These listings began concurrently with the inauguration of this blog in June 2009. They describe briefly the writings I’ve published elsewhere, in print and online, while producing the posts that make up the content of Photocritic International. I list them here with the most recent first.
2017
May 2017: “Une autre histoire : Les photos du Débarquement de Robert Capa,” in Études Photographiques no. 35, Spring 2017. In French. My synopsis of the Capa D-Day project, written as the online investigation drew to its close. Final issue of this respected journal, published by the Société française de photographie. (The same issue contains an essay by Vincent Lavoie, “Falling Soldier : Préambule au procès d’une icône,” both under the rubric “Capa, corriger la légende.”)
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February 2017: “Conflict of Interest, Cubed: Robert Capa’s D-Day Photos, John Morris, and the NPPA,” at the watchdog website iMediaEthics. Thoroughly fact-checked (by iME) analysis of the multiple breaches of professional ethics involved in the National Press Photographers Association’s 2015 attack on the Capa D-Day project. Includes responses from John Morris, author Bruce Young, then-editor Donald Winslow, and Sean Elliot, then chair of NPPA’s Ethics Committee.
2016
December 2016: “From ‘Exile on Main Street’ to ‘Exit Through Gift Shop’: The Rolling Stones ‘Exhibitionism’ Review,” at Camera Chronicle. Review of this international touring show of Stones memorabilia, which has more to say about the group’s skill at image-making than it does about their music. Fourth in a series of articles for this site, published by the Manhattan camera store Photo Village.
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September 2016: “Ethics in Photojournalism, Then and Now: The Case of Robert Capa,” in the online journal Media Ethics (Spring 2016, Vol. 27, no. 2). On the importance of understanding the ethical context in which particular pictures got made, and the significant differences between the ethical environment in the fields of journalism and photojournalism at the time Capa did his work (1932-54) and that of our own time.
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September 2016: “Book reviews: Humans of New York, New York Non-Stop: A Photographic Album, and Project Lives: New York Public Housing Residents Photograph Their World” at Camera Chronicle. Review of these three books, which in various ways represent the consequences of the deprofessionalization of photography. Third in a series of articles for this site, published by the Manhattan camera store Photo Village.
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May 2016: “Book review: SPE: The Formative Years,” at Camera Chronicle. Review of this book edited by Nathan Lyons, which comprises “the enabling documents” from the 1962 conference at George Eastman House, out of which the Society for Photographic Education grew. Second in a series of articles for this site, published by the Manhattan camera store Photo Village. (Rochester: VSW/SPE, 2012; $20, ISBN: 978-0898221428; click here to order.)
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March 2016: “Letter from New York: Pre-K-12 Photo Education and Visual Literacy (1),” in the Spring 2016 (#195) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of quarterly columns. On the ahistorical approach to pioneering pre-K-12 photo-education projects of the current visual literacy movement. First of three parts. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
2015
November 2015: “Truth Over Time,” in the Winter 2015 (#194) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of quarterly columns. On the Capa D-Day project, and the significant differences between the photojournalism ethics of Capa’s day and those of our time, which make it problematic to hold his behavior in the 1930s and ’40s to present-day standards. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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November 2015: “You Press the Button, You Do the Rest: The True Democratization of Photography,” in Photography Inc, the comprehensive catalogue of the FotoMuseum Antwerp’s fall 2015 exhibition with the same name. The book charts the history of photography from the perspective of the photography industry, illustrated with photographs, cameras, and albums from the FoMu collection. This book celebrates FoMu’s 50th anniversary. In English and Dutch. FoMu/Lannoo Publishers. ISBN-13: 9789401430005.
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November 2015: “For a New World to Come: Japanese Photography,” at Camera Chronicle. Review of the exhibition “For a New World to Come” and its accompanying monograph, currently at the Japan Society and New York University’s Grey Art Gallery., created and circulated by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, which tours under the auspices of MFAH. The first in a planned series of articles for this new site, published by the camera store Photo Village.
