Who is the Singled Person?

While I was finishing my post about the ‘Dark side of Photography’, I finally received a little photo book I ordered a few weeks ago from a Spanish independent bookseller, The Singled Person. The timing is great. This is the perfect transition.

 

The Singled Person was initially a simultaneous projection of eight videos from eight photographers: Michael Ackerman, Morten Andersen, Lorenzo Castore, Thorsten Kirchhoff, Peer Kugler, André Lützen, Hisashi Murayama and Filippo Romano.

‘They share their different visions of the singled person. Yet, who is this singled person: the photographer, the subject or both?’

The little book is a succession of images, without titles, captions or comments. The images follow one another to lead us through an intriguing journey. It’s not about the colour or the black and white. It’s not about the format or the size of the images. It’s not about the subject of the photography, its context or the name of the photographer who took it. The story it tells is not linear and sometimes doesn’t seem to make sense at all. Some images are so blurred or abstract that it takes time to understand what is in front of our eyes.

But I believe it’s the story of a day and night on earth. It’s the wanderings of silhouettes and shadows in a mysterious urban night. It’s about contemplation, solitude, isolation, relationship, love and passion

It’s the swirl of life.

Behind each image there is a question, a memory, a second or an eternity. It’s a poem written in images, with its rimes and its melody.

Hisashi Murayama "NeWorld"

André Lützen "Loch im Kopf"

Hisashi Murayama & Filippo Romano

Peer Kugler "Nothing At All"

Filippo Romano "Phishing Memories"

This little book was published in 2009 by the German publisher Schaden: www.schaden.com
You can also order it from Dalpine: www.dalpine.com/
Dalpine is an independent publishing company and reseller focused on selling self-published books and books produced by independent publishers. Dalpine is based in Madrid, Spain. Founded in 2010, Dalpine is focused on photobooks and zines and their aim is to make these publications easily accessible to everyone.

More info, more photos and a video presenting the initial project: www.projektoren.net/singledperson/ 

And as this little book has made me discovered new incredible photographers, you can expect more about them on carte blanche’s blog soon…

The Dark Side of Photography (Part 1)

Trying to analyze what moves you is always very difficult. It’s an internal reaction to what you see that cannot always be explained. Henri Cartier Bresson said that ‘to take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart."  I guess falling in love with an image or a photography style is similar in a way. Images that move you are the ones that succeed in touching your eye, your head and your heart.

I’ve always been drawn by dark very contrasted black and white images and by the work of a few photographers that push the limit of the camera to it extremes. Partially blurred or totally unfocused, their images feel like they come from the darker side of the photographers’ subconscious, the darker sides of our memories. The following 3 photographers perfectly represent this idea and belong to a category of artists that succeed in expressing strong emotions through their art (of course they’re not the only ones…). Their images procure very mixed sensations and for me that’s what makes their attraction and complex beauty. They search for unknown parts of life, dive in to unexplored territories, shake our visions of the world and maybe reveal darker sides of us  (or maybe just of me!).

Michael Ackerman

I’ve already mentioned Michael Ackerman when reviewing images from Benares, India as he has created some of the most amazing images of that place. However the rest of his work is as compelling and emotionally disturbing as his first book ‘End Time City’. Through a few reportages and a second book ‘Fiction’ he continues to deliver his personal testimony of life through a very innovative visual style. The last opus of his work is called ‘Half life’ and was on view at the Vu gallery in Paris last summer. The images follow each other but they’re not a narrative essay. They feel like selected moments of life, selected emotions that throw you in to another universe. They explore the past and the present, they explore personal and universal History. Sometimes you feel the photographer’s anxiety but most of the time his work questions your own doubts and your own feelings towards people and the world. By this complex series Michael Ackerman once again reaffirms his unique style between poetry and strangeness, between isolation and mystery, between drama and love.

‘Every picture is for me a surprise’ 

Here are 2 interviews of Michael Ackerman where he talks about ‘Half Life”: the story of the book, the portraits of vulnerable men, the landscapes of Poland... Quite rare and very interesting.

on youtube: www.youtube.com

on artnet : www.artnet.fr

Smoke 2000

Fiction 2001

Half Life

Half Life

Half Life

Half Life

More on Michael Ackerman: www.agencevu.com

 

Varanasi, holy city for photographers (Part 2)

Unique, impossible to imitate, Varanasi is timeless. Out of the world, the city seems to have stopped at another age. Many photographers have managed to capture its universality.

Michael Ackerman

One of the best photographic interpretations of Varanasi has to be ‘End time city’ the book by Michael Ackerman (American photographer member of the Vu agency). In this fantastic book Michael Ackerman gives a deeply personal vision of Varanasi. His extreme black and white images depict a ghost city at the limit of reality. Very contrasted, blurred, intriguing, uncomfortable and oppressing, his photographs are the perfect representation of emotions one can feel when walking through the narrow streets and the dirty overwhelming ghats. His unique style also questions the principles of photography and its capacity to show or to transcend reality. Far from conventional images Ackermann plays with lights, movement shapes and formats to offer an emotionally strong testimony. He knows how to challenge our blasé vision of the world and play with our feelings and imagination.

 More on Michael Ackerman: www.agencevu.com

François Fontaine

“The moon and the sun are your eyes,
I see you as such, the face shining with fire,
Your brightness illuminates the world”
(Bhagavas Gîtâ, verse 11.19)

The holy hour is a series of photographs taken in 2010 by the French photographer Francois Fontaine (represented by Vu agency). Again no one could say if these images were taken yesterday or 50 years ago. Their universality and timelessness shake our representation of Hinduism as we follow the pilgrims through their quest for God or for eternity. While with Michael Ackerman we felt lost in a dark threatening place, here we immerse in a soft poetic dream. Taken between dawn and twilight, Francois Fontaine’s photographs focus on gestures and attitudes, depicting fervent believers as shadows inhabiting the place. Nothing is clear, every one is depersonalized, everything is suggested, leaving it to our own imagination to recreate the story. With touches of color and lights each photograph seems like an impressionist or abstract painting where the souls of the person or ‘the divine breath’ illuminate the mystical night.

 More on Francois Fontaine: www.agencevu.com