Two to peruse and ponder over

Well, as you can see I’m a busy boy these days, but here are a couple of things to reward those who’ve popped in here of late to find nothing new. I don’t have the time to go into the depth both of these sites deserve, but feel these warrant more than a momentary mention:

Norman Riley

While the site design is very basic and perhaps could be changed to create a more pleasant viewing experience, if one perseveres there is some exquisitely beautiful photography awaiting one at this site by a German-born, Davis, California-based photographer named Norman Riley. Riley currently shoots in large format with a Deardorff 8 x 10 camera, but for now his newer work sans one image has yet to be added to the site.

What is on the site is Riley’s early 35mm “Pictorial” work from 1981 – 85, and what for me forms the heart of the site, four galleries of 4 x 5 work from 1985 – 1998 that Riley calls his “Transitional Images.” As Riley notes on his Technical Notes page: “I refer to my ‘Transitional Images’ as such because, as 4×5 images, they represent the progression from 35 mm to 8×10, and delineate an evolution from providence to proficiency in the art and craft of photography.”

Though in some cases a tad over-sharpened for my tastes, I love the detail and crispness of Riley’s 4 x 5 landscapes, and the wonderful sense of “place-less-ness” they have for me. What I mean is something akin to the word “timelessness,” which unfortunately has become a cliched byword when speaking about black and white work. For me I don’t so much lose a sense of time looking at Riley’s photos as I gain a sense that the places we inhabit and take photos of, should we afford ourselves the chance, are not really so different from one another. Places like Sacramento or Marysville, California for example often fail to excite our visual imagination, but is that a failure of the place or a failure of the eye beholding them?

In a similar vein, there isn’t an apparent heirarchy in what Riley chooses to take photos of, barren landscapes next to views of train stations, architectural details next to stuffed animals in museums, etc., and this democratic quality, in conjunction with a consistent workflow (almost exclusively, Riley’s 4 x 5 images were shot on the same AgfaPan 100 film stock and developed in the same PMK formula) helps to remove the photos from stylistic or genre conventions (read: limitations) and perhaps perversely, lets the images stand on their own, to be judged on their own. There’s an openess to them that defies categorization (eg. “landscape photos”).

I urge you to watch out for those photos where Riley has provided some additional commentary beyond the technical notes of the photo. Sometimes quoting from diary entries written contemporaneously with the shooting of the photo, other times recollecting details about the shoot or the place photographed, Riley’s captions help create an intimacy as if you and he were sitting side by side flipping through one of his albums of photos.

I don’t know where Riley’s 8 x 10 work is going and the one image on the site from this newer work doesn’t tell much of a story, but I certainly will be returning to see how these manifest themselves and flesh out his journey “from providence to proficiency.” No doubt Riley is taking his time, reflecting on his path in the same way his photos reflect on their vistas. As Riley himself explains it:

I feel obliged to disclose that for a considerable time after 1998, I did not practice photography to any regular extent. Rather, I spent many months reflecting on my accomplishments and monumental failures in the medium up to that point, and contemplated qualities I would strive for in my new photographs when I reached the proper frame of mind to resume the practice of photography. For reasons that will be understood by all large format photographers, I spent many hours viewing my images (and those of other photographers and painters) up-side down.

Frank Horvat

Though I’ve seen the name before in passing, on books in the store and what-not, I have been heretofore unaquainted with the work of European photographer Frank Horvat. But thanks to his wonderfully extensive site I came across the other night, that is no longer the case.

A few things strike one immediately about Horvat’s site: first, there are a lot of images (a rough count comes up with something like 45 different galleries of dare I say near 750 photos); secondly, Horvat doesn’t skimp when presenting these, with most photos measuring 550 pixels at their longest length; third, Horvat has extensively annotated the photos with captions and provided substantial introductory essays for each gallery. These are all features one usually finds lacking in sites from published photographers. (I also note happily that there isn’t an obnoxious copyright notice slapped across any of the photos).

I naturally gravitated towards Horvat’s early black and white documentary work (Paris 1951 – 60 would be a good place to start), but even something as seemingly banal as Animals 1952 – I found thought-provoking. A pleasant surprise for me were the many galleries of fashion photography, not something I would normally give more than half a glance to (Fashion for Harper’s Bazaar 1961 – 66 I found especially nice). And I would be remiss if I didn’t urge you to take a look at his Portraits 1944 – (as with all the galleries, mouse over the question mark icon for information on the who’s and where’s of each photo). On the other hand, I didn’t care for Horvat’s other portrait series Very Similar 1980 – 86 at all.

See 1999, A Daily Report for Horvat’s nascent photoblog: one photo a day (and sometimes two) for every day of the last year of the millenium. Here the different strands of Horvat’s work, with a strong accent on portraiture, come together to give us a picture of his life and encounters during a single year. This is not something that artists usually let us look in on, unless it forms the raison d’être of their work.

Lastly, while certainly Horvat’s photographs are the site, what really tops it off for me is not imagery but some text. From 1983 – 87, a time when Horvat was suffering from “serious problems” with his eyesight, he conducted interviews with 14 photographers, and these were collected and published in the 1990 book “Etre Vues,” in French. An English edition never was published, nor was the French one ever reprinted after it sold out.

So in 2002, Horvat decided to publish the interviews on his site, did some of the translating himself, and even put out a call for someone to help him translate the non-English interviews into English, to which a comparative literature professor in America responded with several French-to-English translations. The end result of all this is that on the site Horvat has now re-published 12 or the 14 original interviews, with eight of these available in English versions, including interviews with Josef Koudelka, Helmut Newton, and Joel Peter Witkin. If you’re blessed with French or Italian ability, other interviews include Robert Doisneau, Marc Riboud, and the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Hamaya.

This is really an invaluable service to those who want to know more about the photographers in question or further understand the motivations and modus operandi of working visual artists, and Horvat is to be applauded for making these available to the commons for free.

One Reply to “Two to peruse and ponder over”

  1. Kurt – Thanks for the suggestion of these two sites! Currently I’m perusing the Norman Riley pages and have found this comment to be my favorite (Below a photo of mannequin legs and arms hanging from hooks):

    “This picture along with another of mannequins hanging by their necks (not presented on this site, but appearing in a gallery show along with the above image) prompted one critic to remark that the photographs demonstrated a hatred of women. This photograph has also been described as macabre in that it excites, in the minds of some viewers, suggestions of circumstances prevailing in WWII Nazi concentration camps. Despite such stupid and preposterous remarks, this is one of my favorite and most popular images.”

    This reminds me of how clever we used to think we were in undergraduate photo critiques when we would construe images to be evidence of a subtle expression of misogyny.

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