Photobombing

The other day, while surfing the net, I came across a word that was not only new to me (that happens often) but made me curious (that happens not so often): photobom. This is what The Independent had to say about it:

"Will Self may have missed out on his first Booker prize to Hilary Mantel, but he can take consolation in creating the best photobomb in the history of the Bookers. Which may not be too much consolation for losing the £50,000 bounty but it's, well, something.

Photobombing is defined by the ever-dependable Urban Dictionary as 'any time the background of a picture hijacks the original focus'.

In the photocall for the shortlisted authors, Self found himself holding his title, 'Umbrella', up like an actual umbrella behind Mantel's head, ensuring that when she comes to look at the picture on her mantelpiece in years to come. The memory won't be of Booker glory, but of her head nestling in the verbose genius's armpit."

Booker prize 1: The award for best photobomb goes to ...

The Independent, 18 October 2012

Frans Lanting: Okavango

Zum ersten Mal erschienen ist dieser prächtige Bildband 1993; die nun vorliegende Version wurde neu gestaltet und um einige Dutzend neue Bilder ergänzt, einschliesslich der zugehörigen, informativen und die Bilder kongenial ergänzenden Texte.

Die Kalahari, auch Durstland genannt, weil es hier den grössten Teil des Jahres kein stehendes Gewässer gibt und einige Flüsse zwar hinein aber nicht wieder hinaus fliessen, ist die grösste zusammenhängende Sandfläche der Welt. Sie reicht von Südafrika über mehr als 2'400 Kilometer nach Norden bis zum Kongo und bildet den grössten Teil Botswanas.

In dieser Wüste gibt es ein Wunder: das Okavangodelta, ein mehr als 22'000 Quadratkilometer grosses Feuchtigkeitsgebiet, das eine einmalige Vielfalt an Pflanzen und Tieren beheimatet. Es ist einer der wenigen Orte, an denen Wüsten- und Sumpfbewohner aufeinander treffen. Da finden sich sowohl Flusspferde, Krokodile wie auch Zebras, Büffel, Giraffen, Löwen, Hyänen und der grösste Elefantenbestand des afrikanischen Kontinents.

Ein Lappenchamäleon 

schleicht am Rand einer trockenen Lehmpfanne entlang

Die meisten Bilder zeigen Tiere. "Tierfotografie in Afrika", schreibt Lanting, "ist zum Teil Naturwissenschaft, zum Teil gute Buschkenntnisse, zum Teil Geschichtenerzählen – und genau so habe ich sie gern." Übrigens: Bereits Livingstone hatte 1858 auf seiner Expedition zum Sambesi eine Kamera dabei.

Dem Buch vorangestellt ist unter anderem dieses auf inspirierende Zitat von Henry Beston aus "The Outermost House": "Tiere soll man nicht an den Massstäben der Menschen messen, leben sie doch in einer Welt, die älter und vollständiger ist als unsere. In ihr bewegen sie sich fertig und vollständig ausgestattet mit Erweiterungen der Sinne, die wir verloren oder nie erworben haben, und sie lauschen auf Stimmen, die wir nie hören werden. Sie sind weder unsere Brüder noch unsere Untergebene, sondern andere Völker, gefesselt wie wir im Netz von Leben und Zeit, Mitgefangene der Pracht und Mühsal der Erde."

 

Der Fluss Okavango, die Lebensader des Okavangodeltas

und wo der Fluss endet, mitten in einer Wüste im südlichen Afrika

"Okavango" ist aber nicht nur ein Buch über Tiere, sondern ebenso ein Buch über das Wasser: Die Quelle des Okavango liegt im angolanischen Hochland. Im Norden Botswanas teilt er sich dann in mehrere Hauptkanäle, um sich dann als riesiger Fächer aus kleineren Wasserläufen auszuweiten und schlussendlich als Fluss sein Ende findet und zwar in der Kalahari, die auch eines der grössten Feuchtgebiete der Erde ist.

