On the bright side, there’s also an online version with 10 different people selecting. Of course, looking at books online isn’t quite the same, but it’s an interesting exercise to see what people end up picking. It also got me thinking about what books I would choose given the same assignment. After a quick look through my rather meager library I found that coming up with 10 Japanese photobooks was harder than I thought. The first rule I had to do away with was not repeating books on other people’s lists. Even then, if I don’t include different books by the same photographer then getting to 10 means including some weaker books. I also didn’t limit myself solely to books published in Japan, but rather works by Japanese photographers. So without further ado, here are my 5 Japanese photobooks.

For me, any discussion of Japanese photobooks has to Solitude of Ravens (烏)  by Masahisa Fukase. There are several different versions of this book including the beautiful 2008 Rat Hole Gallery edition. I have the 1991 Bedford Arts edition which isn’t anything special when considering the book as an art object, but the body of work is incredibly powerful and will stick with you long after you have closed the book.

Next I’d choose Rinko Kawauchi’s Utatane (うたたね). Since I’m only including one book from each photographer, it came down to a choice between Utatane and Illuminance. Illuminance is a more beautiful physical object, but Utatane was my introduction to Kawauchi so it gets the sentimental edge. Really you can’t go wrong with any of her work. Each book is a Master’s class in sequencing.

Book three is Takuno by Daido Moriyama. Moriyama is probably best known for his grainy gritty urban shots that often appear in books full bleed. Takuno, conversely, is a journey through a more rural area and has only one image per spread with generous amounts of white around each image. It also reminds me of an area of Japan where I used to live.

Continuing with the generous negative space theme, my next choice is é by Masao Yamamoto. Here is a case, unlike Solitude of Ravens, where the book’s appeal comes more from the book as an art object than the photography alone. If these images were printed in a different way I don’t think I’d feel the same way about them, but this is where the book as an object rather than just a container really works.

My final choice is hi mi tsu ki chi by Daisuke Nishimiya. A delightful book about the physical spaces in which children create imaginary worlds. The book includes tiny hand drawn maps of the areas as well.

After a day listening to people talk about photography and making photobooks, I’m convinced I should be taking photographs and making books. If for no other reason than to document things I’m seeing or thinking about. I love photography, books and photography books so why shouldn’t I make one? Even if the book sucks, it’s so easy to physically make a book these days that there really isn’t a compelling reason not to make one.

That was the overwhelming feeling I had after spending the day at Carte Blanche on Valencia yesterday. CB  owner Gwen Lafage hosted an event built around a show of photobooks from the Indie Photobook Library curated by iPL founder Larissa Leclair and Dairius Himes, Assistant Director, Fraenkel Gallery and Co-Founder, Radius Books. The day began with a Photobook Meetup where a number of people whose work was in the show or had produced books talked about the book making process. Their was a wide range of experience from Noah Beil (Gone Quickly) who produces his own books (printing the photos, hand setting and printing the type, and sewing his own binding) to Lydia Panas, who had her book The Mark of Abel published by Kehrer Verlag. Whatever the experience, there seemed to be agreement that producing a photobook was never going to make you rich, but that it was important to the process of making and thinking about images, and a useful tool that opened up other opportunities.

The afternoon consisted of three panels discussions, The Art of the Artists Book, Publishing a Photobook, and Documentary Photographic Styles in the Early 21st Century.

Books are Containers of Thinking
Kicking off the first panel Lauren Henkin talked about her various book projects and how she really saw them as a chance to collaborate with other artists, be they binders, printers, or poets. John DeMerritt talked about bookbinding and how, though much of his work is still based on 18th and 19th century craft, he’s incorporating things like laser matte cutting as well. I was happy to see that he had worked with Bay Area artist Nigel Poor on a case for her Washed Books project. Though he didn’t say it in so many words, I got the impression that he subscribed to the bookbinding equivalent of the Crystal Goblet theory, that the binding should only be a vessel for the content or ideas of the artist. The final speaker, Michael Light talked a bit about some of his trade books, but the show stopper was a giant thirty-six inch tall book of aerial shots, GREAT RIFT/SNAKE RIVER/SHOSHONE FALLS, in a beautiful case built by DeMerritt (seen above). It was Light who crystallized the theme of the session by calling books “containers of thinking.”

