Have you heard about my lead balloon?
I’m pleased (and by “pleased” I mean: aghast) to note that my new book has been taking off like a lead balloon. Truth be told, the one thing I had not been looking forward to before its publication was the fact that I would have to spend enormous amounts of time trying to create buzz around it. I think under neoliberal capitalism this is called the “doer and seller model”.
Kate Wagner wrote a very good article about all of this (and more), or rather about what bugs her (and what bugs me). Since she is a much better writer than I am, it’s fun to read. I suppose it’s fun especially if you’re not a writer, and you don’t have to worry about any of it. Then again, as a reader, you do have to worry as well.
I wrote a longer article about how photographers might deal with the end of social media. Unless you’re not engaging with social media (in which case: lucky you!) you might want to have a look.
Speaking of social media, Carole Cadwalladr wrote about the total information collapse. It’s a depressing read, but you might need to know what’s coming.
Anyway, if you want to buy a copy of my award-winning* book, simply write me an email, and I will set you up. I have plenty of copies to sell.
(*not really)
By the way, there was a long interview with the outgoing US ambassador to Hungary in the New York Times, and you want to read it to understand some of the background of my book. David Pressman is very diplomatic, and yet he also is very candid about what’s going on.
It doesn’t happen too often that photography is being discussed in more detail in the media. So it’s rare for me to find a bunch of articles and to be able to share them.
The New York Review of Books published articles about Sohrab Hura and Jim Goldberg. I have a subscription (it’s the one subscription I have actually), so I can read both articles easily. I think if you have no subscription, they will only let you read one per month (you might or might not have to sign up for that).
So you have an interesting choice to make: which one will you read? If I were you (and I am obviously not) I would read the one about Sohrab Hura. It’s a lot more interesting. The article about Jim Goldberg is a tad too hagiographic for me, and it’s also… let’s say underinformed. I mean you can’t write about text in books without bringing up all those smart books that already exist. Or rather, you can.
Moving on, you absolutely want to read this article about Sebastião Salgado’s neocolonial photography. Honestly, I don’t know why this kind of discussion around that work is so rare. I don’t know why contemporary curators who showcase that work are not aware of the issues:
Refusing the curator’s invitation to “feel enveloped by the forest”, João Paulo Barreto, an anthropologist from Brazil’s Yé’pá Mahsã (or Tukano) ethnic group, walked out after just 15 minutes, visibly distressed after visiting the exhibition shortly after its opening last month.
“I couldn’t stand it,” he says. “For me, it feels such a violent depiction of Indigenous bodies. I mean, would Europeans ever deign to exhibit the bodies of their mothers, of their children in this way?”
Barreto’s objections were directed towards the portraits of his fellow Indigenous “kinspeople” in naive or suggestive poses with little or no attire. While authentic to some forest settings, he argues that such images perpetuate the “primitivisation” of Indigenous peoples when reproduced in public.
It is telling that even as art is held up as the last relic of “authentically human” expression, it is being systematically eliminated from public life. Not only are literature and the arts (and even the more theoretical, less-“applied” sciences of physics and mathematics) being deemphasized or simply eliminated in high school and college curricula, but the only argument that is accepted for their possible relevance is their instrumental value for the workplace—where, presumably, they will help the new class of professionals to ensure that the machines run smoothly, feeding “creative” prompts to educate LLMs. In this world, the idea that art is what machines can’t do sounds like a challenge: the ultimate goal rather than a prohibition or limit.
James Duesterberg on art and AI
I couldn’t care less about reforming, teaching, or uplifting men at a personal level. Do it yourself or don’t do it. It’s not my job to teach you or guide you step by step out of your swamp. My job is to say that when you lovingly embrace people who hate women and make it clear they find women disgusting, weak, and not really quite human, when you love the work of these people without noticing the hatred of women in it, you are supporting a giant social ill that harms me and people like me. Go ahead and keep loving what you love. I can’t stop you.
Laurie Stone on Bob Dylan and other, similar male artists
Apparently, there are a few painting by Egon Schiele that have been lost and for which only photographs survive (this is also true for a number of other artists). Adrian Ghenie used those photographs to create his own versions of Schiele’s paintings. This article is in German, but you really only need to look at the pictures at the very top to get an idea of the originals and their re-interpretations.
I think that you really want to have a look because this dialogue between the two artists is generously fascinating, regardless of whether you approve of the idea or not.
Here’s a real treat: a longer article about Walter Benjamin and the writer’s final days. This quote from a letter Benjamin wrote to Theodor Adorno (a friend) has haunted me ever since I read the piece: “The complete uncertainty about what the next day, even the next hour, may bring, has dominated my life for weeks now. I am condemned to read every newspaper … as if it were a summons served on me in particular, to hear the voice of fateful tidings in every radio broadcast.”
Lastly, this photograph looks like it had been created with AI, right? I mean how could that even be real? And yet, it is a real photograph (from around 1914 or 1915). This might be a so far underappreciated aspect of AI image making: yes, we do have to be able to spot the fake images, but we also have to be careful not to create false detections.
If I had the time (and interest), I’d think and write more about this. But truth be told, AI mostly bores me. The pictures are crap, and the people behind them are as well. Rebecca Shaw just wrote about that particular aspect:
I knew that one day we might have to watch as capitalism and greed and bigotry led to a world where powerful men, deserving or not, would burn it all down. What I didn’t expect, and don’t think I could have foreseen, is how incredibly cringe it would all be. I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice – but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers.
Well, that’s all I got for today. The weather forecast tells me there is snow coming later in the day. I shouldn’t complain about winter (or the seasons in general), but I’m over winter. It’s just such a tiresome mess.
Regardless, I hope that you’re doing well wherever you might be.
Maybe one piece of unsolicited advice: you don’t actually have to pay attention to every utterance that’s coming out of the mouth of that orange man. Even though today’s journalists appear to believe that they have to write up each and every piece of stupid shit said by that man, you’re under no obligation to read any of that stuff. There’s going to be a lot of noise being made over the next few years. Paying too much attention to it will only sap your energies. Instead, focus on what really matters to you — and to others.
This is my new motto: less doom scrolling and more making!
As always thank you for reading!
— Jörg