Eyemazing: The New Collectible Art Photography

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That is what my work speaks to. That is why I make the work. I take on western civilization’s highs and lows through the medium of photography.” Steichen even designed the cover, layout and typographical logo for the inaugural issue of the latter, and his logo appeared on the cover of all 50 issues. AS: I have pursued an artistic career all my life. There were moments of great success. I won many second prizes in painting and drawing competitions. I always came in second, though. And I know why. It’s because a gallery didn’t represent me in those days. I was independent, so I always got the jury’s prize, but never first prize. Famous for her photos of beautiful women, Bettina Rheims has been one of France’s most celebrated photographers for almost four decades.

Anónimos (2011) is a series of self-portraits. An intimate compendium where the figures’ individuality remains hidden. In these pictures, the artist strives to give expression and capture her own self while remaining, essentially, anonymous.

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Art communicates truths or ideas that cannot be described by any other form of language. For this reason, the most stirring art can also be the hardest to write about. Germán Herrera’s work presents such a challenge. Herrera’s captivating photomontages unravel directly into the topography of the psyche. They strike personal notes, resonate deeply, and do not easily resolve into answers or translation. Herrera’s work is striking in how it immediately tugs at the mind on a subliminal level. Below the shadowy, luscious surfaces lurk ephemeral manifestations of philosophical concerns. Many of Herrera’s works seem to be palimpsests of unknown origin, teetering evocatively on the brink of obscurity. Through his sensual, multi-panelled panoramic photographs, David Hilliard tells stories—stories about desire, fathers and sons, masculinity unfolding, relationships that elude. This body of work, is his most autobiographical project; through a very tender, observant lens, he looks at his relationships with his parents; the anxieties of being a boy who doesn’t thrill at boyish things; the longing of a young man; and the mature awareness that we will all have to say goodbye to the people we love the most, no matter how hard we may embrace them now. With different focal points throughout and an almost tactile emotional sensibility, the photos portray a beautiful, richly nuanced world: one that Hilliard both perceives and invents through his narrative images. AS: Socialist Realism was actually very good for us artists! We could earn money by making official art! Each exhibition contributed to the Revolution, to industry, to the Kolkhoz, or to some other official cause and so our work was bought by the state (laughs). We were the elite!

Researching the work of Sofía López Mañán (b. 1982) is like being submerged in an intimate journal that lets you witness someone else’s life through details and fragments of presences. She is an artist who develops each one of her projects by getting involved on all levels. Travels, spiritual retirements, living with foreigners, researching deserted places, dialogues, and films are what define her art not only as photographs but also, as performance works. Heather Snider: How would you describe the connection between the real world and the world in your imagery? Witkin’s La France et le Monde does not present Marianne, that expected version of La France, but something quite different. France in this work is massive, masculine, and holds a tiny female nude against his chest. Is le monde the diminutive figure behind him or perhaps merely the clouds. In any case France towers, as she—or he—in reality does. Witkin is a Francophile, like so many of us. And although Witkin is recognised as a giant in the United States, it is France that best seems to understand, appreciate, and revere his art. Likewise, Shidomoto captures that separateness between one’s own mortality and the light that will survive it. To look at these photographic mayflies is to share in Shidomoto’s effort. We are “joyfully to see” as much as we possibly can—to embrace, if only for a moment, all those things which cannot last. the object retains the potential of its previous existence, be it music, a story, an image or some manufactured element. Its history remains there in some way, only in a new context.” Douglas’s photography stops the viewer for a more detailed moment adding further dimension to the stories. He creates the images to begin the process of his storytelling allowing him to study the environmentsSL: Maybe I should have been more organised! A lot of my negatives were destroyed in a flood and there were two fires where my files were kept, and the fireman came in and sprayed the place and a number of things were badly damaged. But I figured that if I had everything I did it would be terrible; at least I don't have to deal with all of it! Pasternak said something like one should lose a quarter of one's work. I think I lost more, and I think that's good. People who keep everything amaze me. I keep a lot and my house is a mess, a disgrace… I'm ashamed to have anyone come in now! (Ha, but not really.) Seeing myself as an anonymous person means to leave my individuality. To multiply and mirror myself allows me to become the person portrayed for a short while. I became anonymous to express the emotions of universal characters. Anonymous of me, myself. Anonymous, because it is always easier to talk about someone else than myself. I speak of myself through photographs where characters are nameless. A character without a face. No characters. Anonymous, because what I create is meant to be interpreted and reinterpreted as many times as necessary while being contemplated. The pieces are created, allowing the same photo to reflect any encapsulated emotion. It is me, it was me, but it can also be someone else. A faceless image with the sole intention of engulfing the viewer thereby positioning the viewer as the portrayed,” she says. TH: I choose to leave my works untitled because I would like the spectator to have his own thoughts, make his own story and fantasy about what is seen.Those are not necessarily the same thoughts that I had when making the work. FS: I think that a few decades ago, time and support was given to a journalist going to a place and understanding it from the ground up. Financial imperatives

I see Liulitun now through Inri's eyes, its rambling, riot of greenery—vine tendrils reaching out into space, grasping for each other, like the new lovers united after a nine month separation of agonising, mute phone calls—and bohemian ambience offering a delicious space in which to breathe freely. I see the sensuality of their half-eaten dragon fruit, suggestive, moist and magenta-skinned; the shy declarations of their bare feet touching; Inri's wonder at the unfamiliar foods in local stores, the rows of strange meats in plastic wrap, culinary mysteries to lay on their table; red roses, hot crimson and belligerent with fragrance; carnal-ethereal moments of the sort we pray never to end, those moments of corporeal discovery in which the tangled limbs of self and other become momentarily indistinguishable, and in the eyes of one's mate you see your own soul; the journeys and homecomings; the mundane rituals of the everyday that make the string of moments hold together in the irreducible chain of subtle repetitions and variations that you come to call your life.

