WALL DONE MAGAZINE

CONVERSATION WITH SILVIA & BART POGODA

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 0

WALL DONE: Bartek, when are you going to slow down? You still have some countries to make. How many have you made so far? 82? There're still about 60 I guess..

BART: I've already slowed down. Well, there are still short distances to cover, though. We still live in Vienna and work in Poland. And here we are: Polish roads, My Sweet Little Village and The Blue Danube :) on the road between Warsaw, Vienna, Bańska Bystrzyca in Slovakia and Kłodzko where my parents live. Over two years like that. You said about „making” a few countries, and it seemed to me like a short love affair without any deeper reflection. The truth is, however, a backpacker's life is becoming really boring after some time. You know, the same talks, places, atmosphere.

WD: Bartek and Silvia, you compose a nice duet. We've even some friends who took you as a model and created their own blog, and now they're shooting somewhere in Asia. How is it, working as husband and wife, taking photos together? Is that what makes you develop or is it a challenge?

BART: I think it's a challenge that makes us develop. Though I admit it's not an easy thing and the truth is we haven't started to work together in a full commercial swing yet, but we do projects together.

SILVIA: It' s funny, people always hope to find a partner who would have the same idea of spending time or at least similar passions in life so that it would be easier to connect and make things happen together. But in fact nobody really wants to work with the partner, 'cause there's the danger of spending too much time together, burning out, fighting over work at home and spoiling the "homely" atmosphere with problems raising out from co-working. We're the couple that shares most of the time together in a way where you can't really find the border between work and pleasure and that's of course connected with situations where strong emotions come to life. But u know where is the will there is a way, and by the end of the day this way seems to be more constructive and exciting.

WD: We all like listening to stories from a journey, encounters with other cultures and continents. Tell us some, maybe you have a fresh one.

B: Yeah, right :) let's give it a break. No story to fit in, I guess, man.

WD: Let's talk about As If There Was No Tomorrow, your project. Do you manage to reach this state of mind, you know, being here and now? Isn't photography the emanation of such a state, this very moment when the shutter clicks?

S: I wish I could live my life right here and right now as if there was no tomorrow, but I can't. Maybe that's why I' m taking photos. But As Is If There Was No Tomorrow is not about us, it doesn't reflect our feelings. It's about people in the photos, people who live in a country and in the way that taught them how to live for today. Maybe they were brought up like that, maybe that's what they take up from their surrounding, maybe that's what they hear watching TV, or maybe that's some sort of stigma of their past. But they're really able to live as if there's no tomorrow to come, and even their food tastes as if it was their last one. We hoped to catch that atmosphere in the photos, but looking at them now, we know there's still something to be shown...the time to finish the project has to come.

WD: What next? Do you think about next projects after As If There Was No Tomorrow? Any new challenges?

B: Well, there're some things up in the air– some of these we've already touched, did a bit and left like that. There's always some missing point, though – cash, time. That's why it all evolves very slowly. During summer vacation we worked with one project which sort of „missed the point” completely. It was the Upside-down Mountain and it dealt with the end of the world in 2012 as well as the "magic mountain" in the Pyrenees. We planned, read extensively, spend huge amount of money on gasoline as we had to reach the spot and in the end it all turned out to be another new age crap. We were dead tired and on the way back divorced four times:) Photos were failure and we kicked ourselves regretting we didn't stop for longer in some other places instead of stubbornly glueing to the Pyrenees. Challenges? To build some stable fundament which will give you a financial backbone and money for future projects. We take part in various competitions, follow the thread on the Internet trying to exhibit our works here and there. Step by step, you know. But no set destinations. The worst thing I guess is to reach the peak and then lose your happiness of cherishing every move leading towards it.

WD: For some time I had a feeling you represent the so called 'stream of consciousness' photography – you shoot whatever comes up, in a way... What do you think about the blog photography? Is it a temporary style, or trend with its representatives (Dash Snow, Fletcher Chancey, Dawid Misiorny, Kuba Dąbrowski...), its magazines like Vice as well as faithful recipients? Do you somehow associate it with the mainstream trend 'I have a camera, I'm a photographer'?

B: You had a feeling? Or you thought (think) so?;) For me it's like "home-made" photography – sometimes disorderly group of "bad" photos stitched together creating the flavour, the one you read between the lines, indirectly.

S: I think it's connected with the question that has to be answered first: "What is a blog for?" Once u know why you have it, you know why you show the photos and what kind of photos are there. Either you understand a blog as a diary which is meant to be shared with others, or you keep it as an "album" for photos that aren't good enough to end up in your portfolio but not as bad that you would've to throw them away, or you have no "higher" ambitions with photography and than you use photos only as illustrations with other content. But in general blogs are very appealing 'cause they're so lively and everything that's appealing becomes a new trend and then, after some time, it's slowly vanishing. We' ll see what happens after this trend is over.

WD: I know you work much with the film. For you a camera is just a tool or does it influence the way you take photos? The fact is, you can't in a moment check the effect of your work, press Delete, try again, see how many photos are left to take...does it influence the way you compose?

