Trevor Ray Heart
When I was doing my A Level in Photography I borrowed my dads old Blue Triumph Dolomite and persuaded a nice looking blonde lass (thats Northern talk and not disrespectful) to bring some dresses along as we headed for Carlisle Airport for my first fashion shoot.
With its stark yet oddly romantic images of American factories, intersections and trailer parks, William Jenkins's 1975 exhibition rewrote the rules of landscape photography. Does it have the same impact today?
Mundane yet mesmeric ... Stephen Shore's photograph of an alley in Presidio, Texas (1975)
It is 35 years since the term "new topographics" was coined by William Jenkins, curator of a group show of American landscape photography held at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. The show consisted of 168 rigorously formal, black-and-white prints of streets, warehouses, city centres, industrial sites and suburban houses. Taken collectively, they seemed to posit an aesthetic of the banal.
"What I remember most clearly was that nobody liked it," Frank Gohlke, one of the participating photographers told the LA Times when the exhibition was restaged last year at the LA County Museum of Art. "I think it wouldn't be too strong to say that it was a vigorously hated show."
The exhibition's clunky subtitle was "Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape", which gave some clue as to the deeper unifying theme. What Jenkins had identified in the work of US photographers such as Gohlke, Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, Lewis Baltz and Nicholas Nixon was an interest in the created landscapes of 70s urban America. Their stark, beautifully printed images of this mundane but oddly fascinating topography was both a reflection of the increasingly suburbanised world around them, and a reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental. In one way, they were photographing against the tradition of nature photography that the likes of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston had created.
Adams, who is now perhaps the most well-known chronicler of America's disappearing wildernesses, pointed his camera at eerily empty streets, pristine trailer parks, rows of standardised tract houses, the steady creep of suburban development in all its regulated uniformity. Baltz made stark photographs of the walls of office buildings and warehouses on industrial sites in Orange County. Nixon concentrated on innercity development: skyscrapers that dwarfed period buildings, freeways, gridded streets and the palpable unreality of certain American cities in which pedestrians seem like interlopers.
Coolly architectural ... a detail of Hilla Becher's series of Pennsylvania pit head photographs (1974) Jenkins also included American work by Bernd and Hilla Becher in the show. The Bechers' stark images of Pennsylvania salt mines and giant coal breakers were as coolly architectural as their images of German cooling towers and industrial plants. The suggestion was that there was something determinedly European about this new American gaze.
Only one photographer, Shore, shot in colour. It seemed to heighten the sense of detachment in his photographs of anonymous intersections and streets. Shore was influenced by Ed Ruscha, the conceptualist of Californian cool, who, in the 60s, had made a series of artist's books with self-explanatory titles such as Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Every Building on the Sunset Strip. The show also nodded obliquely at the later work of Walker Evans, who had photographed the vernacular iconography of America in road signs, billboards, motels and shop fronts.
Evans's images now carry the romantic undertow of an almost vanished America. The work of the photographers in the New Topographics exhibition, now collected in an austerely beautiful book of the same name by Steidl, still looks, for the most part, contemporary – and still seems troubling in its matter-of-factness, its almost dull reflection of the uniform and banal. A friend of mine who works in publishing dismissed the book outright, saying: "If I were to commission a bunch of authors to write essays on boredom, I would not expect the result to be a bunch of boring essays. Nor would I give it a pretentious postmodern title." Outside the rarefied world of art photography, many would, I suspect, agree.
The influence of the New Topographics movement, however, has been pervasive. You can detect it in the work of Andreas Gursky, Paul Graham and Candida Höfer. Indeed, Donovan Wylie's clinical approach to photographing the empty Maze prison in Northern Ireland, currently shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse prize, could easily have been a contemporary addendum to the Steidl book.
The New Topograhics exhibition in 1975 was not just the moment when the apparently banal became accepted as a legitimate photographic subject, but when a certain strand of theoretically driven photography began to permeate the wider contemporary art world. Looking back, one can see how these images of the "man-altered landscape" carried a political message and reflected, unconsciously or otherwise, the growing unease about how the natural landscape was being eroded by industrial development and the spread of cities.
Back then, Jenkins seemed to have anticipated what the public reaction to the show would be. University students were on hand at George Eastman House to interview visitors for their reactions, most of which were negative or dismissive. One man was surprised to find his own truck in one of Adams's photographs, and had this to say: "At first they're really stark nothing, but then you really look at them and it's just the way things are. This is interesting, it really is."
