© Pauline et Pierre, Hugues de Wurstemberger

For the birth of my second son, my friend and colleague Bertrand Carrière gave me a beautiful photography book titled Pauline et Pierre, from Belgium photographer Hugues de Wurstemberger.  As the title suggests, the subject of this book are of his children Pauline and Pierre, two figures that mingle through the book with images of other members of his family, landscape images, details of objects and scenes of the everyday.

© Pauline et Pierre, Hugues de Wurstemberger

The book has a beautiful tone that oscillates between light and darkness, between the fragility of childhood and the complexity of family and parenthood. The work relies on a sense of observation that consider (at least to my interpretation) the concrete and the real as having a power to evoke and to tell stories that could not be heard otherwise. That may sound like an obvious take on photography in general, but it appears to me that art photography today deals less with the documentation of the evocative potential of objects, places and people, than in its contextualisation as an artwork, with all the history and the ramified discourses that this may entail. I sometimes feel that being an observer in the world and recording its cycles, movements, and paradoxes trough the photographic images has lost its value in the art world… For that reason, I like to delve into work like de Wurstemberger’s, exploring a sensitivity, a way of looking at things, a poetry that does necessarily redefine what photography should be, but that uses photography’s most elementary capacity (the capacity to extract from the world a portion of time and space) to presents a parenthesis of life and an affective manifestation extracted from its substance.

© Pauline et Pierre, Hugues de Wurstemberger

© Pauline et Pierre, Hugues de Wurstemberger

I am drawn to those personal documentations of the everyday that seems to use photography as a tool for the creation of a territory; territory that automatically creates an inside and an outside, a territory that allows the photographer to touch the world as much as allowing the world to touch him or her. A reciprocal relation with what is out there to see and feel. I see this kind of work as being an experiment in living, a process and tool from which it is possible to learn about the world and our own relation to its complex interlacing features.

Some people can’t stand personal and diaristic work, asking whether there is anything to get out of personal (individual) narratives.  There might be more for an outsider of these narratives in a conceptual work. I don’t know. I am open for discussion about that, but for the time being, I’ll spend tome time with de Wurstemberger’s images.

© Stefan Heyne - The Noise

I’ve recently received Stefan Heyne‘s book titled The Noise published by Kehrer. These days it’s always really exciting, for me anyways, to get a package from the post office, especially when it’s traveled from over seas. Discovering Heyne’s work through his book has been a really nice experience and I do wish one day to see real prints.

The Noise challenges our perception of what our definition of photography is and what we think photographs should look like. In the 1820s when photography was at it’s developing stages and through out the remaining 1800s (and even sometimes today), it was believed a tool to record reality and the images revealed truth of the thing photographed. As we are more than aware today, photographers don’t always intend or do not always accomplish to convey a complete truth (but then my truth and your truth are probably very different as well). Photography is a slice of a moment, the frame captures a brief occurrence of time, the photographer simply pulls it out and puts it on display. His or her relation to the image will naturally be completely different than the ones of the viewers. It is the emotion and attraction of an image, which makes a photograph meaningful to the person that did not take the photograph. With Heyne’s work one must be open to let the quality of space, light and colour evoke the emotion, instead of looking for the crisp “real” photograph to tell the story.

© Stefan Heyne - Wardrobe 2006

Heyne’s work warps and distorts reality, it shifts our orientation and creates oddly familiar shapes. As I was going through his book I had this sensation of being in a dream state, where the environment seems to make sense but then there are details that are off and therefore I can’t quite make out what’s going on. While viewing the book, I found myself being pulled between comfort and uneasiness. The images, because of their blurriness, can create the sensation of an open space but also at times images can bring on a sensation of claustrophobia. These images are extremely subjective and for me some the his images really capture and transcend these qualities and sometimes some don’t. But I think that’s the beauty of Heyne’s work, the images or the objects in the images take on a life of their own and wait to be explored. One can approach them like paintings, which then shifts our perception of photography.

The book itself is really well thought out. The layout is simple, which lets the viewer take the time to appreciate the images, it also permits us to be able to absorb the space photographed and the qualities of the abstracted object, which I think is important.

© Stefan Heyne - Entrance, 2006

© Stefan Heyne - Keel, 2005

Thank you Stefan.

