Category: book shelf

reviews and essentials –

Evans: Among the Stacks

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, book shelf, on photographers

Two books after reading the Chauncy book. The Stott book is satisfying. It took me to places and situations that encouraged further readings. “Foursome” provided a view of people I had wanted to like, since I like their work. Instead, I’m glad I didn’t know them. At least the “them” of this book.

The work isn’t the life, it is the life after death. The artist, even life-artists are never the artwork. We do not become fully merged. In many cases that is best, or so it seems.

Is it possible that people hate art because they hate artists? That they don’t understand them; maybe they want to be them, but can’t. Perhaps, the art-haters do so to suppress their impulses to move across the floor, pass thru life differently. In watching those who fail, I’ve discovered a core set of failure points. It is far easier to fail, the ways are so widely shared, so easily shared that we have more failures — those passed by. Many creatives are cowards — at least timid.

The first failure, as well as the lasting, strongest defense of the long term anti-artist is simply that they don’t trust words. They form them, sometimes that is all they do — these are words without the driver of thought — without the strength of self awareness. Many of those people don’t trust words, as well, these days, they don’t trust pictures.

  • The Last Years of Walker Evans ISBN: 0-500-54210-4
  • Walker Evans: A Biography ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0618056729
  • Walker’s Way ISBN: 1576873625
  • Walker Evans, James Mellow. ISBN 046509077X

My work is closer to Strand, yet my life, my way, my acceptance is Evans.

Gibson: Rodinal + Tri-X

Posted on Posted in art stuff, book shelf, labnotes, on photographers

Venerable members of the silver brigade. Marched photography from the hallways to the white walls; from the basement to the main gallery. Art words began to be understood, and refined by photographers during the 60s and 70s. Ralph Gibson was a promoter, a vagabond, a troubadour for photography. Mainly the book, that area he mastered, and mentored through his Lustrum Press.

A mix of techniques, craft skill along with image skills. The walkway and the walk. Path and walker.

“The reason I publish under Lustrum is the same as my attitude towards the frame,” Gibson says. “I want all the credit, all the blame, complete and total autonomy.”

Ralph Gibson’s early method was using Tri-X shot at 100 to 400, processed in Rodinal 1:25 for 11 minutes, agitation by rolling tank on its side 10 seconds every 90 seconds. He printed using Brovira 111, Nos. 4 and 5 in Dektol 1:1 for 2 to 3 minutes. No toning. Dry between blotters.

That was then. These days digital. Lustrum thrives as does Ralph Gibson (at 83, b.1939 – ).

“Digital Color— at Leica Gallery Los Angeles on January 17 (2019), the day after his 80th birthday—features images created entirely with digital cameras”

“Digital responded to the way my eye sees the world in a very emphatic, ineluctable way,” Gibson says. “Very few people get a chance to reinvent themselves when they’re 75.”