Ein Ochsenfrosch, der fast ein Jahr unter dem harten 

Ton einer Pfanne übersommert hat, kriecht vom Regen geweckt

an die Oberfläche und nimmt sein Revier in Besitz

Sich mit diesem Buch beschäftigen bedeutet, aus dem Staunen nicht mehr herauszukommen. Ich jedenfalls staunte über unfassbare Weiten, wunderte mich, wie solche Nahaufnahmen von nicht ungefährlichen Tieren enstehen konnten, fühlte mich gefesselt von kitschigen Sonnenuntergängen, die nur die Natur hervorzuzaubern vermag. Und freute mich, dass es so prachtvolle Bücher wie dieses gibt, die mir erlauben, eine mir unbekannte Welt zu entdecken, die ich ohne Frans Lanting und seine Kamera wohl nie zu sehen gekriegt hätte.

Frans Lanting

Okavango

Afrikas Letztes Paradies

Taschen, Köln 2012

Yousuf Karsh

© Yousuf Karsh/camera press

"Yousuf Karsh is a photographer from a bygone age", writes stern-Artdirector Johannes Erler, "who looked for virtues such as power, courage, intelligence and genius in his photographs." Just have a look at the pics here on this page and you know that Erler is indeed very right. He also shares the following story: "In a Boston hospital there is a room where doctors meet patients and their families to discuss the findings of their diagnosis. It is a fateful room because the news is often bad. During his lifetime, Karsh donated a number of his most famous portraits to the hospital so they could be hung up in this room. And they are a real help, the doctors say because they encourage patients in their will to live. I know of no other photographs about which something like that has been said." I wouldn't know one either. And, I truly adore a photographer who can accomplish such powerful, and inspirational, pictures.

© Yousuf Karsh/camera press

There is also a longer text in which Jochen Siemens, among quite some other stories, tells the one of how Karsh removed Churchill's cigar and shot one of the most extraordinary Sir Winston photographs ever. Also, Siemens's eloquence contributes substantially to an even more precise and joyful reading: "... in this particular second everything came to a head in Winston Churchill, deprived as he was of his beloved cigar: indignation at the photographer's impudence, weighing up his opposite number with a lurking scowl, the power of his empty hand pressed against his hip, the stance – if you look closely – a hint of amusement (between the left-hand corner of his mouth and his eye) at the strange man behind the camera.") One would wish that more such detailed observations would accompany photographs.

© Yousuf Karsh/camera press

Again and again I wondered: How did Karsh do that? How come he can accomplish what others seemingly can't? There must be a special chemistry between photographer and the person photographed, I thought, but with all of them? Siemens argues that Karsh "was always searching for the essence of his opposite number in order to lift it onto a higher plane – adoration, not investigation", and Scottish photography historian Sara Stevenson explains: "The ability to ally yourself with your opposite number – to empathise to a certain extent with that person and the significance of that person – allows models to be themselves ... Portraiture is essentially empathising art."

© Yousuf Karsh/camera press

stern Fotografie Nr. 71 is one of these rare photo books in which you will see the ones portrayed as you haven't seen them before. And this is not a cliché, this is simply the way it is.

_____

The accompanying booklet (Talent 04) features Alma Haser who 'reconstructs', I'm told, "the sitter's face using the paper-folding technique of origami and then adds this to the original face." I truly do not know what to think of it.

Yousuf Karsh

stern Fotografie Nr. 71

Steve Pyke: Philosophers

Philosophers consists of a hundred black-and-white portraits of contemporary philosophers photographed by Steve Pyke, a photographer whose work is a regular feature of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

From Jason Stanley's interview with the photographer I learn that Pyke had asked each philosopher to provide him with 50 words capturing their particular philosophy. Not all of them complied, the ones who did delivered however quite some food for thought. Here's an example:

"Philosophy is the strangest of subjects: it aims at rigour and yet is unable to establish any results; it attempts to deal with the most profound questions and constantly finds itself preoccupied with the trivialities of language; and it claims to be of great relevance to rational enquiry and the conduct of our life, and yet it is completely ignored. But perhaps what is strangest of all is the passion and intensity with which it is pursued by those who have fallen in its grip."

The above text is by Kit Fine who teaches, I read in Wikipedia, at New York University. Unfortunately, there is no information given in this book about the philosophers portrayed, neither is the reader told what criteria were employed in order to come up with the selection presented. 