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September 2015: “Robert Capa’s D-Day and the NPPA,” in the Fall 2015 (#193) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of quarterly columns. On the National Press Photographers Association’s unethical attack on the Capa D-Day project at this blog. (Synopsis of posts on this subject here at this blog.) Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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September 2015: “POTUS at the Bully Pulpit,” in the September-October 2015 issue (vol. 75, no. 5) of The Humanist, published by the American Humanist Association in Washington, DC. Reprint of a self-contained segment of my July 27th, 2015 blog post, “Election 2016: Image World (1).” Also published in the magazine’s online edition. “The mission of the American Humanist Association is to advance humanism, an ethical and life-affirming philosophy free of belief in any gods and other supernatural forces. Advocating for equality for nontheists and a society guided by reason, empathy, and our growing knowledge of the world, the AHA promotes a worldview that encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good.” My kind of people.
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June 2015: “Letter from New York: Helmut Gernsheim, Beaumont Newhall, and the Childhood of Photo History (2),” in the Summer 2015 (#192) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of quarterly columns. On the personal and professional relationships between these two historians, the differences between their approaches to the projects they undertook, the significance of their contributions, and the ways in which their shared biases shaped the historianship of photography. Second of two parts. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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May 2015: “‘A Broad and Luminous Picture’: The Photographic Works of Edward S. Curtis,” in the monograph Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks by Christopher Cardozo (Prestel). ISBN-13: 978-3791354217. This book accompanies and serves as the catalogue for a touring show with the same title, drawn from Cardozo’s collection. The show highlights the diverse vehicles Curtis chose for the display of his images, and my essay concentrates on this aspect of his photographic practice.
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March 2015: “Letter from New York: Helmut Gernsheim, Beaumont Newhall, and the Childhood of Photo History (1),” in the Spring 2015 (#191) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of quarterly columns. On the personal and professional relationships between these two historians, the differences between their approaches to the projects they undertook, the significance of their contributions, and the ways in which their shared biases shaped the historianship of photography. First of two parts. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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January 2015: “Auras: There’s an App for That,” in the January-February 2015 issue of MIT Technology Review. A rumination on apps that enable the artificial aging of digital images, in relation to Walter Benjamin’s concept of the “aura” that accrues to handmade objects as a consequence of their physical facture and passage through time. Available in this journal’s print edition, and online here.
2014
December 2014: “Letter from New York: Photography and Performance Art (2),” in the Winter 2014 (#190) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of quarterly columns. On the complex relationship between these two forms of contemporary art practice. First appearance in English of this essay, originally published in slightly different form in the Swedish journal Paletten in 2000. Second of two parts. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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November 2014: “Conspicuous by His Absence: Concerning the Mysterious Disappearance of William Mortensen,” in American Grotesque: The Life and Art of William Mortensen, edited by Larry Lytle and Michael Moynihan, published by Feral House. Reprint of my 1982 essay, the first major critical reassessment of his contributions to the medium, credited by many as sparking the Mortensen revival. You can download a free PDF of American Grotesque at the publisher’s website, and view a short video about him there as well. ISBN-13: 978-1936239979.
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September 2014: “Letter from New York: Photography and Performance Art (1),” in the Autumn 2014 (#189) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of quarterly columns. On the complex relationship between these two forms of contemporary art practice. First appearance in English of this essay, originally published in slightly different form in the Swedish journal Paletten in 2000. First of two parts. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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September 2014: “Rochester, New York: After the Kodak Century,” my introduction to Kodak City, by Catherine Leutenegger (Kehrer Verlag). ISBN-13: 978-3868284621. This young Swiss photographer’s studies of Rochester today, after the bankruptcy of Kodak collapsed the city’s once-booming economy. The project consists mostly of unpopulated daytime urbanscapes, in which the former domain of “Big Yellow,” which headquartered here, now appears as a ghost town. As I write in my essay, “The irony, of course, is that instead of getting devastated by the digital evolution the Eastman Kodak Corporation could have owned it. The very first digital camera, after all, got born in one of Kodak’s own labs, the invention of one of its engineers, Steven Sasson.” Click here for an online version of the essay at this blog.