The Period at the End of the Sentence
All three of the panelists for the second panel, focusing on DIY and small press publishing, talked about how they ended up making books almost by accident. Patrick Aguilar talked about starting up Owl and Tiger Books right out of school producing books for people he knew. John Steck, Jr., of Make Book Blog, took a class on photobooks where they just talked about books and had to figure out for themselves how to actually make a book for the final project, and Daniel Milnor (Smogranch), Blurb Photographer at Large, started out making books as promotional pieces for his photography and found that it fed his need to document.  Though they are both working with the book as a form, Steck and Milnor differ in how they use it. Milnor doesn’t claim to be a book designer. He uses the book-making process as a way to work through ideas, making a book for every idea that comes to him. Steck sees the book as the “period at the end of the sentence.” The idea given final form as an almost sculptural object. However they use the book, each speaker from this panel has produced at least one book that is in the Indie Photobook Library and it’s great to see how a community, that was really made possible by the Internet, can move beyond the virtual and result in a bunch of people sitting in the same room looking at and talking about books.

“Photography is a profound corner that sits in between literature and film”
The final panel of the day, ostensibly titled Documentary Photographic Styles in the Early 21st Century, included Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin’s ethnographic work in Romania from The Color of Hay, Eric W. Carroll’s giant diazo prints of a walk in the woods (Blue Line of Woods), and Todd Hido’s fictional narratives created from real parts for a book that will come out Spring 2013. As you can tell, the term “documentary” was applied fairly loosely, though I tend to agree with Carroll’s point of view that all photography is a document of some kind in that it is a record of the interaction of light with some chemical or electrical process. The “profound corner” quote, sited by Hido and attributed to Lewis Baltz, came towards the end of the panel. It was a fitting closing thought because human beings are hard wired to create stories and anytime you have a group of images arranged in a sequence (as in a book) the mind is going to start creating narratives.

On the whole, a great event on photobooks and a reminder of how strong both photography and the book arts are in the Bay Area. Something I should take advantage of more often.

1. Theme or No Theme
If you’re going to have a theme, the presenters should address the theme. Quite frankly, I forgot that there was a theme until Neville Brody mentioned it in passing in the second to last talk.

2. To the Speakers: Thinner Decks, More Depth
You’re speaking to a specialized audience. One that’s interested in the process, what you were thinking about, what went right, what went wrong, rather than just the final outcome. Wouldn’t it be better to pick a couple of projects (maybe ones that relate to the theme) and speak about them in depth rather than trying to run through a larger group of projects in a cursory way?

3. Debate and Dissent
Try breaking the single speaker model more often with panels or conversations between an interviewer and a speaker to get beyond the usual show and tell dynamic. It doesn’t have to be antagonistic, but what about having a panel where various people come at a subject from different perspectives?

4. Interaction
A lot of lip service was given to the importance of the interaction that takes place at these conferences. Is there a way to make this a more integral part of the program rather than leaving it to the 15 minutes (provided the speaker hasn’t run over and you don’t have to get in line for the next talk) between talks? Do you have breakout groups to discuss a topic after a presentation is given? What about just allowing for questions from the audience at the end of the talk? You can even pre-screen the questions by either having the submitted ahead of time or even during the speech via Twitter hash tag. That way the tweets have more function than just an echo chamber of adoration.

5. Have Mike Monteiro Close Every Conference
As I mentioned before the conference was inspirational, but Monteiro’s talk was a great reminder that it’s about more than just having great ideas or even doing great work. It’s about how we live, work, play, and act in the 363 days that we’re not at a design conference surrounded by people who speak the same language that we do.

So, in the end, it was a good experience which has the chance to be a great one. Whether or not the suggestions above will help I don’t know, but I hope that Typo San Francisco will be back next year and that I’ll see you all there.

