Back in the spring of 2001 I consented to allowing Jennifer Baichwal to interview me on camera for her forthcoming film, The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia (Mercury Films, 2002). We did it in two sessions, the first in Toronto on May 7, 2001, the second in Manhattan on November 2, 2001.
I find the work of Adams deeply problematic on many levels, from the conceptual to the ethical. Though Baichwal filmed me for several hours, I end up appearing in the film for somewhere around five minutes all told -- hardly enough time to make a full, reasoned argument. Nonetheless, the quotes accurately represent my positions on Adams's work and documentary, so I have no objections. The one thing I'd add is that I'm only one generation away from Adams's territory myself -- my mother was a West Virginia farmgirl -- and spent time as a boy with my relatives down there, so my views don't make any city-slicker assumptions about the people in his images.
Most importantly, Baichwal's excellent film probes usefully and intelligently into many of the troublesome issues embedded in documentary photography, especially in its relation to the creative impulses of the photographer and how those manifest themselves (for better or worse) in the resulting work. The film has gone on to win awards and other recognition. In addition to Adams and myself, it includes commentary from Mary Ellen Mark and Vicki Goldberg, among others. I'd recommend it highly not just as provocative viewing in itself but as a discussion-provoking teaching tool in classes on documentary and on the ethics of representation. Available on DVD.
I concentrated for much of the winter and spring serving as editorial coordinator for Saga: the Journey of Arno Rafael Minkkinen, the book version of this photographer's mid-career retrospective. Both book and exhibition have entered the production pipeline, and will premiere in early September of this year.
Working on the book (from Verve Editions/Chronicle Books) put me in the memorable position of editing essays by physicist-novelist Alan Lightman (Einstein's Dreams) and philosopher-art critic Arthur C. Danto. What a treat to work with them both. The book includes an essay of mine as well, plus several texts by Minkkinen and the mandatory biographical apparatus -- not to mention 125 of Minkkinen's images, many of them previously unseen. A very special project. Look for it in bookstores near you.
My late winter-early spring travel itinerary took me to Portland, Oregon for the SPE National Conference; then to Hamburg, Germany, for the opening of the new International House of Photography there; and right after that to Newark, Delaware for a lecture at the University of Delaware. In June I head to Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, for an exploratory visit (my first ever). Possibilities have begun to open up there for me and my work, so I decided to take a first-hand look and introduce myself to that culture in person. (As Woody Allen once wrote, "Eighty percent of success is showing up.")
Aside from that, I'll stay home for the rest of spring and summer 2005, doing my gardening and renovating while nursing along my other projects. next travel after that will be to Lincoln, Mass., in early fall for the Minkkinen opening.
The Photography Criticism CyberArchive, an autonomous website I launched in August 2003, has now become the largest online repository of writings on photography by numerous authors past and present. Its individual and institutional subscription base grows steadily. In the days just before we opened for business, I had the signal privilege of posting the entirety of W. H. F. Talbot's The Pencil of Nature there -- an historic event, by my lights.
The magazine Camera Arts, now under new management, has invited me to serve as a Contributing Editor. Our relationship begins with a reconsideration of the Museum of Modern Art's 1967 "New Documents" show, which introduced Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand to the big time. This essay will appear in the April/May 2005 issue, on your newsstands right about now.
You'll find the texts of two complete essays of mine, previously unavailable online, in this issue's Writings & Publications: "In the Face of Forgiveness: Steven Katzman's Epiphanies," the foreword to this photographer's new monograph, and "Igor Moukhin," the text of a wall label and handout prepared for a spring 2004 exhibition in Colorado by this Russian photographer.
Henceforth, the essays I post here will remain on the Writings & Publications menu until I post a new issue and replace them, at which point they'll move permanently to the Photography Criticism CyberArchive, available thereafter to that repository's subscribers. A small selection of my texts will stay semi-permanently on the Writings & Publications menu here, along with links to other work of mine that appears elsewhere on the web.
For your convenience, we've set up an online store through which you can order my books, with a shopping cart, secure credit-card transactions, and other e-commerce frills.
This section of C: the Speed of Light contains brief synopses of recent, current, and upcoming projects and activities related to my work as a critic, historian, teacher, lecturer, and internet publisher.
