Every once in a while, a photographer receives a major price or does something else the media consider noteworthy, and so they decide to write about her or him. The Japan Times just profiled Mari Katayama, and you want to read that. It will inform you a bit about the artist, and it will also inform you about how the world at large sees photography.

By and large, though, photography remains at the margins of what people see profiled, probably because, let’s face it, it is as much of an art form as graphic design is: useful for certain purposes but not seen as offering much insight — more on par with a craft actually.

And I don’t think that many photographers are doing a good job refuting this idea.

What is it that we read when we read a book in translation? Well, the book, you might be tempted to respond.

But which book? Or whose book?

Consider 奥の細道 (Oku no Hosomichi), a book by Matsuo Bashō, whose haiku you might have heard of. I just bought a new translation of it, and I was curious about older ones.

As luck would have it, there’s a website that presents nine translations of the opening paragraph. They are… different. Noticeably different. This is not to criticize the translators: Japanese is notoriously difficult to translate into English, what with its generous omission of all things that needn’t be said for all kinds of reasons (whether grammatical or because the speaker/writer decides so — this is what fuels haiku).

Moon and sun are passing figures of countless generations, and years coming or going wanderers too, Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu translate. But no, says Earl Miner: The months and days are the wayfarers of the centuries and as yet another year comes round, it, too, turns traveler. Actually, Donald Keene pipes in rather clunkily, The months and days are the travelers of eternity. The years that come and go are also voyagers. And so forth.

Well then, if I have so many opinions about the translations, why do I not produce one myself? How to translate 月日は百代の過客にして行かふ年も又旅人也。? (source)

I might just work on it. Some day.

Speaking of translation, Emily Wilson was in the news because her translation apparently triggered the making of the recent Odyssey movie (you know the one made for adult boys who have feelings but don’t know how to process them [“complicated men”] — I shared the translator’s review in an earlier email). As it turns out, Wilson has a new book out, and there is a wonderful interview with her about it here.

“The coverage, whatever its content,” Wilson says about how her translation was covered in the press, “has succeeded in prompting at least a notch more popular awareness of the interpretative stakes of translation, and I’m grateful for that, regardless of what anybody thinks or says about me personally.”

I’m all here for THAT, the interpretative states of translation because for me, that’s the core of good photography, too: how do you translate what the world offers you into pictures that add to the world?

Do photographers think about that? Adding to the world?

Often, when I see photography projects or books announced, I think “No, many do not.”

Why should I look at something that looks nice (nicely done as a craft, view camera and all) but that doesn’t add anything to the universe I have swirling in my head?

That’s why I am so allergic, and yes, allergic is the word, to one of those trends in project-statement writing in which someone will describe their work using series of two opposites stringed together, to indicate that whatever it might have to offer can be found somewhere in there:

“With Pudding Effect, Colberg interrogates the liminal space between the concrete and the abstract, between sadness and joy, and between foods that are solid and foods that are liquid.”

Obviously, I made up that brief statement just now. It doesn’t make any sense (or rather it will make sense once my new pudding-based photography project — working title The Proof — is out).

But it makes just as much sense as the real examples you can find everywhere now. In a sense, it’s like those social-media videos where someone talks about something and then inevitably, they end with “What do you think? Let me know in the comments!”.

But when looking at art, I do not want to find the spot where I’m comfortable; I want art to challenge and move me, and that often means that someone brushes against the grain.

How do you write about the kind of extremely rare photographs that are so shocking that they appear to elude words? Right after 9/11, Tom Junod wrote about the picture that had become known as The Falling Man. If you’ve never read it, you should read it now.

On a lighter note, Lucy Sante wrote about meeting famous writers, and the outcome is hilarious and a bit sad at times. Inevitably, I caught myself guessing who the writers were: only the first letters of their last names are given. I think I got one episode filled out with names, but I’m thinking that’s possibly the easiest one.

And here’s Adam Shatz writing about Lisette Model, offering the kinds of things you probably have never heard about before. I know I had not.

Then again, you’re probably a lot smarter and a lot better educated than me, so I better not make any assumptions here.

Anyway, in the same publication, Em Hogan writes about the wonderful biography of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek that I reviewed on CPhMag.com a while ago. It’s the kind of article that might suffice for you if you’re not that interested in these artists; for everyone else it might just push you to buy and read the book.

As you know, George Lucas remade Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress into an entertaining space saga with terrible dialogue. Which, you know, is fine, I like getting entertained as well (even though the spin offs are now completely out of control).

Regardless, Lucas made a fortune with his movies, and unfortunately for the people of Los Angeles, he decided to give back in the form of his Museum of Narrative Art (as if narrative art was somehow different than or maybe a subset of all art). Philip Kennicott wrote a real scorcher of a review of that museum. Enjoy: “if this giant spaceship of a building suddenly took off and visited another galaxy, aliens inspecting the cargo would be left with a very confused sense of what narrative art is, and what it is meant to do”.

And with that I will conclude. There’s a village-wide yard sale going on here, and I don’t want to miss it, especially since the weather is gorgeous. I need to soak up some of that sun before it disappears for months.

As always thank you for reading!

— Jörg