Danish identity

Nicolai Howalt ©

Nicolai Howalt works was recently shown to me and fascinates for his ability to document with different work some of the social aspects of danish society, tackling with different projects the concept of identity.

In his work Boxer Nicolai Howalt followed young Danish boys boxing in Denmark and abroad. The project portrays a series of young boxers before and after the match. Another interesting body of work is 3x1 a series of images about the evolution of a relationship between a young danish couple living in a surburban council flat. More recently he focused on the series How to Hunt

Nicolai Howalt ©

Nicolai Howalt ©

A trip with Simon Hoegsberg

Simon Hoegsberg ©

Sometime ago I saw Simon Hoegsberg work and i was very interested in particular in his project " The Thought Project " about the thoughts we have when we walk alone in the street.

In most of Simon Hoegsberg work there seems to be an element of research to support and sometime combined the visual project A statement of the artist about The Thought Project:

Simon Hoegsberg ©

"Over a period of 3 months I stopped 150 strangers on the street and asked them what they where thinking about the second before I stoppedthem. Using a mic and a dictaphone I recorded what they told me, then took a picture of them. 55 of the 150 thoughts are presented on this website as quotes. All quotes state exactly what I was told during the interviews. The interviews took place in Copenhagen, Denmark and New York City."

Simon Hoegsberg projects are a real snapshot of ordinary life, making stories about who we are and what we think. Other projects includes Copenhagen Istanbul, Private and Public, Faces of New York .

A child view

Marina Ballo Charmet ©

A few days ago I was at a conference that presented the work of Marina Ballo Charmet, a photographer, an artist and a children’s psychotherapist by training.

The artist was there and she presented her works which include photograph and video installation. In most of her projects MBC observes things from below, taking her eye view to a child level. With her project Con la coda dell`occhio (in Eng. With the Corner of the Eye) the artist looks at pheriferal situation within the everydaylife, photographs are about our perceptive experience.

Marina Ballo Charmet ©

Her work also includes a series of project on video, one in particular was displayed on the night that was made in collaboration with Walter Niedermayr at Milan main prison. Agente apri (in Eng. Open up officer) is the title of this project, is about a children daily journey from the prison nursery to the outside world with volunteers all shots at child height.

Parco is the artist latest project and research is focused on a phenomenon taking place in green area of the city, the parks.

Marina Ballo Charmet ©

Photography from the Italian Riviera

Andrea Dapueto ©

Andrea Botto is the Artistic Director of "On the road, again" title of the current Rapallo Fotografia Contemporanea on the italian riviera. For the third year running this small festival will be hosting the young talents of contemporary photography and the theme of this festival is "street photography".

For this year event RFC also invited Mark Cohen as guest artist with the exhibition "Italian Riviera" curated by Francesco Zanot with the intent " to bring to the public’s attention the work of a photographer who can convey all the emotions generated by that strip of land trapped between sky and sea, which is known on the other side of the ocean as the Italian Riviera”.

The author who stayed few weeks on the Riviera in 2008, has moved freely and with curiosity between Genoa and the Cinque Terre producing a contemporary photographic series of real and emotional impact.

Mark Cohen ©

In the young talents section you can see work by Martina Bacigalupo, which exposes the story a refugee burandese who returns to his country after more than forty years of exile, Andrea Dapueto with "Camere con vista" a work around Italian roads in places for low cost sex, Alessandro Cirillo with his reportage in black and white on the north-east of Brazil, Camilla Micheli with a series of portrait on the road around Japan and Nanda Gonzague with her work in Armenia. Francesca Cirilli presents an amusing video installation about social behavior of tourists in Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa. Open until December 2, more here

Bratislava, Photography from the East

Symon Kliman ©

A few days ago Bratislava Month of Photography was taking place with a number of exhibition around town. Here is some of the interesting work that we found during during the Sittcomm Award and the Portfolio Review Slideshow.

Grzegorz Klatka with his car project, Symon Kliman with his Gypsies Made Nice, Maros Krivy with Green Dessert project and Mikolaj Dlugosz with the Real Foto series.

Filip Berendt was the winner of the Sittcomm Award.

Grzegorz Klatka ©

Filip Berendt ©

Mikolaj Dlugosz ©

Oliviero Toscani was also showing an installtion of 50 life size pictures of donkeys in the main square. Apparently Toscani did not show up for the presentation conference and later when we walked by the square a loud sound of donkey braying was organized in the square by the people waiting.