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August 2014: “Memory’s Mirror: The Photographs of Jerry Spagnoli,” in the Summer 2014 (#2) issue of The Handmade Photograph, a new journal published and edited by Wendy Erickson. Slightly revised version of my curatorial essay written for the Beijing exhibition “Light Quartet,” a four-person show by Breakey, Connie Imboden, Jerry Spagnoli, and Robert Stivers, held at See+ Art Space/Gallery in Beijing’s famous 798 Art District from June 6-July 18, 2009, and introducing the audience in mainland China to these four mid-career photographers. Available from HP MagCloud as a digital download ($2.99 per issue) or a high-quality print-on-demand magazine ($11.00). Buying the printed version gets you a free download of that issue.
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June 2014: “Letter from New York: Freedom Reflex: The Photographs of Liu Xia,” in the Summer 2014 (#188) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of quarterly columns. Slightly truncated version of my essay on the photographic work of this dissident mainland Chinese poet, painter, and photographer, for whose touring exhibition I became co-curator and tour manager in 2012-13. Originally published in the catalogue for the 2012 Hong Kong showing of her work. (See below.) Liu Xia is the wife of the imprisoned 2010 Nobel Peace Prize awardee Liu Xiaobo. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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March 2014: “Letter from New York: Social Responsibility and the Photographer (3),” in the Spring 2014 (#187) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of quarterly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Third in a three-part series addressing the distinction between political art and issue-oriented art. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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William Mortensen catalog, cover, 2014
January 2014: “William Mortensen Reconsidered,” in A Pictorial Compendium of Witchcraft: William Mortensen, 1897-1965. A brief statement on Mortensen’s photographic work and writings, and the controversy surrounding those. Commissioned for gallerist Stephen Romano‘s catalogue of a cluster of Mortensen prints created for his uncompleted, unpublished magnum opus, A Pictorial Compendium of Witchcraft, from the collection of Hereward Carrington. The catalogue contains essays by Larry Lytle and Tom Patterson that make real contributions to the literature on WM. Click here for a free PDF download of the catalogue, posted courtesy Stephen Romano.
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January 2014: “The Directorial Mode: Notes Toward a Definition,” in Photographic Theory: An Historical Anthology, edited by Andrew E. Hershberger, from Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1-4051-9846-2. My most frequently cited and anthologized essay, first published in Artforum in 1976 and nearing its 40th birthday, makes yet another appearance in print. Perhaps I’ll throw a party when it hits the big four-O. Y’all come.
2013
December 2013: “Letter from New York: Social Responsibility and the Photographer (2),” in the Winter 2013 (#186) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of now-quarterly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Second in a three-part series addressing the distinction between political art and issue-oriented art. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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December 2013: “Roy DeCarava (1919-2009): A Farewell,” in the Winter 2013 (30:4) issue of The Photo Review. First print publication of my oration for the late, great photographer, delivered first in 2001, while he lived, at a ceremony honoring him at the National Arts Club in New York, and again after his October 27, 2009 passing. The second occasion was a January 28, 2010 celebration of his life and work held at the Studio Museum in Harlem. This commemoration first appeared here, at Photocritic International, on January 30, 2010.
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Allen A. Dutton, “Real to Surreal” (2013), cover
December 2013: “Full of Surprises: The Photographs of Allen A. Dutton,” in Allen A. Dutton: Real to Surreal, my foreword to this monograph, a self-published, Kickstarter-funded survey of the life’s work of this eccentric Arizona native. I count Dutton, now a nonagenarian, among the seriously under-recognized photographers of his generation. ISBN: 978-0991415007.
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November 2013: “A. D. Coleman and Robert Hirsch: A Conversation About Photography,” in the November/December 2013 (34:6) issue of Photo Technique: Variations on the Photographic Arts. A lively exchange of ideas between myself and historian/consultant Bob Hirsch, primarily concerning the shift from analog to digital. Conducted via email, commissioned by editor Wendy Erickson for the (alas) final issue of this long-lived periodical. Another platform gone.
