Doug Dubois’ and Richard Hines’ families are very different, but the intimacy that they both photograph is very similar. And while neither is the first to photograph their family, both bodies of work are unique in that they capture intimate moments from a specific time, place, and group of people that only they would have been privileged to experience. Read more
By Chen Tamir
Photography is caught between an invocation and a denial of death.1 On the one hand, it petrifies a scene, a moment. When sitters “hold still, smile, and say ‘cheese’,” they are fully aware of how they look at that moment, or at least how the camera sees them, will be carried into the future and seen by others. It is like a little moment of death, or of loss — what Roland Barthes calls “mortification.”2 The moment the photographer releases the shutter is the moment to be remembered (or imagined) by whoever sees the photograph in the future. Even if it is seen the day after the photograph was taken, there is a melancholy to it as an object of the past, of time enduring.
BY Stephen Horne
“To photograph has long been synonymous with the procedure of isolation and dislocation of an instant from its temporal/contextual mother land.”1 — Scott Connaroe
“To define the present in isolation is to kill it.”2 — Paul Klee
“Nostalgia is part of the problem and it does not contain the solution.”3 — Edward S. Casey
1.What better context in which to explore the topic of emplacement and displacement than by abandoning one’s own fixed abode in favour of a journey, with its characteristics of motion, distance, estrangement and roaming: a passing through that becomes a kind of home, one identifiable as ritual. Last year Scott Conarroe pursued By Rail (2008), a year long photographic project premised as a North American landscape survey, but undertaken thematically as a journey (a road trip) on the one hand and on the other, concerned with documenting a subject: railways and their environs. That Conarroe posed this work from the perspective of a journey situates the artist within our own topic of nostalgia, implicated as it is with the concept and experience of the home-place. The term “journey” is also inflected with myth and tradition, maintaining continuity with other terms I privilege here such as “place” and “aura.”
By Mark Clintberg
I write this alone, from a cabin composed primarily of windows in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, in an artist’s colony at the Banff Centre. It is winter solstice. It is 5:00 p.m. and impenetrably dark in these woods. I have seen hungry looking coyotes. When I walk to and from my studio I shake my keychain aimlessly, and whistle to frighten off animals — and ghosts. To my understanding, I am the sole resident using this area of the campus at this time. And so, upon noticing moonlit human footprints in the snow encircling my studio, capturing the mark of someone peering in my window — is that a greasy nose-print on the glass? — I cannot ignore the uncanny feeling that I’m being watched. From a completely rational perspective, these prints must be the mark of a phantom. Certainly not a friendly marmot, or the cleaning staff?
Notes:
This series of photographs is compiled from a range of work over the last eight years. Many of the peripheral locations that I photograph often result from pedestrian explorations of urban space. These investigations identify a number of concerns including social histories, ephemera, the nature of collective memory and the way we order our environment. As I wander through all of these places, I also try to reveal the uncanny that exists within the everyday and draw attention to these fragile and intimate undertones. In a range of ways these images express a certain kind of longing for both the past and the future.
The earliest memories I have of growing up on the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in central Saskatchewan are of my childhood home, a blue and white trailer that sat in a farmyard, steps away from both my grandmother’s home and the home that my father grew up in. Though I have few vivid memories of life during that time, as my family moved from the trailer into a log house when I was four, I remember the essence of the place, the layout and décor, the smells and colours. I remember looking out the picture window at the yard, the late 1970’s/early 1980’s colour pallet, the floor to ceiling mirrors, green shag carpet, relatives coming over for visits, cousins and birthday parties, the eight-track player.
BY Erika Szabo
The first time that I ever saw a Guy Maddin film was only a year ago. A friend, and later love interest, told me about The Saddest Music in the World (2003) and suggested that I watch it. I have always been interested in early cinema, and hearing that Maddin’s films borrow visual and technical styles from the silent film era and early talkies, I was further attracted to his work.
Edited by: Emanuel Raab, Martin Roman Deppner, Roman Bezjak.