The publisher states: "These fascinating portraits feature virtually every major philosopher working in the West". Well, not really, for there is no German (Habermas, for instance) or Latin American portrayed. And, as much as I appreciate the work of Daniel Kahneman, I fail to see why this eminent psychologist is labelled a philosopher. On the other hand, why not?

Most names are unfamiliar to me which of course says more about me and my ignorance than about the philosophers. However, to look at their portraits and to read what they felt like saying is actually inspiring enough, I do not really have to know anything about their place on the social ladder in order to appreciate what they have to say. Here's an example I'm fond of:

"Philosophy's distinguishing value? For me, it resides not so much in the big questions' multifarious answers themselves, not, alas, in wisdom attained through the exacting process of anwering them, but rather in how it invariably reminds us how little we really do know. Philosophy is, or should be, humbling – and is, for this, ennobling." Robin Jeshion.

In the introduction, Arthur C. Danto characterises Steve Pyke as "master photographer of the soul and character of individuals of diverse classes and callings ... For the most part, Pyke shows us only their heads, in characteristic moments of thought, which some of them look as if they are about to express. Everybody looks fiercely smart, though we have testimony regarding the great thinkers of the past that they didn't always look as clever as they actually were."

Do portraits of philosophers radiate something different form portraits of, say, artists or politicians? No idea, really. What however distinguishes this book from other portrait books are the texts that stand next to the photographs. "Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?" asks John Gray, who is pictured focussing on something in the distance; the question accentuates his gaze. What also makes his portrait more intense than the picture alone could is that we know that the accompanying question originated in the mind of the person pictured.

Here's how Pyke sees his work:

"The contents of a photograph are not facts, nor reality, nor truth. They are a means that we have created to extend our way of seeing in our search for truth. On a most fundamental level one may question a likeness "How is that me? ...it does not look like me ... but it is there in front of me ... it is a photograph of me.' Creating a moment of puzzlement is at the very least a beautiful byproduct of photography."

Steve Pyke

Philosophers

Oxford University Press

Oxford, New York, 2011

www.oup.com

The Colors of Growth

In 2002, I spent a semester teaching at a private university in Fujian Province, since then I consider myself an expert of things Chinese. I'm of course joking but must admit that my stay in China has greatly influenced my perception of the country. What I especially recall is an almost complete absence of joy. Andreas Seibert's pictures that he took while journeying along the thousand-kilometer-long Huai River has not altered my impression.

Andreas Seifert is a freelance photographer, born in 1970 in Switzerland, who lives with his family in Tokyo. Since 2002 he has been documenting China's economic development. I love the way he introduces The Colors of Growth. China's Huai River: "The high-speed train from Shanghai to Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, is moving through a severe thunderstorm. I look out the window. Lightning flashes in the rapidly darkening sky. Heavy raindrops drum down on the roof and windows of the train, making it impossible to see the passing fields and villages. The train slows down. About a week prior, on July 23, 2011, two high-speed trains collided on a viaduct near the city of Wenzhou, in similar weather. Cars were derailed and plunged off the bridge. There were 40 people killed and over 190 injured in the accident. The badly damaged cars were buried on the spot, without further investigation. The official explanation was that this was to make room for emergency vehicles." This telling me in what mood the photographer approached his subject is precisely how I would wish more photography books to be presented – for I want to have a clue in what frame of mind pictures were taken.

The Huai River drainage basin is a complex water system, I learn. It consists of the river itself and of many large and small canals, lakes, ponds and natural and artificial reservoirs. Seibert writes: "In order to get a solid understanding of the river, one must travel in a nonlinear fashion, taking detours along the way. While the places I visited are not located on a linear route, the images in this book are arranged so that by flipping from one page to the other, the reader is virtually traveling from west to east, from the river's source to the river's mouth."

Air and water quality is a major problem in China. I vividly recall how "my" students in 2002 emphasised the clean air on campus – an obvious indication that things were not that way elsewehre.

What Andreas Seibert achieves with his book on the Huai River is however much more than documenting the progressively deteriorating water quality: he also tells the stories of the people who live by, and from, this river. He thus impressively demonstrates that good photojournalism, the intelligent combination of pictures and words, is still unmatched when it comes to storytelling.