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September 2013: “Seeing the Life in Which We Live: The Photographs of Harold Feinstein,” in the September/October 2013 (34:5) issue of Photo Technique: Variations on the Photographic Arts. A consideration of the work of this classic, under-recognized exemplar of the New York School. Slightly revised version of an essay written for a two-person show (Feinstein and Wynn Bullock), the fourth in a now-concluded series of small exhibitions I curated for See+ Art Space/Gallery in Beijing’s 798 Art District in spring 2010.
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August 2013: “Letter from New York: Social Responsibility and the Photographer (1),” in the August/September 2013 (#185) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” First in a three-part series addressing the distinction between political art and issue-oriented art. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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June 2013: “Dinosaur Bones: The End (and Ends) of Photo Criticism (Part 2),” second half of this controversial fall 2011 lecture, with images and short video footnotes, in Issue 3 of the new VASA Journal on Images and Culture, a web-based publication. Also available online as a downloadable PDF file (text only).
June 2013: “Letter from New York: This Is a Photograph (3),” in the June/July 2013 (#184) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Third in a three-part series addressing the various ways contemporary practitioners play with the physical materials of the medium. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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May 2013: “How to Talk Through Your Hat (5),” in the May issue of The Vocabula Review, self-described as “The principal web destination for anyone interested in words and language.” Slightly edited republication of this post from my recent series on “artspeak,” a/k/a International Art English (IAE). Available online to Vocabula Review subscribers.
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April 2013: “Dinosaur Bones: The End (and Ends) of Photo Criticism (Part 1),” first part of this controversial fall 2011 lecture, with images and short video footnotes, in Issue 2 of the new VASA Journal on Images and Culture, a web-based publication. Also available online as a downloadable PDF file (text only).
April 2013: “Letter from New York: This Is a Photograph (2),” in the April/May 2013 (#183) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Second in a three-part series addressing the various ways contemporary practitioners play with the physical materials of the medium. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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March 2013: “Archive as Artefact: The Black Star Picture Agency,” in the March 2013 issue (32:1, no. 125) of Border Crossings, published in Canada. In this essay I discuss the history of the picture agency as a distribution system for photographs, the changes wrought on that industry by digital communications, and the significance as material culture of collections of press prints such as those in this archive. Also online as a downloadable PDF file at the website of the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto, which houses the Black Star Collection and originally commissioned this essay.
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February 2013: “Letter from New York: This Is a Photograph (1),” in the February/March 2013 (#182) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” First in a three-part series addressing the various ways contemporary practitioners play with the physical materials of the medium. (Mistitled “After Postmodernism, What?” in the print edition.) Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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Maggie Taylor, No Ordinary Days (2012), cover.
January 2013: “Maggie Taylor: Circumstantial Evidence,” in No Ordinary Days, a retrospective of 120 of Maggie Taylor’s digital photomontages from 1998 through 2012. Minimally revised version of my introduction to the 2008 catalogue published by See+ Art Space/Gallery in Beijing in fall 2008, in conjunction with a 2-person show that I curated there with works by Taylor and her husband Jerry N. Uelsmann. The book accompanies an exhibition that will tour. ISBN: 978-0985878412.
2012
December 2012: “Letter from New York: After Postmodernism, What?” in the December 2012/January 2013 (#181) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Ruminations on the effect of mass-marketing techniques and media saturation on the postmodern generations. Drawn from a statement made at the first session of the symposium “Examining Postmodernism: Images/Premises,” sponsored by the Photographic INsight Foundation and hosted by new York University at NYU’s Tisch Hall on March 5 and 7, 1991. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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October 2012: “Letter from New York: Return of the Suppressed (3),” in the October/November 2012 (#180) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Last in a series drawn from a lecture delivered at the Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia, Canada on March 13, 2008, in conjunction with the exhibition “TruthBeauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945,” presented at that venue from February 2 to April 27, 2008. The series addresses the resurgence of pictorialist practices and concepts in contemporary photography, especially (and surprisingly) among postmodernists. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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September 2012: “Freiheitsreflex: Fotografien von Liu Xia,” in the catalog for the exhibition Die sichtbaren und die unsichtbaren gefängnisse: Eine Ausstellung chinesischer Künstler, mounted September 4-16 in conjunction with the Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin 2012 at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. The show’s English title: “Visible and Invisible Prisons.” My essay on Liu Xia’s work (see June 2012, below) appears therein, in both German and Chinese translations. Click here to view or download a PDF file of the complete 64-page “brochure” containing selected illustrations plus all the texts for the exhibition, which, in addition to a selection of images by Liu Xia, included works by Ai Weiwei, Liao Yiwu, Meng Huang, and Tsering Dorjee.
