the articles feed through to Feedbin… i circle back and follow the links through to the Believer Mag website and find the actual authors and switch credit accordingly and the pronoun mystery continues because it turns out i am right about the parking lot article, written by a (Asian) woman… her bio on Wikipedia refers to them as ‘her’ and ‘she’ while she self-refers as male in the body of the article… hmmm some more…

… by the way, i really like The Believer Magazine…

Nietzsche on Walking and Creativity, Maria Popova, The Marginalian… i am a walker… i walk every day… my daily goal is at least 10K steps… right now, my weekly average is close to 15K steps… i walk, i think, i make pictures… this has gotten me through the pandemic in good shape… it turns out that Maria Popova is a walker too…

Almost everything I write, I “write” in the notebook of the mind, with the foot in motion — what happens at the keyboard upon returning from the long daily walks that sustain me is mostly the work of transcription.

Maria Popova’s recommendations on reading are always compelling… i have found so much of what i read through her…

Senator Blumenthal Delivered Speech at Communist Party Awards, Brittany Bernstein, National Review… red bating is a time honored tradition of conservatives… this reads like a political hit job… is there something wrong with what Blumenthal did?… why should his wealth-by-wife be any more of an issue than Mitch McConnel’s?… i am fine with socialist policies… not so much with communism… i also believe in freedom of association and speech…

Gone Too Far, Brendan Dougherty, The National Review… refreshing for this substantially right of center magazine to publish an article stating that:

But the riot at the Capitol happened because President Donald Trump simply lied, and lied, and lied. On that very day he lied about what the vice president’s powers were. “All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people,” he told the crowd.

Photography - A Feminist History, Emma Lewis

Photograph by Priya Kambli

When Emma Lewis first discovered the work of artist and activist Joan E Biren (known as JEB) in 2016, she describes it as a “lightbulb moment.” Biren – who began documenting the lives of LGBTQ+ people in the 1970s, and used her camera as a revolutionary tool to advance social justice for lesbians – was well known in the States. So why had Lewis, a curator at Tate Modern, never heard of her?¹

… part of an ongoing effort in the art and museum world to give greater recognition to women in the arts… in this case, photography… read this article in AnOther Magazine about it… because of my oft stated interest in women in photography, i have purchased the Kindle version of the book… my library of unread books grows… how does one set aside enough time for all the books one wants to read?…

Eva Donkers, Photography

Eva Donkers, from What happens when nothing happens.

… [an article on Eva Donkers](https://www.booooooom.com/2021/11/15/what-happens-when-nothing-happens-by-photographer-eva-donckers/ ““What happens when nothing happens” by Photographer Eva Donckers”) in Booooooom… i admire this photographer’s intention possibly more than her work, which i think might be overly romanticized… it’s all about the color of places that have existed forever, suspended in the late afternoon sun, populated by the occasional human doing nothing consequential…

… she claims inspiration from Georges Perec’s novel An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, and this quote from it:

What happens when nothing happens, other than the weather, people, cars and clouds.(?)

… this, i think, is a perfect statement for my Notes blog… perhaps i should adopt it… i look up Georges Perec and realize i have encountered him before… i install a tag filter dedicated to him among my tag filters on people, which is becoming extensive…

… i order a copy of An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris from Amazon… i once said about my daily photo walks that i would keep doing them until i got bored… that was seven or eight years ago… boredom has never set in… meanwhile, my to-read list grows faster than my rate of reading…

… on to Feedbin…

… Jonathan Blaustein wrote about his trip to Chicago this morning… i learn about Weedmaps.com, for the weed dispensary near you… i look up what might be near me and find that it’s all medical marijuana in NY… weed was recently legalized for recreational use too, but i imagine the state is still working out the regulations and how to enforce them…

… overall, JB reported on numerous pizza restaurants which seemed to be the only food they ate while in Chicago… i mean, who eats pizza all weekend long and doesn’t gain a few pounds doing it?… not me… not at this point in my life… i try to eat healthier than that…

… i review the work of Leonardo Magrelli, published on Aint-Bad, and think, ok, but not compelling… all black and white, city environment…

… i look over, read, Proud, Provocative Portraits That Celebrate Feminine Authenticity… a woman photographer and stylist pursuing a project called Girls… an area of interest as anyone reading this blog will know… yes, interested because of primal programming, but also interested in the subject of how women are presented in photoland… i am especially interested in cases where women photograph women in ways that will, whether intended or not, provoke the male gaze… this set of photographs provokes the male gaze and seems intended to…