B: The mode of taking pictures differs according to the camera. The digital camera, as we all know, is used for work and I don't limit myself in shooting. However, if you exaggerate you spend all night long in front of your computer screen browsing through the pics. I have my own workflow in the Adobe Lightroom so I don't waste time. The more difficult thing is when you work with the film. Particularly after you come back – you have to do some previews, scan it all, choose, scan once again, clean, retouch, prepare for printing. Arduous and frustrating. I remember one scene from the "War Photographer" about James Nachtwey – the way he organizes things – he has his men who deal with prints and all is fine. In our case, we have to do it ourselves. Mamiya 7 puts limits on you – compositions are too safe and a bit stiff, I guess. I talked about it with Siska today. The continuous progress and searching for a new form has to come so as not to stuck in one place with our neatly composed frames :)

S: I still don’t take any digital photos, apart from when I' m working. And I' m not saying this with any pride or to make impression. Actually, thinking about it I wish I could. The whole process of bringing a photo from a negative to its "public" life is sooooo long, takes sooo much energy, patience and money that it starts to be a problem. But before this whole process you are bringing your negative to have it developed, hoping for some shots that you remember and you are expecting they have to be great and then you look through the negative ten times searching for that shot and it's not there. Those are the moments when I hate myself for shooting analog. But I simply can' t do digital...I wouldn't be myself then. I' d feel as if I was betraying myself. So I always try to be very aware of each photo I take, and it was the same even when I tried digital. However, because of the speed of composing I had a feeling I' m missing something :)

WD: Apart from authorial content, photography is also your source of income. I guess it means a lot of things to give up on and at times you feel like throwing your camera out of the window. Your commercial nightmare? I hope Viva's CEO won't read that;)

B: Well, I'm sort of balancing, I guess. Most of the time I complain I don't have a job, about the crisis, about my laziness... But when I find something to do, I'm happy about that. Then, I do it without thinking about things to give up on as I know after a while things I have now will vanish in thin air. But then, there is time for your private things, life, projects and...waiting for the money transfer:)

WD: Bart and Silvia in 40 years' time? Two active old people running around with a camera?

Well, I don't know about Siska – I don't plan my future further than 2 months ahead:) Are we going to be still active in 40 years' time? I guess, I can imagine that. However, there's nothing I can plan or imagine, or even try to picture :)

COLLECT ART, NOT DUST

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:00 0

It's official. After many days of hard work and preparations (including working on Labour Day…yes, it should be illegal) we'd like to announce that from May 10th, Wall Done has a new, temporary home at Willa Grohmana, where we'll be holding a "Collect art not dust" event, together with terrific people from Fotofestiwal Łódź.

-------

Here's what's happening:

Wall Done joins forces with Fotofestiwal Łódź to encourage the public to engage in the reviving practice of art collecting and once again open a discussion about the place of art in our daily life. Because blank walls are no longer en vogue.

At Wall Done, we believe that anyone interested in art and photography can become a collector; in order to share that view with a larger audience, we assembled a limited selection of choice, high-quality photo prints by the participants of the forthcoming edition of the festival.

This is your chance to experience the privileges of owning a private photo collection. Individual photos as well as sets of the entire collection will be available for viewing and purchase in one of the Fotofestiwal venue’s rooms (Willa Grohmana, ul.Tylnej 9/11), adapted especially for that purpose, throughout the festival (May 10th-20th), as well as online, at walldone.com.

Tailored speciﬁcally for beginner collectors, these rare works come in two functional formats (30x40 and 18x24 cm). Each copy is numbered and comes with a certificate signed by the author. You no longer just stare and desire, right now you may indulge yourself with a private collection of art.

Now, if for some reason you won't be able to come in person you still have a chance to be a part of the campaign. We'll be keeping everyone in the loop through our Facebook and Twitter channels. A 10 days full of exhibitions, lectures by renowned photographers and photography lovers. Video interviews with the authors and people from the industry. Please join us for tons of inspiration, networking and fantastic imagery.

LIEKO SHIGA AT PHOTOMONTH KRAKOW

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 0

Lieko Shiga – ‘CANARY’
18th May – 17th July 2012 at Manggha Center of Japanese Art and Technology

May is a very exciting month. For a variety of reasons. One of them is a peculiar accumulation of many unique photographic venues. That alone makes us smile and wondering how to reschedule our timetable to be present at half of them. In terms of the distance the closest it gets for us is Photomonth in Krakow 2012. This year they're celebrating 10th Jubilee Edition and the main program looks nothing like monotonous. The Lieko Shiga exhibition curated by Ferdinand Brüggemann is something we definitely wouldn't want to miss.

Lieko says:

The photographic paper is the evidence. The image printed on it had a smell like something still fresh, as it appeared before my eyes. If the time axis of this world exists inside the photograph, then I am standing completely outside of it, and in order to escape from uncertainty of the "present", which is both indecisive and elusive, I search desperately for some clue of an axis that definitely exists. Time moves forward towards my death, and the act of creating a moment of stationary time, as opposed to passing time, is something akin to prayer; the image establishes itself in line with a strong desire for and attachment to the existence of something opposed to self.