Of all the films I saw last year the one that had the most lasting impact on me was Bela Tarr’s Turin Horse. I’m not saying that it was the film that I most enjoyed, but it’s definitely the one that has stuck with me the longest. The visuals are so powerful and so bleak that they still come to mind months later. Thatcher Hullerman Cook’s Black Apple strikes me as being a visual relative of that film. Granted the setting is different and the cast of characters is larger in Black Apple, but I feel like there is the same sense of struggle in an inhospitable landscape.

In a relatively brief 33 black and white plates Black Apple shows Kyrgyzstan as a place where lives are lived in a way that can only be described as hardscrabble. Landscapes are vast, empty, often ruined places where people are mostly tiny and alone. Interiors, though much closer and more crowded, lack warmth causing people to frequently huddled together. And everywhere there is coal and snow. It’s a landscaped leeched of color. In addition to striking individual images I think the sequencing and use of white space is quite strong.

I also like the notes at the end of the book where Cook writes a few sentences, sometimes terse, sometimes poetic, about various images. For one image he writes, “After the fresh fallen snow, the sticky mud would cling to feet and hooves. After a deep freeze the ground became slippery, making travel, even for the familiar, seem alien. The village boys were left to negotiate this battle between mud and mule.” It’s this struggle and the poetry with which Cook captures it that will keep these images stuck in my brain like a mule in the mud.

To see all the images from Black Apple click here.

I got my copy at Carte Blanche a new gallery/bookstore in San Francisco whose aim is to make experiencing and buying photography more accessible. Check them out.

Finally, if you’ve gotten this far, I’ve started tweeting this year. Follow my shorter more frequent randomness @mpsilva

End of Animal, by South Korean director Jo Sung-hee, made it’s U.S. premier at the San Francisco International Film festival and it was the third film I saw that day. The first two (which shall remain unnamed) where underwhelming, so I headed into the theater with a bit of hesitation. The festival mini-guide described End of Animal as follows;

A pregnant teenager finds herself in a taxi with a passenger who counts down to cataclysm. Cinematic clues that you’re in one movie genre will steer you wrong time and again, as this entrancing and deeply unsettling debut unwinds its small, personal tale of apocalypse with menace and dark humor.

Sometimes I come out of a film wondering if the person writing the description actually saw the film, but in this case, the description is spot on. End of Animal is yet another example that you don’t need a lot of effects to make an engrossing film. I will temper that by saying if you like a movie to answer questions, this probably isn’t the film for you. If, on the other hand, you like films with intriguing characters where you have no idea what’s going to happen next, try End of Animal.

I like paper. How much? Let’s put it this way, I just bought a book made up almost entirely of photographs of envelopes. It’s not even as if there is a wide variety of envelopes, they generally are all standard Japanese style envelopes. The difference is that each envelope is hand made from a variety of paper. Grandfather’s Envelopes is a sampling of the work of Kouzaki Hiromu’s twilight years. From the age of eighty to ninety-five this retired master builder made envelopes for no other purpose than to pass the time and practice a craft. Both the book and the envelopes within are beautiful in their simplicity.

BIOSOPHIA of BIRDS, the larger of the two volumes 168 A4 (28 x 20.4 cm) pages, contains specimens of birds in various stages of unpacking. Some of the birds are on stands as if ready to be displayed, but most look like they have just been taken from storage, some bound and tagged, some still in their boxes. All are photographed on the same black background.

BIOSOPHIA of BIRDS

spreads from BIOSOPHIA of BIRDS

ONE HUNDRED STONEWARES, closer to square in format (24.2 x 23.4 cm) and a bit thicker at 186 pages, is a collection of stone tools photographed in a similar manner.

ONE HUNDRED STONEWARES

spreads from ONE HUNDRED STONEWARES

Both books were published in 2008 and in trying to find out more about them I came across what seems to be the first in the series, CHAMBER of CURIOSITIES, published two years earlier. Sadly I haven’t seen this one in person because it looks the most interesting. Rather than a typology of a single subject (birds or stone tools) it’s a collection of oddities from bones to butterflies.