Albertine Photography Guen Fiore, styling Rubina Vita Marchiori

_ A new series by photographer Guen Fiore and stylist Rubina Vita Marchiori celebrates the fearless authenticity of Gen-Z women_¹

… the article tells us the women are photographed in their own homes (a safe environment)… the broad message, i will present myself as sexy if i want to, i am in control of that… a legitimate question to ask, does this promote women as much beyond being sex objects?… my answer, i am not sure… apparently there are photo sessions with each woman, that, presumably, lead to multiple images… are they all laced with sensuality?, showing the women in states of partial undress?… are they presented in any other way?… the artist’s instagram account suggests otherwise…

… i look at some of the comments on one post… that the women are “hot” is appreciated… the photographer has 34.5k followers… did they build that following with these images?… yes, almost all the images are attractive young women displaying their bodies in sensual, sexual ways… the following has been built on the fact that “sex sells,”…

… it think what bothers me is not that the women are presenting themselves sensually, sexually, but that it is a celebration of “fearless authenticity of Gen-Z women… only if women are to be defined by their sexuality… so the project tries to be high minded, but isn’t at all…

Catalog cover, Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories, published by Marion Goodman Gallery

… awesome talent, tragic story… this exhibition runs from November 02 to December 23 at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York City… the exhibition catalog is for sale here.

… one of my great interests, women and photography… women as subject(object?), women as photographers, women as critics of photography, women as curators of photography, and on and on…

… this article in AnOther is a long list of women who have made important photobooks… well worth a gander if at all interested in photography and women photographers who have blazed trails…

… [Jackie Nickerson](https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/13652/the-story-behind-jackie-nickerson-s-salvage-portraits?utm_source=Link&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=RSSFeed&utm_term=the-story-behind-jackie-nickerson-s-arresting-salvage-portraits “Stansfield, Ted, The Story Behind Jackie Nickerson’s Arresting ‘Salvage” Portraits")

Photography by Jackie Nickerson

… as i look at the images i try to decide between gimmick and serious art work… i like the images, like the concept, but am i being seduced by something which really only has surface attraction?… she is described as a “world-class” photographer… she has earned her reputation in the fashion industry… interesting that these art/fashion photographs are about identity through, essentially, hats…

… the photography is from Salvage, her latest photobook… it explores the relationship between people and consumption in formal portraits… but what exactly does it say about that?… that we throw away some beautiful things that make cool face and head props in a photo project?…

… i look at the images… first take, cool… second take, what’s the message?… should we be forced to wear the wages of our sins?…

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.¹

… as i think the words “wages of our sin” onto the computer screen, i look up the reference… a bible passage… and so, my thoughts about the photographs move to the objects plastered onto the heads of the models as some kind of cancerous growth… but not grotesque… somewhat disturbing but also beautiful… cleaned up, sanitized, cancerous growth…

… the pictures are compelling… would be easy to hang on the wall of ones living room… but… is the message lost in the glamour of the photography and art direction?…

… Ann Barngrover, Taking Flight

… the author discusses the work of another author… Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights… i have, but have not yet read, H is for Hawk… Vesper Flights is a collection of essays… as i read the descriptions of the books, i am thinking they would make good Christmas gifts for my sister…

… i learn about the German concept of wunderkammer, “cabinet of wonders.”…

Originally depicting rooms rather than pieces of furniture, wunderkammers were most popular in Victorian times as enclosed spaces that held collections of rare or unexpected finds. Instead of functioning as museums, “It was expected that people should pick up and handle the objects in these cases; feel their textures, their weights, their particular strangenesses.” You could touch and hold mollusk shells and chinaware, pressed feathers and butterfly wings, beaded stones and the fragile candelabras of fish bones, things both natural and forged. “Nothing was kept behind glass,” Macdonald notes.²

… as i read about the concept of wunderkammer… i think, i have a wunderkammer… my studio is a wonderkammer in a way… i have lots of natural objects i have collected… a bag of such objects from Block Island, sitting on my bed right now… a windowsill full of them… i think, this could be an art project… a photo project…

… the author moves on to talk about a college course on Star Wars that she and her colleague designed and gave… she talks about the feminism in Star Wars… she talks about the male know-it-alls who claim exclusive dominion over Star Wars interpretation…

Indeed, wondering comes at a price. As Macdonald reminds us, “Increasingly, knowing your surroundings, recognising the species of animals and plants around you, means opening yourself to constant grief.” This is the sobering reversal of slowing down and rejoicing in complexity and nuance, beauty and depth. The more you slow down, the more you will find. The more you find, the more you will connect. The more you connect, the more you will love. The more you love, the more you will lose—maybe not today, but one day, one day soon.³