When photographing, I create a device to produce chance events, waiting to be shot by the camera at a moment that is impossible to predict in order to lose any control over the images I may intentionally hold. The verb "shoot" is used to describe the action of taking a photograph, but the same word is also used to mean "kill", therefore to be shot is to be resurrected through the action of killing. I can already visualize the finished photograph when i first encounter the subject or scene, or even before that. The time that exists before the photograph is taken, shoots me where I stand outside, and restores me to life.

The body is simply a medium, I kept a canary inside my stomach.

Look upon people or scenery that have been sacrificed through photography as offerings to the next world.

Lieko Shiga (1980) is a Japanese photographer based in Miyagi prefecture, Japan. She lived in London for several years, and graduated from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2004. She herself explains that her limited ability in English and lack of money for expensive materials led her towards a more introverted approach and to devise her own techniques. Initially she used cheaper prints, which she cut and perforated, then backlit so light shone through the holes, and then photographed again. These were published in three books: Jacques Saw Me Tomorrow Morning, Lily, and Damien Court). Though Shiga’s techniques have evolved, her conceptual approach remains constant: for her, photographs are the sum of experiences that led her to a place—a site where she stages a scenario. For the Canary series, she asked the residents of Brisbane, Australia, and Sendai, Japan, to choose the “lightest” and “darkest” places in each city; based on that information she attempted to find links between the place and the person who chose it.

List of works (in order of appearance):

1 Banquet
2 Wedding Veil
3 Gift
4 Remember that?
5 Chiako
6 Canary
7 Restaurant Surtaj
8 Bon Bon Hall
9 Rita
10 My Husband

All images from the series, Canary 2007 © Lieko Shiga

VALÉRIE BELIN: YOHOHO

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:00 0

Valérie Belin – ‘YOHOHO’
31st May – 7th July 2012 at Michael Hoppen Contemporary

The exhibition will showcase twelve black and white silver gelatin prints, from her new series.

Taking as her subject the famous burlesque, cabaret clubs of Paris, Bélin shot all the film at Le Moulin Rouge and Le Lido. She then carefully constructed each image by layering two negatives together, creating luminous studies of a familiar yet mysterious world, and all the time referencing the gaudy, historical stages of those places. Some years ago, Bélin photographed two dancers from these clubs, and with this series she seeks to unearth more of that story. The personality and history of places and objects is a constant source of inspiration for her work. And these pieces are certainly more still life than landscape.

“In my first series, and especially those dedicated to crystal vases and glasses (1993), I worked only on the light spectrum of the objects and remained very close to the primary process of photography. However, in my later work, whether colour or black-and-white, the new technologies have given me the option of using a freer, more pictorial, dreamlike treatment of the subject - for example, in the pictures of the magicians, of the dancer at the Lido and of the baskets of fruit (2007). Modern tools have led me to see photography beyond the analogue, as a means of creating a pure image captured directly by me at the very heart of my models. Much more than a figurative medium, photography offers me the possibility of probing the evanescent frontiers between reality and illusion, to reveal the profound supernaturalism of my work.”

Her style is not detached, nor is it clinical or purely documentary. Instead, Bélin uses her camera to revel in the exotic details of these stage sets to produce painterly views that are far removed from naturalism, forcing the viewer to question the ambiguous scenes that confront them.

Shot at oblique angles, otherworldly in their great swathes of black, the portraits of interiors are utterly devoid of any human presence and capture cabaret’s empty arena in all its disquieting and Baroque beauty. “Cabaret settings are false illusions of an external world; they are artificial images, enchanting fantasies,” Bélin has noted.

Bélin has never conceived of photography as a way of recording what we see, but rather works in a kind of symbiosis with the luminous essence of the photographic medium itself. It could be possible to describe Bélin’s new series as being more akin to drawing rather than photography: the solid and highly contrasting black and white images resemble thick marks on paper. Reflections and refractions seem to be drawn by light itself or the shapes and forms left in its absence. This effect, combined with solarisation, strips away any physical substance and make the image appear apparitional and the objects within it hollow.

Bélin’s work harks back to Laszlo Mohly Nagy’s ‘photograms’ and is even suggestive of Man Ray’s brand of surrealism. However, the artist is equally eager to adopt digital technology when appropriate: her masterful control enables her to transcend the limitations of reality and formal resemblance. The precise technical choices generate a tension between the settings and their surfaces, magnifying and accentuating the sumptuous details, creating a chaos, which like the richness, only adds to the visual bouyancy of the prints. Once again, the “sur-réalité” of this French artist’s photographs hover somewhere between illusion and image.

“We could consider that I work on the idea of "cliché", but the difference with a pure "cliché" - empty and meaningless - is the fact that if I photograph a purported "cliché" then my work goes beyond the "cliché", and also beyond the subject itself. It becomes a pure vision, a photograph.”

Born in 1964 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, Valérie Bélin lives and works in Paris. Her work is in many private, public and corporate collections across the world – including MoMA NY; Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Pari; the UBS Art Collection; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the JP Morgan Chase Art Program, New York; and the Huis Marseille in Amsterdam.

List of works (in order of appearance):

1 Fancy Forest, 2011,
2 The Mirage, 2011,
3 Queen Ann’s Revenge, 2011,
4 Caribbean Tales, 2011,

All images © Valérie Belin, Courtesy Michael Hoppen Contemporary.