CHAMBER of CURIOSITIES

Ueda Yoshihiko from CHAMBER of CURIOSITIES

The books I saw at Dashwood are beautifully produced and priced to match, but if you’re fond of museum collections or typologies they’re worth taking a look at given the chance. Also, to see more images from Ueda Yoshihiko’s other work, go here and here (text in Japanese).

Mother with Babies, Fort Polk, Louisiana from Theater of War
© Christopher Sims

The first, Theater of War by 2010 Baum Award Winner Christopher Sims, is a combination of portraiture and environmental images that shows us an aspect of soldiers preparation before deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Sims shows us a glimpse of the fake villages the military creates and populates with “actors” to provide a stage upon which various scenarios are acted out. Despite the fact that, as Sims’ artist statement sates, “The designers and inhabitants of these worlds take great pride in the scope and fidelity of their wars-in-miniature,” the absurdity of a woman sitting in a folding chair spinning wool next to a RPG only makes me think there is no way to properly prepare soldiers for what they will encounter. It also highlights the near impossible task regular armed forces face when they’re up against irregular forces, especially in a populated area. Even if you take the military aspect out of it the images are representation of a simulation. They are one person’s edited view of an interpretation of a foreign place and people which calls into question, more so than usual, the veracity of photography.

Captain Elizabeth A. Condon, New York Army National Guard, veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, with daughter, Kate, and mother, Elizabeth, Troy, NY, June 2008 from Soldiers’ Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan
© Jennifer Karady

In contrast to the careful preparation prior to deployment, the second body of work shows us the aftermath of deployment, the psychological damage, and the sometimes faulty support system that soldiers face on their return to the US. Jennifer Karady‘s Soldiers’ Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan show soldiers reenacting  traumatic situations from their deployment, but in their home setting, often with friends or family members in the scene as well. Though perhaps not as intricately staged as Gregory Crewdson’s work, I feel that Karady’s work is more immediate. By that I mean that though both artists construct staged narratives replete with psychological drama, I think of Crewdson’s work as being more removed and clinical, lacking the emotional weight of Karady’s work. A lot of that may have to do with being able to read the soldiers’ recounted descriptions of what they were feeling or the situations they were reenacting. Yet even before I read the accounts, I looked at the images and wanted to learn more about the people pictured. Not something I often feel with Crewdson’s work.

from Twilight
© Gregory Crewdson

All in all, a really smart paring of two thought provoking bodies of work. Both are up through the first week in August, so if you’re in San Francisco this summer, check out the show.

Overall, I was a good experience, while I didn’t see any films that just blew me away, I saw a lot of good films. I’ve listed them below in levels of “good” and a brief comment. Within each level of good I’ve listed them in descending goodness. Of course, all of this is subjective and it’s hard to compare films that are trying to do different things. I could probably come up with a dozen different lists based on different criteria.

VERY GOOD

Breathless (South Korea)
The cycle of brutality is vividly realized in the debut feature of writer, director, producer and star Yang Ik-june. Though not as extreme, fans of Chan-wook Park’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy should enjoy this nuanced portrayal of the life of a small time thug and those left in his wake.

Air Doll (Japan)
Director Hirokazu Kore-eda (After Life, Nobody Knows) puts a intricately intertwined spin on the sexual surrogate love story by bringing an air doll to life and having her afflicted with the human condition. How do people deal with loneliness, find a connection with another human being, or try to find another way to fill the void?

Mother (South Korea) Oscar Submission
How far will a mother go when her son is accused of murder? Pretty far according to Bong Joon-Ho in his feature follow up to the pleasing b-monster-movie fun of The Host. A fabulous performance by Kim Hye-ja in the title role.

The White Ribbon (Germany) Oscar Submission
Small town life is never as idyllic as it seems. While director Michael Haneke’s film is in black and white, the topics it’s dealing with aren’t as finely delineated. Set in an agrarian community in the run up to WWI Haneke is asking questions about what conditions prepare the ground for post-war Fascism. Just don’t expect any answers.

QUITE GOOD

Letters to Father Jacob (Finland) Oscar Submission
Using a limited number of locations and actors, director Klaus Härö tells the story of an ex-con working for a blind priest with quiet assurance. The two main actors give great performances.

