Book Review - Jim Goldberg: Raised by Wolves

I first saw this book on Goldberg’s website as a video that provides a much more visually interesting online version of the book compared to that of a standard downloadable PDF, that many artists offer. I have now loaned the book out from the library and it is larger than I thought it would be, slightly bigger than A4. It has a fantastic handwritten list of the ‘Cast of Characters’ that play roles in Goldbergs’ compilation of images and text. It then opens out to the first image in the book (as seen on the right) a heavy vignette frames it to look almost like binoculars. A very moody opening that also holds elements of nostalgia and creates a definite time period as a prelude to the work that follows.

 The book then leads straight into a chilling story about child abuse from a friend of Jims and film stills from home movies. You then flick through the images that you think might be related to the story but there is no certainty of this. Then the next story with Echo, the daughter of the woman in the first story. These stories and images give you a basis to put your emotions on, he makes you react and feel for these characters by giving them a back story.

His way of placing images on unconventional backgrounds, makes the images pop off the page, it highlights them and plays with the photograph. The use of colour to play off the black and white imagery. His Polaroid of Echo on a black page is something I will explore in the production of my own book. Playing with coloured pages to bring a playfulness to the work that can sometimes lack when using a traditional white background. His use of handwritten text with his photographs, not only adds to the story but also to the authenticity of the work. Something I seek to do within my own book is to represent my brothers truth and also my own.

The page to the left is an example of how black and white and colour photographs can work together and bring out each other’s strengths when next to each other. This will be an important component within my own book, as I have a mix of colour and B&W imagery within the series. It is actually one of the only stand alone colour images in the book, this anonymous character with his eyes blacked out. I have found that I was more immersed in the text within the book rather than the images, the conversations Goldberg has with these runaway children are filled with sadness and frustration that he cannot help them. The characters he tells us about: Echo, Tweeky Dave and a few others, are the subjects in his photographs and they make the writing feel more real. So in this short amount of time reading this book I felt towards the end this heart wrenching sadness for these people and their lives. I think that was the point, that was what Goldberg wanted to do. I think he cared a lot about these kids and I think this book is a great tribute to them. One of the few photobooks to have made such an impact on me. 

Book Review - Dash Snow: I Love You, Stupid

I have been looking at the late Dash Snow’s book titled ‘I Love You, Stupid’ (440 pp., 430 color illustrations, 11x7¼") as it is filled to the brim with Polaroid’s he took of himself and the world around him, his world really. The photographs are full of drugs, sex, streets, drinking, friends, food, tattoos and various other things that caused me to raise my eyebrow a couple of times. This guy led a wild life and was known by many as being a free artist, one that never stepped into the commerciality of the art world and was an artist for himself, not anyone else. The book is thick and dotted between pages of Polaroid’s are full bleed images of black and white scenes blown up until almost out of focus to break up the monotony of the Polaroid’s four-on-a-page layout.  

                             

In reading the book I found several brilliant quotes that not only spoke of photography but of Dash Snow and his way of working.

The book cites Ezra Pound:

“What is the greatest hearsay?

The greatest hearsay is the tradition of gods.

Of what use is this tradition?

It tells us to be ready to look.”

I love that ‘be ready to look’, in this age we are always looking, we live in a visually saturated society that’s major form of communication is through looking and creating things to be looked at. Then it moved onto citing the great Antonin Artaud:                                                                             

“Masterpieces of the past are good for the past: they are not good for us. We have the right to say what has been said and even what has not been said in a way that belongs to us, a way that is immediate and direct, corresponding to present modes of feeling, and understandable to everyone.”

Our styles, fashions, fads are always reinterpretations of the past, ideas reworked for a modern audience, one that requires everything instantly and where everything belongs to everyone because social media allows for it to be shared to everyone.

Blair Hansen said of Dash Snow: “…one of Snow’s greatest achievements as an artist was his ability to harness the power of immediacy in order to make out experience of his artwork so vivid that we confuse our relative distance from that artwork; it is like touching a life.”

Book Review - William Eggleston: For Now

Right now I am looking at the book in a purely visual way. The cover is particularly striking with no text it allows for the image alone to speak of the intimacy contained within with a photograph of his wife in bed. The yellow border matches the yellow colour theme in the image resulting in a beautifully flowing cover that emanates the vibrancy of the American culture and is a precursor to the style of work Eggleston produces in the book. The book is about A3 size square which really captures the details in the photographs.

“the flow of images, the torrential nature of his picture-making process, registers as a sprawling but precise visual diary, a record of things firmly seen or glimpsed and grabbed at, an inventory of experience.”

“the spaces between spaces, the mundane, the makeshift, all the fragmentary raw proofs of civilisation as a perishable human construction that, nevertheless, provides subject matter for vivid and vibrant photographs.”

“Eggleston claims that he takes only one picture of one thing”

I like that this process allows for a vast abundance of images that all portray something different, not one is of the same scene. It adds to the spontaneous, fast nature of the images and the pure visual diary of Eggleston’s life. They reflect the human enterprise, the human condition is present in each photograph, he is present in each image, not physically but in an almost ethereal way. The portraits are what draw my attention most, they are raw and connective. The subjects often look directly at the camera and hold a strong emotion. The image above of the woman with her hand on her hip seems to say ‘what the hell are you doing taking a photo of me’ or as if the photographer is in some kind of trouble, a disapproving mother asking her teenage kid ‘what time do you call this then?!’. When you first open the book you are confronted by a photograph of a woman crying, all emotion laid bare in the way she looks at the camera, the dishevelled hair, the tired eyes, the tear stained cheek and the look of a woman just having to get on with it. The truth of the human condition.
The title page of the book continues the yellow colour that was present on the cover and thankfully all the text and essays are left at the end of the book which allows for you to delve straight into the photographs uninhibited by another’s view of what you are seeing.
The last few pages contain various essays by people who know Eggleston and his work on a more personal level alongside an interview with Eggleston himself . In this he speaks about the people in some of the photographs and enjoys the fact that all the photographs in the book are ones that have previously been unpublished. His archive contains over 35,000 images so I imagine there are many he can’t recall offhand. The book contains images personally picked out by the author and contain more portraits then previous Eggleston books and the personal connection to the subjects in the photographs to Eggleston make this book more like a family album than anything else. For me, Eggleston’s work speaks to me in its way of capturing moments that are as close to the truth as photography gets nowadays and his use of colour is beautifully, the way he spreads it out in his images rather than clumping it within one corner of the photograph.