ONE SUMMER

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:00:00 0

Marion Poussier lives and works in Paris. She shares few thoughts about her (one summer):

This series rose out of the scarce memories I have of summers spent at holiday camps as a teenager. I always felt, during those camps, that I was living rare, intense, and precious moments. The camps were a sort of parenthesis in my life, where no one knew me and I could play the part I wanted. For two or three weeks, it really felt I was cut off from the world. Time had stopped and the enclosed space had taken on another dimension. Every day counted. The first few especially. When we looked for those like us or those we would have liked to resemble. The days during which appearance was everything.

The questions of appearance and representation, inherent in adolescence, are at the core of this work. But if these images show the theatrical side of adolescent attitudes, they also give us a glimpse of their personalities, fragile and vulnerable.

Series of 20 photographs taken between 2003 and 2005 in three different holiday camps at Morlaix, Fouesnant and Avignon. None of the situations are staged.

All images © Marion Poussier

SALT FEVER

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 0

Simon Davidson based in Sydney, Australia has been photographing muscle car and custom car culture for almost a decade. Here, he explains the origins of his obsession:

I’ve always had a passion for old cars from the 1950’s and 60’s, an era when all cars were jeweled with chrome. Growing up as a surfer, old cars were a means of transport chasing waves up and down the coast. It wasn’t just the style of the 1960’s cars that was appealing; it was also the ability to fix an old car ourselves, usually in a remote location.

As a photographer I’m constantly looking for personal projects. Editorial and advertising assignments may feed the bank account but personal projects nourish the soul. About 10 years ago a good friend was heading out to compete in an Off Street Drag meeting. This is where street registered cars race for fun, a way getting the racing off the streets and onto the track. It was the first time I had ever been to the drags. That night something clicked; it wasn’t just the old cars but the people who captured my imagination. You could say I went to the drags and never left! For the past ten years I’ve been documenting Australian muscle car and custom car culture. Land Speed Racing on dry salt lakes is part of this ongoing project.

Imagine a place so flat you seem to see the curvature of the planet, so barren not even the simplest life forms can exist; this is a dry salt lake. Land Speed racing is conducted in Australia by the Dry Lake Racers of Australia at Lake Gairdner in South Australia each March, this is where I first fell in love with the world of Land Speed Racing. The starkness of the environment, the graphic element of blue sky against white salt and the romantic history of the culture was enough for me to catch “salt fever”. In 2010 I made my first trip to Bonneville, the rightful home and heartland of Land Speed Racing.

For me is the last realm of motor racing untainted by the corporate sponsors. Dry salt lake racing is rich in history and the racers filled with passion. They race for speed, the only trophy is a time slip that records their time in miles per hour. If you can bag a record, even better but at the end of the day it’s man and machine... as pure as it can be. Land Speed Racing is a community as much as it’s a culture. A helping hand, a lend of some tools, advice or just a friendly chat are never too far away in the pits.

At Bonneville the long course is nine miles of salt lake smoothed out and prepped for speed. From a standing start you have three miles of run up to reach close to top speed... from there you are timed at the quarter mile, one mile, two mile and three mile mark. Then there is three miles of course to run down. My first year at Bonneville I watched a streamliner go past at 429 miles per hour. Yes, I definitely have “salt fever”.

All images © Simon Davidson

BACKYARD OASIS

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:00 0

Anyone who’s taken a plane flight over LA knows that its landscape isn’t marked by rivers, crop fields, or cows. Rather, it’s distinguished by an inordinate number of swimming pools, collectively forming an iconic staple of SoCal living that’s been explored by David Hockney, Herb Ritts, and countless other artists who have been inspired by the region’s so-called “backyard oasis.” More than any other medium, though, photography captures the swimming pool’s distinctive features, like the characteristically glistening, unpredictable play of light and shadow — not to mention the backyard barbecues, poolside parties, and moments of quiet reflection on the shores of man-made watering holes across greater Los Angeles.

In conjunction with the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative, the Palm Springs Art Museum presents a comprehensive visual survey of swimming-pool photography: Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography, 1945-1982, featuring more than a hundred archival images of swimming-pool design and culture. Curated by the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Deputy Director of Art, Daniell Cornell, the exhibition is thematically divided into five categories: California Architecture and Design, Hollywood and Celebrity Culture, the Shape of Desire and Dreams, the Utopian-Dystopian Topos of Suburbia, and the Pacific Ocean as Context. And for anyone who won’t make it out to Palm Springs for the exhibit, the accompanying hardcover catalog offers more than 200 illustrations and insightful essays, all which further examine the cultural importance of these unique hallmarks of life in the Golden State.

