Andy Adams is the founder and editor of FlakPhoto.com. Larissa Leclair is an independent photography writer, curator, and collector, and founder of the Indie Photobook Library. Together, Larissa and Andy curated 100 Portraits—100 Photographers: Selections from the FlakPhoto.com Archive, a projection which will be featured during NYPH 2011.
Link: New York Photo Festival » Andy Adams & Larissa Leclair In Conversation with Adriana Teresa
Adriana Teresa: What would you say is the most significant progression in photography today?
Kira Pollack: Speed. In the digital world, the speed and the demand for speed that stories need to be communicated—and published—is astronomical. The most critical thing that we can do as editors is to be as thoughtful as possible in response to that speed. We need to get the images published as quickly as possible, but with journalistic integrity.
Link: New York Photo Festival » Kira Pollack in Conversation with Adriana Teresa
MW What inspired you to start taking photographs, and what is the primary inspiration for you to keep working in this field? SR My form…
Link: http://2waylens.blogspot.com/2011/04/simon-roberts.html
In my opinion there is no right or wrong time to start promoting your work, only hindsight can answer this question. The most important piece of advice I can give to an emerging photographer is to continually take advice from a mentor figure, someone who understands what your work is about and whose opinions you value. Furthermore, learn quickly from your mistakes. This industry is like walking a tight rope – it’s easy to fall, so take slow and steady steps forward.
Outside magazine called over a month ago to ask if I would interview a photographer for their summer interview issue. I immediately pitched them Tim Hetherington whose work I admired although I’d never met or spoken with him before. The body of work he cr
via A Photo Editor: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/04/21/tim-hetheringtons-last-interview/
Outside magazine called over a month ago to ask if I would interview a photographer for their summer interview issue. I immediately pitched them Tim Hetherington whose work I admired although I’d never met or spoken with him before.
Calling Tichý a recluse would be a drastic understatement. He was a notoriously private man, much to the chagrin of gallery owners in the mid-aughts whom he spurned by not attending his first solo exhibitions. So we were ecstatic when, last November, we made arrangements with his neighbor and caretaker, Mrs. Hebnarova, to stop by for a chat.
Dan Winters interview part 3. Part 1 is (here). Part 2 is (here). Rob: So when did you move to Austin? Dan: We moved in 2000. I knew going into this that there’s no market in Austin. There are a lot of photographers here… Rob: It’s amazing how many photog
via A Photo Editor: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/04/15/dan-winters-interview-part-3/
Rob: That leads me to my next question, the now legendary fact that you deliver final prints, and that’s it.
Dan: Yeah usually, and it’s one of those things, too, where when I started out in New York, I really stuck my neck out a little bit, but I say I know the kind of picture I want to make, and I know the aesthetic that I want to apply to the picture. And I knew back then, at that time, the kind of pictures I was making. They’re different now, but when you look at them, you see they’re very similar, really. They really are. They’re square, little square black and white pictures, but they’re very similar to the ones that I do now and have done for many years. I felt like a part of my job was to see the thing through all the way, and I knew exactly what I wanted, so I didn’t want someone editing what my version of the picture was.
Dan Winters interview part 2. Part 1 is (here). Dan: I worked for Chris for exactly a year. When my year was coming up, and I said, ” two more months left.” And he’s like, “you’re really going to stop?” and I said, “yeah, I want to shoot.” The entire time
via A Photo Editor: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/04/14/dan-winters-interview-part-2/
You know, it’s funny, you either get this, or don’t really at all. You tell people you’re a photographer, and they say, “Oh, what kind of camera do you use?” It’s like asking Eddie Van Halen “What kind of guitar do you play?” or, “Yeah, I heard one of your records, man, you must have a killer guitar.” It’s not the camera, it’s the operator. But, with photography, as with a lot of things, the tools that you choose inform the aesthetic, to an extent. The 35mm looks different than 4×5, so the tools will vary, but the voice needs to be consistent. I started feeling like you get hired for your opinion. Wherever you come back with is your take on that experience.
Q: You photograph both in color and in black and white. Why did you decide to go black and white for this series? Was it a way to tell the long story of this people and at the same time to create a sort of distance from a raw reality?
A: As soon as I arrived I felt I had to use black and white, even though I had plenty of color film rolls with me. It was a clear, strong and crucial feeling.
Dan Winters is one of the most recognizable, awarded and sought-after editorial photographers in the world. I’ve worked with him a number of times, even visited his studio in Austin, but it wasn’t until I got the chance to interview him that I fully under
via A Photo Editor: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/04/13/dan-winters-interview-part-1/
Rob: And you loved that, you loved being in the action and shooting that style and all that?
Dan: Yep, I loved it. I loved shooting that way, and I still love that form. That was actually a really weird time for photojournalism, too. I always used to criticize the trend that existed then, so much stuff in the ’80s was shot with 300-millimeter lenses. I never shot that way. I didn’t like it. And they would do that insane, burning, I used to call it the “hand of God burning, ” where they’d burn everything down in the print except for like the face, try so hard to show you what to look at I’d go, “What’d you do, put a quarter on that guy’s face while you were making the exposure?”