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September 2012: A “critic-in-residence” essay, “Archive as Artefact: The Black Star Picture Agency,” published as a downloadable PDF file at the website of the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto, which houses the Black Star Collection. In this commissioned essay I discuss the history of the picture agency as a distribution system for photographs, the changes wrought on that industry by digital communications, and the significance as material culture of collections of press prints such as those in this archive.
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August 2012: “Letter from New York: Return of the Suppressed (2),” in the August/September 2012 (#179) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Second part of a series drawn from a lecture delivered at the Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia, Canada on March 13, 2008, in conjunction with the exhibition “TruthBeauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945,” presented at that venue from February 2 to April 27, 2008. The series addresses the resurgence of pictorialist practices and concepts in contemporary photography, especially (and surprisingly) among postmodernists. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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June 2012: “Letter from New York: Return of the Suppressed (1),” in the June/July 2012 (#178) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Drawn from a lecture delivered at the Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia, Canada on March 13, 2008, in conjunction with the exhibition “TruthBeauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945,” presented at that venue from February 2 to April 27, 2008. The exhibition was organized by the VAG in collaboration with George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, NY, and curated by Alison Nordström, Curator of Photographs, George Eastman House. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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June 2012: “Polaroid Collection: Update 25,” in the June 2012 issue (33:6) of The Photograph Collector. First print publication of this February 28, 2012 post from this blog, one in a long-running series of meditations and investigative reports on the lamentable dismantling of this unique and irreplaceable corporate collection. This post summarized the situation up to that date, with emphasis on the then-upcoming April 2012 sale of the remaining portions of the collection at Swann Galleries in New York.
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June 2012: “Freedom Reflex: The Photographs of Liu Xia,” in the catalogue of the 2012 Hong Kong showing of the exhibition “The Silent Strength of Liu Xia” at the City University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Arts Centre, June 9-July 2, 2012. Published by the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC). My essay on the photographic work of this dissident mainland Chinese poet, painter, and photographer, for whose touring exhibition I’ve become co-curator and tour manager. Liu Xia is the wife of the imprisoned 2010 Nobel Peace Prize awardee Liu Xiaobo. This essay appears online here in English, and here in Chinese.
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May 2012: “World Press Photo: The Next Phase?” in European Photography 91 (the “Investigation” Issue). Thoughts on the mounting irrelevance of World Press Photo, the Amsterdam-based organization, and some thought experiments devoted to considering how WPP could transform itself to function usefully in the new digital-imaging and media environments. I propose scrapping its Academy Awards-style annual gala and its monotonous touring exhibition of the year’s supposed best, and instead embracing and supporting crowdsourcing, electronic publishing, and citizen journalism.
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May 2012: “Words of the Prophets: Errol Sawyer’s City Mosaic,” in the May 2012 issue (3) of VLAK. Slightly revised version of my introduction to the first retrospective monograph surveying the black & white street photography of this expatriated African-American photographer. Here’s a link to Sawyer’s website, which contains a good bit of information about him, including an interview conducted by his wife, the Dutch architect Mathilde Fischer. VLAK is an international curatorial project with a broad focus on contemporary poetics, art, film, philosophy, music, science, design, politics, performance, ecology, and new media. An annual print magazine, published in Prague, London, New York, Paris, Melbourne & Amsterdam.
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May 2012: “‘Beneath Even the Old Adam’: The Photographs of Robert Stivers,” in the May/June 2012 (33:3) issue of Photo Technique: Variations on the Photographic Arts. A consideration of Stivers’s work, as exemplifying a “less than sharp” approach to the photograph as a perceptual artifact. Slightly revised version of an essay written for Light Quartet: Themes and Variations, the catalogue for the third in an ongoing series of small exhibitions I have curated for See+ Art Space/Gallery in Beijing’s 798 Art District, which opened on June 6, 2009.