New Photojournalism?

Martin Parr © Dreamscapes Ocean Dome [bath center] 1996

Following a recent post on Jörg Colberg "Some thoughts on the visual language of photojournalism" a debate has started with lots of posts on the Magnum Blog over this argument. It all started with a comment about creating awareness of drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) a project that photojournalist James Nachtwey had been working on. I personally see this debate as very interesting one, having had long discussions in the past with colleagues on this very subject.

For myself it all started when I attended a lecture in a theater college in Rochester England in 1996 and the topic of "new photojournalism" was behind the debate which saw a confrontation between the photographer Martin Parr, the then Photoeditor of the Guardian and a classic BW photojournalist which name unfortunately can`t remember. At that time many exhibition in London were petrol for this argument, infact may exhibition of people like Richard Billingham (previous post in Ph39) Nick Waplington Paul Graham were taking place. We could not call the photographers above photojournalism but certainly moved the border with the way photographer interpret society at least in the UK and Europe.

Alex Soth ©

At the time of the lecture Parr just joined Magnum and I remember asking him about what Magnum members thought of his his way of photographing and how the old school saw his way to photograph sometimes far from subjects traditionally associated with photojournalism.

To which he replyed along the line of that it was called hopefully because Magnum member appreciate his work and that we would wish to see in the future other photographers in Magnum with interst different from the traditional topic of photojournalism. Over ten years have passed and I think that great strides have been made in Magnum and in similar agencies around the world, although sometime it certainly remains an interest in preserving the fiction of emotions related to traditional subject.

James Nachtwey © Rwanda, 1994 - Survivor of Hutu death camp

Memorable photojournalist images are still linked to historical, emotional or dramatic event, but I personally hope to see more photographers who try with a different approach to defuse the situation even in front of less happy situation without necessarily emphasize the drama.

In a recent interview on PDN this summer "Why Photojournalism Must Get Modern" Martin Parr says: "I don’t regard myself particularly as a photojournalist. I’m a documentary photographer. The idea of my work is to try put my finger on the zeitgeist of what’s happening. That’s constantly changing and shifting. I’m not interested in photographing things that are disappearing, although I’ve engaged in a slight bit of nostalgia. I’m interested in things as they are now." and "in the end, it comes down to the personality and individuality of the photographer to express that."

Childhood memory at Paris Photo

Billingham ©

As i was looking at the preview of the next Paris Photo on Lens Culture I saw the work of Richard Billingham, a Turner Prize nominee in 2001 and winner of Citibank Photography Prize in 1997. I rembember seeing his works around 1994 during a group show "Who's Looking at the Family " held at Barbican art centre in London. A couple of years later Ray's a Laugh was his first book and an immediate success who started off a series of social, political and artistic debates in England.

Billingham ©

With the publication of Ray's a Laugh, Billingham ended a six years research, that he began to source material for his paintings, looking at his mum and dad, Liz and Ray living in a council estate in west Midland. Ravaged by alcoholism and poverty, the project was about his family every day life with some brutally frank images of an alternative family album.

Billingham says about this project "In all these photographs I never bothered with things like the negatives. Some of them got marked and scratched. I just used the cheapest film and took them to be processed at the cheapest place. I was just trying to make order out of chaos." I still remember when seeing this photographs asking myself how can he ever produce a projects in the future capable of matching Ray`s laugh.

Billingham ©

So few years later Zoo is Billingham’s compelling series of photography and video installations, inspired by his childhood visits to the Zoo. Billingham with this project is questioning the relationships between the public audience and captive animals and their unnatural environment.

Question Time with Giorgio Barrera

Giorgio Barrera ©

Few months ago I asked Giorgio Barrera , who has an interesting mix of projects, to take part in our question time. I was delighted when he agreed and after a period conflicting commitments we arrange to talk about his work.

Ph39 - In the project "Through the Window " do people in the images lives in those houses or are they actors?

GB - Both things are happening and that the two things coexist in some cases.

Ph39 - What kind of involvement do they have during the seen? What kind of feedback, if any, do you get when they see the final image?

GB - It does not happen often that I have a feedback from people. The people who participate in the photographs they do enjoy it, because of curious situations that occur during the shooting and sometime they like the act of being themselves. Once I asked a girl to foot the person in front of her and she told me that this was something she had never done and that would have liked to do.