List of works (in order of appearance):

1. Herb Ritts, Richard Gere, Poolside, 1982, C-type print, Courtesy of the Herb Ritts Foundation, Los Angeles © Herb Ritts Foundation. Photo courtesy Palm Springs Art Museum

2. Lawrence Schiller, Paradise Cove, 1964, printed 2011, modern digital chromogenic print from original negative, Courtesy of Judith and Lawrence Schiller; Lawrence Schiller © Polaris Communications, Inc. Photo courtesy Palm Springs Art Museum

3. Bill Owens, Hockney Painted This Pool, 1980, © Bill Owens, courtesy PDNB Gallery, Dallas, TX

4. Bill Owens, He's a typical Californian who doesn't know how to relax, 1971/printed 2000, c-type print, Courtesy of PDNB Gallery, Dallas, TX © Bill Owens

5. Leland Y. Lee, Silvertop – Hollywood Dawn, 1972, printed 2010, archival pigment print from original Ektachrome transparency, Courtesy of the artist and Michael H. Lord Gallery © Leland Y. Lee

6. Lawrence Schiller, Palm Springs Fashion, No. 8, 1964/printed 2011, digital chromogenic print, Courtesy of Judith and Lawrence Schiller, Lawrence Schiller © Polaris Communications, Inc.

7. Lawrence Schiller, Marilyn Monroe, 1962/printed 2011, digital chromogenic print, Courtesy of Judith and Lawrence Schiller; Lawrence Schiller © Polaris Communications, Inc.

8. Michael Childers, The Hockney Swimmer, 1978, C-type print, Courtesy of Michael Childers © Michael Childers

9. Mel Roberts, Rich Thompson and Mike Kelley, Bel Air, 1962, C-type print, Estate of Mel Roberts © Michael H. Epstein & Scott E. Schwimer

LISBOA

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 0

If you are a regular visitor you should be already familiar with Guy Neveling and some of of his commercial work. Today I'm feeling way more casual. Look and read what he has to say about being rewarded:

These were shot on a road trip through Portugal last September. Every year I pick a few spots and head out armed with just a camera and 50 mm lens...
(80mm if I take medium format). The aim is travel light and shoot simply and being rewarded for getting out there and seeing things as they take shape in front of you as the day progresses. A few minutes either way and the sun wouldn't have fallen in that way or the smoke from the guy roasting nuts wouldn't have been that thick and I would never have seen it as it would have been something completely different...thats the reward the universe is giving for going out and having a look.

All images @ Guy Neveling

DRAMA KING

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:00:00 0

Guy Bourdin's fashion photography was dark, theatrical and disturbing. While he was considered one of the coolest photographers of his time, he refused to have his work celebrated.

Guy Bourdin probably never meant for his photographs to be seen on magazine pages again. Throughout his career, spanning three decades, he created thousands of images for French Vogue and advertising campaigns and yet saved almost nothing for posterity. So even before his death of cancer in 1991, you could be forgiven for asking, 'Guy who?'

In the Sixties and Seventies, Guy Bourdin, was the coolest photographer in Paris – then regarded as a cultural hotspot. But unlike his contemporaries, who revelled in their burgeoning rock-star status, he ducked away from the limelight and continually turned down offers to exhibit or compile a book of his photographs.

Although Bourdin worked as a fashion photographer, his pictures were never just about clothes. They were incidents, troubling scenes from movies never made. The women populating his images were characterized by their flawless pallor and make-up (originally inspired by Bourdin's mother) that resembles an over-zealous mortician, all livid pink blush and three-dimensional lipgloss. The clothes were almost incidental to the drama.

There is nothing straightforward about Bourdin's work. Emma Soames entered his orbit working for French Vogue in 1971 and found herself keeping track of two Andy Warhol models running amok outside the French Parliament in nothing but high heels. 'He caused havoc but we adored him,' she asserts. 'Working with him was a real adventure.' Such escapades could involve anything from transporting a reeking tuna halfway across France to complete one of Bourdin's scenarios, scouring Paris for a wall made of 'the right kind of bricks' to comply with his specific demands.

His models also required a healthy sense of adventure. 'It really went beyond being a pretty girl,' stylist Grace Coddington once commented. Bourdin tended to avoid professional models, as his one-time assistant Icaro Kosak recalls. 'He'd look at a girl and think, "Will she go all the way?" Not sexually, but "Will she hang from the ceiling with five bags of ice in her pockets?"

Guy's studio down the dingy Rue des Ecouffe in the Marais district of Paris was an ideal playing field for these games. A dungeon-like warehouse, it had no telephone and a toilet accessible only by walking along precarious wooden planks. When Kosak started working for Bourdin in 1975, Guy didn't speak to him directly for three months. Only when Kosak was about to topple off a stepladder screaming 'Help!' did Bourdin respond: 'Icar, a good assistant never asks for help.'

Kosak quickly realized that Bourdin's skill in the studio was as much psychological as it was technical: 'He would create a situation which forced three or four people who couldn't stand each other into a confined space for 12 hours, and observe how the whole thing would slowly, slowly get out of hand.'

So keen was he on cultivating tensions between the assembled models, make-up artists, and fashion editors, he once suggested to Kosak that they line the walls of the tiny make-up room with copper mesh so not one spark of the electric atmosphere that built up could escape.

Bourdin was never one to shy away from life's dark side. For his first commission for Vogue, he photographed a model in a graceful net-veiled hat in front of a butcher's market stall - five-spectral looking calves' heads hanging from hooks above her, their five wan tongues lolling. He came to enjoy complete control over his Vogue pictures; the magazine's support for him became so unequivocal that reputedly staff would go into ecstasies over a Bourdin photograph before they had set eyes on it.