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April 2012: “Letter from New York: John Berger Goes to the Dogs,” in the April/May 2012 (#177) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Continuing a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Shortened version of “Counting the Teeth: Photography for Philosophers,” which was originally commissioned for and appears in The Weight of Photography: Photography History Theory and Criticism, Introductory Readings, edited by Johan Swinnen and Luc Deneulin (Brussels: ASP/Academic & Scientific Publishers, 2010). Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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February 2012: “Letter from New York: Thoughts on the Critical Tradition (3),” in the February/March 2012 (#176) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Seventh in a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Herein I conclude my discussion of the purposes and functions of criticism of photography (and my own practice), subsequent to my November 2011 lecture at Hotshoe Gallery in London, “Dinosaur Bones: The End (and Ends) of Photo Criticism,” with a text drawn in part from that talk. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
2011
December 2011: “Letter from New York: Thoughts on the Critical Tradition (2),” in the December 2011/January 2012 (#175) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Sixth in a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Herein I continue a discussion of the purposes and functions of criticism of photography (and my own practice), in advance of my upcoming November lecture at Hotshoe Gallery in London, “Dinosaur Bones: The End (and Ends) of Photo Criticism,” with a text drawn in part from that talk. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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November 2011: “‘Animal Longings’: The Still Lifes of Kate Breakey,” in the November/December 2011 (32:6) issue of Photo Technique: Variations on the Photographic Arts. A consideration of Breakey’s work. Revised version of my curatorial essay written for the Beijing exhibition “Light Quartet,” a four-person show by Breakey, Connie Imboden, Jerry Spagnoli, and Robert Stivers, held at See+ Art Space/Gallery in Beijing’s famous 798 Art District from June 6-July 18, 2009, and introducing the audience in mainland China to these four mid-career photographers.
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October 2011: “Letter from New York: Thoughts on the Critical Tradition (1) ,” in the October/November 2011 (#174) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Fifth in a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Herein I open a discussion of the purposes and functions of criticism of photography (and my own practice), in advance of my upcoming November lecture at Hotshoe Gallery in London, “Dinosaur Bones: The End (and Ends) of Photo Criticism.” Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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August 2011: “Letter from New York/Amsterdam: Subscription-based Photojournalism,” in the August/September 2011 (#173) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Fourth in a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Herein I discuss the suddenly current concept of “crowdfunding” of projects in photojournalism and documentary. Drawn in part from my keynote address to the World Press Photo Awards Days gathering in Amsterdam on April 16, 2000, in which I anticipated this development. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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June 2011: “Letter from Atlanta: Theory vs. Dogma,” in the June/July 2011 (#172) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Third in a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Herein I comment acerbically on the March 2011 Society for Photographic Education National Conference, despite whose theme of “Science, Poetry and the Photographic Image” no scientists or poets were invited to present or attended on their own. Once again, drawn in part from comments I made during the course of a talk I gave to the Photo Imaging Education Association (PIEA) Conference at the Sydney Convention Centre, Australia, April 29, 2006. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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May 2011: “Photographic Seeing: the Camera Work of Kenneth Josephson,” in the May/June 2011 (32:3) issue of Photo Technique: Variations on the Photographic Arts. A reconsideration of Josephson’s work, as exemplifying an inquiry into the nature of the medium undertaken by many practitioners between 1945 and 1970. Slightly revised version of an essay written for Kenneth Josephson: The First Fifty Years, a catalogue published by the Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago to accompany a small Josephson retrospective there in 2008.
