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LOVE CARRICK!

Photography Exhibition

June 10-30, 2019

Sean Healy Memorial Library

Carrick On Suir, Co. Tipperary

info here http://ryzinski.com/love-carrick

Des Oiseaux- Pentti Sammallahti

blogEntryTopperIt’s hard to believe that it’s 5 years since I mentioned Pentti Sammallahti retrospective book Here Far Away on this blog So I’m delighted to see a new monograph Des Oiseaux (on birds) being published by the excellent Xavier Barral A true poet of the camera, this collection of bird photos comes in two language editions -French and English, because accompanying these photographs, the ornithologist Guilhem Lesaffre showcases the relationship to the seasons that is a fundamental aspect of the life of birds. I look forward to receiving this in the coming weeks. Write up from the publishers - Traveller-photographer Pentti Sammallahti captures the myste­ries of nature on his travels and among these, the world of birds. Coastlines, swamps, parks, endless plains, forest clearings, snowy landscapes… In these isolated areas, birds slyly reveal their pres­ence.

Like visual tales, his B&W photographs attest to his extraordinary eye for detail, to light that sculpts spaces, to silent expanses in which a human or animal presence suddenly appears. The experience of the image is twofold: beyond its narrative virtuosity, his use of a two-colour process, with immaculate whites (as in the plumage of his swans or pink flamingos) confronted with deep blacks, creates a play of textures and powerfully renders a world in which birds play a unique role.

Interview with Pentti Sammallahti

Photographers on Photography-Henry Carroll

blogEntryTopperHenry Carroll is a UK author and studied photography at the Royal College of Art. In recent years he has produced a series of books with ‘Read This If…’ in the title. A full list can be found here on Amazon
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Aimed at the new and intermediate photographer to get creative with their camera, I have been pleasantly surprised by their straight forward approach. In his latest book- Photographers on Photography, there is no mention of the mechanics of photography here but rather a collection of quotes and images by masters of the art, with accompanying text by Carroll, he tries to show what photography actually means to the giants of the genres and how they developed their distinctive visual styles.
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As he says in the introduction..” this offers an introduction to the more philosophical. Expect different opinions ranging from the personal to the practical, the esoteric to the enlightening’.
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So one is given an insight into the approach of very different photography artists. It is a slim book, but big on content. Mixed in with the approach shown above, he has placed some interviews, among them Alec Soth.
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An inexpensive, finally printed, book that I can highly recommend. It’s published by Laurence King Publishing and costs approx €16 in hardback at time of writing.

Awards

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The 2018 ND award winners have just been announced and happy to be among them. I received two honourable mentions in fine art -Abstract and in Nature. Click on logos to see my entries.

Book Highlight-Willy Ronis by Willy Ronis

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The definitive reference on master French photographer Willy Ronis, this volume reproduces personal and previously unpublished photo albums of his work that he curated and commentated throughout his career. A key figure in twentieth-century photography, Willy Ronis conveyed the poetic reality of postwar France in iconic black and white photographs. Influenced by Alfred Steiglitz and Ansel Adams, and amicable with his contemporary Magnum photographers, Ronis was the first French photographer to contribute to Life magazine. In the 1950s, MoMA curator Edward Steichen featured Ronis-along with Henri- Cartier Bresson, Robert Doisneau, and Brassaï- in the groundbreaking exhibitions The Family of Man and Five French Photographers . Throughout his life, this powerhouse of humanist photography kept meticulous record of his work, curating each era into albums, which are reproduced here for the first time. Timeless photographs of postwar France and its inhabitants are accompanied by the photographer's original observations and comments, framing the images within their technical and historical context. Photography historian Matthieu Rivallin's critical perspective adds nuance to the photographer's notes, and the ensemble is a groundbreaking and definitive reference on the myriad aspects of the artists' immense career and is an essential volume for all photography aficionados.

