 … stomach-cutting of the samurai, in the office of the commander of the new Japanese army. He wanted to see the restoration of Imperial power and military culture, he wrote, and he is therefore called a political rightist. The label helps us little toward understanding him, though. The leftist students who fought the police in the streets and tunnels of Shinjuku, and who appear in a few of Tomatsu’s and Moriyama’s photographs, also sho… DAIDO MORIYAMA: Daido Moriyama: Investigations of a Dog” (1999) …tists and the historical effects of their work are rarely synonymous. For example, artists who have benefited from the renewed critical and curatorial interest in Conceptual Art in the last decade have themselves resisted the label “conceptual.”(2) This is understandable – no practicing artist wants to be pigeon-holed as an example of an historical movement. Yet the conceptual designation has been crucial to the historical under… “The Photographic Idea: Reconsidering Conceptual Photography” (1999)  …most responsive description we have of the spirit of Frank’s pictures. 4) Eugenia Parry Janis and Wendy MacNeil, eds., Photography within the Humanities (Danbury, N.H., Addison House, 1977), p.56. 5) Ibid., p. 56. 6) The wall label for his part of this exhibition was written by Evans himself: “Valid photography, like humor, seems to be too serious a matter to talk about seriously. If, in a note, it can’t be defined weightily, what it is not can b… WALKER EVANS & ROBERT FRANK: “Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge” (1981)  … works are ‘portraits’ of spaces, but really you could just as easily turn that around: several of the portraits in my earlier work were to a certain extent already images of ‘spaces’, as I now see them. At the same time, the label that was attached to my photos very early on is proving stubborn. The same clichés keep on turning up in article after article. Admittedly, I still don’t make optimistic, colourful pictures, but I still believe I’m doi… INTERVIEW: “Conversation with Dirk Braeckman” (1998)  …ic integrity while admitting that everything he has accomplished as a creative artist depends on the participation of others. Demanding that he be seen as an artist is nothing new for Avedon; he has spent decades fighting the label “fashion photographer.” This is partly because it is important for him to claim his own identity as a photographic artist as opposed to a constantly compromised and therefore non-existent individual associa… RICHARD AVEDON: “Listening to Avedon” (1995)  …23-1971) wrote that she was compiling her photographs into a ‘Family Album,’ likening it to a ‘Noah’s Ark’ and imagining in it the people who might be remembered and saved in the aftermath of the tumultuous 1960s.” Exhibition label, Portland Museum of Art, Diane Arbus’ cast of characters is a startlingly unusual group. They are people held together by all sorts of bonds, traditional and alternative, yet each merits special attention. Her mothers,… DIANE ARBUS: “Diane Arbus’ Noah’s Ark of Humanity” (2004)  … but, on taking a closer look (as these images always demand), you can see shoes from both the fall and spring collections, a simultaneity never encountered in a Prada store. Despite the fact that fashion in general (and this label in particular) is all about currency and ephemer ality, Gursky creates from it something so paradoxically solid that the image compresses “fashion” to become its emblem. Shoes aren’t the only seemingl… ANDREAS GURSKY: “The Big Picture” (2001)  …unes of Depression times, but your photographs are not critical. I find them more of a glorification—glorification of the plain and simple reality. W.E.: I’m pleased to hear you say that, because I didn’t like the label that I unconsciously earned of being a social protest artist. I never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring d… INTERVIEW: Walker Evans – “The Thing Itself is Such a Secret and so Unapproachable” (1974)  … work. I can’t stand to give him even that much credit. NF: Has your work aroused censorship in America? CS: No, I don’t think so. But I wasn’t surprised when Metro Pictures felt they should put up a warning label for kids. NF: You mean the sign at the exhibition of the Sex Pictures that read, “Parents might want to view the works inside before letting their children see them.” CS: Yes. But on the other hand, I suppo… INTERVIEW: “Interview with Artist Cindy Sherman – A Woman of Parts” (1997)  …y identifies a realist use of the medium, which could be seen to open up a much more complex and rich understanding of photography than the limiting implications of terms like formalism, which tend to get used pejoratively to label your writings and contribution to the history of photography. JS: When critics don’t know what to say about a good photographer who uses the camera simply and directly they say that the photographer uses the came… INTERVIEW: “Eyes Wide Open: Interview with John Szarkowski” (2006)  Detroit 2009 is a new publication from Dashwood Books by Ari Marcopoulos, this time employing that citys industrial ruins as backdrop for an intimate portrait of two teenage noise musicians. Marcopoulos video documenting their performance is featured in this years Whitney Biennial. The stills in this book, shot simultaneously, work to flesh out its environs, weaving a loose narrative around familiar lines: domesticity, alienation and the mark… ASX.TV: Ari Marcopoulos – “Detroit 2009″ (2009) |
