Thinking About Contemporary Photography
There are so many exciting things going on visually. So many talented image makers. It is humbling and inspiring to see this new work. This level of technique and story.
So here are photographers that I have seen and thought, "Wow!"
Soth: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=alec+soth&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=a0NATfzhBMrGgAeNg5mbAw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CE8QsAQwAg&biw=1737&bih=839
He has way more compassion than Avedon, but there is a naked quality to his subjects. There is a nakedness to his landscapes too. Who was that female Dutch photographer who shot the awkward adolescent women with the ocean in the background? Dijkstra Rineke! His work has formal intensity like her work.
Also you have to consider " la vie bohemme lifestyle" photographers like Nan Goldin and Wolfgang Tillmans. "Look I am having sex with a junky!" There is an American iconography and vernacular that Soth has continued from these two. Empty motel beds, couples entwined with sad non erotic looks on their faces looking right into the lens.
Perhaps Timothy Greenfield Sanders should come into the discussion. But he seems the one trick pony compared to Soth, who seems to be at play. There is an innocence to Soth's eye that pulls me in. He isn't trapped in a formula.
Soth seems less fucked up than Goldin and Tillmans. Sweeter than those two. Mapplethorpe's portraits took the formality even further. Soth is less fussy about visual cleanliness. He likes the mess and containing it in the frame. Human mess. Industrial landscape mess. Frailty.
Mary Ellen Mark, the low rent Diane Arbus, has to be considered in the Soth discussion. He doesn't look for freaks exactly, but he does demand a certain rawness that Mark pays her rent with.
To go beyond Soth and move into a broader look at contemporary photography, I received a couple of cool tips from my friend Tim Devine.
1) Alex Prager is the love child of Cindy Sherman and Hitchcock. LA Darling and blowing up huge at MOMA. http://www.alexprager.com/
2) Julia Fullerton Batten: She has a great eye for solitude/loneliness as well as a great eye for color harmony, line, and the absurd. Cinematic narrative in a single frame. http://www.juliafullerton-batten.com/
3) Martin Parr: http://www.martinparr.com/index1.html
4) Mark Zibert: http://www.markzibert.com/ He is definitely in the Editorial camp, but his technique is so flawless, it is just interesting to see someone work at the top of their shooting and post production canoodling excellence.
I also have to throw Julia Blackmon into the mix. Her art history winking composites are fun and telling about the privileged suburban lifestyle. She is a morphed Tina Barney on hallucinogenic steroids. Funny and fun!
A couple of interesting blogs to check out!
Thinking about photography....
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