© Melanie Bonajo
It’s the rentré here in France – everyone’s getting back from vacations and jump straight into work. So, back to the blog.
I wasn’t completely idle over the summer, though. I manage to write a short essay for Le Bal (WHICH OPENS SEPTEMBER 18th, BY THE WAY) on the New Weird. I urge you to read it:
Obviously, this kind of work has long had a history in the art world – Art world critics, curators, and collectors have long had a much easier time with a work as an independent expression of an idea than has the photography world. The photo world has always had an implicit belief in the photograph as an authentic document that, though not necessarily a conveyer of truth, is the medium for authentic communication between creator and viewer. New Weird photography frequently claims to be nothing more than an assembly of symbols and juxtapositions and that it can be nothing more than some king of photographic Rorschach ink blot to the viewer’s predispositions and prejudices.
More here. This essay, in its current form, is unfinished – I’m interested in expanding upon it, so any comments or input is appreciated.
Others were also not idle – which I’ll get to as I catch up on my linkage. To start, though, here’s a call for entries from 3/3. 12th Press will be submitting; You should too.
Little big press exhibition aims to survey the tendencies that, during the last few years, changed thoroughly the world of photobook publishings.
A more and more increasing vitality is directing photobook evolution towards an independent, self published and scale reduced position, giving life to independent photobooks or fanzines, while small publishing houses are becoming more and more active and prolific all around the world.
Apply at treterzi.org.
Nick. Whoooa! These are really cool. Washington State Reformatory is the prison in which I volunteer teach. It’s in Monroe about 40 minutes from Seattle.
In fact, tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the institution. It is the second oldest prison in Washington.
I’m going to be badgering you for follow ups and delivery of an awesome project to the wider web world!
I wonder how the mugshots got to Paris?
Weird coincidence – I figured these would be of interest to you, Pete, but I never made the connection to the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe.
As far as the broader collection, the rest of the work isn’t mugshots, but rather a much broader collection of other found photos. I’m going to do my best to get the project out, but as I said in the post, I probably shouldn’t even have posted these as I’m not even sure how public they want the work to be.
As far as how they got to Paris, your guess is as good as mine, though I imagine these were widely handed out at the time, and they’ve probably made their way all over the place. I love also that the text is handwritten on the back of two of them – I guess, though, that this was common enough, or widely distributed enough, to necessitate actually printing on the back of the cards..
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Tags: Mugshot
Posted in Found Photo, On Shadow