Joining the dots between his arresting pictures and his private life, Bourdin is often referred to as a misogynist puppet-master. The suicide of his second wife Sybille Dallmer, completes this sketchy image. Before her death Dallmer devoted herself to organizing Bourdin's business affairs so exclusively that by the end she rarely left the fifth floor apartment they shared. Following the tragedy, 'He surrounded himself with the wrong people. It was like tempting the devil,' Says Kosak, who remained a friend until Bourdin's death.

During his life Bourdin liked to get his own way. Once when he was refused entrance to a nightclub, he tore his clothes off and cried, 'If I can't get in then my clothes will!' With all this can-do energy channeled into his high-voltage images, it is no surprise that his photographs have survived him. Even against his will. —Naomi West

On display from February 02, 2012 till March 10, 2012 at Michael Hoppen Gallery. The exclusive representative of the Estate of Guy Bourdin.

All images © Guy Bourdin

SEVEN ROOMS

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:00 0

The plan was pretty straightforward. To go to Russia and create a broad and complex story describing the condition of the contemporary country with all its little things and most importantly, the whole generation of young, troubled people in the middle of transformation. After three years of work he realized that the task might be little bit more demanding than he initially expected. Instead of trying to comprehend the problem with all its nuances, he focused on everyday lives of - as he described - usual residents. I'm glad he did.

A short excerpt by Liza Faktor:

Why does a photographer, or anyone with an ability to create narrative, gets drawn to a certain geographical territory to the point that he spends years in and out and most of his income to look at it at a close proximity? The sense of belonging, probably?

He doesn't have to like it or even come to understand the place, but he has to love it and all that comes with it: its people, food, drunkenness, taxi music and landscape.

Rafal Milach has been haunted by Russia and its 7 people. He spent six years with those people in 3 cities: Moscow, Yekaterinburg and Krasnoyarsk. In their 30s, they are intermediates between the ineradicable Soviet mentality and the increasingly anxious Russian mind of today.

Milach's search is the kind which is almost impossible to visualize. And yet, what he has here, in this book, is a fascinating and subtle journey into the loss of direction, into the sad and beautiful connection with our country.

You would be surprised that in all the richness of the Russian language, where there is a separate word for everything, the word 'country' means both the territory and the government…

The book was published by Kehrer Verlag, has 152 pages and 57 pictures. It has a killer design by Ania Nałęcka. All interviews were conducted by the author himself. Texts by Svetlana Alexievich. It is available in English and Russian and as a special, signed and numbered, limited edition of 100. Comes with a signed print of your choice!

All images © Rafał Milach

BUILDING BRASILIA

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 0

Marcel Gautherot, the ideal architectural photographer, made an epic undertaking in the late 1950s – photographing every step of the construction of the city of Brasilia, from untouched grassland to modern capital.

Gautherot photographed not only every stage of construction, but also the faces and homes of the workers. The result is a monumental and radical photo essay on this triumph of urban planning and architecture.

  Gautherot had studied architecture and design, and was influenced by Le Corbusier and other modernists as well as the political radicalism of the period. Postwar, he devoted his life to travel and photography, taking with him the formal rigour of modernism and also a sympathy for ordinary people.

  Moving to Brazil in 1940, he forged many friendships, most notably with Oscar Niemeyer, the chief architect of Brasilia, becoming Niemeyer’s photographer of choice.

For the first time, the photographs are collected to form a portfolio of Gautherot’s work in Brasilia, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the city’s inauguration.

All images © Marcel Gautherot

THE TIME MACHINE

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 0

The Time Machine is a body of previously unseen works, shot across Portugal between 2010 and 2011. Structured as a topographic survey of hydropower plants, built between the 1950's and 1970's, the work recovers a past of exciting technological innovation and optimistic belief in the future. It records spaces and objects that characterise a suspended time, that of the modern: machines and rooms which simultaneously place us in genuine science-fiction settings and in an unavoidable field of nostalgia. Because the future announced there is here now; and now we know that nothing has happened in the way that the ideological narrative of the modern wanted us to believe that it would.

No more than half a dozen people, including specialists and cleaning and security staff, run places which, in some cases, were intended to house up to 250 workers just fifty years ago. These people and their families were intended to live in real villages, hubs of population and urban development in a future which, today, has ultimately emerged as uninhabited.

At each dam, the automating of the machines has alienated the concrete and immediate power by which reality is governed and concentrated the control of a complex hydroelectric system in a distant centre, lending consistency to the possibility of fictionalising the controlling of man by machines which he himself created.

What can now be considered as false expectations of the future, or broken promises, stems from projects that were conceived when man and machine formed part of the same future, when the particular submitted to the universal. The work alludes to the paradox of this impossibility and his images are a testimony of the link that has been broken.