… a good essay… worth reading…

… Reese Herrington, “Girl Talk”

Girl Talk, Photography by Reese Herrington

… a young woman photographer photographs the women around her in appreciative, sensual and sexual ways… in the bedroom, the bathroom, the boudoir… if its women photographing women, is it objectification?… their Instagram site is more balanced…

Stacy Arezou Mehrfar: The Moon Belongs to Everyone

… as i look through the review, not really sure i can call it that as the reviewer doesn’t take a position on the book that I can see, if don’t find an image that is compelling in and of itself… i get many of the images, but don’t love any of the images, and have a sense that the photographs are gathered to become something more than they are individually… this image is an example:

… an image that most any photographer with a bit of a poetic spirit might make…

The Moon Belongs to Everyone by Stacy Mehrfar, is a response to the contemporary experience of migration – of shifting continents and mindsets. A multi-layered visual narrative set in a non-locatable landscape, the book reflects upon the loss of roots, and search for belonging in the wake of immigration.¹

… it might sound like i am panning the book, i am not… i don’t have it in my possession, so can’t take it in entirely… i have only the images shared in this review and the artists statement about the work to go by… i am attracted by the idea of it and its alignment with a spirit within photography which doesn’t view each individual image as precious, but rather places the emphasis on the story they collectively tell…

Photographer: Kate Sweeny

Kate Sweeny

… nice photographs of young women, clothed and unclothed… an example of nude photography with women behind and in front of the camera… the artist tells us that the photographs are not about the objectification of women, but rather, about the celebration of women’s bodies as an art form in and of themselves and as natural presences in the world… which i believe… the photographs are, however, easy to view in a sexualized and objectified way, especially when they deploy tropes like wet fabric on the body as in the above image… i think we suffer from a lot of confusion about sex and sexuality, particularly in American Society, because there is a strong tendency to repress sexuality, and because the Patriarchy is so alive and well, it makes any young woman an object of sexual desire and any photograph of said young woman sexualized, when patriarchal eyes that are looking… i don’t see this as a reason not to make and display them… i do see a need to be honest about the variety of ways in which content can be perceived…

Catherine Opie

… a retrospective volume of her photographs… the review talks about her prolific production, that it is normally organized chronologically, that in this volume, it is organized thematically… i am not sure i am as interested in the photographs as i am the words, prolific, chronological and thematic, all three of which apply to my work…

Women Pushing the Boundaries of Image Making

©Carey Ellen, Crush and pull

… an interesting article on an exhibition of photo process imagery by women…

Holy

By Donna Ferrato, reviewed by Jonathan Blaustein…

… for the most part, i agree with Jonathan Blaustein, that Holy is a powerful book, though my personal reaction to it is that it starts to fall apart a bit in narrative intent at the end, in the “Other” section… i proudly own a copy though… it’s overall, fabulous… i commented on the post, expressing these sentiments…

Graciela Iturbide

Graciela Iturbide

Some thoughts from Graciela Iturbide, “regarded as one of the most influential Latin American photographers of the past four decades.”¹

Yvette Tang

Yvette Tang

… some amazing abstract work…

… her website…

Seabound by Elina Brotherus

Elina Brotherus’ new photobook, Seabound, is visually arresting…

…she photographs herself in varying landscapes by the Norwegian coast line, which the review of the book points out is the second longest in the world due to all the nooks and crannies… stretched out in a straight line it would wrap around the earth two and one half times…

… i am struck by the very painterly nature of the images… landscapes with her singular figure in the midst… i am struck by the carefully thought out wardrobe, clothing always chosen to match or contrast colors in the photograph… each photograph is meticulously framed, i am guessing she works with a large format camera?…

Like many of Brotherus’ past works, Seabound holds strong links to wider visual contexts, especially those found in art history. When she first arrived in Kristiansand in the winter of 2018, Brotherus visited the Sørlandets Kunstmuseum (the Southern Norway Art Museum), searching for historical depictions of the area. In the museum’s 19th-century landscape paintings, she found dramatic, romantic, and intense reflections of the coastline, a style that is echoed throughout Seabound. In doing so, Brotherus ties herself, and her images, into the wider context of Norwegian art history.¹

Eve Adams

I have been following the blog Body Impolitic, written by Laurie Toby Edison. Today I read her post about Eve Adams and was moved by it. The final paragraph in the post:

Eve Adams is worth remembering both for her accomplishments and for her fate. In the end, in the hell of the camps, who she was, what she wrote, who she loved, and what she believed was dissolved and erased. Everyone who died in the camps, everyone who dies at the hands of the police, everyone who is deported today to a dangerous homeland, everyone who dies of abuse of any sort should be remembered both for their individuality and for their common experience. The celebrated and deported Lesbian activist writer dies next to the housewife who never left her home village, and nothing about any of their deaths is inspirational, or hopeful.¹

Ms. Edison describes herself this way.