Alfred Stieglitz book published by National Gallery of Art

This past weekend I was in Ottawa and stopped in at a used book store, Argosy books on Dalhousie to be exact. I made my way to the back to the photography section, where there were some interesting ones, mostly old history photography books, which were at eye level. But up above were the books that are too tall to fit in shelves and are slotted sideways with the titles facing down. So I took the ladder to see what was up there and pulled out an Alfred Stieglitz book, wrapped in a protective plastic and heavy. I started looking through it and what a beautiful book!

The paper has an ivory colour, a perfect thickness and the texture is a mixture of silk and velvet. The book is about 14 inches by 11 and the pictures are set in the middle letting the paper frame them perfectly. The tones of the images are so rich and absolutely stunning. The book even smells good – not like plastic! Not only are there over 70 printed plates, including images of Georgia O’keeffe and his Equivalent series, but there is also a section called Alfred Stieglitz On Photography, which are his writings.

Stieglitz journal entries, published articles and his letters to various artists and photographers, reveal his views about photography at the time and how he saw the medium evolving. Stieglitz had for a mission to establish photography as a valid art form and expression. He published over two hundred articles stating his case and educating the people, some of which are in this book.

I am taking my time to read through his thoughts, but so far my favorite entry and article, that is probably still relevant to our times, is from his “Twelve Random Dont’s,” Photographic Topics, January 1909. “Don’t believe you become an artist the instant you received a gift Kodak on Xmas morning.” Now it would be a digital camera with a lot of numbers in the name! “..The machine may see for you, but its eye is dead. Your eye should furnish it with life. But don’t believe that all open eyes see. Seeing needs practice – just like photography itself.”

Needless to say, I bought it! I am extremely happy; it is in perfect condition and a first edition print. It was printed in 1983 by the National Gallery of Art, Washington and co published with Callaway Editions. This was my hidden treasure in this used book store!

In the afternoon I attended a wonderful lecture by Gabor Szilasi at Concordia University. Gabor is being celebrated for his 50 years of work, starting at Musée d’art de Joliette on May 24 and a retrospective of his work will be touring the country this year. His work is absolutely beautiful and has been extremely influential in the Canadian photography world.

©Gabor Szilasi

At the end of the day I met up with my husband Martin and he had gotten me Stephen Shore’s book American Surfaces as a gift. It’s a wonderful book. The size is perfect and the layout is simple and of course brilliant photography.

Stephen Shore, American Surfaces

I thought that this was all very fitting; the photography and the surprise!

Phil & Me ©Amanda Tetrault

Phil & Me ©Amanda Tetrault

Amanda Tetrault‘s project Phil & Me is a really interesting series. Phil is Amanada’s father who suffers from schizophrenia. And Amanda attempts, through photography, to understand and to enlighten her relationship with him. On the streets of Montreal, Amanda documented her father’s life and hers. You can find the photographic series on her website but her book is a wonderful piece of work with writings and letters from her father and herself.

“Phil & Me is a personal document of a daughter’s use of photography to try to control her relationship with her father and the disease that has crippled him, as well as an attempt to focus public understanding upon the essential humanity, the worth and contribution, of all victims of schizophrenia.”

“In the book Amanda explores the world of her father, Philip Tetrault – a poet who has lived with schizophrenia since he attended McGill University at the age of 21. Philip was a poet suffused with promise and was hailed by Leonard Cohen as Canada’s best kept secret in 1989…before he slipped into yet another schizophrenic nightmare.”

Phil & Me ©Amanda Tetrault

Trees, Hidcote ©Beth Dow

Yesterday i was so excited, i received my Blurb book in the mail. After seeing that Blurb had launched Photography Book Now Award, i was interested in seeing what a final product looked like. So i did a test and was quite happy. There is some print tweaking to do but nothing drastic! What i loved with Blurb is the creating process, it’s amazing and their software is so user friendly and fun to use.

If you want to get a feel for Blurb and book publishing, check out Cara Phillips blog Ground Glass and her post Blurb Symposium. Cara was 1st runner up in the Themed Category for her Singular Beauty series.

The Grand prize was awarded to Beth Dow with her series In The Garden, it is a beautiful series of soft and mystical imagery. And while your there check out her series Fieldwork, they are also wonderful and thoughtful pieces.