Chris Jorden
We hope that you can join us on Thursday February 25th from 6-8 pm at the Edwynn Houk Gallery for the opening of Pioneers of Color. And... on March 6th at 3 pm Joel Meyerowitz will be in conversation with Kevin Moore, the curator of Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980, currently on exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Please click on the image below for more information. Look forward to seeing you! |
Derek Henderson (left)
Vancouver photographer David Burdeny is on the defensive over his recent series of landscape images called “Sacred & Secular,” after photographer Sze Tsung Leong reportedly challenged him about similarities to Sze’s “Horizons” series. Some of Burdeny's images are also similar to images by Elger Esser, although Esser has not objected.
Dahshur, Egypt. From "Horizons" by Sze Tsung Leong, 2007
Bent Pyramid. From "Sacred & Secular," David Burdeny, 2009
The Jennifer Kostuik gallery has also removed from its Web site Burdeny’s image of the pyramid in Dahshur, Egypt.
The owner of the Herring Kiss gallery did not respond to requests for an interview.
Burdeny went on to say, “I’m aware of their [Esser and Sze’s] work, and my position is, these are fairly common tourist locations,” referring to vantage points where he shot images similar to theirs.
Of the landscapes he’s been shooting since 2006, he says, “More often than not I am standing next to someone who is taking the same image. So in a sense I’m taking things where basically, there might as well be a ‘scenic viewpoint’ sign. There are hundreds of copies of pretty much the same viewpoint.”
He continues, “It’s not that I want to divert attention away from myself. To imply that I am somehow the first person who has ever made a similar image, even if I was aware of that image—that’s the climate that everybody else works in…People appropriate other people’s images, people are aware of certain people’s work, the knowledge of what people are doing travels at light speed. Everybody draws from each other, and every once in a while, somebody gets singled out.”
Milo says it’s not just the similarity to a few of Sze's images that’s alarming. “The [Sacred & Secular] installation is exactly the same [as "Horizons"]. This takes it to another level.” According to Milo, the Kostuik gallery asked two years ago to exhibit Sze’s “Horizons” series during the winter Olympics in Vancouver, but Milo declined.
Canale della Giudecca I, Venezia, Sze Tsung Leong, 2007
Grand Canal II, Venezia, by David Burdeny, 2009
Cutting Wharf I, Elger Esser, 2008
Sacramento River, David Burdeny, 2009
Paris, Elger Esser, 1999
I found this here on the copyright action website which is full of information but a little 'contract' in its writings and not so easy to understand in places. The British Journal of Photography also covers such matters, but this pretty much sums up the situation regarding copyright at the moment.
The Digital Economy Bill : what's yours is ours
The end game is now in sight. The Digital Economy Bill is now expected to become law within the next 6 weeks. It introduces orphan works usage rights, which - unless amended, which HMG says it will not - will allow the commercial use of any photograph whose author cannot be identified through a suitably negligent search. That is potentially about 90% of the photos on the internet.
Copyright in photos is essentially going to cease to exist, since there is no ineradicable way of associating ownership details short of plastering your name right across the image. Photographer's organisations have pressed hard for mandatory attribution to deter orphans being manufactured. Early in the consultation process the IPO accepted the irresistible logic that it was completely unreasonable to permit orphan use without a balancing requirement to not orphan photos in the first place. However, the IPO recognised with dismay that this would mean "taking on Rupert" (Murdoch).
Publishers have a long history of opposing our moral rights. They were responsible for the feeble and unenforceable moral rights clauses in the 1988 Act. They want their branding, not ours, and they want maximum freedom to exploit our IP at minimum cost and inconvenience.
The IPO avoided confrontation with Murdoch, who does have something of a rep for being a vital friend in an election year. The Bill contains no deterrent to the creation of orphans, no penalties for anonymising your work, no requirement for bylines. It is a luncheon voucher for industry hungry for free and cheap content.
So Flickr, Google Images, personal websites, all of it will become commercial publishers' photolibrary. A fee will have to be deposited with a collecting society in case the owner spots the usage. The author who discovers his work has been used as an orphan can then make a claim and receive a percentage of the peanuts, after the collecting society has had its share, and the government its share.
This is perhaps a slight improvement over earlier proposals, whereby HMG egregiously planned to keep all the fees itself.
Essentially, if photos were cars, so long as the numberplate is missing (or you can get rid of it and claim it was), you'll be able to legally TWOC and use it on payment of a fee to the Government.
The quaint notion that the author alone has prime and inalienable rights over his/her own work, must be able to restrict usage, negotiate a fee, prevent usage they consider immoral or distasteful, or assert their moral right to attribution, is about to pass into history.
This is the biggest change in UK copyright law in 150 years. It also punches holes through the Berne agreement, international copyright law and TRIPS.
It most certainly is not an issue that affects only pro's, who for the most part are doomed anyway. Simple economics of media evolution are driving commercial users toward free or very cheap content, sourced from readers and users, microstock, hobbyists, and we suspect that Government is using orphan works legislation as a means to oil the wheels of Britain's publishing industry. Cultural freedom, the worthy concerns of museums and galleries, are just a Trojan horse. If they were not, none of this chicanery would be necessary, a simple extension to fair dealing would have solved the orphans problem.
So it is amateurs who should worry most. Pro's tend to be careful about asserting copyright and being easy to find, because it's their livelihood. Amateurs just don't want to know about this dull legal stuff or spend hours embedding IPTC, even if they know what it is. They want to concentrate on the enjoyable bits of shooting and sharing their work, often via free services and untraceable nicknames. If work gets published without payment, they tend to feel flattered rather than robbed anyway. If they can claim a few quid from a collecting society they'll be chuffed. It is their photographs that will become easy targets for orphan claims, relieving commercial publishers of the tedious necessity of needing to ask permission when they can't easily find the owner. But the fact remains that photographers will have been serially robbed with government connivance.
Back door man
Most of this state-sponsored thieves' charter isn't even going through Parliament as primary legislation. The Digital Economy bill Section 42 sections 16a, 16b, 16c enable ad hoc regulation by Mandelson's office without further legislation. None of that will ever be voted on.
In fact what an "orphan work" is remains undefined in the Bill. Simlarly, what precisely will comprise an "adequate search", what level of fee will be required, how the fee will be divided between the revenant author and the collecting society, who will benefit from unclaimed fees, who the extended licensing societies will be and what rules they will have to follow, are all unspecified and unknown to supporters and opponents alike. As far as orphans and photographers are concerned, this is a deliberate shell of a bill whose real payload will not be made apparent until it is too late to do anything about it.
Remarkably, even though it simply isn't possible for them to know what they were voting for, only a handful of Lib-Dem and Tory Lords expressed concern during Monday's Lords debate.
This covert approach to major legislation did not escape the attention of the Lords Select Committee on the Constution, who wrote to Mandelson in December :
"The Committee's view is that this is inappropriate, and that "orphan work" should be defined in the Bill. Likewise the following matters are left for you as Secretary of State and are not settled in the Bill: the treatment of royalties, the deduction of administrative costs, the period for which sums must be held for the copyright owner, and the subsequent treatment of those sums. The Committee notes that regulations made under this section are subject only to negative resolution procedure; and that the provisions contain no express duty on you as Secretary of State to consult appropriate stakeholders....it would greatly assist the Committee if you could explain why you consider it to be constitutionally appropriate for what appear to be such wide-ranging and open-ended rule-making powers to be conferred on you as Secretary of State."
Mandelson replied that the need for flexibility in specifying what comprises an adequate search makes this difficult. That what is an orphan work will change according to evolving methods of determining its status. (An astonishing concept borrowed perhaps from quantum mechanics). He gives no clues what an adequate search may comprise because that too is subject to change. Therefore we have no clue what an orphan work may be, but rest assured the law needs to change to address the dire handicap that orphans present to creativity. Who can argue with that? But he does at least promise yet more IPO public consultation. In over 3 years of consultation with photographers' representative bodies, Gowers, Lammy, the IPO have proved deaf as a post, so this is not reassuring.
Nor have the answers been any clearer regarding the EC Human Rights implications of disposing of some unknown person's copyright. "No Articles are engaged by the provision itself as the provision only contains a power and has no immediate substantive effect" is a truly audacious Houdini-ism. But anyhow, according to Mandelson ECHR allows him to do anything he likes with other peoples' copyright so long as it is in the public interest, and so long as people can opt out of the licensing arrangements he undertakes - which appears to mean they forfeit collecting society fees. Can they sue for infringement? Sorry, don't know, nobody knows
Even if he can't tell the public or Parliament what he's going to do or how any of it will impact on us, or how the sums work, or even how much money government will rake off the deal with collecting societies, or even exactly what "opt out" means, he is at least sure all of it will be in the public interest. Mandelson has a long, long list of informal soothing assurances to live up to, but once the law is passed they may well be worthless. There is little point is reserving to oneself unaccountable Godlike powers of unlimited "flexibility" if one does not intend to use them. In the public interest, of course. That's not defined either.
Whatever next
Now that their Lordships have nodded through this masterpiece of double-blind opacity, it will return to the House of Lords for the report stage on 1st March, with none of our elected representatives being any the wiser when they vote, but reliably following party lines. The Government is determined to see the Digital Economy Bill passed without further amendment before the May 6th election date. A cynic might think that, having watched the fate of successive US orphan rights Bills and the international uproar among visual creators, the UK Government has been very clever indeed at closing down debate and circumventing democracy. Nobody can argue with what is still secret. Genius.
