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A New Amazing Book of Photographs: WHAT I KEEP, Susan Mullally, Baylor University Press, 2010, with an introduction by elin o'Hara slavick

You can pre-order this book now, due out at the end of summer. Here is the introduction I wrote for the book:

What I Keep So You Can See Me

Susan Mullally's unforgettable color photographs of people who gather together in their "Church under the Bridge of I-35" make visible something we usually choose not to see. There is a young woman holding a photograph of her sweet baby girl with whom she cannot live because she does not have a place to live. There is a picture of an African-American woman holding her Junior High School diploma. This is the first time the woman has ever shown it to anyone. There is an unemployed carpenter who collects any stuffed animal that he finds so he can give them to the children he encounters during his homeless days. Most of us do not relate to these people because we have jobs, homes, families with whom we live and a comfortable routine. If we practice a faith with others, we probably worship in a temperature controlled interior environment that provides shelter, warmth and a refreshing respite from the natural elements and a welcome and deliberate pause in our daily patterns of behavior, usually with people who fall into similar ethnic, financial and political categories. According to their website, the Church under the Bridge is “an ordinary church made holy by His presence – black, white, brown, rich and poor, educated in the streets and the university, all worshipping the living God, who makes us one.”

What we keep exceeds Mullally's frame and is thus left out. In these pictures, she is not interested in the glut of consumption, our wasteful and luxurious ways, and our individual success stories and privileged positions from which we pass judgment or remain passive. Mullally is interested in how people survive, how they form communities, how they hold onto one single thing that becomes a symbol of pride, identity, generosity, memory and faith. While I may not relate to these people, I feel as if I know more about each of them because of Mullally's images. A Vietnam Veteran's Army hat places a homeless man in a very specific history and culture, in a certain political situation – one of a broken health care system that fails even for those who almost died “serving their country”, a capitalist system that relies on the suffering of some for the pleasure and profit of others.

      Working in the tradition of August Sander, Lewis Hine, Diane Arbus and Rineke Dykstra, Mullally knows she is swimming in troubled water. Susan Sontag asks the challenging question in Regarding the Pain of Others, ""What does it mean to protest suffering, as distinct from acknowledging it?" I am not sure these photographs answer this question, but acknowledging a problem is at the very least a beginning to the solution. Mullally's photographs move us. They create a spark of recognition, of empathy. None of us can act compassionately without empathy. Unlike the aforementioned photographers, Mullally is not making an archive of archetypes; she is not aligned with a political party or working towards the passage of a specific law (although perhaps she should be); she does not consider her subjects as freaks. She is making photographs as a good citizen, as a concerned woman, as someone searching for community in the small and strange town of Waco, Texas, where Mullally teaches at Baylor University. Mullally respects her subjects, many of whose lives are constantly disrupted by serious challenges such as homelessness, incarceration, drug addiction, alcoholism, mental illness and poverty. Mullally simply asks each person what he or she keeps and why it is valued and she makes a color photograph of them holding that object of subjective value.

      Mullally participates in the Sunday service regularly. She started going when she first moved to Waco for her teaching job at Baylor. She wanted to get to know some people so she volunteered to take the black and white photographs of members for the Church’s cherished annual directory. While performing her service for the Church, Mullally had the idea for What I Keep and was able to gather willing participants for the project. It is noteworthy that this project grew organically and sincerely out of Mullally’s own spiritual and community practice and not out of a superficial art world desire. I appreciate being introduced to these anti-heroes, these survivors, my fellow citizens. We all need to be reminded, even if we are acutely aware through personal experience, of other people's struggle and difficult situations - often as a result of other people's selfish and greedy ways of life. I look in their eyes and recognize that in these bankrupt and corrupt times of recession and foreclosures, their eyes could one day be our eyes – open and pleading, reconciled and tired, searching and resolved. This is all so close to home. Indeed, many of us drive over such bridges every day – on our way to work or the grocery store. Little do we know that there are people gathering underneath us to join in worship. It is hard to imagine worshipping in such a state (both in terms of personal desperation and need and in terms of actual geographical location) but they do it and seemingly with joy. I once heard Toni Morrison speak about how if we do not take care of the poor and oppressed, they will rise up and eat us. It is easier for me to imagine people gathering together to plot their cannibalistic feast, but that is the difference between Susan Mullally's visionary spirit and mine, perhaps even yours. 