List of works (in order of appearance):

1 Alto Lindoso power station: instrument transformer cell in the busbar gallery (alternating-current generator floor)
2 Alto Rabagão power station: waiting room,
3 Miranda power station: machine hall,
4 Miranda power station: office,
5 Alto Rabagão power station: busbar shaft (view from the machine hall),
6 Lindoso power station: control room (frontal view),
7 Fratel power station: machine hall,
8 Caldeirão Dam: water intake tower for hydraulic circuit, ,
9 Alto Rabagão power station: meeting room,
10 Picote power station: emergency diesel generating set.

This project was funded by the EDP Foundation

THE WAITING GAME

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 0

We've met Txema two months ago at Spéos during the Open Portfolio Night, part of Lens Culture FotoFest in Paris. A young gentleman with short beard, wearing beige jacket seemed to be quite satisfied with small crowd of reviewers and observers gathering around the table where he was carefully rearranging prints from his The Waiting Game project.

For over four years, disguised as a road-worker with yellow reflective vest, yellow tripod and blue helmet he was photographing girls working as prostitutes along the Mediterranean highway from Catalunya to Andalucia. The fact that he was using a large format Cambo made them believe that it's an instrument used by surveyors to transfer, measure, or set horizontal levels, making it possible to blend in and take pictures unnoticed.

CENSORSHIP IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 0

...so is this act. Take action.

http://en.wikipedia.org/
http://wordpress.org/
http://boingboing.net/
http://www.reddit.com/
http://www.minecraft.net/
http://wired.com/
http://theoatmeal.com/

SCARRED FOR LIFE

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 0

California, place where I wouldn't mind spending this weekend will soon become crowded with photography enthusiasts seeing that Photo LA is about to start its 21st edition January 12 - 16, 2012. Photographer Klaus Pichler or to be exact, his images from the 'Skeletons in the Closet' series, get to be temporary residents right at the Galerie OPEN booth.

Meanwhile at Wall Done we're having a closer look at his new book 'Fürs Leben gezeichnet' and the world full of teardrops and spider webs. Thanks Julie.

Tattooing mainly used to be common amongst sailors and prisoners. That's why people used to say they'd been out at sea when they'd been in prison really. Obviously no one believed them. If somebody was covered in tattoos people knew he'd been in prison. It was imprinted in people's minds, tattoos equals criminal, especially amongst the older generation. You could also tell by the way they were done and there was a certain type of pictures which was only done in prisons. Three dots between the thumb and index finger, a cross, Che Guevara, a dot on the face, a spider's web, women's names or a bunch of grapes. All these used to be typical prison tattoos.

Mr. V., 51 years

Traditionally tattooing used to be mainly for people from the prison scene, nowadays it is trendy everywhere. I'd say if you compare modern day tattooing to the old tradition, many people just feel very important nowadays. It never just used to be a tradition, you know, but it was also a sign of being part of a criminal culture. Everybody who got put away for a while just had to have some done. Well, you didn't exactly have to, if you didn't want to do it you didn't do it, but nearly everyone had some done. Criminals were criminals and they were tattooed. That was it. We were outsiders and with our tattoos we made a promise not to join the mainstream.
Mr. L., 63 years

There was no way of stopping people having tattoos done in prison, not even back in the 70's when we weren't allowed ink and needles weren't available. We just made all the stuff ourselves. The colour was made by cutting a piece off the rubber sole of our prison shoes, burning it and covering it with a tin bowl which created a layer of soot on top. We mixed the soot with toothpaste or shampoo. The red colour was made using brick dust which we scraped off the prison walls. Our needles were usually sharpened paper clips, pieces of wire or guitar strings.
Mr. J., 57 years

THE GREAT UNREAL

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 00:00:00 0

What images represent typically American sceneries? The starting point for the photo series 'The Great Unreal', a project on which the two photographers from Zurich worked from 2005 to 2009, was a scholarship from the City of Zurich. This scholarship allowed the two men to work in New York for a year. From New York, they made numerous trips through the country. Fascinated by the seemingly endless landscapes, they strove to connect the mythological 'America' pictures in our heads with the everyday images that they encountered on the roadside.

Nico Krebs and Taiyo Onorato, who completed their degree in photography at the ZHdK in 2005 and who have been working together since 2003, built models and used illusion tricks of the type known from Hollywood movies. In the background of one photograph, caravans can be seen, loosely grouped to form a settlement, and next to them giant cacti, palm trees and telephone masts. A typical 'American' picture bathed in atmospheric light of the type we seem to recall from films. But in the foreground, there is a gaping abyss which fills the entire lower quarter of the picture ('Abyss').

In addition to such fabricated images, in which reality is combined with models, the photographer duo has decided to also include a series of 'straight' images which are not 'faked' in any way. The effect is astounding: all of a sudden, one does not trust the 'real' pictures anymore, thinks that they too are artificial and fabricated, and this is what the title 'The Great Unreal' alludes to.

A highway weaving its way through several rolling hills seems to stretch out into the barren landscape endlessly ('Map'): is this how the view presented itself to the photographers, or did they construct it as a model? In some pictures, the duo reveals its trick box: the model of a country road is seen sitting on a tripod in front of a mountainous country road. Viewers experience particular pleasure when the photographers thus reveal their playful approach to reality and fiction.

The photography book 'The Great Unreal' was published by Edition Patrick Frey in 2009.