Sergio (USA) Oscar Feature Documentary Short List
The heart breaking story of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the head of the UN mission in Iraq, who died in a bombing of the UN headquarters. The film cuts back and forth between the rescue attempt and Sergio’s life, but is a bit too one-sided in lionizing its subject to be a truly great film. It touches on the fact that he was a bit of a womanizer and mentions his first wife and children, but doesn’t get their perspective on him.

I Killed My Mother (Canada) Oscar Submission
A bit self involved, but what else would you expect from a film written, directed and starring a teenager? In fact, only a teenager could have made this film and had it feel as real as it does. Based on his own explosive relationship with his mother Xavier Dolan and Anne Dorval, who plays his mother, battle it out with gusto. It’ll be interesting to see what his next project is.

A Bad Day to Go Fishing (Uruguay) Oscar Submission
A delightful tale of two men clinging to the margins that has the feeling of a fable. A former world champion wrestler and man claiming to be European royalty land in a small town and set about to make some money putting on an exhibition bout against local talent. Things don’t go as planned. Beautifully shot by Álvaro Gutiérrez.

Reykjavik-Rotterdam (Iceland) Oscar Submission
Sometimes it’s nice just to watch a good caper movie. An ex-con looks to do one last smuggling job to help his wife’s brother and to improve his own family’s circumstances.

Kelin (Kazakhstan) Oscar Submission
A foreign movie where I didn’t have to read any subtitles because there was no dialogue. Even without dialogue, this simple story of the life of a young bride on the steppe in the second century CE is easy to follow. As you would expect from a film without words (but not sound), the visuals are quite good and winter in the steppe looks daunting.

GOOD

Terribly Happy (Denmark) Oscar Submission
One of the themes of the festival (other than “don’t mess with mom”) was “bad things happen in small towns.” In this film a city cop gets reassigned to a town in the boondocks and has to deal with things hidden there and within himself.

Max Manus (Norway) Oscar Submission
A fairly standard, but well crafted war movie centered on the efforts of the Norwegian resistance during WWII and particularly, Max Manus.

Merantau (Indonesia)
This movie may be a bit high on the list for its actual quality, but I saw it near the end of the festival when it was nice to take a break from all the serious films to see a genre film. The focus of this particular genre film was the Indonesian martial art silat with some solid fight scenes.

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (USA) Oscar Feature Documentary Short List
Well-crafted and interesting, especially in comparison to the run up to the war in Iraq.

Milk of Sorrow (Peru) Oscar Submission
With a touch of magical realism, director Claudia Llosa tells the personal story of Fausta as she tries to keep herself from being taken advantage of and the larger story of a generation of children of women raped in the turbulent 1970s.

Backyard (Mexico) Oscar Submission
A fairly standard police procedural enhanced by being set in Juarez, Mexico and focusing on a female detective investigating violence against women. Throw in corrupt government and uncaring multinational corporations to round out the mix.

Samson & Delilah (Australia) Oscar Submission
The monotony of life in central Australia runs off the rails for two Aboriginal teens. Played by non-actors with minimal dialogue this “love story” was beautifully shot, but I couldn’t help but wonder why the female lead stuck with Samson. He was a mess.

Garbage Dreams (USA) Oscar Feature Documentary Short List
The story of three young men growing up in the Coptic Christian community in Egypt that makes a living from collecting trash. As engaging as some of the subjects of this film were I just wished it could have been better somehow.

NOT QUITE GOOD

Reverse (Poland) Oscar Submission
Well-acted story set in Warsaw of the 1950s and present. A grandmother, mother, and daughter struggle to find a husband for the daughter. Ultimately unsatisfying.

For a Moment, Freedom (Austria) Oscar Submission
You would think that the story of Iranian families escaping to Turkey and dealing with the unexpected conditions there would be a compelling story, but it seemed like the film maker tried to cram too much into this movie.

Nobody to Watch Over Me (Japan) Oscar Submission
Felt like a series of tv dramas strung together. The premise was intriguing, just overly melodramatic and not very well executed.