Exhibition by Alen MacWeeney

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Showing in Kamera8 in Wexford until September 8th, 2018 Alen MacWeeney - The Country of Yeats. As a young man in the early 1960s, MacWeeney left his native Dublin for New York, where he worked over several years as an assistant to photographer Richard Avedon. He returned to what he called “the Ireland of my imagination” in the summer of 1965 on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the Irish poet, with the vision of a short-term project inspired by Yeats’ poetry and a desire to explore the people, places and settings that inhabited his words.

MacWeeney drew meaning for his photographs from the lines of Yeats’ poems, and in one of the two portfolios in the gallery, gave meaning to his photographs by pairing them with lines selected from Easter, 1916, Yeats’ most powerful political poem.
More info here

Book Highlight- Vivian Maier The Color Work

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The story of Vivian Meyer is certainly a fascinating one. Her story—the secretive nanny-photographer who became a pioneer photographer—has only been pieced together from the thousands of images she made and the handful of facts that have surfaced about her life.But whatever about her background and discovery it’s her street photography that fascinates most. The first definitive monograph of color photographs -Vivian Maier: The Color Work is the largest and most highly curated published collection of Maier’s full-color photographs to date. It’s due for publication in November 2018
With a foreword by world-renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz and text by curator Colin Westerbeck, this definitive volume sheds light on the nature of Maier’s color images, examining them within the context of her black-and-white work as well as the images of street photographers with whom she clearly had kinship, like Eugene Atget and Lee Friedlander. With more than 150 color photographs, most of which have never been published in book form, this collection of images deepens our understanding of Maier, as its immediacy demonstrates how keen she was to record and present her interpretation of the world around her.
Vivian Maier website

Book Highlight- Abstrakt, Ernst Haas

blogEntryTopperDelighted to see that Steidl will once again be publishing another collection of work by Austrian born photographer Ernst Haas. If it is as good as Color Correction mentioned here then we are in for a treat. It is due to be released in late May 2018. Abstrakt is a collection of photographs selected by Ernst Haas for a two-projector 25-minute film he worked on until his death in 1986. The photographs span his entire career in color from 1952 to 1984. Many of the photographs were shown in Life magazine’s first color issue devoted to Haas’ 1953 story on New York, “Images of a Magic City,” and in his 1962 solo exhibition Ernst Haas: Color Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, the first color retrospective at that institution. The photographs in this book show various abstractions―from street detritus to torn posters and other found objects. Haas considered this project to be the culmination of his work in photography.

Kaos and UFO

blogEntryTopperIf you have €1250 burning a whole in your pocket then you could do worse than investing in Taschen’s latest ‘baby sumo’ size book -Kaos, of the work of the renowned Scottish photographer, Albert Watson. But hurry as it goes up by €500 on January1st. 2018. Be aware however that it does not come with the necessary accessory -a taschen book stand
If you are not endowed with the necessary cash may I recommend the excellent UFO book of 2010. Published by Hardie Grant Books it is still in print and at a fraction of the price of Kaos, around €60, UFO (unified fashion objectives) offers an excellent overview of this photographers work covering the period 1975-2008.

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Albert Watson is one of the world s most successful fashion and commercial photographers. His striking images have appeared on more than 250 Vogue covers around the world, and have been featured in countless other publications such as Time, Vibe and on over 40 covers of Rolling Stone magazine.

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Albert’s celebrity portraits include well-known and iconic movie stars, rock stars, rappers, supermodels, even President Clinton and Queen Elizabeth II (Watson was the official Royal Photographer for Prince Andrew’s wedding to Sarah Ferguson).

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The production values of this book are very high. Printed on quite a weighty soft lustre paper, the black and white photos are neutral to warm in colour and colour photos have body and nuance. The binding is of a high quality which allows pages to lay pretty flat when open, a great help when viewing double page spreads. There are also many full page bleeds.

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The book focuses mostly on Watson’s fashion and advertising work and if you are a studio photographer and fashion interests you well you are in the hands of a master here. Technical mastery of lighting and equipment to exacting compositions are on display here. There is so much in this book of over 400 pages.

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I’m sure Taschen’s book will be excellent also, but for those of us who cannot rise to the very high cost and can forgo the very latest work (and the faux chimpanzee fur fitting), well UFO is your best option.

Kamera8 exhibition

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