—Peter Stohler

what he found in the forest

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:00:00 0

Anna Orłowska is Poland based photographer, whose works were presented in prestigious album ReGeneration2 which focuses on the World's rising stars of artistic photography.

Anna constructs photographic cycles which pretend to be narrative stories. The viewer at first glance, evaluate them as a coherent sequence which has its storyline, but the author herself says: "in my series [...] one seek for the storyline (and they have a problem because nothing there is arranged orderly) instead of focusing on individual images and then combine them into the complete plot."

Her pictures are in various degrees staged: sometimes the place, photographed person, clothing etc. everything is planned and prepared by Anna but sometimes only a part of each photograph is planned and the rest is a matter of luck. In her cycles she also smuggles "real" images - the ones which simply records the world around her.

About her series entitled "What he found in the forest" she writes: "The hero during his monotonous daily journeys by car, sees images that trace the strange and unusual situation. By combining parts together he arranges his own versions of events, which eventually becomes the only story on himself."

--

For those of you living in our one-of-a-kind, beautiful city... Anna is having an exhibition called Leakage starting 08.12.2011 at 7:00PM, CK Agora/Serbska 5a. It would be unwise to miss such an opportunity.

All images @ Anna Orłowska

PARASOMNIA

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 0

I saw this image a while ago. It stunned me with it's play of light and shadow. It was mighty and very dreamlike. Both at the same time. I was carrying it with me until I knew where did it come from. Then it grew on me and became permanent resident.

--

Viviane Sassen (Dutch, born 1972) studied fashion design and photography before receiving an MFA from Ateliers Arnhem, the Netherlands. Some of her earliest memories are of life in Kenya, where she spent three years as a child. When her family returned to the Netherlands in 1978, Sassen was troubled: "I didn't feel like I belonged in Europe, and yet I knew I was a foreigner in Africa," she says. Ten years later, at age sixteen, Sassen revisited Kenya, and she has been traveling and working in Africa ever since. She made Parasomnia, her newest body of work, in a number of intentionally unidentified African countries, featuring anonymous subjects. Parasomnia is a category of sleep disorder whose symptoms include abnormal dreams, nightmares, and sleepwalking. In the surreal pictures in this installation, Sassen invites viewers to follow her on a journey through the mysterious remnants of her memories.

All images © Viviane Sassen

SENTIMENTAL FICTION

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 0

What is going to become of a deliberately assembled family album which at the same time was trying to investigate current haunting problems? What does such a form demand?

The need to modify reality, to thicken the time and the situation, to stage things, to create a certain fiction or the illusion of fiction which will make it easier to speak of one’s own reality. What is this own, personal reality?

It is an image that simultaneously generates memory and determines what one would like to remember. It is also an ordinary snapshot or a family picture, as well as an after-image and deja-vu. It is both an account and reminiscence.

Sensitivity to images that are already familiar, that once appeared somewhere before our eyes – eyes conscious or unconscious of what they were seeing.

These images are scenes from movies we have seen, which are put together yet again from the surrounding elements by force of inertia. It is a state in which one wants to build an absolute monarchy of the image and cut oneself off from the non-ideal. To live in this fiction, tangling it up with the form of a family album, framing it and hanging on a hook.

What is a family album without people who can identify the photographs it contains? An album without signatures, names, dates, names of places and the whole context which made it function as a collection of memories of a family? What is left of it when it is handled by someone to whom it was not addressed? What becomes of the reading of only the visual layer which is usually of secondary importance during the selection and choosing of the photographs for the album? What does the narrative springing from the sequence of the pictures, scenes, portraits and views speak about? Is it somehow related to the original intention of the author or is it completely at odds with it? Is another, partly reverse situation, possible, a situation in which the photograph without knowledge, consciousness and the will of the artist illustrates the synthesis of the future fate of those who appear in the photograph, the synthesis expressed precisely by means of the meanings and contents of the purely visual layer?

Is it possible to displace memories by the photographs that were taken at the very same time? Can one have a memory consisting only of photographed images, i.e. can one have a memory consisting of photographs only?

--

All images © Jakub Karwowski

WINDY CITY GYM

WALL DONE MAGAZINE — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 0

The more you sweat, the less you bleed. That's a proverb about training for war. But right now, it's probably taped on the wall of a few boxing gyms across the nation. At a time when a lot of people think of the gym as something with juice bars, valet parking, built-in TVs on the elliptical trainer, boxing gyms, real ones, stand out. Chicago's Windy City Boxing Gym was one of the nation's oldest. In 2006 it was forced to close its doors and find a new location.

The gym operated on the second floor of a red brick warehouse for more than 30 years, and when you walked in, it was like stepping back in time. The wooden floors were warm from thousands of hours of shadow boxing. Old stationary bikes lined up against the poster-covered wall. Punching bags were wrapped in duct tape, and if you hit them hard enough, bits of dust scattered in the air.—npr

In 2004 photographer Kai-Uwe Gundlach was doing a shoot for HP. He was so impressed with the location, atmosphere and people involved that he couldn't resist to stay longer and document it just for himself. These images are some of his personal work.

All images © Kai-Uwe Gundlach