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April 2011: “‘China: Insights’: Mainstream Documentary in the People’s Republic,” in the April 2011 (No. 15) issue of PhotoResearcher, published by the European Society for the History of Photography (ESHPh). Special number of this scholarly journal, on the theme of “Photography in East Asia: New Archives, New Histories.” My curatorial essay, unpublished to date, for the traveling exhibition “China: Insights,” touring the U.S. since April 2008. The essay considers the work of the seven contemporary photographers from the People’s Republic of China represented in the show: Chen Yuanzhong, Hua’Er, Jia Yuchuan, Li Nan, Yang Yankang, Yu Haibo, and Zhang Xinmin.
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April 2011: Extracts from my essays “Color Photography: The Vernacular Tradition” (1980), “Is Criticism of Color Photography Possible?” (1982), and “The Image in Question: Further Notes on the Directorial Mode” (1987), in Reading Photography: A Sourcebook of Critical Texts, by Sri-Kartini Leet. This volume “brings together over 100 extracts from writings on different themes in the medium to explore the history of the art of photography.” Lund Humphries/Ashgate Publishing, 2011; ISBN 978-0-85331-976-4.
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April 2011: “Letter from New York/Sydney: The Audubon Society of Photography,” in the April/May 2011 (#171) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. Second in a series of bimonthly columns that appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Herein I summarize the devolution of the Society for Photographic Education. Drawn in part from comments I made during the course of a talk I gave to the Photo Imaging Education Association (PIEA) Conference at the Sydney Convention Centre, Australia, April 29, 2006. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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February 2011: “Letter from New York: We All Need Someone to Giclée On,” in the February/March 2011 (#170) issue of Hotshoe, from the U.K. First in a series of bimonthly columns that will appear under the rubric “Hot Topics.” Herein I reveal the identity of the individual who inflicted this pretentious and comical term on us: Master digital printer Jack Duganne, who began printing for Graham Nash, and later founded Duganne Ateliers. Duganne thought it sounded “sexy” and “romantic,” demonstrating a deep ignorance of the French language, in which the term connotes ejaculated ― as in male human sperm and cat spray. Available online to Hotshoe subscribers.
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January 2011: “Words of the Prophets: Errol Sawyer’s City Mosaic,” in Errol Sawyer: City Mosaic. My introduction to the first retrospective monograph surveying the black & white street photography of this expatriated African-American photographer. Here’s a link to Sawyer’s website, which contains a good bit of information about him, including an interview conducted by his wife, the Dutch architect Mathilde Fischer. ISBN 978-9081604116.
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January 2011: “Roy DeCarava (1919-2009): A Farewell,” in the January 2011 (32:1) issue of The Photograph Collector. First print publication of my oration for the late, great photographer, delivered first in 2001, while he lived, at a ceremony honoring him at the National Arts Club in New York, and again after his October 27, 2009 passing. The second occasion was a January 28, 2010 celebration of his life and work held at the Studio Museum in Harlem. This commemoration first appeared here, at Photocritic International, on January 30, 2010.
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January 2011: “‘A Form of Joy’: The Photographs of Wynn Bullock,” in the January/February 2011 (32:1) issue of Photo Technique: Variations on the Photographic Arts. A reconsideration of Bullock’s work, including discussion of his “color light abstractions” recently released by his estate. In it I suggest that Bullock was among the most experimental photographers of his generation in the U.S. Revised version of an essay written for the forthcoming catalogue of a Bullock mini-retrospective I curated for See+ Art Space/Gallery in Beijing in spring 2010.
2010
December 2010: “‘Brush Up On My Fieldwork’: The Photographic Projects of Masumi Hayashi,” in the Winter 2011 (no. 62) issue of Ag: international journal of photographic art & practice, published in England. Consideration of this Japanese-American photographer’s application of a distinctive collage technique to social-documentary projects, including the World War II internment camps of American citizens of Japanese descent, in one of which Hayashi was born. Her work was cut short when she was murdered in Cleveland in 2006.
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September 2010: “Counting the Teeth: Photography for Philosophers,” in the Autumn 2010 (no. 61) issue of Ag: international journal of photographic art & practice, published in England. A consideration of the relationship that contemporary philosophers have established to the medium of photography, with sketches of the hermeneutic issues that they have so far failed to address. Concluding with a discussion of misguided commentary by John Berger on the work of the Finnish photographer Pentti Sammallahti.