      It is dangerous to address faith in one's art. Religion, or ideology, is at the root of every war. Some of us are atheists, agnostics, Jewish, Catholic, Muslim and Baptist. Some of just don't care about religion one way or another. Somehow, even though Mullally's subjects all belong to the same church, the pictures do not feel religious, even the one of a woman holding out a crucifix. She could be holding a baby or crutch, a broom or an instrument and I suppose a crucifix can be any of these things. This church under the bridge feels more like an umbrella organization for people who need each other, who may have a whole lot to give or to receive. I wonder if they each take turns at being the minister or reverend or priest. Mullally could have just as easily chosen to photograph a group of similar people at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen, but she chose to find them in a place that they choose to go, a place where there is hope and a sense of community. 

      While the church is non-denominational, it is Christian. Having been raised in an unusual politically active Catholic family, I have always imagined the true Christian to be someone who feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, loves their enemy and gives to the poor. In the United States of America, as an inherent part of their religious beliefs, interpretations and practices, some “Christians” hate homosexuals, believe in forcing women to give birth to unwanted babies, support endless war that we all know kills more civilians than soldiers or terrorists, work towards wealth and give little to charity. Of course there are other Christians who attempt to mirror Jesus, the humble socialist carpenter, but the loudest ones are the ones we hear. I have no idea what the people in Mullally's photographs believe in politically, if they can vote and if they do, for whom? It doesn't really matter. What matters is that they are people living in our country and we should care about them. If we don't, who will? If we don't care about them how can we care about each other or ourselves? Our denial and greed lead us, involuntarily or not, to inequality, injustice and suffering, whether or not we acknowledge it. I am waiting to be devoured, but not by these people who stare out at me from Mullally's pictures. We will devour ourselves.

July 1-3 Visual Studies Workshop
Rochester, NY

The following is a brief conversation with Tate Shaw, director of the Visual Studies Workshop, in regards to the upcoming Photo- Bookworks Symposium.

What is the goal of the Symposium?
A few years ago we started recognizing that a lot of photographers were using print-on-demand services to make books, rather than portfolios, to present their work. But many of these photographers aren't thinking enough about sequencing, pacing, or the possibilities for different materials to support their ideas. The goal of the symposium is to expand the potential for the photo book-as-art within a new production generation--in an era with access to print-on-demand and desktop publishing--in order to educate on the distinctive time/space art of the photo-bookwork.

Is there a theme?
There isn't a theme per se. Photographers who work in the book form often blur subject lines and you'll see many themes in one book alone. So we have gathered practitioners that are making complicated, interesting projects where the editing, sequencing, pacing, and sometimes the materials inform the photographs for books that are themselves works of art.

There is an impressive list of presenters, how did you decide who you wanted to have participate?
I focused a lot of attention on practitioners who are also invested with publishing projects. I felt artist/publishers would have more diverse experience to present from. I also contacted curators inviting them to suggest those books they would like to discuss. This is how the conversation between Anne Wilkes Tucker and Alec Soth materialized. In the very early stages I organized a photo-book club with some thoughtful friends and colleagues--a book club where you didn't have to read anything prior to coming, you just had to come with a few photo-books to share. This was a great way to see a lot of books I may not have found on my own necessarily.

How do you see the artists' book fitting into the photography world now and in the future?
The point of this for me is to further educate practitioners on the potential of the book as a complex form of display. It seems to me that if the facility is growing (with print-on-demand and the like) and the practitioners are informed of the potential for complexity in the book form, then more photographers will self-publish works and we will have direct access to artists' ideas. The problem is always distribution--how to distribute books that you make on your own? Some interesting developments are taking place, however, such as Joachim Schmid's small but growing ABC: Artists' Books Cooperative with links to self-publishers where you can get books directly from the artists themselves. More book fairs and festivals for photo-books are popping up each year as well.

