Tag: photography

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Garry Winogrand's Guggenheim grant

Con­tin­u­ing the dis­cus­sion of inter­est­ing and inspi­ra­tional grant-writ­ing exam­ples, here's a piece from pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gar­ry Wino­grand's Guggen­heim fel­low­ship appli­ca­tion, 1963:

I look at the pic­tures I have done up to now, and they make me feel that who we are and how we feel and what is to become of us just doesn't mat­ter. Our aspi­ra­tions and suc­cess­es have been cheap and pet­ty. I read the news­pa­pers, the colum­nists, some books, I look at some mag­a­zines (our press). They all deal in illu­sions and fan­tasies. I can only con­clude that we have lost our­selves, and that the bomb may fin­ish the job per­ma­nent­ly, and it just doesn't mat­ter, we have not loved life … I can­not accept my con­clu­sions, and so I must con­tin­ue this pho­to­graph­ic inves­ti­ga­tion fur­ther and deep­er. This is my project.

Found and for­ward­ed by Leslie.

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Walker Evans discusses Robert Frank

"If that were a ham­mer in his hand he would dri­ve the nail in one or two hard fast per­fect strokes, but not usu­al­ly care­ful. There wd be a ham­mer mark in the wood and the boards wd be joined for­ev­er." — Walk­er Evans, about Robert Frank

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Foto / Modernity in Central Europe

Foto - Modernity in Central Europe

When I was in Wash­ing­ton DC last month, I saw an incred­i­ble show at the Nation­al Gallery called Foto: Moder­ni­ty in Cen­tral Europe 1918–1945. As you may have guessed by the title, the show is pho­tog­ra­phy-ori­ent­ed, but it's more than that: It's a sto­ry about pho­tog­ra­phy craft, and the way that Euro­pean pho­tog­ra­phers bent, broke and oth­er­wise manip­u­lat­ed pho­tos to express the social, polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al frag­men­ta­tion (and chaos) in the wake of the First World War. Most of the artists were unknown to me; they're all intro­duced and dis­cussed in detail in the excel­lent exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logue. It opens at the Guggen­heim New York in October.

Birth of a robotThis is a pho­tomon­tage by a Pol­ish artist named Janusz Maria Brzes­ki. It's called Twen­ti­eth-Cen­tu­ry Idyll, but the name of the series is even bet­ter: A Robot Is Born. Pho­to: Nation­al Gallery of Art.
Jindrich Styrsky - SouvenirAnoth­er pho­tomon­tage, this one by Jin­drich Strysky, a Czech artist. Pho­to: Nation­al Gallery of Art