Photographer Giannina Roche uses macro photography to capture beautiful portraits of irises of the eye.

When I came to this understanding of kōga, the way I looked at Shidomoto’s photography transformed completely. Brainchild of Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the performance art known as Butoh (“dance of darkness”) inspired the great photographer of darkness, Eikoh Hosoe. The power of Eikoh’s and Butoh’s art stems from the very fear, disgust, rancour, hate, stress, and powerlessness which lives in the shadows of repressed memory. Consequently, Butoh dancers move like marionettes, contorted and faltering beneath Death’s fingers. Butoh is the image of light’s cancer and bruise, its final death rattle. Shidomoto begins where Butoh ends. What slips away from us into the dance of darkness, a new dance with light revives. One of Delano’s strengths is that he moves nimbly and gracefully in the worlds he photographs, altering them as little as possible with his presence. Photographing sex workers is a delicate endeavour; not only must Delano have the confidence and calm required to snap a photo in culturally sensitive moments, but he must have the quiet respect needed for people to let you into their worlds, disrupting them as little as possible when lifting his camera. The American artist Saul Leiter (1923–2013) became enchanted by painting and photography as a teenager in Pittsburgh. After he relocated to New York City in 1946, his visionary imagination and tireless devotion to artistic practice pushed him to become one of the iconic photographers of the mid-twentieth century. An innate sense of curiosity made him a lifelong student of art of all kinds, and he retained his spirit of exploration and spontaneity throughout his long career, in both his fashion images and his personal work.

DH: It’s not so much about my desire to embrace the geriatric crowd but rather a newer project where I’m photographing my mother and her community down in Florida. My parents divorced in the 1970s and have since taken very different paths in their lives. My mother is a born-again Christian and it’s taken me many years to get my mind around that and begin to make pictures. It’s obviously quite difficult due to the fact that the very nature of who I am is counter to her spiritual belief system. We love one another…yet there’s so much that’s wrong. Much of this work is Florida is about what remains unspoken. Outwardly the work is playful and colourful. But in actuality it’s heavy and dark. They’re some of the hardest pictures to make. I feel very disconnected in those moments. What better role can photography play than that of the compassionate voyeur—allowing us to step out of our own limited lives and, at least for a moment, and pull us into someone else’s very different existence? The possibility of stimulating our understanding and compassion for another human’s condition, pushing the boundaries of our own contained world—this is ones of the most valuable roles that photography can fulfil. Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was a pioneering photographer, and probably the most versatile and prolific of his era. His subjects ranged from portraits and landscapes, to fashion and advertising, to still-life and war photography, and to dance and sculpture. His manner of handling his multi-faceted career was considered radical and controversial, and laid the foundations for how contemporary photographers crisscross the fields of editorial and advertising today.

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During his visit what stroked the artist most was not only the people he was able to meet or the partly demolished houses he could visit but rather the over-exaggerated numbers of signs of “PERMIS DE DÉMOLIR” that were placed on the houses and everywhere on the streets. SL: I did fashion photography, I did advertising… I tried to earn a living, and was not always successful! I had a studio at 156 5th Avenue for a number of years. And I worked for different people and for magazines. Some of my favourite pictures I did with Soames for Nova, which is an English magazine that I liked a lot. And the Art Director of Harper's Bazaar saw my pictures for Nova and said to me: “Why don't you do something like that for us?” So I gave her an idea a few weeks later and she had forgotten what she had told me and she said: “We can't do that! We're Harper's Bazaar!” and that was it! Sometimes I made some money. Sometimes I was very impractical. I bought prints, I bought certain things. I love the works of Bonnard and Vuillard and owned some. I also had a little collection of Japanese prints. I think that the Japanese explored many ideas long before Western artists ever did. The story of Chris Sky Earnshaw would be a sad one if I did not know him to be such a spirited man, even at this stage of life when it seems he has next to nothing. Without a doubt, he is a masterful photographer, one whose work has been lost to all up until now. As an artist he is nearly anonymous, and as a human being he hovers inches away from a destitute life. To offer him a hand, to save his work for others, is all that one can do to express one’s gratefulness for what truly enriches our lives. home. They had come to Vrindavan of their own accord, wishing to spend the last years of their lives in devotion to Krishna. Fairy Tales and then grounds them within a new context and composition that ignites new meanings. “The structure is a bit complicated. But then, the genre of investigating events is complicated. Plus, stories are complicated by their very nature. I am not interested in the simplicity that is offered in mass storytelling.