What is the Visual Studies Workshop's mission?
Visual Studies Workshop is committed to expanding the potential of the media arts, and their impact on contemporary culture, through innovative programs in education, exhibition, publication, research, practice, and community service. We were founded in 1969 by Nathan Lyons and our programs support photography, artists' books, film, video, and new media projects each year. We also have an MFA program in Visual Studies accredited through the College at Brockport, State University of New York. Our grad students are connected to the nonprofit media arts center, where activities such as the symposium are taking place, and their education and the center's programs support one another.

What makes up the artists' books archive?
Joan Lyons founded the VSW Press in 1971 to facilitate artists publishing projects. Because we have actively contributed to the field, publishing over 450 projects in the past 40 years, artists and publishers send us books for our collection and for review in the journal we publish, Afterimage. The Independent Press archive is where these books are held. The archive has grown to be around 5,000 titles by independent photographic, visual, and language artists. Some of the most influential artists' books and small poetry of the past 35-40 years can be found in the archive.

For more information:
http://www.vsw.org/symposium.php

Tate Shaw

tate@vsw.org

Route 66 is often referred to as “The Mother Road,” but to us East Coasters it is Route 1. Sure, these decades, it’s the parallel I-95 we use to get anywhere fast, but One preceded it. It has been there since 1926 (or 1939, depending on how far south you live), and runs often at 35 to 45 mph, and under pseudonyms like Baltimore Pike, City Line Road, Boston Post Road, East and West Main Street. It stretches for 2376 miles, from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida.

Up in Maine, lives D.C.-area native, Brad Richman. I, myself, have never lived, nor had close relatives live, very far at all from Route 1, except a couple forays up into the Hudson Valley. For four years in the Nineties I attended Bard College. This is where I met Brad, a photography major who was two years ahead of me in Stephen Shore’s program. I got to know him better when I made his portrait for my senior thesis, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

We stayed in touch after graduation, and I would see Brad and his fine black-and-white prints of basketball players at Lee Marks’ booth at Aipad. The work was an extension of his senior project at Bard – pictures of amateur basketball players and games shot with a  Wista 4x5 field camera. He experimented with hand-holding as well as using a tripod, the convential method.  He got in there with the players, and made their movements look like a dance. He became again, “The White Shadow,” his nickname from his middle-school basketball team. The work got a lot of early attention, and is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Columbus Museum of Art; and the Library of Congress, as well as in sports-related venues like The Basketball Hall of Fame. It bridged a gap most of us never think of, really, that gulf between sports and art. From the website of Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago: “Richman’s photographs touch upon the roles the sport plays in our society, but more directly deal with the physical movement on the court: the grace and fluidity of its players, its affinity to dance. Unlike most sports pictures, the large-format negatives produced from Richman’s view camera hold the fine details in these moments, rendering forms and expressions with clarity and composure.”

The work was a labor of love, and Brad was living outside DC at the time, working a day job that forced him to travel away from home. But he made some peace with that and brought his view camera along with him to find courts and players everywhere he went, even very out-of-the way places. Some of my favorite pictures from this series are the Evans-esque ones of a country barn or a stucco building hung with a lonely basketball hoop, no kids in sight. Even though he was paying for materials on his own dime, the travel expenses were part of the gig he was already paid to do. He covered all of the lower 48 states during the basketball project - 28 of them paid for, and 20 of them self-financed.

He, too, often found himself on Route 1, and decided to embark on a new project about that well-worn road. This new series cost him more to do, however, as the travel would not be covered by an employer. He would also be away from his family, and he was a young father of two. He shot in New England, D.C. and central Florida, but then (in his words) “gave up.” He felt like the pictures were just not as good as the previous project, though I wonder how much of a chance he really gave it. Failure happens all the time in art; that’s part of the process, isn’t it? He said that the pictures “lacked the animation and spontaneity of the basketball work.” When I imagine what the pictures must look like, I think about Evans, and I think about Robert Adams, and about Cleveland-area photographer Andrew Borowiec. The project is unfinished, and unavailable in digital form, as he stopped making the project before our world really became this digital. He never scanned the work back then, put it away in boxes, and retired early, in his Thirties. He concentrates on being there for his family now, and makes a living doing something a photographer would likely see as more ordinary. He said in an email, “I also got tired of spending hours in the car going photographing, looking to make a connection with a stranger, when I'd rather make a connection at home with my kids.”