04 Jennifer Latour:

From Bound Species, by Jennifer Latour…

… i really like this work, looking so much like botanical drawings of yester-yore, but with the contemporary twist of creating franken-flowers, sublime and amusing idea and outstanding execution… and, she has a great instagram feed…

03 Maria Lax, Some Kind of Heavenly Fire:

Night Flight, Maria Lax from Some Kind of Heavenly Fire

… a photographic rendering of UFO sightings in a small Finnish town up north in the 1960’s… the sightings seem to have occurred at a time when there was an exodus of people to find work in the cities further south… it was a time of economic hardship and struggle… the photographs are beautiful and remind me a bit of Gregory Crewdson images, sans the people… they are noir in their generally dark and brooding character… they are on display as an OpenWalls Arles 2021 winner… i came very close to ordering the book… don’t really have the money right now…

03 Photography:

Fiona Véronique…

… the images presented in this article are from “Riddle,” a recently released photobook by the artist…

Published as a photobook by Antics Publications in 2020, “Riddle” follows a road trip Véronique took with her sister, from Seattle, Washington to Elko Nevada.¹

… road trips to “look for America” are a common theme for photobooks, by American photographers (Stephen Shore, Uncommon Places), and foreign born photographers (Robert Frank, The Americans)… there is a high bar for this kind of work…

… i don’t know if this book meets that bar as i don’t have a copy to look through, but i believe many of the images in the book are quite solid and evocative…

… this one in particular is beautiful and rightfully headlines the article… the flat landscape, the trucks, the edge of a parking lot, the place chosen to sun oneself, at the apex of the corner of the parking lot… all quintessentially American… tipped on an angle (homage to Frank?) to slope down (suggesting a downhill run for the nation?)…

… i click through to the book purchase page and buy one of 50 copies for $30… why is it so cheap?, why are there any left?…

04 Tarra St. Hill

… an article about TSH in AnOther Magazine… i am initially interested because the lead photograph is of TSH from the waist up, naked… yes, the sex hook worked as it usually does…

… AnOther Mag is largely a fashion focused publication, but includes some good spreads on art of the moment, especially photographic art… in the past i have not been much interested in fashion, but a niece in the fashion industry and my interest in how women are presented photographically have converged to inspire me to pay more attention…

… TSH was apparently a muse to Corrine Day who was a fashion photographer, documentary photographer, model and author of Diary, in which she wrote about the experiences of herself and the constellation of people around her… Diary, published in 2000, sounds as though it has been generationally important… and when i look the book up i discover it is out of print and collectible, selling for north of $300 for a hardcover copy… it’s available as an ebook through a membership gated portal… i will investigate that later…

… as i read the article on the new TSH zine… it strikes me as largely a PR piece meant to enhance the notoriety of TSH… that the article leads with a partially nude portrait is to draw people (especially men?) in… TSH reminds me of the Blade Runner character Priss in the selection of photos offered from the magazine… i imagine that is intentional…

03 Jenna Westra, Afternoons

… i’ve taken my first page by page tour through Afternoons, by Jenna Westra…

… here is what i notice…

… the artist includes photographs of herself throughout and uses a cable release in several of the portraits which marks the portraits as self portraits and identifies her amidst the multiple women who are subjects of photographs in the book…

… thus, one woman in particular, the artist, has prominence in the book as the only individual with a name and a presence that goes beyond studies of form and the feminine… the choice to include herself without such clear identification for the other women is significant and shifts what the book would be without it… yes, the other women are sometimes identified in the title of a picture, all, i presume, are listed at the end… it’s not possible to be certain, as there is a list of names but only as individuals to be thanked, one wonders about these choices…

… keeping the female subjects of the photographs largely unidentified supports the feminine generalities of the book…