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July 2010: “In the Face of Forgiveness: Steven Katzman’s Epiphanies,” in the July-August 2010 (31:4) of Photo Technique: Variations on the Photographic Arts. A revised version of my introduction to The Face of Forgiveness: Salvation and Redemption, Katzman’s 2005 powerHouse monograph on Christian revival services at evangelical churches in Florida, Brazil and Mozambique, which sparked his own unexpected conversion. My first appearance in this revamped version of this magazine, now under the editorship of Paul Schranz.
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April 2010: “Counting the Teeth: Photography for Philosophers,” in The Weight of Photography: Photography History Theory and Criticism, Introductory Readings, edited by Johan Swinnen and Luc Deneulin (Brussels: ASP/Academic & Scientific Publishers, 2010). Originally commissioned as the introduction to this anthology, as mentioned below, my essay ended up considerably shortened for this volume and simply included among the contents. Contributors include Jean Baudrillard, Jan-Erik Lundstrom, Shahidul Alam, Ariella Azoulay, Willem Elias, and Jian-Xing Too, among others, as well as the editors. ISBN 978-9054877042.
2009
December 2009: “Counting the Teeth: Photography for Philosophers,” in the December 2009 issue (28:4, no. 112) of Border Crossings, published in Canada. Editor Meeka Walsh describes it as “a rigorous and playful article on philosophy and photography.” Originally commissioned for a forthcoming Belgian anthology, but as that’s been years in the birthing the essay makes its debut here.
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December 2009: “Steichen Then, Now, and Again: Legacies of an Icon,” in the Winter 2010 issue (no. 58) of Ag: international journal of photographic art & practice, published in England. Second in a two-part series on Steichen, drawn from Coleman’s essay for the 2007 monograph Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography (New York: W. W. Norton & Company). This part traces his later activities, from the World War II teamwork in the Pacific theater to his curatorial years at the Museum of Modern Art and the making of The Family of Man.
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November 2009: “Philip Tsiaras: Photography Using Artist,” in Philip Tsiaras: The Superreal, the monograph accompanying the 200-print retrospective survey of the photographic work of this Greek-American artists who works in many media. My text appears in both English and Greek. The exhibition originated and premiered at the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, October 9-December 6 2009, and will now tour for several years. Here’s a link to a Euronews video interview with Tsiaras about the project.
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September 2009: “Steichen Then, Now, and Again: Legacies of an Icon,” in the Autumn 2009 issue (no. 57) of Ag: international journal of photographic art & practice, published in England. First in a two-part series on Steichen, drawn from Coleman’s essay for the 2007 monograph Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography (New York: W. W. Norton & Company). This part traces his early activities, from the pictorialist period through his World War I aerial photography and into the modernist/fashion years. Part two forthcoming in the next issue.
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Death Becomes Them, by Alix Strauss (2009)
September 2009: Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious, by Alix Strauss (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2009). This book discusses in detail the suicides of dozens of famous people. In a chapter on the death of Diane Arbus, it reproduces “Diane Arbus: The Mirror Is Broken,” my August 5, 1971 obituary of Arbus, published originally in the Village Voice and subsequently reprinted in my first collection of essays, Light Readings: A Photography Critic’s Writings, 1968-1978. The obit appears here as a photographic reproduction of the original article itself, as published in the Voice. ISBN 978-0061728563.
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Spring 2009: Light Quartet: Themes and Variations, the catalogue for the third in an ongoing series of small exhibitions I have curated for See+ Art Space/Gallery in Beijing’s 798 Art District, starting in spring 2008. Opening on June 6, 2009, this show ran through July 18 of that year, introducing the audience in mainland China to four mid-career photographers from the U.S.: Kate Breakey, Connie Imboden, Jerry Spagnoli, and Robert Stivers. (Breakey, who emigrated from Australia, now lives and works in Tucson, AZ.) I chose these picture-makers — who were unacquainted with each other at the time — to represent the diversity of craft practice and image content among the creative photographers of their generation in the west. This book contains my curator’s overview of the show, and essays on each of the photographers, in both English and Chinese.