Only When I Dance (UK/Brazil)
Great subjects. Uninspired film-making.

Baaria (Italy) Oscar Submission
I expected more from the director of Cinema Paradiso, but the best I can say about this film was that it was a visually appealing mess. And at 150 minutes, way too long.

NOT GOOD

The World is Big and Salvation Lies Around the Corner (Bulgaria) Oscar Submission
For me this was the biggest disappointment of the festival. There was a lot of buzz about it and it ended up as one of the “best of the fest”, but I found it completely predictable and uninteresting. There wasn’t anything special about the cinematography either. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I seem to be in the minority thought as it ended up making the short list of nine films for the Oscars.

Dawson, Island 10 (Chile) Oscar Submission
This film seemed to be stuck between the narrative and the poetic and failed at both which is too bad because the story of deposed Allende government officials being sent to a concentration camp on an island in Southern Chile is a story I want to know more about.

Grandfather is Dead (Philippines) Oscar Submission
I’m thinking this one was culture specific. A broad comedy that the Philippino audience members seemed to enjoy. I couldn’t get past the poor production values and on screen histrionics.

In 1986 the photographer Didier Lefèvre went into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan for the first time while covering a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) mission. Of the four thousand frames he exposed only six images were initially published. Thirteen years later his friend Emmanuel Guibert suggested they collaborate on publishing the story of Lefèvre’s journey and, with the help of Frédéric Lemercier, Le Photographe was published in France in three volumes between 2003 and 2006. In 2009 the English version, The Photographer, was published in one large volume by First Second.

The Photographer, p. 74

Being based on actual events I don’t know if you would call it a graphic novel, but the illustration drives the bulk of the narrative with Lefèvre’s photographs working as accents. It’s similar to, though not quite as powerful as, the film Waltz with Bashir and its shift from animation to photographic images. In the film’s case, the change takes place at the end to maximize impact while in The Photographer Lefèvre’s images are sprinkled throughout allowing the viewer places to rest and contemplate. I also enjoyed how, in many places, we’re given the equivalent of a contact sheet where we can see a sequence of shots and the one that has been selected (or discarded). Seeing the contact sheets sometimes gives you a better idea of what the photographer is looking for. Another example that comes to mind is the Diane Arbus shot of the boy with the toy hand grenade in Central Park. Looking at the contact sheet the boy looks fairly normal in most of the shots, but the in the image she chose the boy looks mentally unbalanced. I don’t pretend to know why Arbus chose that particular shot, but, for me, seeing the shots she didn’t choose make that image all the more interesting.

Diane Arbus contact sheet

To be perfectly honest, I doubt I’d like The Photographer as much if it were just Lefèvre’s photographs. There is something about the combination of photos and illustration, and even the size and heft of the book (11.7 by 9.4 in., an inch thick, and over 2 lbs.), that makes it appealing. Though the line work is heavier and looser, the drawing style strikes me as Tintinesque. There’s a similar use of color and sense of adventure. Add to this Afghanistan being in the news a lot lately and I found myself devouring it in large chunks.

Finally, the use of the black and white reportage reminded me of something from Salman Rushdie’s novel Fury. He (or his character) found it curious that black and white photography, “the most unreal of processes,” now stood for “realism, integrity and art”. That may have been true when Rushdie originally wrote those words, or when Lefèvre shot the photos, but I wonder if today the ubiquity of color photography hasn’t left black and white photography seeming dated or, at the very least, self-consciously arty.

On a lighter note, Alec Soth’s slideshow of a trip to Las Vegas for his 40th birthday is another example of the flexibility of story telling media. People are more willing to experiment with ways of telling a story. In this case Soth, normally a still photographer, is experimenting with an A/V presentation.

One of the great things about Soth’s slideshow (other than the actual images) is how self-contained and almost circular the narrative is. It begins with him wanting to buy a limited edition of Bukowski poetry. He can’t afford the book, so being in Vegas, he tries gambling to raise the money. You can probably guess how that turns out. But don’t despair, he turns the experience into a piece of art that references both Vegas and a bit of poetry from the unattainable volume which he then sells for the price of said volume. Genius.