… there are full and partial nudes in the book… they are outnumbered by images of women with some kind of clothing on… only one of the nudes¹ strikes me as being at all sexual, attractive to the male or female gaze… a woman’s sex potential is not an overt theme of the book, rather, it is feminine form, femininity and an intimate society of women together… it is not to be assumed that the women are lesbians either… they are there, with each other, as a sisterhood… or perhaps, as alter egos, different dimensions, of the artist herself…

… the book is well done, a mixture of black & white and color images, it has a nice pace…

… there are layers of intent and meaning to peel away, more is revealed with each pass through the book…

… a very nice photobook experience…

03 Afternoons, Jenna Westra

… i ordered this book prior to leaving on vacation, forgot that i had, was pleasantly surprised to see it in the mail pile when i returned…

… for some time now i have been interested in the subject of women in photography, as subject/object, as photographer, as critic… i became especially interested in the “male gaze” vs the “female gaze,” as i was noticing increasing numbers of women photographers photographing other women nude… i often found the nude images made by women as “male gaze” provocative as those made by men, and wondered how that squared with the feminist idea that it is not helpful that women are continually objectified as sexual objects, not to be taken seriously as intelligent accomplished beings in their own right…

… i ordered this book because it is entirely about the female body, singularly or with other female bodies, with some full or partial nudity, but as often dressed and posed in ways that allow an appreciation of youthful feminine form without being open to an overly sexual read…

… from the opening essay by Orit Gat…

Many of the photographs feature degrees of nudity. Once this book, these photographs, are out in the world, the tender consciousness of being seen between the models and the artist or the cameral shifts. Whatever eyes rest on them, though, will recognize different things in their freedom. It’s hard, maybe impossible, to talk about a female gaze without it reading like a translation of the terminology of the male gaze. The comfort nude women feel around one another will read as familiar to many, and like a secret society to others. The photos do not explore the difference per se, but they also do not generate tension around the history of nude representation. Instead, there is tenderness.¹

… it’s a deep subject that has brought lots of feminist literature into my library, Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex, for example…

… the biggest thing i have learned is that consent, then intent, matter… the models should always have agency in both agreeing to be photographed, how they are photographed and how the photographs are to be used after being made… intent also matters… and even when intent serves a good purpose, is not objectification of subject, the image can always be appropriated as such when it engages the male gaze, which often is the case…

01 First Thoughts

… no middle of the night waking by either dog, but Chas is ready promptly at 4 AM… it’s ok, no alcohol last night and in bed more or less on time…

… the heat should break today… there isn’t anything abnormal about a few days of this kind of heat at this time of year… not like the Pacific Northwest where temperatures are breaking records, and in the case of British Columbia, setting an all time record… 116 degrees!…

… this morning’s Heather Cox Richardson is all about how the oil and gas industry are lobbying states for legislation that favors the fossil fuel industry and makes it harder to pursue green energy strategies… the problem with capitalism… money equals power and big oil and gas have lots of money… interests are entrenched… numerous states depend substantially on the oil and gas industry for jobs and revenue… we should be better at adjusting but the market capitalist system often makes it difficult to do what is beneficial in the long run…

… a sweet story about Gertrude Tate and Alice Austin love affair in Brain Pickings… Alice Austin was a pioneering photographer… Maria Popova describes her work as brilliant, i am not as clear that it was, but she was both pursuing photography and loving a woman when both were difficult to do… i think her genius was in just getting out and doing it, recording people, in dignified portraits… here is an example…

Street-cleaner at 34th Street, New York City, part of Alice Austen’s 1896 series Street Types of New York. (Alice Austen House archive.)

… trying out Craft after a high recommendation from a Micro.blog community member… trying to see where it might fit into my workflow…

… the internet is so freaking slow this AM… that is what i hoped i was leaving behind when i came home… what gives?…

04 Poulomi Basu

… an article on Poulomi Basu, woman photographer from India… her body of work sits at the intersection of fine art, fiction, documentary… a conflict between government, capitalism, and natives… i wonder, will anything change because of the work?… or will it be enshrined in museum halls of the capitalist machine, the self critique that offers a veneer of respectability but alleviates no suffering because, after all, capitalism values extraction of minerals under the ground more than people living above that ground…

04 Kiss the Police?

Vinca Peterson: Raves and Riots

… this photograph is striking… it seems that young women confronting the uniformed presence of the state with love is an image to be found happening again and again… it reminds me of this photograph from the Vietnam War era…

Marc Ribaud, Jan Rose Kasmir confronting the military at the Pentagon.

… i wonder if the striking contradiction of the feminine confronting the masculine in this way can happen with the same impact now that women increasingly join the ranks of the police and military?…