I had some trouble accepting his early retirement, not that it’s any of my business at all, really. I suppose I just have a lot at stake in the career I have chosen, which is unfair to project onto him. A lot of people start out one thing, then go on to be another, even after spending a lot of time and work and money on a graduate degree. I suppose I am used to being around people working their way up, or who are sustaining a career that has already made it to a certain level, family to support or not. It’s still hard for me to completely understand the walking away. Richman recently said, “ (I) needed to raise a family so … had to make a choice between art … and a job that paid the bills. I'm happy with my choice, and I've made peace with the fact that it didn't totally work out as a career. But I know I made some great pictures, and as I get farther away from the art world, I also understand that while people may not see my work, no can ever take the journey away from me. Meaning, I took those pictures, I traveled to all those places, and I'm proud of myself for just doing it. I'm satisfied with the means, even if the end didn't work out like I hoped it would. I often think about what I'd photograph now, and everything is just changing so fast with camera phones and iPhones that I wouldn't know where to begin.”

That last part reminded me of what the aforementioned Adams said to me about the digital world we live in. He said that had he grown up today, he would probably have been a painter or an architect, because he loved the darkroom so much, and now has no interest in digital technology. What would the photography world have been like without that man and his life’s work? Not the same.

And Brad’s right about the journey part, which is one of the best things about photography. Like Diane Arbus said, “My favorite thing is going where I’ve never been.” She didn’t stick around, and maybe her work here was done, to paraphrase George Eastman’s own last words. (Please pardon the morbidity.)

Richman may be in retirement from photography, but his pictures are not. One of his photographs is currently in a show at the Art Institute of Chicago called "In The Vernacular."  The photo is really taunting him, as it’s even reproduced on the cover of the show’s brochure, along with a picture by his old teacher, Stephen Shore. The show is up through May: http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/exhibition/vernacular .

The basketball work can be seen at: www.bradrichman.com .

 And for the New York Times Article that got me thinking more about Route One a few years ago, see here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/us/23land.html?_r=2==1=slogin=1198426536-Czl3vXwDfvMLdQXrslOPwQMaybe

URDLA

Lyon, France

http://www.urdla.com

by elin o'Hara slavick

If you ever find yourself in Lyon, be sure to visit URDLA, an international center for prints and books. Located in Villeurbane - the neighboring town to Lyon (like Brooklyn to Manhattan) that makes Lyon the 2nd largest metropolitan area in France after Paris - URDLA is tucked away down an alley of a fashion wholesaler and wood shop. URDLA is housed in an old printing studio that is skylit, providing the perfect light for making and looking at art. While the space is bright white, URDLA does not feel like a regular gallery and that is because it isn't. There are consistently amazing exhibitions to see, including thematic group shows and solo shows by artists who come to URDLA over the years to produce bodies of work, but there is also a small and impressive book shop where you can purchase cards, prints and books that are produced on the premises, as well as current art magazines and monographs. There is an open working studio area (where I am currently an Artist-in-Residence, working on a series of etchings inspired by the Resistance) that houses beautiful presses of all sizes, large tables, sinks, materials and shelves for the archives: stacks of old letter stamps; drawers full of portfolios by visiting artists; a collection of exhibition posters throughout the years; lithograph stones and other treasures. URDLA has been open since the late 1970s. It is truly a remarkable space.

Director Cyrille Noirjean curates the shows and there is an impressive consistency to their political and formal power. Damien Deroubaik's aggressive, sarcastic and almost apocalyptic show and the more recent and eclectic group exhibition Violences Actives (Active Violence) both spoke to issues of war and conflict, power structures and systems of representation. The posters for Deroubaik's show - of an ape excreting money - that were scheduled to be hung around town, were never allowed to be hung, even in this relatively Socialist and anti-capitalist country. That's how hard Deroubaik punches. 

Violences Actives included some translucent photographs of appropriated imagery with French subtitles by prominent French artist Jacqueline Salmon. Images lifted from the television - of an atomic explosion with the words "Mama, what is it?" and of a confrontation between protesters and police in the street with the word, "Democracy" and of Martin Luther King with the question "Do you fear for your life tonight?" hovered above  and throughout the exhibition. Suspended from the ceiling, viewers could see them properly and backwards. This strategy propelled these historical moments into our present and future, compelling us to recognize the continuing importance of such events and how they shape our current world: we are living in a relentlessly (post)traumatic moment and trauma begs for representation. 