Publisher: Kehrer Verlag (2008) language: German. www.kehrerverlag.com
Gibt es die Welt auch ohne mich (Is There a World Without Me) is the catalogue published to accompany the juried exhibition of thesis work from thirteen graduates from the department of Media and Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld, Germany. The exhibition was held at the Kunstverein Bielefeld from October 31 to December 21, 2008. This catalogue presents different viewpoints through the works of these alumni of a heterogeneous concept, where photography acts as a middle ground for emotion, association, sensation, fiction, memory and reflection. The title, Gibt es die Welt auch ohne mich was the guiding theme of this exhibition, and refers to the search for answers in this world of media in which not only the viewers of photography but also photographers themselves seem to disappear in the overwhelming rush of information. This leitmotiv harkens back to the idea of denkraum posed by art historian Aby Warburg, which refers to the emergence of room for thought, for reason and reflection that an increase in distance creates, be it emotional or intellectual. Yet, like Warburg’s understanding of the diverse elements of the individual object, the work of these graduates presents the differing voices that are intrinsic to those practicing this medium, presenting in their turns documentary photography, photojournalism, fashion photography, and conceptual art photography. Each of the photographers presented in this catalogue are exploring through these various modes of photography their world, to find their place within it.
Interestingly, this particular collection of work finds itself in a time where the politics and the requirements of education are in a state of flux. At issue in this flux is the tension between the creative work of the educational institution and the possibilities, or impossibilities, of creative instruction. The outcome in this discourse is that the Applied University is not only a place of instruction, but also of art production and as such functions as a platform for experimentation and a protected place of practice, which gives, and allows for, insight into the future direction of art. The jurors for this exhibition are photography instructors from four different German Universities, two of whom contributed articles to the publication. The articles posit as much variety as the images, presenting information about the exhibit, the institution, the progress of documentary photography in Bielefeld, and an article by Martin Roman Deppner, titled Fotografie als Denkraum which is an examination of the medium of photography, not simply using the medium to reflect or even present the notion of denkraum but being itself the room for thought.
— Sandra Herron
Patrick Schmidt has many talents. He is a graduate student at the University of Saskatchewan in the Civil and Geological Engineering Department; he plays the banjo in the Saskatoon band Slow Down Molasses and he is presented here because of his photographic practice.
Schmidt’s highly saturated photographs of the city, predominantly architecture, are taken on his Kodak Brownie Six-16 camera. His use of multiple exposures and frame overlaps gives his images a dream-like quality. Add this to the feel of the large format film and the fact that Schmidt leaves the film’s sprocket holes exposed and you get images that emote the cozy feeling of nostalgia.
Schmidt tends to focus his lens on older buildings. One series has the Barry Hotel as subject matter. The Barry, as locals knew it, was built in 1913 in the Riversdale area of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Once one of the most prestigious hotels in Saskatoon, the Barry was demolished in December of 2008 because the ninety-five year old building was determined to not be worththe cost of a renovation. The photographs are a composite portrait of a tired building in its last days. An homage to a building that everyone in the city knew as a place with a long history that had fallen on hard times. In his photographs Schmidt never reveals the entire building. He sets up an evocative scenario that allows the viewer to construct the rest of the structure and setting from their memory or imagination.
The idea behind the Nostalgia Issue is the end of film photography, or at least the looming threat of it. Digital photography is quickly overtaking the market leaving artists to hoard their favourite film stock for as long as possible (Winter issue 2009, Dirty Pretty Things). Others are finding new ways to express old ideas. Adad Hannah uses video to take snapshots (p. 18) — a job traditionally held by the film camera.
With the way things are going, it feels like the plug on film photography is going to be pulled very soon. Perhaps a quote from Mark Clintberg’s article about the work of Michel Campeau and Alison Rossiter (p. 36) sums it up best “Nostalgia is born from the impulse to love ghosts.”
As much as we love to reminisce about the past we are also looking to the future. We have just launched our new website (www.blackflash.ca) and with this issue we have created some new features both in the magazine and online. One such feature is a new section called Emerging (p.6), which will showcase promising young artists at the beginning of their careers. Patrick Schmidt is our first artist to be featured in Emerging. We are hopeful that our readers will help us find more undiscovered artists who deserve recognition for their work.
With the intent of opening up a dialogue between our readers and BlackFlash Magazine, we’ve started a letters section. This is the reader’s chance to give us feedback about the work we publish, propose artists we might not know about or just let us know what we can do better. We received our first letter from photographer Carl Warren who lives in White Salmon, Washington (his message is featured below.)
Another dialogue initiative is Blackflash 2.0 (www.blackflash.ca/2). This project asks our readers to help us plan the May 2010 issue by registering at BlackFlash 2.0 and uploading content. The print issue will feature select content from the website. A section on BlackFlash 2.0 that I am particularly excited about is the image blog. We’re asking people to upload their artwork for guaranteed publication in May 2010. How will we do it? You’ll have to pick up the May issue to find out.
Right now is an exciting time at BlackFlash. Let us know what you think.
John Shelling
Managing Editor
