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Parr – Only Human
A few weeks ago I ordered it by Only Human, by Martin Parr (the signed version). It arrived in the mail yesterday. An incredibly interesting anthropological work, in addition to the unique aesthetics of Parr’s photographs.
Eddy Posthuma de Boer’s Photo Libretto – because of the joy
Photographs, as Hans Aarsman prefers them, are not taken to make a nice picture but only because they attract the photographer’s attention and because he just feels like taking a picture of them. Photo Libretto van Eddy Posthuma de Boer is full of it.
Or as Winogrand said:
Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.
I knew Eddy Posthuma de Boer was the photographer who had taken the pictures in Cees Nooteboom’s books.
Here and there, the images are shrewd like Elliot Erwitt: black-and-white dalmatians at a crosswalk, an Arab who appears to be trying to fix an overturned car, fiddling with the engine with one hand, but a few meters away lies the rear axle of the car—a huge pile of square blocks of metal from cars pressed together.
Photo Libretto is a calendar. A picture every day of the year. Arranged by themes, or rather collections of photos. Texts on signs on storefronts with spelling mistakes. Means of transportation. French cars are rotting and becoming part of the French landscape. People reading the newspaper. Companies and products with the name Victoria.
Ordinary and remarkable images. Marte Röling’s Star Fighter. A hotel reception in Marseille is unimaginably crowded with wallpaper and carpet with floral designs. The tower of Pisa straightened (and thus the surroundings askew). A hotel room with a bathtub set in the middle of the room with a shower curtain around it (only possible in Belgium, I think).
The most admirable pictures are still the everyday things rendered without further context, which produce insane images. A neat little plant table made of Pepsi crates. Eggleston, then, I think.
I Will Be Wolf – Bertien van Manen
I Will Be Wolf is the first book by Bertien van Manen. It is from 1975. The book exudes a wonderful freshness. Van Manen has seen Robert Frank, and I think also Eggleston. The images in I Will Be Wolf are a sort of European version of Frank’s The Americans. Less critical than The Americans, more friendly. Van Manen seems as shy as Eggleston. Photographs of people’s backs, often taken from a distance with views obstructed by poles and window columns. For me, it all works.
A History of Pictures
In the format of a semi-dialog, David Hockney and Martin Gayford in A History of Pictures discuss the history and various aspects of picture-making.
Beautifully illustrated.
The most interesting thing is that Hockney seems not to have a very high regard for photography.
“… I question photography. A lot of people don’t, they accept the world looks like a photograph.
“But colour photography couldn’t get tones like those [Vermeer] as is has to rely on the dyes or printing ink. Those aren’t like paint, and never will be.”
“… I don’t know whether photography is an art. Some photographers considered themselves artists, and some didn’t
… Good photography does require intelligence and imagination but aa lot of it is very mechanical.”
Vermeer, Caravaggio, Degas, Delacrois, a few of the painters mentioned in the book that used photographic techniques for their paintings.
“Photography came out of painting and as far as I can see that’s where it is returning.”
Hellen van Meene in Huis Marseille
Panoramas of death. Strange coffins with almost dead bodies. Grandchildren stand mourning alienated next to the coffin. A dog too. In the film, a cat in the polder that doesn’t seem to want to be photographed and disappears from view. The panorama that does not want to be a panorama because it is upright. A dress blows in front of the coffin, which has been placed on a touching pair of yellow bricks so that it stays upright.
Surely the best is the image of nothing, or of what was.
In the other half of Huis Marseille show Koos Breukels photographs of his son. Can’t stop thinking: what a brat.
Ed van der Elsken, street photographer in love
I visited Ed van der Elsken’s retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum. Van der Elsken is chaotic and distinctly extroverted, an expressionist. His films are messy and experimental. The exhibition was impressive, but mostly, it was a lot.
I came down the stairs with a full head. The book De Verliefde Camera is the catalog of this retrospective. In the introduction, Hripsimé Visser, the catalog’s compiler, calls the work vibrant and dynamic. Surely that seems like an understatement. The book gives an overview of Van der Elsken’s work chronologically.
Paris, street photographs. Then, a series called A Love Story: Love on the Left Bank. The photographs in this series are large areas of black, little light, and stark—more lust than love.
Then Africa. Again, rather dark photos. Where the story is anthropological, in my opinion, Van der Elsken was much more interested in the aesthetics of black people. Close-ups of Negroes and Negresses, and I don’t mean that as a swear word, but as an indication of the style of the photographs. Photographs that are not about life in Africa as their subject but much more about the anatomy of the African man.
Sweet Life. Van der Elsken at his best: street photographs of everything that comes in front of the camera that he finds interesting. Here, Van der Elsken measures up to William Klein and Robert Frank.
Amsterdam. There are street photos, reportage-style photos, and portraits. Again, the individual photos are the strongest. The street photos are of everyday things.
Eye Love You. Color for the first time. Everyday scenes. Topper: a photo of elderly ladies with sunglasses and in neat dresses photographing two Negro children as if they were at the zoo. The vicarious blush comes to your cheeks.
Japan. Again, the street photos of someone who takes unfettered pictures of everyday subjects.
Ultimately, Ed van der Elsken was primarily an excellent street photographer who tried to make ends meet through his photography. His street photographs are world-class.
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