The ICO code : put that camera away, my face is private
Not content with abrogating photographers' copyright, another part of Government is now going some way to ban photography altogether in public places, for data protection reasons. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) proposed new code for personal information online has "commonsense" new rules that in effect will prohibit photography in public places where anyone who's in the photograph might be unhappy about being photographed. A photo, taken in public, is now deemed private data, y'see.
CCTV, full body scans at airports, no problem, but if an ordinary person takes a photo, this Kafkasesque notion of privacy in public will apply. Unless it's on film. You'd probably be OK taking photos of someone committing a criminal offence too, as ICO thinks this shouldn't be private information.
Mindful of the damage this would do to tourism and how much it would piss off Joe Public to be told he can't use his cameraphone in the street to make humiliating snaps of his drunk mates for Facebook (and quite possibly subsequent orphan use by Rupert Murdoch), ICO have decided that this lunacy shall only apply to pro photographers, a small enough constituency to castrate with impunity.
Of course ICO thinks all pro photography is deeply unpopular paparazzi harassment of our beloved celebrities so it is acting in a most principled manner for, you guessed, the public interest. Minor considerations like journalism, history, social documentary, freedom of expression - and even the simple logic that if you can eyeball it in public, it can't possibly be private - all are just collateral damage. At a stroke, ICO is redefining allowable photography to exclude all that contentious street stuff that has made the record of the last 150 years so insightful. Consensual falsehoods, celebrity promotion, ridiculous propaganda, marketing nonsense will all be fine, however.
"Consultation" has, in the now time-honoured manner, met with stonewall indifference. As far as ICO are concerned, there is not a problem. It simply means pro photographers must not take any photo that anyone in the picture may object to. They don't have to actually object, the photographer has to guess whether they might and do the responsible thing.
Almost always that will mean putting the camera away and going home. In the most CCTV-monitored and nannied country in the world, once the bossed-about public gets the idea that they have a right to not be photographed in public places they wil point blank refuse, just to assert the one tiny freedom left to them. At last they will no longer have to imagine privacy rights they don't have. The prejudice and suspicion against anyone with a big camera will be officially sanctioned. Photographers will not only be potential paedophiles and terrorists, but identity-thieving personal data pirates too.
Of course, we already have police and PCSO's deploying S44 TA2000 for the purpose of interdicting photography in public places. That has admittedly been ruled illegal under ECHR by the European Court in Strasbourg, but HMG assure that is in the public interest too and police say it is a vital part of the fight against terrorism, so the law lives on.
All told, at this rate it will soon be easier to photograph in North Korea than UK.
[EDIT:
Just to be entirely clear, the above article deals with two separate issues emanating from two different government departments.
1. Digital Economy Bill
We urge you to write to your MP about the orphan licensing provisions of the Digital Economy Bill. Pressure on our elected representatives is now the only way to stop the Bill, and time is short.
It is better to write your own unique letter because MP's take less notice of organised campaigns than individual constituents, but if it helps a template letter is available here. Word (.doc), RTF (.rtf) and plain text (.txt) versions may be downloaded from the bottom of that page. Adapt it, change it, write something entirely different, but write!
If you can, don't just email. A proper letter on paper sent through the post, or even a fax will command a great deal more attention. Recorded delivery is best of all - they might think it's from the Fees Office ;-)
How to find your MP's name and contact details is described here.
2. ICO Personal Information Online consultation
In response to inquiries correctly noting that the ICO code does not explicitly mention photography please read the comment "ICO and Photography in Public places : a clarification" - http://copyrightaction.com/forum/uk-gov-nationalises-orphans-and-bans-no...
The ICO consultation is ongoing and concludes on 5 March. Please email consultations@ico.gsi.gov.uk seeking urgent clarification regarding their interpretation of data protection law regarding photography in public places.
Kodak retires Tri-X 320 medium-format films
Kodak has announced that it was stopping production of its popular medium-format Kodak Professional Tri-X 320 films. The US-based firm blamed the decision on decreasing sales numbers
Launched more than 50 years ago, the Kodak Professional Tri-X 320 films were popular with photojournalists and documentary photographers. The 320 films were available in 120 and 220 pro-pack of five rolls.
'Based on current sales, product is expected to be available in the market through March 2010,' says Kodak in a statement. It adds that the Kodak Professional Tri-X 400 films will continue to be available.