Ph39 -In this series you seems to have an inner and an outer frame. In the inner frame we are seeing private life moment, while on the outer frame you define the context. How do you build your own own idea and the narrative to combine the two frames?


GB - It depends, however in general I would say that the shape of the windows, the architecture of the place and the location of the house suggest to me what will happen. In some occasion I want to represent a circumstance and therefore I have sought a place for this imaginary situation.



Giorgio Barrera ©

Ph39 -In the outer frame we often see neighboring buildings, gardens, bricks detail of houses and to me they all seem to define a social pattern and a way we live in today society. How important is the context of the outer frame in your images?

GB - Earlier research would be especially anthropological, sociological. The places belong to a platform, which accepted a certain social class that I had identified as the middle class that was also the object/subject of my previous work. Later my research has moved on to languages and therefore homes had to be closer to the idea of a scenic container.

Ph39 - I some way by just looking at the final image, this project could be seen as a theatrical practices of representation with carefully staged seen but also as a mere representation of reality. Was this the intent and could you tell us more about it?

GB - There is a sentence of Gilles Deleuze that I am found of "you are in the world in a sound mind and pure." My Pictures want to remain on a threshold where it intends to represent the reality, the everyday in an objective and truthful way. On the same threshold, however, want to deny to the image the opportunity to represent and then tell in a comprehensive way a certain event. I believe to be a representation everything that exists outside of a direct experience of real.

Ph39 - Would you consider your project "Through the Window " as documentary photography and how do you perceive the decisive moment in this work?

GB - In this work for me there is not a decisive moment. The image is not the interpretation of a random moment. I would say that "Through the Window “ is a documentary work and to some extend is looking at the cinematographic photography of Jeff Wall that invites the viewer to ask questions about what we can see and experience.

Ph39 - In your project "Battlefields", you are dealing with historic sight, what inspired you to do this work and can you tell us more about the motivation behind it?

GB - I started this project somewhat randomly and gradually (it took me three years to finish it) I have enriched it with conceptual reasoning. With this series I visit the sites of Battle of the Risorgimento. It is a photographic work that looks at historic landscapes and investigates those sites avoiding the commemorative, epic or didactic. It was mapping a visions of the Italian landscape.

Ph39 - I saw on you website some new interesting narrative work on video. How did you find the transition and is there more to come?

GB – Yes, I hope so. I do not think there has been a shift from photography to video. Sometimes I find myself more comfortable when I prepare and execute a video that a photograph or a series of photographs. If you refer to window # 1333 °, a work made for Jarach Gallery in Venice, almost the opposite of what happens in the series Through the Window took place. The setting is in a foundations in Venice and except for the three actors who play the part no one is allowed to know what is really happening, when the story began, when and how it ends or why. This is another way to emphasize that with images you can say and not say, and above all you can conceal a truth assuming a different one.

Ph39 - I understand over the summer you have spent sometime traveling around northern Europe and working on your projects, any anticipation?

GB - I worked on a project presented for the prize Baume & Mercier. The project aims to collect a series of works showing places within Europe that for geographical, political or cultural reason they are defined as on the borders. In most cases I tell the story by watching what happens in the home through that inner frame that is the window.

Naked Suit

Pablo Chiereghin ©

A couple of nights ago I went to the opening of Pablo Chiereghin exhibition at Micamera Bookshop in Milan. A very good show with a number of conceptual projects on display, more of his work on the website . The main project on show was Birthday Suit ( nakedness, being nude ) a series of street portraits made by the photographer while he was naked inside a window of a busy London street. While i was watching the backstage video a very interested Gianni Berengo Gardin was also there next to me, I did not dare to ask his comment on a work so far from traditional photography but he seem certainly amused.

Pablo Chiereghin about Birthday Suit says: " People had been paid £1.13 (average UK daily income multiply by the time wasted and by the poverty coefficient of the artist) to be portrayed by the nude photographer that stood inside the shop window. The situational agreement is a dualism of power: the artist seduces the model engaging him in a voyeuristic situation where the spectator has a strong advantage: being dressed. On the other hand, the photographer has the power to determine the situation through the photographs. When the spectator is photographed, he is suddenly naked". Two catalogues were on sale on the night, both limited edition.

Here is a backstage video of Birthaday Suit here

An ordinary landscape

Bert Danckaert ©

Bert Danckaert work is mainly looking at places that defines our lives in the everyday life often by isolating spaces from their surroundings. The photographer introduce his project Simple Present with this sentence “Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out"Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

Bert Danckaert ©