Old Books

Monday, December 21st, 2009 - admin


Alexey Brodovitch

I hate deadlines – keeps me from blogging.

Anyways, I disappear from the internet for just a couple of days and Larry Sultan goes and passes away.  I never had the fortune to meet him, but he was and will remain to be one of the few photographers who I like without condition.

Also, check out this Blake Andrews post regarding his publishing of the original show catalog for New Topographics.  George Eastman House contacted him about taking it down (in a respectful and sincere way, it must be said), which just highlights the problems to having some kind of online resources to look at alot of books like this.  I’m fortunate to live in a city that has a phenomenal photobook library (with a terrible, terrible website) accessible to all, but it’s a shame not to be able to share books long out of print that we’d all be dying to pass on and/or see.  In that spirit, you’ll find below all the spreads that I had the good fortune to photograph a few years ago from Alexey Brodovitch’s Ballet (note: it’s not the complete book – I didn’t shoot all the spreads).  It’ll be up indefinitely (I hope) as I can’t even seem to find who owns the copyright: the book was self-published (as I understood it), Brodovitch himself is long gone, and the estate, as it, is doesn’t really exist.  So why not?

Studyo Osep

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 - Nicholas Calcott

Tayfun Serttas
Studyo Osep

I was flipping through Artforum’s 2009 best-of issue when I came across an image that immediately stopped me – you can see it above.

A little research reveals that it’s from a show at Non Gallery, in Istanbul, of prints from a certain Studyo Osep.  Studyo Osep is Osep Minasoğlu, one of Istanbul’s oldest studio and set photographers.  The show is the result of work by Tayfun Serttas, a young social scientist and artist, who organized the show as a reflection on representation and history in Turkey over the course of Osep Minasoğlu’s career.

You can find further images of the show here and here (with installation shots), a biography of Osep Minasoğlu here, an image of him on Non Gallery’s facebook event, an interview (in french) here, and the catalog from the exhibition (which was the thing that made the best-of list) can be ordered here. I want.

Portraits

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 - Nicholas Calcott

I’m working on a really really long post that I’ll probably end up posting in multiple parts, so nothing today but a pointer to Robert Wright’s Dear Recalcitrant Portrait Subject, which marks a return to photoblogging and begins:

Do not bore me with your protestations. I have heard them all before. Yes I know Karl Lagerfeld photographed you recently and better, barely containing his joy behind those dark sunglasses and tight white collar. Ryan McGinley similarly found the pale of your flesh fetching as you tumbled out of your jeans in the soft desert night aglow with sparklers, a bitten peach spilling juice down your pimply chin.

The rest is a gem.  Check it out here.