Up until today, Kodak continued to market the Tri-X 320 film as 'world's best selling black-and-white film.' It said: 'This classic black-and-white film allows for maximum pushability when he needs it, while its wide exposure latitude lets him leverage even the most challenging lighting situations. And the distinctive grain structure adds a level of realism as dramatic and profound as each subject.'
The Tri-X 320 films will also continue to be available in sheet format. For more details on availability, visit Kodak's website here.
Best start saving for that Hassleblad MK IV or whatever its called...
Its been a while since I posted anything on Mark Powers project DESTROYING THE LABORATORY FOR THE SAKE OF THE EXPERIMENT, but there's been a fair bit added so its more than worth checking out here.
As its now the build up to the next show with invites to produce and press releases to be released. I happened to mention a certain magazine with an aim to getting a little publicity for the extravaganza which is to be in March. Upon approach the words Never Heard Of Him where passed on to me in a quiet whisper.Some time ago, I went to a talk given by Joel Sternfeld at UMass, where some of his Oxbow Archive photography was on display. I thought I'd get to be presented with some insight into that project. As it turned out, Sternfeld decided to go through all his work, including (and focusing on) some very old street photography. Good thing I love street photography so much! Joking aside, at the very end of the talk, Sternfeld had a special surprise for his audience - and who wouldn't be giddy about getting to see new work by a great photographer? My giddy excitement quickly turned into an "uh-oh" feeling when he pulled out his iPhone and started talking about some trip to Dubai.
Maybe it's the fact that I have spent too many years dealing with computers (don't ask), but I'm at a stage now where I don't get very excited about gizmos any longer. It's great that there is a telephone that allows you to take photographs and browse the web, but I'd be more excited about a vacuum cleaner that can also clean out cat boxes and fill up cat-food bowls (People of Apple: develop an iCatVac, please - I won't complain if it doesn't have a camera, but its surface better not scratch easily!). So I view serious artists embracing the iPhone with a bit of skepticism, especially if the phone itself is presented as a big selling point.
For example, a little while ago, New Yorker magazine made a big fuss about a cover produced on an iPhone. I forgot the name of the artist, maybe in part because the art work reminded me of what you typically get to see at "starving artists sales".
But sure, you can probably produce great art on an iPhone, because, after all, great art is not made by tools, it's made by people. You can take incredibly crappy photographs with an 8x10 camera; but in the hands of someone like Sternfeld, an 8x10 camera can - and usually does - produce stellar art.
Of course, I had no idea what he would do with his iPhone, but there was Dubai. At this stage, after having seen so much work being produced in Dubai I frankly don't see what anyone could possibly find there that we haven't seen before. I never thought that Dubai was such an interesting photographic topic in the first place: taking photos of rich men shopping in the desert or of fancy buildings - what other message than the incredibly obvious is hidden in there?
We could even eliminate Dubai from this photographic context if we wanted to and ask what we are supposed to take away from photographs that show rich people shopping? Once you start thinking about it, it's not much, is it? Of course, you can convince yourself of various (also incredibly obvious) ironies, such as, for example, the fact that it's only those very people shown in the pictures who are usually able to afford the photographs. But for how long does that remain something you need to or want to think about? Well, not much longer than it took you to finish reading this sentence.
Coming back to the artist's talk, Sternfeld presented his audience with iPhone photos he took in Dubai, photographs that, frankly, made it almost a bit hard to believe they were taken by the same artist who had produced all the other ones presented earlier. And he announced there was going to be a book, called - brace yourselves - iDubai
Of course, it's unfair for me to single out this particular book. I frankly would never do it if I did not have various other of Sternfeld's books on my book shelf, books that I would happily recommend to anyone as American master pieces to look at. And of course, I should just get over the fact that every artist can do whatever s/he wants, and sometimes, the results might just be not so great. That's a risk any artist takes, which is why it's unfair for me to write about this. Make no mistake, I do applaud Sternfeld for his willingness to try new things. But part of me also thinks at some stage the artist who produced American Prospects should have taken aside the artist who produced the iPhone photos...
I thought very long and hard about whether to write this post, and in the end I decided to write it because it's not a rant about a particular book or artist - even though I'm "using" one as an example (that's the unfair bit). What I'm really doing here is re-iterating, yet again, that the medium is not the message, and if you rely on some overhyped gizmo to produce art, then what matters still is not the gizmo, but whatever it is that is being produced with it. That's true for a Deardorff 8x10, for a Leica M9, or for an iPhone.
Furthermore, this post is re-iterating something else I wrote earlier, namely that what I'm looking for in art is something that leaves me a different person after being exposed to it, art that asks me questions, that challenges me, instead of presenting me with the obvious.
The obvious bores me.