Interestingly enough, it was not so much the river but the people and their stories that were still with me when I closed the book. It is no small feat that Andreas Seibert was able to make visible, and thus make me feel, how much we human beings depend on an intact environment. 

"The Colors of Growth" is not only an inspiring but also a useful book.

Andreas Seibert

The Colors of Growth

China's Huai River

Lars Müller Publishers, Zurich 2013

Arvid Gutschow

As it is common in photo books, the captions can be found on the pages in the back. And often they are so uninspired that they should have been left out entirely. The one of the above pic says: "Untitled (stubbles in the snow)", it was taken in 1952. More useful would be to tell the viewer when and where the picture was taken, and in what mood the photographer had been. Needless to say, I'm aware of the difficulties ... but nevertheless ...

The caption of the pic on the left reads: "Untitled (flickers of sunlight and bits of sea foam, Sylt)", it was taken in 1928. The caption of the pic on the right reads: "Branches of a Dried-Up Rivulet", it was also taken in 1928.

The caption of the pic to the left reads: "Undergrowth Battling the Sand and Wind", it was taken in 1928. The caption on the right reads: "Play of Stalks in the Sand" and was also taken in 1928.

Arvid Gutschow (1900 - 1984), I learn from Stefanie Odenthal ("A significant photographer and almost forgotten"), was a self taught photographer who began to take picturing the landscapes of the outlying areas of Hamburg at an early age. Photographing was then very different from today. "My father was a businessman. He took photographs while hiding under the black cloth of large cameras ... When I got older, I took pictures with the same box cameras and also a Stegemann camera."

Gutschow studied law and became a high-ranking official in the city government of Hamburg; taking photographs was done in his spare time. In 1930, his photographic book See Sand Sonne was published and made him well-known. Most of the pictures were taken on the Island of Sylt, Thomas Mann was supposed to write the foreword but had to bow out due to time constraints.

I very much liked Stefanie Odenthal's approach to See Sand Sonne and feel that one would be well-advised to consider approaching the now available book (published by Hatje Cantz and Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung) in the same way: "One makes ones's way through the book as if taking a walk, in which the viewer follows the movements of the photographic gaze."

Andreas J. Büchting ("Memories of Arvid Gutschow: Fragment of a late friendship") was a close friend of Gutschow, who "tended to look at the world around him through the lens of a virtual camera, often by holding an 'O' shaped by his thumb and forefinger up to his eye." They traveled together through Switzerland, South India, and Western Europe. "In India, his photos focused on the details of agriculture and especially of people: people's faces, clothing, perticularituies. But ever and again the faces, eyes, their beautiful features. In the course of this, he became fascinated with colors, for without color, life in India will barely let itself be captured." Too bad that there are no such colorful pictures to be seen in this well-done book.

Arvid Gutschow
A Significant Photographer
Almost Forgotten
Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2013

Cap San Diego

Die Cap San Diego ist ein Schiff, das im Herbst 2011 seinen fünfzigsten Geburtstag feierte und dafür wurde die alte Dame im Trockendock 16 der Hamburger Traditionswerft Blohm & Voss noch einmal kräftig herausgeputzt. "Entrosten, trennen, schleifen, schweissen, malen: Die Arbeiten an der 5,40 Meter grossen Schraube, am tonnschweren Anker, an der 11 500 PS starken Maschine dauerten zwei Wochen – bei Tag und Nacht und unter den eindringlichen Warnsignalen der sich fast pausenlos bewegenden Kräne auf dem Werftgelände."

Die beiden Fotografen Heike Ollertz und Axel Martens waren dabei und haben mit diesem Buch eine eindrückliche Dokumentation vorgelegt. Ihre Aufnahmen zeigen so ganz Unterschiedliches wie etwa Schutzfolien an der Schraube, die noch abgenommen und museale Hinweisschilder, die überholt werden müssen; Sicherheitshinweise auf dem Werftgelände, einen Assistenzschlepper, der für das Ablegemanöver fest macht und und und ... Ich fand faszinierend, auf wie viele verschiedene Arten ein Schiff wahrgenommen und abgebildet werden kann. Ein tolles Buch!

Heike Ollertz & Axel Martens

Cap San Diego

Junius Verlag, Hamburg 2011