Dead artists behind the camera (and more)
Welcome to the 58th edition of this newsletter!
With each email I'm sharing material that has inspired me recently. I hope that it will inspire you, too. If you want to support my work, you can sign up for my Patreon. This will get you access to exclusive material every week.
If Patreon is not your thing but you enjoy what I'm doing, feel free to send me a little something via Paypal, and I'll re-invest it into the Japanese green tea that fuels much of my creative work.
I'm currently reading William Deresiewicz's excellent (and somewhat depressing) The Death of the Artist. Unlike Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, it's no novel. Instead, it focuses on what it means to be an artist in the era of rampant neoliberal capitalism. I'm currently in the middle of Chapter 5, which talks about the need for self-promotion. So I might as well offer some:
There still are spots available in both of the workshops I'm offering right now.
Please be in touch via email if you want to sign up!
The workshops are scheduled to start in about a week.
Someone recently told me about Behind the Camera. In the website's own words, it's "is an open-source website that creates new critical directions on the history of photography, feminist art history, and the history of modern Japan." The site appears to be relatively new, but it already contains some very interesting material.
The video above is a presentation given by Japanese scholar Hiroko Hagiwara (you'll see the YouTube video when you click on the picture). I'm pretty certain that it's based on an academic paper that I read a few years ago. The paper is hidden behind an academic paywall, but the video is freely available.
In the video, Hagiwara speaks about Nobuyoshi Araki and what she calls "the Araki Industry". If you're interested in an incredibly smart critical analysis of this photographer's work, have a peek.
And there is another video. This one has curator Maggie Mustard speak about the artist. Mustard curated Araki's 2018 exhibition at the Museum of Sex in New York City: "In response to harassment accusations by multiple of Araki’s former models, Mustard addresses issues of power dynamics between photographers and their models, the importance of institutional transparency, and curatorial ethics in moments of cultural crisis and change." For sure, you want to watch this. It's done incredibly well.
Between Hagiwara and Mustard, you're going to get a well researched and critical look at this particular artist that you simply won't find anywhere else.
I guess at some stage in a man's life, they keep repeating the same stories. Have you ever noticed this? I'm mortified by the idea that it might happen to me. So maybe I recommended Janet Malcolm's Forty-One False Starts already. If I did and if you read it, then... Well... But maybe I didn't -- or you didn't read it, in which case: do yourself a favour and read it. It's the finest writing about art you'll ever find.
A little less than three weeks ago, a piece by Aidan Clare Ramsay entitled The Price of Luck was published. It's about classical music and about how and why the idea of a meritocracy is completely flawed. I don't know whether you're into classical music (I'm sometimes into it, and then intensely, but usually not at all). In many ways, it doesn't really matter whether you're into it, because what Ramsay writes about applies in our little nook of the arts as well.
Throwing in a recent picture for good measure. I had had hopes that I would be able to travel to Germany this year to continue the follow-up project for Vaterland there, but alas... It wasn't supposed to happen.
In the meantime, I've been trying to challenge some beliefs that I've had about my own photographs. As you can imagine, that has been quite frustrating (lots of bad pictures). But I've also had a few revelations. Turns out that I can photograph horizontal pictures that work, and I can take colour pictures that I like, and now I've also learned how to work with harsh summer light in colour.
So maybe maybe maybe Nationalgalerie (that's the title of my next project) might look a little bit different after all.
And with that I'm going to conclude for today. As always thank you for reading and looking!
-- Jörg