Lukas Roth
I found myself liking the work of Lukas Roth (found via pishpot, where you can see more of his work). This German artist based in Cologne relies on intensive digital manipulation by using software to stitch hundreds of individual photos into a single extraordinarily large image. You can find out more about him by reading this PDF, which contains an English-language conversation with the artist, and which is posted on his site.
An update: More of Lukas Roth' work can be found on the website of Paul Kopeikin gallery located in Los Angeles, where the photographer has a show until December 22nd. (via Squint.)
Hidden dreams or a faux facade?
Jörg M. Colberg has posted a fascinating conversation with Andrew Miksys, a Seattle-born photographer who is working on an upcoming book on Lithuanian Roma people (gypsies), BAXT. One of the main questions that arose in the conversation, was how to avoid the Borat-exposed stereotype of gypsies as emblematized subjects of xenophobia and to present them in a way that differs from the convention of "a woman holding a baby, barefoot children and wild dogs." Andrew took on an approach that could only be described as "fortuitous":
Somewhat out of frustration, I asked [a Roma girl] if she wanted to stand in a different pose. Right away she took on the seductive super model pose. It was totally unexpected. In the discos I often have similar experiences. Last summer I was photographing in a disco and there was a guy who kept asking me to photograph him. I really wasn't interested in photographing him, but finally agreed to take one picture of him. While I was setting up my lights he took off his shirt and got in a pose like a boxer. Again, I never could have imagined or set up a scene like that. In the past, I thought that this kind of posing was unnatural. Now I find it more revealing. The poses are sort of like the dreams and fantasies that most people keep hidden.
Once I read these words, it struck me that I have encountered a similar concern on a popular photo forum some time before. A photographer who was working "on a collection of portraits of bar girls in Mexico" had asked: "How to kill a smile?" In his own words, he was trying to "go beyond a collection of pictures of faux-happy hookers." That is to say, he was either trying to place his subjects into some kind of preconceived notion of how they should appear or to reveal something about the subjects that the casual smile was hiding. From his argument, we could guess that he wanted the latter, yet in his case, a case very different from that of Andrew Miksys, the pose that his subjects first took on did not "reveal" but instead "concealed."
I do not know how to reconcile these two different stories, but they certainly provide me with material for further thinking on this subject. Any comments are welcome...
Jay Parkinson on Conscientious
A conversation with Jay Parkinson has been posted on Conscientious, Jörg M. Colberg's weblog. Jay Parkinson is a Baltimore-based photographer whose subjects are mostly aspiring models. Jay's website is at darkshapesprowl.com, and his Flickr stream is here. The thing that amazes me about Jay Parkinson's project “Aspiring” is how he turned his own and his models' main weakness to his advantage. A quote:
I've heard one model say she looks “frumparrific” and like she has an extra twenty-first chromosome. But I think out of the twenty-five or so portraits I have for this project, maybe three or four models added my portrait to their portfolio. I definitely took no offense from this because I understand that these photos would doom many of them to modeling for the “before photos” in anti-depressants advertisements.
A comparison to Wegee is something one would expect the least, yet Mr. Parkinson does make a very strong point by referring to one of Wegee's photos presented at the end of the conversation.