The current show is the solo exhibition, Evolution, by Berlin-based French sculptor Assan Smati, who has been making prints at URDLA since 2006. The images are mostly drawn from photographic imagery - butterflies with skeletons for bodies, dogs pooping and roving in packs, upside naked men with boxing gloves on. Reading these simple descriptions of the imagery, it seems that the show must also be apocaplyptic (and I do joke with the Director that a human skull should be the icon for URDLA) but somehow it transcends such a gloomy and doomed state and is quite beautiful. Circular hives and webs surround chimeras, birds with butterfly wings, elephants wearing moth-wing capes, dogs howling into a blank white void, anorexic clowns floating like insects. Noirjean cleverly installed a selection of Smati's sketches in one corner of the show: drawings of soldiers, dogs, fragmented bodies, pigs and grenades. While sketches, these could be snapshots or pictures clipped from newspapers.

Ten years ago I reviewed a show at URDLA (for Art Papers) that explored the historical and contemporary links between printmaking and photography. The show included work by many artists, including Annette Messager and Christian Boltanski, two artists who blur the lines of distinction between taxidermy, photography and clothing in their work. Both artists also employ whatever means are necessary for their concept. URDLA, while a self-declared space for prints and book, is also a space for sculpture, drawing, painting, photography, sound installations, performances and readings. This is what makes it great. This is also what makes it, at least for me, one of the only "printmaking spaces" that is more than that. It is a space for art, for process, for critical discourse, for a respite from the technologically hyped up speed of our daily world, and a welcome change from the superficial and market-driven displays at most galleries.

Discussion is in the air. Is photography dead? What is the state of photography today? Where have we been and where are we going? I had the opportunity to attend 2 of the 3 fairly recent, behind-closed-doors panel discussions about photography today at the Museum of Modern Art. The topics were the Definitions of Photography in the 21st Century and Influence. The third, which I did not attend, was Globalism. There were high points in the two I attended, but I largely felt like the panels in general seemed a bit choppy, as the participants didn’t seem to be speaking about enmeshed enough topics, or willing enough to open up to differing points-of-view, for a natural flow of discussion to really evolve and stay on point.

The first presentation by Paul Graham delved into how “straight” photography is very often misunderstood as “documentary” photography by many in the art historical and curatorial fields today. If your photograph is not manipulated or appropriated, or taken of a scene you build yourself, some in the art world have a lot of trouble “getting” it. But think back to the “New Documents” show at Moma. The work of Arbus, Friedlander and Winogrand was not really documentary, though it was, indeed, straight photography. They presented these new sorts of documents that are actually evidence of an artist’s personal vision, not an accurate description of truth or reality. The work was an example of Evans’ “Lyric Documentary,” a thing closer to poetry than to journalism. Philip Lorca diCorcia seconded that motion in the second event, at which he labeled himself “old school,”  which I was happy to hear.

The text of Graham’s statement, titled “The Unreasonable Apple,” is no secret, and is posted on his website: http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/writings_by.html

It begins by his having been taken aback at a critic’s suggestion that what he does, what many of us do, as merely “snapping.” He goes on to explain that photographing is a creative act, even if the artist’s handiwork is not evident.

Last month on the West Coast, SF Moma hosted a major symposium, titled “Is Photography Over?” It was organized by Corey Keller, associate curator there who I met over a decade ago when we were assistants working on the Nan Goldin Retrospective – she as a curatorial assistant at the Whitney, and me as Nan’s personal assistant.  Without even going out there to hear the presentations, I take the bait and cried an emphatic, “No!” to my computer screen. My colleague, Joshua Chuang, assistant curator at the Yale Art Gallery, did participate and was asked to write an account of the events. It begins here:

http://blog.sfmoma.org/2010/04/is-photography-over-thursday-evening-event-reports/

But be sure you also read the addendums he posted later on:

http://blog.sfmoma.org/2010/04/is-photography-over-friday-afternoon-session-report-1/

One of my favorite parts is when he recounts the story about Friedlander’s purposely, tight-lipped slide presentation at one such event, many years ago.