I chafe a little at the idea that I’m an “antiquarian” photographer. I use the Deardorff because I’m in love with it. Because it and I work in synthesis, and because it does a great job of intimidating my subjects into holding still. I’m after a look that I think of as “classic”, but I am not, specifically, trying to make photos that look like they’re from the past. Not “classic” as representing the past, but “classic” as representing the past, present and future. My friend David Lewis points out that in the future, any picture made on film will be marked as a twentieth century image. We came in on Brownies and we went out on the early digital cameras, so folks in the future will look at a film based photo and know that it was from the twentieth century. I’m doing my part to blow that curve.
Link: Jake Shivery
The profane photographer on stars, snobbery, sculpture and why he couldn’t give a monkey’s about posterity.
via Telegraph.co.uk: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/8418600/David-Bailey-in-conversation-with-Andrew-Graham-Dixon.html
The profane photographer on stars, snobbery, sculpture and why he couldn’t give a monkey’s about posterity.
Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington visited Columbia University to discuss their documentary Restrepo, that as you will know, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. For me, the most important part of their discussion was how they don’t define themselves within one box, “I write”, or “I take photos”, or “I shoot video”. Tim and Sebastian are extraordinary for pushing the boundaries of what defines us as journalists… they both use whatever tools necessary to tell the story. Part I of this series is Sebastian’s path to being a journalist and where the comparisons lie between conflict photographers and soldiers.
Link: Restrepo: A Conversation with Sebastian Junger | Prime Collective
Billy Maynard Q & A – Trans/Tender
How old are you?
19
Where were you born?
Auckland
What do you want to explore in your work now and in the future?
I want to photograph a feeling I’ve had building inside since a young age. But without constru
via AMERICAN SUBURB X: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2011/03/interview-billy-maynard-2011.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Americansuburb+(AMERICANSUBURBX)
I want to photograph a feeling I’ve had building inside since a young age. But without constructing any of the pictures deliberately. So far I have found this feeling is most often found in outsiders and fringe dwellers. I find myself more comfortable with outcasts. The feeling is growing bigger in me, so the pictures will follow.
Goran Tomasevic of Reuters arrived in Libya on Feb. 23, having covered the upheaval in Egypt. (“Even the Middle Ground Is Perilous in Cairo,” Feb. 4.) These images, presented in chronological order, convey some sense of what a tumultuous month it has been. Kerri MacDonald interviewed Mr. Tomasevic by e-mail last week.
Link: Thirty Days on the Ground in Libya: Goran Tomasevic’s Extraordinary Month, in Pictures – NYTimes.com
Believe me, when I looked at the pictures on the screen, my hands were shaking. My heart was beating. I realized that this is a picture you take once in a blue moon. It’s being there at the right time, at the right moment, at the right place, with the right lens. If you want to shoot artsy stuff, you never have the lens for this. If you’re covering the war with a 35-millimeter and a 50-millimeter lens, you’ll never have this.
Sloane #34, Oakland CA
“Suddenly when I tried to speak with people they would not answer me. So there we were completely isolated in America while the US was at war.”
By Robert Wiedenfeld for ASX, March 2011
Robert Wiedenfeld: Initially how d
via AMERICAN SUBURB X: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2011/03/interview-lise-sarfati-new-life.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Americansuburb+(AMERICANSUBURBX)
I wanted to go to the States and to work there. I loved the feeling of my body in this space… I felt free. I decided to do a road trip and to produce it myself. François came with me. I had no idea what I was wanting to do… just a road trip from the east to the west like in the American tradition of photography, but not with the same spirit. Once I started, I realized quickly that the circulation of people was quite strange.
Sometimes you meet someone whose person and work is filled with grace and dignity. Michael Kirchoff is one of those people–kind, enthusiastic, talented, capable, and shows up prepared. And more importantly, just plain shows up. On the eve of his first solo exhibition, An Enduring Grace: Exploring the Cultural Landscape of Russia, I thought that this was indeed, a success story.
Link: L E N S C R A T C H: Success Stories: Michael Kirchoff
“A photograph is an entity. You don’t crop it, you don’t butcher it, you don’t plaster text over it, you treat it with dignity.”
Link: Elisabeth Biondi by Elizabeth Avedon | La Lettre de la Photographie
Zabriskie Point, Death Valley, California, 2003
Thomas Kern – Interview A DRUG FREE LAND
By Christian Reister, 2011, originally published by Seconds2Real
Q: Thomas, tell us a little about your photographic career.
TK: I became fascinated by ph
via AMERICAN SUBURB X: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2011/03/interview-thomas-kern-drug-free-land.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Americansuburb+%28AMERICANSUBURBX%29
The photographs I was searching for were documentary but rest ambiguous and inconclusive at the same time. I was not trying to make a final statement. The images come from heart and mind alike. They are wrought from strong convictions shaped by my own experience of living in the midst of a sometimes deceitfully familiar America – a very personal departure point to explore a very public subject. There was no common language for the confusions and fears triggered by 9/11, the ongoing wars and a crumbling economy. It was my ambition to give this America a face, to create a document, a visual commentary on the state of the nation
Tyler Hicks has covered Kosovo, Chechnya, Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. He said the battling Wednesday in Libya ranked among the worst he has seen.
via Lens Blog: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/in-the-thick-of-libyas-brutal-fighting/
When Tyler Hicks says that he has just witnessed what may have been the “thickest fighting in a single day” that he has ever experienced, with the “most firepower — coming and going,” he is describing extraordinary hostilities.