on photographic truth is taken up in today’s NYTimes by Errol Morris. Although my interest in engaging with this debate (does there really have to be one anymore?) is minimal, his approach (that of a storyteller, true to form) is elegant and eloquent.
Although I no longer have the bird field guide as impeccably memorized as I did when I a pop-culture deprived 10-year-old, my soft spot for bird visuals is still tender. So is Jen Bekman’s.
Victor Schrager Snowy Egret and Zebra Finch 2001
Marianne Engel Sad Owl 2007
Paula McCartney bird watching (summer tanagers) 2003
This week finds me running around the city in a puddle of not-so-graceful sweat. What kind of metropolitan center of daunting anonymity is this, when my first stop the other day, at the ICP, has me running into one of my first photo teachers, also only in the city for a few days?
Although I didn’t find that the ICP lives up to my Gold Standard of What a Photography Museum Should Be (La MEP!), I enjoyed the Stephen Shore exhibit (NYTimes review from May), but was a bit puzzled when it came to Shore’s recent book work on display. I’m all for photo books, and love the idea of constrained time frames as overarching structure… So my nit-picky complaint: must we be informed that they are made with iPhoto? Why does the ever-present Mac branding insinuate itself into this work? We are never informed that a silver gelatin paper is from an Agfa, Ilford, or Forte box or is printed with a Durst or Beseler enlarger… Is this Mac specificity meant to make us, the audience/proletariat, realize that we, too, with a simple press of a glowing software button, can produce identical iHardCovers? (Not often a feeling I associate with seeing monumental C-prints, sure.) There are other ways to produce reasonably elegant and not-so-pricey books in a simple fashion, and the shout-out to Mr. Jobs seems unnecessary (disclaimer: yes, this is written on a Mac).
I have a perpetual weak spot for intersections between photography and ornithology, which came up in conversation with friend and fellow bird-inclined photographer Libby yesterday. I was reminded of the work of Richard Barnes, as seen in the New York Times Magazine a few months back… alien-esque swarms of starlings on the Italian skyline:
He also photographs nests:
