At Work

At Work is the recent hybrid memoir/monograph from Annie Leibovitz, the portrait photographer best known for her work in Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Leibovitz isn't my favorite photographer by a long shot--indeed, though I certainly like what she does, her subject matter doesn't interest me much, or at least it hasn't since her early days, when she shot informal, journalistic pictures, mostly of rock bands, most notably the Rolling Stones.

But there is something irresistible about this book, which reproduces many of her most famous pictures, and describes the circumstances under which they were taken. She is most interesting when talking about two things: the technical problems that a given photo posed, and the personalities of her subjects. It's a lot of fun learning how she ended up getting Keith Haring to paint his own penis, or John Cleese to hang upside down from a tree. When she gets the job of photographing Queen Elizabeth, she is faced with a serious dilemma--how the hell do you photograph Queen Elizabeth? The interesting thing about a career like Leibovitz's is that it consists of variations on a theme: she has a particular, rather circumscribed way of working, which she is constantly forced to adapt to new circumstances.

The book is written in an as-told-to style, in direct language, without a lot of contemplation or philosophizing. Personally, I'd have preferred a little more complexity, but that's not the kind of artist Leibovitz is, and it is inspiring to see somebody going about her work so enthusiastically and unpretentiously, and consistently. I also really appreciate the little section in the back about the equipment she uses--as a gear nerd, I was of course curious, and it's a pleasure to learn that she'll buy whatever newfangled thing comes along, just to give it a try. It's also refreshing to hear about somebody embracing digital technology with so little fuss. Though I love all things analog--film, audiotape, pencil and paper--I get a little weary of internet-based nostalgia for these things, and hearing people's elaborate justifications for using the tools they do. Leibovitz just likes using stuff to make other stuff. It seems to me a healthy attitude for a working artist.

The photos are great, of course, for what they are, and sometimes they transcend what they are, too, and turn into something really special. I think this comes from the seriousness and excitement with which Leibovitz regards her work: another case of dedication to craft giving way to art.

Taschen: The Polaroid Book

Is there anyone else out there who loves Taschen? Their books are big, beautiful, and cheap, and they appear dedicated to abolishing the distinction between high and low culture, embracing everything from portraiture to porno. And then there's the architecture, the old maps, classic anatomy texts, illuminated manuscripts...almost everything they put out is interesting.

Anyway, The Polaroid Book isn't new, but I just picked it up at the Bookery for fifteen bucks, and it's a tremendous inspiration--not just for photographers, but for anyone who likes representing the world in art. Polaroid photography was developed by Edwin Land in the 1920's and refined through the thirties, and exists in a variety of formats; the one people know best, however, is the square-frame pack film, used in instant cameras and recently discontinued, which created pictures like the one above (taken by Karin Elizabeth, on flickr, and pretty much selected at random).

What is it about Polaroids? For me, it's the the saturated pastels, the darkened edges, the sense of immediacy and accident. People used Polaroids to instantaneously commemorate experience: you took one, and could look back fondly on the moment, a couple of minutes ago, when you took it. The result was a heightened sense of the flow of time, the way life changes from moment to moment--something that the very best fiction does, as well. I also like that Polaroids are an artifacty format--the instant snaps like Karin Elizabeth's are usually shown inside their lopsided paper frame, which serves to remind you you're looking at a picture. The old Land Camera positives always had those rough, distorted edges, as well--evidence that art is a process, that it is something made by man. I like art that flaunts its artificiality. I like art that is about itself.

Anyway, the book is little more than page after page of cool pictures, and I recommend it. It expands one's idea of what is worth representing in art, and how it can be represented. And it shows that art can be egalitarian, and it can be refined, sometimes in the same instant.

EDIT: Reader Lou Barranti, a contributor to this book, sends the following correction: "Your post says that 'Polaroid photography was developed by Edwin Land in the 1920's and refined through the thirties...' Actually it was in the late 1940s that Land created the Polaroid photographic process. Perhaps it was a reference similar to the following statement in a Wikipedia article that you may have seen prior to writing your piece on the Polaroid book (in fact, you link to that Wikipedia article at the beginning of the above quoted sentence): 'The original material, patented in 1929 (U.S. Patent 1,918,848 ) and further developed in 1932 by Edwin H. Land, consists of many microscopic crystals of iodoquinine sulfate (herapathite) embedded in a transparent nitrocellulose polymer film.' It wasn't a photographic film. It was a light polarizing film (or filter) that Land created in the 20s to which this article refers. This was his first major invention. The Wikipedia entry for Dr. Land ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_H._Land ) has more on his photographic invention. There are more authoritative sources out there, of course (Barbara Hitchcock's essay in The Polaroid Book, for example), but what I read there seems to line up with what I know about Land and his invention (instant photography, that is; I don't know much about the rest of his professional life, other than that he invented Polaroid polarizing film.)"

Jonas Bendiksen's "Satellites"

On a recommendation from a photography forum, I picked up a copy of Satellites, a book by Norwegian photojournalist Jonas Bendiksen. A chunky, affordable hardcover with distinctive glossy black page edges, the book is a striking artifact before you even open it, and it only gets better from there.

Bendiksen is quite young--he writes that he traveled to Russia in 1998, when he was twenty, and a few years later was kicked out, due to "a bureaucratic misstep." He goes on:

I spent much of the next five years traveling through the fringes of the former Soviet empire, exploring the oblique stories of half-forgotten enclaves and restless territories...I found isolated communities struggling to redefine themselves and, in the process, questioning what constitutes a legitimate claim to independence or autonomy.

Among the places he visits are a forgotten Siberian outpost to which Stalin lured Zionist Jews in the 1930's; the spaceship crash zones of Kazahkstan, where people scavenge launch debris; and the former beach resort of Abkhazia, half-destroyed in the early nineties by a war with neighboring Georgia. The photos are simply stunning--dark, sometimes out of focus, with colors wildly shifted off balance, they have a grim, eccentric force. Subjects are often pushed off to the side of the frame, foregrounded by evocative blur, or lost in backlight, yet the distortion strengthens the image, ennobles the subject. Bendiksen's emotionally direct, aesthetically oblique approach is an inspiration to me, both as an amateur photographer and a writer--a good artist should show you a new way of seeing, and this book succeeds wildly at that.

Here are a couple of pictures, swiped with the magic of Google: