Posts from the “Photography” Category

Fresh Dressed: Directed by Sacha Jenkins

Posted on June 29, 2015

CNN Films: Fresh Dressed- Classic street style; Brooklyn New York, circa 1986.
Photograph by Jamel Shabazz

“Being fresh is more important than having money. I only wanted money so I could be fresh,” Kanye West says with the utmost conviction. Dressed in all white, Kanye is sitting in on the deck of a beach house, somewhere where the skies are blue and the water is clean, and drops bon mots like this for the camera. Yeezy is just one of the many moguls, masterminds, and pioneers in Sacha Jenkins’ documentary film, Fresh Dressed, which premiered at the SVA Theater, New York, on June 18 and releases nationwide on June 26, 2015.

The theater was a who’s who of legends who created the form of Hip Hop that took the world by storm. As KRS-One said, “Rap is something you do. Hip Hop is something you live.” This way of being was very much in evidence in the crowd, filled with the artists, musicians, and designers who have defined Hip Hop style. It was a veritable who’s who of fashion visionaries including Dapper Dan, Karl Kani, Mark Ecko, April Walker, Shirt King Phade, and Jorge Fabel Pabon, among others, people who revolutionized the look, feel, and availability of mainstream apparel as well as couture pieces.

Nasir Jones, executive producer of the film, was sitting in the audience as Sacha Jenkins took the stage before the screening began to welcome the audience and say a few words. Wearing a Public School shorts-suit, bow tie, and plaid shirt with red kicks, Jenkins was handed the mic and asked, “You know my first question, right? Is Queens in the house?” The call was answered enthusiastically by the audience. Jenkins did roll call, then he broke it down, introducing Nas by saying, “He went to the same shitty junior high school as I did…The guidance counselors told me the best way to make it in life was vocational jobs. None had any expectations of us.”

Read the Full Story at CRAVE

CNN Films: Fresh Dressed- The jean jacket was graffiti art’s first canvas. B boys on the street, Brooklyn circa 1983
Photograph by Jamel Shabazz

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

The Way We Wore: Black Style Then

Posted on June 19, 2015

1978, Newark, New Jersey. Douglas Says.

Style is a statement of individuality, of identity, and of pride. Style is the great art of living manifest by our desire to beautify, to adorn, and to express a great inner being in tangible form. Style most readily finds itself expressed through fashion, hair, and makeup, though it is also evident in the very act of documenting one’s self. To have style is to give unto the world, to share it not only in the present tense but to capture it for future generations to enjoy.

In The Way We Wore: Black Style Then (Glitterati Incorporated), Michael McCollom chronicles African-Americans fashion from the 1940s through today. Featuring snapshots of over 150 black men and women’s most unforgettable “style moments”, The Way We Wore includes personal photographs taken from the author’s own family and circle of friends, a circle of 100 fashion insiders, outsiders, and beautiful people that includes Oprah Winfrey, James Baldwin, Carmen de Lavallade, Iman, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Tracy Reese, Patrick Kelly, Kimora Lee, Bobby Short, Bethann Hardison, Tookie Smith, and Portia LaBeija, among others.

The late, great Geoffrey Holder eloquently observes in the book’s foreword, “One should not enter a room and expect ambiance; one should enter a room and become it. Those that grace the pages of The Way We Wore took that concept and ran with it. Through the reader will witness the evolution—and, in some cases, the faux pas—of fashion and design, it is in the personal flair that an individual bestows to each outfit that creates the look…. Like a yearbook, you will come back to this work again and again. Though you may not know the people personally, you will recognize them. Michael has carefully chosen pictures and people that exhibit the historical framework of African-American influence on fashion, design, and culture.”

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

1978, Newark, New Jersey. Linwood Allen, Designer.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Salut ! NYC, 1981 Nominated for Webby Award

Posted on April 8, 2015

SAMO IS DEAD, New York, NY, 1981. Photograph by Robert Herman

We are thrilled to announce that NYC, 1981 has been nominated for a Webby Award in the category of Website: Blog – Cultural, alongside the likes of Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Pitchfork, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

NYC, 1981 is a culture website inspired by the film “A Most Violent Year,” and a TWBE x A24 production. For the site, I had the great privilege of interviewing Charlie Ahearn, John Ahearn, Barry Blinderman, Joyce Chasan, Joe Conzo, Jane Dickson, Ricky Flores, Arlene Gottfried, Robert Herman, Douglas Kirkland, Joe Lewis, Christopher Makos, Toby Old, Clayton Patterson, and Jamel Shabazz. You can check out these interviews and more at NYC, 1981

We would like to encourage you to vote, and to spread the word, so that this great, independent site dedicated to New York City culture, politics, and art in 1981 will receive the recognition it deserves.

Vote HERE.

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Fashion, Graffiti, Manhattan, Music, Painting, Photography

Peter Mishara: Bronx 79

Posted on February 11, 2015

Bronx 79. I remember it well. Diana Vreeland once said something to the effect of the first five years of your life influence your sensibility and your taste because the world makes a powerful impression on your soul. It is those early years, when you are just navigating the world, that time and place are one and the same. This is style, in the truest sense of the word. Who What Where When Why & How? That’s what it’s all about.

Bronx 79, that’s where Peter Mishara comes in, with a trailer of the same name that you can view HERE. It takes us back into time, to a world so long ago that all that remains are the photographs, the footage, and the people who lived to tell.

Miss Rosen: What was the inspiration for Bronx 79 ? What made you decide to develop a documentary film to explore this place in time ? What are some of the ideas and themes that you are exploring in the film ?

Peter Mishara: Quite simply, Bronx 79 grew out of a lifelong love of the music and the culture. Hip-hop has been some part of my life from a very young age and something that has grown with me as I have and has connected me to people and places and experiences that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. The interest to me was twofold – one, I was born in NYC in 1976 and I’ve always grappled with the sense of nostalgia that I have for that era, not of my own specific memories but more of a time and place that is no longer. And two, even when I was a young kid listening to EMPD and Slick Rick and the like I still was curious to the origins of the culture – who were these cats that came before? So stuff like Crash Crew and Flash were getting a lot of play in my Walkman. My first screenplay that I ever wrote was a short film based on a Masta Ace story (with his blessing of course) that appeared in a 1993 issue of the Source called “Sleeping Snakes” which was about graffiti writers in the early 80s. In ’98 I turned it into my senior thesis at Temple University when I went there for undergrad (a trailer is HERE). In any event, my desire to accurately portray this era on film has been with me a long while.

This is the main idea that I want to explore – you’ve got a culture that was effectively on its own for almost 6 years, from ’73 to ’79, with its own constellation of stars, artists all within a 50 block or so radius. In today’s hyperconnected world, that’s an impossibility – that shit would be on Twitter tomorrow and by the end of the week be played out, but again we’re talking 6 years here – crazy, and not to mention set against the backdrop of one of the single greatest collapses of urban infrastructure in the modern history of the world. Its become cliché to say nowadays, but people forget how much NYC was in freefall at the time and there was serious consideration that it might not ever recover. All that to say that these kids were not expected to make any contribution to larger society, quite the opposite, they were in many ways abandoned and forgotten. Instead of being forgotten however, they laid the foundation to the greatest youth movement of the past 40 years. So they’ve got six years to cook the culture, let it percolate and establish rules and style. Then boom, this one 12” comes out – Rappers Delight – and changes everything. Literally, its BRD and ARD in hip-hop history – what does that mean to the constellation of stars and fans? Its almost like the introduction of sound in film, you’ve got some talent that’s able to make the switch, but a lot aren’t able to, and just like silent film, you’ve got a lot of those amazing pieces of art that are lost to time. That’s what compels me about this and what I want to explore in Bronx 79.

Who are the subjects who will be featured in the film ? What made you select them ? What expertise does each of them bring to the story?

In this proof-of-concept trailer, you’ve got 3 people interviewed – two people that were there at the beginnings, DJ Disco Wiz and Joe Conzo and a journalist, Jeff Chang to help give a little context. All three were incredible talents and I was lucky (with the help of a certain Miss Rosen) to get them on screen. Wiz wrote the amazing memoir It’s Just Begun (which served as inspiration for the main music choice of the trailer), and one of the things that’s fascinating about him is that during “BRD” he went upstate to do a bid and he missed the actual shift that the culture experienced, so that the change for him when he got back home was far more palatable. Joe is an incredible dude, just a kid when he took these pictures that would be some of the only records of this era and talking to him you can still see that same guy in there somewhere. The way he talks about that time you just feel like that you’re there with him. And Jeff was fantastic just in terms of his research and his knowledge of this specific time and place. I was very lucky to interview them as the basis for this trailer.

I do have a rather extensive wish-list of people that I’d love to get on film. Of course the “holy trinity” of Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash. You’ve got musicians such as Grandmaster Caz, The Furious Five, Charlie Chase, Kurtis Blow, Sha Rock, Buzy Bee Starski, Melle Mel, the list goes on and definitely talk to the cats that were on the front lines of this seismic shift – the Sugarhill Gang (RIP Big Hank Bank). If I could be quite honest, my biggest issue with the proof-of-concept trailer as it is, is that it doesn’t include any b-boying or graff, this is not an oversight, just a factor of production limitations. So that being said, b-boys such as Crazy Legs, Ken Swift, Jimmy D, Lenny Len, Chino “Action” Lopez, Popmaster Fabel, etc. And graff artists Lee, Lady Pink, Futura, Zephyr, T-Kid, Seen, Phase II just to name a very few. As a side note, its pretty interesting that what is considered the core “pillars” of hip-hop started out separately from one another and became inextricably linked in hindsight, but this is an element that would be worth exploring more. And finally, I’d like to interview people from that time that aren’t “names” but were avid fans of the scene. Jeff Chang has a great passage in his book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop with Cindy Campbell, sister of Kool Herc, whose desire for a new wardrobe for going back to school was the impetus for what is widely considered the first hip-hop jam in 1973. I’d love to interview people such as her to get a completely different perspective on what that world was actually like.

I love the original footage and photographs included in the film. What were some of the challenges in sourcing authentic materials from the era ?

The challenge is that there isn’t any! Well, that might be going a bit far, but the reality is that actual archival footage from that time is very few and very far between. First and foremost, Joe Conzo allowing me to use his photographs was huge – they are pretty much the only document from that era that directly shows that scene. The other first degree archival footage exists as personal photographs and in rare instances Super 8mm film, all of which I’d love to feature.

The other main resource is either a handful of narrative films and a few documentaries. The internet obviously is a great resource in terms of listing the films, but almost anything online is horrible quality. I strove for highest quality as possible, and I’ve been collecting DVDs for the past decade or so to pull from. What is exciting is that these movies, such as Fort Apache, the Bronx and Wolfen were shot on film and could be potentially uprezzed to HD, a possibility which is completely dependent on availability and cost. There’s a great blog run by filmmaker Jonathan Hertzberg (http://knifeinthehead.blogspot.ca/) where he creates these supercuts of what he terms “Dirty Old New York” which was an invaluable resource.

The challenge is a great one to have and forces you to find new ways to show what it was actually like then. In an ideal world, I’d like to bring to life some of these stories either through animation (Vaughn Bode and particularly Ralph Bakshi’s Coonskin are huge influences) or through live-action recreations. Both techniques should feel like a modern interpretation of era specific styles, meaning they should feel like a time capsule of the ’70s.

What are your plans for developing a longer length film?

Great question. On one hand, the proof-of-concept trailer were some ideas that I’ve had in my head for a long time and eventually I just wanted to get them out in the world. From that perspective, the experience has been invaluable in terms of allowing me to focus on what works and what doesn’t. For me, it comes down to storytelling – people that were there and lived it and through their stories are able to take you back to that time. There tends to be a romanticizing of what New York was like back then which doesn’t interest me. That’s why I started the trailer with Wiz’s great quote, “This wasn’t like no love pow-wow, this was the streets.” So basically I want to hear more of these stories, get them on film and take it from there.

Categories: 1970s, Art, Bronx, Music, Photography

With Infinite Eyes

Posted on January 6, 2015

Walker Evans, “Many Are Called” (1938)

Everything changes
once we identify with being the witness to the story,
instead of the actor in it.
~Ram Dass

Categories: Art, Photography

Q. Sakamaki: This is Gaza

Posted on November 17, 2014

Separation Wall at Bethleham, eight-metre-high concrete barrier, that cuts the West Bank city off from Jerusalem. An Israeli watch tower is also seen on the upper left. Israel wants to call this as Security Wall, because suicide bombings and other violent attacks have decreased since the construction of the barrier. On the other hand, it has created so many negative impacts to Palestinians, such as Loss of land, road closures, increase of difficulty in accessing medical and educational services, restricted access to water sources, etc. That is why it is also often called as Apartheid Wall.

eparation Wall at Bethleham, eight-metre-high concrete barrier, that cuts the West Bank city off from Jerusalem. An Israeli watch tower is also seen on the upper left. Israel wants to call this as Security Wall, because suicide bombings and other violent attacks have decreased since the construction of the barrier. On the other hand, it has created so many negative impacts to Palestinians, such as Loss of land, road closures, increase of difficulty in accessing medical and educational services, restricted access to water sources, etc. That is why it is also often called as Apartheid Wall.

A member of the Gaza Parkour Team exercises among the debris in Khuza’a in Khan Yunis, one of the most damaged areas by Israel Defense Forces during the summer’s 50-day war. Parkour is a dramatically growing sport in Gaza. The concept is to move freely and overcome boundaries and barriers, as most Palestinians cannot move freely out of Gaza.

When Q. Sakamaki’s photographs taken in Gaza after the 50 day war began to appear on his Instagram, a sense of reverence overcame me. What nightmares bring. The system of apartheid is unspeakable, and yet light must be shed. “The truth is on the side of the oppressed,” as Malcolm X said. Q. Sakamaki shares his work here, in images and words. I thank him for doing the work that hurts my soul.

Miss Rosen: Please talk about why you decided to go to Gaza at this time. As a photojournalist, what is the story that brought you to this devastated land?

Q. Sakamaki: First, this year marks 20th anniversary since I, at the first time, went to Gaza. And it is surely to assess and feel the aftermath of the summer’s 50-day war. Yet, The timing — I went to Gaza several weeks after the war – helps me see more freely and deeply what was happening, in the still fresh war devastated environments, through which I could view/ and or predict, about what is going on in future and what the international community should do.

Please talk about what you discovered upon arriving in Gaza? What were your expectations and how did the measure against the reality of life for the Palestinians ?

I expected the huge destruction. And it was really so. However, I was very surprised at children’s reaction or acts. Many children in Gaza have become very aggressive more than ever. They want to be paid attention, but if they don’t get, they often get violent. Or totally opposite: some get seemingly very depressed.

Can you talk the ways in which the Palestinian children express their aggression ?

If I ignore them, many children often turned their toy guns aggressively at me, sometimes firing the plastic bullets that often hurt people, if those hit on face. I’m also curious to know if you saw any distinctions between those who got aggressive, and those who got depressed (such as age of the children, the gender, etc). Boys in the middle teen are more likely to be aggressive than those in other ages and girls. Pre-teen or low teen girls are more likely to get depressed, compared to those in other ages and boys.

I was particularly struck by your photograph of “A Palestinian boy in Beach Camp” as it made me aware that this is not just photojournalism, it is history.

I am a more journalist, but in terms of photography, I am not the so-called photojournalist. Apart from that, I believe all captured moments are connected, related to the past and future, often very strongly and very importantly. By photographing such moments, I am exploring why human beings were born, why we love and/ or hate each other, and in the situations where we are heading. And, through photography, I want to share, or think together, with people to find those answers. Actually it is part of real core of Journalism.

What do you mean when you say you are a journalist but not a photojournalist ?

Photojournalist usually implies photographers who cover spot news in the style of the so-called news wire type of shooting. My style is in the visual and story base that often covers beyond/ or behind news. Also I don’t like to be defined by my photography—like photo documentary, or photojournalism, or personal or fine art. Each feature is always overlapped with others, and should be so, too. That is why I often feel I am not the so-called photojournalist. On the other hand, when I cover stories, especially for writing – most in Japanese, I try to check the details and facts of all related actors and elements as much as possible to be fair or not to have bias. In that way, I would be more journalist. Unfortunately, photography is very hard, or nearly impossible, to cover in the same way as that of writing, since by nature photographers have to face the subject in the shootable distance. In other words, I, as writer, feel more journalist, but as photographer, I feel less, or even not photojournalist.

Q. Sakamaki on Instagram

Palestinians take Friday prayers at Al-Susi mosque in Gaza City’s Beach Camp, which was destroyed by Israeli air strikes during the summer’s 50-day war between Israel and Hamas. This was shot for @opensocietyfoundations and the last posting image. At my account @qsakamaki, I will post more Gaza images for few more days.

A Palestinian boy in Beach Camp, one of the biggest refugee camps in the Palestinian Territories.

Animal market is held at Alshjaia, one of the most destroyed areas in Gaza by the summer’s 50 day war between Israel and Hamas. An international organization involved in assessing post-conflict reconstruction says it will take 20 years for the rebuilding. However, the import of critical rebuilding materials, such as cements and other housing stuff, to Gaza remains extremely restricted, as Israel fears that the militants use them to build rockets and tunnels.

Categories: Art, Photography

Patrick Frey: Absolutely Modern

Posted on October 21, 2014

Walter Pfeiffer: Cherchez la femme!, 2007

Karen Kilimnik: Photographs, 2014

Edition Patrick Frey was founded in 1986 in Zurich, Switzerland, as publisher/editor. The house provides young artists with a platform for a first publication, as well as engages in long-term collaborations with artists including Walter Pfeiffer, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, and Andreas Züst. Today, the house publishes 15-20 books a year (“Too many!!” as Frey says), with a staff of are two full time and three part-time collaborators.

Each book is wonderfully considered on its own terms, conceptualized and conceived as an objet d’art befitting its subject. Publisher Patrick Frey has graciously agreed to speak about book publishing today.

Miss Rosen: Please talk about the mission for Edition Patrick Frey (EPF). How do you approach visual book publishing as a medium to communicate and explore larger ideas about the culture in which we live? What themes and motifs occur in the list as examples of this vision, and in what way?

Patrick Frey; I guess the term mission is missing the point a little bit. It sounds almost religious, as if I had have a message as a publisher. In German, when asked your message, there is a nice answer: messages are for carrier pigeons. When I started in 1986, it was all about artist books, books with artistic content, beautiful books. First of all, books were a medium to translate an artist’s work in a very direct way. The book could be considered a condensed body of the artist’s artwork itself, autonomous, not to be modified and not to be mediated or even explained. These years left its marks on my attitude as a publisher. That is why, from the beginning, every single book of EPF looked totally different, specific. And why there were very few or no comments. It was a sort of the contrary of a branding strategy.

With the years, my vision or maybe perspective – because vision is another one of those suspicious-looking terms – got broader and the books more diverse. Now we publish all kind of non-fiction books, some of them even look like ordinary photo books or even coffee table books, and still – there is this unchanged urge to keep our concept of a book absolutely non-ordinary, to maintain a specific and highly artistic approach.

Miss Rosen: What I love most about your list is the energy each book holds, the way each title is an exploration into its own world, and in some way, each is like a visual poem that gives us a new way of perceiving the ways in which photography can be used to tell stories. I am particularly interested by the way in which photographs are used to create a narrative in book form. It is the photograph that one meditates upon after (or in lieu of) reading the word. As a publisher, what are your thoughts on how the photograph connects and imparts ideas, energies, experience? How do you think the book does something that other forms of photography (the print, the scan) can not?

Patrick Frey: A photograph can be a narrative by itself. But this narrative is entirely different from the narrative it takes in a book. It is non-sequential, non-directional. Looking at a single photography, one experiences more something like a narrative field, creating a multitude of associative possibilities, fragments of stories, narrative paths and crossroads. A print on the wall of an art space is a free-floating piece of art. There are some references, maybe a reference to the print next to it, to a certain body of work, to the history of photography, or to certain trends in contemporary art, but the contextual references are rather coincidental and mostly rather weak. A book is and always was by its nature a medium of storytelling and reflection. That is, if you put photographs in a book, you sort of force them into a strong contextual reference, and you expose them to a specific kind of reflection, for instance into the dialogical structure of the double page. And most of all, you force them into a totally different kind of storytelling.

In a book – if it’s not just a simple collection of pictures, a typical catalogue, so to speak – the narrative power of photography becomes directional. Somehow, a book tells a story always in one and the same direction: from a beginning on page one to the end on the last page. Books do not just tell stories sometimes, like a novel for instance. Books are embodiments of narrative, they are narrative blueprints, they lead you on a journey, or through a man’s life, or follow somebody’s trains of thought. Books will always be mementos of odysseys or Bibles or Madame Bovarys. That is the referential impact photography always will encounter if it is published in a book.

Miss Rosen: Where did your love for books begin? Do you recall some of your favorite illustrated books? What made them alluring to you in your earlier years? Do you see a connection between the influence of certain authors, art directors, or publishers on your work as a publisher today?

Patrick Frey: I grew up on the countryside, quite idyllic, and I think my first love in the kingdom of illustrated books was Beatrix Potter. I adored The Tale of Peter Rabbit or The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, and in my eyes everything was totally real and highly animated. I was really terrified each time I saw the Mr. McGregor, the evil gardener, coming round the greenhouse, knowing that Peter hadn’t seen him. I loved these kind of strong feelings, mostly the fear – or Angstlust, to use a German term, that were triggered entirely by the illustrations.

Like in Struwwelpeter, a famous German educational book, a collection of quite sadistic stories about misbehaving children that are severely punished. Like Konrad, the thumbsucker. He is warned by his mum: Stop sucking your thumb, otherwise the evil tailor will come and cut your thumb. But Konrad continues sucking his thumb. And then comes the evil tailor and cuts Konrad’s thumb off and you see the blood dripping on the floor. Over and over, I checked the thumb falling to the floor and the dripping blood. Or the history of the Suppenkaspar who is not eating his soup and gets thinner and thinner from picture to picture, until he is drawn like a matchstick man and then you just see the soup bowl sitting on the grave of most probably the first anorexic (a boy!) in literary history.

I don’t know if there are any connections between the book experiences of my early childhood and my preferences today. I know that I still love and that I am still looking for very powerful emotions, triggered by images, be it photographic or otherwise. It may seem a bit of a naïve concept, but it is not because it is always combined with an intensive need or even desire for qualities like complexity and referential ambiguity or extreme precision. Because it is telling me a lot about the relationship between the author and his / her object or subject of desire – for me one of the most important issues in photography at all.

Like for instance in Mom/Dad by Terry Richardson, published by Mörel Books, one of those books I would have died to publish myself, a highly unsentimental and hilariously funny book on the author’s parents that reports on this relationship in such extreme, brutal and tender intensity that it makes you cry.

Miss Rosen: As technology takes hold, we are relating to image and text in new ways. How do you think digital media informs our experience of print? How does this impact the publishing industry? What aspects of digital culture have made work in books more exciting?

Patrick Frey: As digital publishing has almost completely conquered the news and information market, the analogue book is shifting from an informational medium towards a more artistic medium. There is a growing consciousness for the book as a physical object, for the book as a work of craft or art, a feeling for the book as a fetish. Among artists, there is definitely a growing desire to publish a printed artist book. Our concept and our experience of printed matter will become more aesthetical. Even if you look at average hardcover books nowadays, you will already find an intensified sensitivity for aesthetic values. Many ordinary catalogues or fictional books look like artist books now. There is even a growing consciousness for the experience of reading a real printed book, for the smell, the touch, the paper, the binding. Printed books are pimped and pushed towards physical fetish-like objects with added value, collectors items. What has been already true for artist books like ours for quite a while, will become a general rule: Printed books will increasingly be bought by book collectors. Or by people who are looking for a gift.

On the other hand, digitalization created growing sensitivity for the waste of paper. Not only if I look at a book proposal, if I look at any printed book, the first question now is: Does this REALLY need to be printed? Because the problem is: To print a book doesn’t MEAN that much anymore, everybody can make his own totally okay looking artist book online or create an evenly nice looking 800 pages non-fiction book with Wikipedia texts in less than 15 minutes and get it printed in ten days for about 30 bucks each. Digitalization means speeding up analogue processes, digitalization means self-publishing, and both naturally is a blessing and a curse. Ten years ago, book proposals looked like book proposals, bundles of copied material, stapled or glued together by hand. Now book proposals look like state-of-the-art printed books. I call them phantom books because they look like books but they aren’t really, they are just first ideas from which the editing and publishing work starts. Editing is the key word here. One could say that digitalization caused a radical shift in perception: I think in the near future publishing a book means you have to deal much more with editing skills and coaching processes.

Maybe I have to correct on sentence from above: Among artists there is definitely a growing desire to publish a printed artist book with a publisher. Some of those authors are only hunting for distribution (they don’t really know that distribution in the tiny niche market for artist books is a disaster anyway!) but some others are looking for an upgrading of their editing process, for an intensive professional dialogue between author and publisher, who is not so much a distributor, rather than a curator – or even a midwife ! – in order to assist in creating and customizing this cultural high-end object named printed book.

Miss Rosen: There are a great many projects out there, and so many stories to be told. With the wealth of content made available today, how do you select books for publication? What kinds of stories appeal to you as a publisher? This is a big, broad sweeping question, but what do you think makes a book timeless?

Patrick Frey: No idea, I rarely think about publishing a “timeless“ book. Books are fashion victims like all other artifacts. Attitudes and styles come and go in waves, even content does. The best you can do, is try to be as radical and true to the cause as possible. And to be contemporary at least, or, as Rimbaud puts it, one must be absolutely modern. Which means you have to keep a sharp eye on everything that is out of fashion, fallen out of time. And then time will tell. As I said, no mission, no vision, just wide-open eyes and this everlasting love for intensity and for the eccentric. Try to learn from the authors. And what selection concerns: no method and no recipe. Even in times where the so-called “freedom of choice“ seems to become overwhelming.

For more information, please visit
Edition Patrick Frey

Roswitha Hecke: Irene, 2011

Patrick Frey, photograph © Daniel Ammann

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Requiem for Mike Brown

Posted on October 5, 2014

Artists are here to disturb the peace.
~ James Baldwin

~*~

press PLAY

Categories: Art, Photography

Live With Lions

Posted on October 1, 2014

E. 3 st., 1967. James Jowers

But luxury has never appealed to me,
I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.
~ Daphne du Maurier

Categories: Art, Photography

The Cloud of Divine Grace

Posted on July 13, 2014

Photograph by of Maddie the Coonhound by Theron Humphrey

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
~Epictetus

Categories: Art, Photography, Poetry

Nick Knight: Flora

Posted on July 2, 2014

LILIACEAE
Gloriosa verschuurii

PASSIFLORACEAE
Passiflora alato-caerulea

Passion is a flower, a strange and exotic thing, an energy that burns deep within and underneath and through it all, the candle that lights the dark, the darkness forevermore vanquished, vanished, or at least it seems to be, for once we can see, we believe we know.

The photograph does this, reminds us time and again. The more passionate the photograph the more we return to it. And so it is that a specimen arrived the other day, between two long slips of hardboard were pages sewn together at the spine, and between these two large slips of board the pages turned. Long white layers upon which a flower appeared, not just any flower but dozens I had never seen until I laid my eyes upon Flora by Nick Knight (Schirmer/Mosel).

Flora is a garden of earthly delights, an archive of pressed flowers, each photographed like a portrait. Each plant is from the herbarium of the Natural History Museum in London, a collection which contains more than six million plants from all corners of the world. The book, first published in 1997. is being reissued on the occasion of the publisher’s 40 anniversary. And rightfully so, for Flora is a treasure trove, a magical portal, a veritable repository of soul.

In the book’s preface Mr. Knight observes, “I was struck by the fact that these plants didn’t look dead. Life was very apparent. I could see the movement of the wind blowing through their leaves ad petals. Sense the water flowing through their vessels and their flowers straining to turn and open into the suns’ rays. But these plants had one important difference—the fragility, the tragic urgency that had gone and they had taken on a new certainty of being; a statement like boldness. They have escaped their fate.

“There are few things that make me happier than discovering a new way of seeing the familiar. Seeing in a way I could not have imagined. It is a very liberating seeing and one that makes me feel very optimistic.”

Indeed, for a photographer, the act of seeing is the act itself. To be able to see anew, again and again, to take it all in, to set it down, on paper slipped between boards, to edit from a collection of hundreds until the final 46 came forth. Forty-fix flora taken at full size, collected in this bouquet unlike any other. To see is to believe is to know that we need to feed our eyes to serve the soul. We consume, effortlessly, endlessly in all that exists, but to charge one’s self with looking—that is the next level. Mr. Knight knows life, and now he knows death. The flora here are eternal, preserved forever more as we peruse the pages of Flora.

SCHIZAEACEAE
Lygodium palmatum

Categories: Art, Books, Photography