So, I was recently helping a prominent photography curator on a research trip, and one of our stops was the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts in Moscow. As bad luck would have it, their security system crashed that day – first time ever, they claimed – and there was no access at all to the goodie-laden vault. Surprisingly for Russia though, huge chunks of their collection have been digitized. Turns out, they have an entire department soliciting grants and they’ve gotten quite good at it, and a lot of that money is ploughed into future-proofing. Kudos to them! Since we wouldn’t have had another opportunity to visit, we sat down with a technician at least to go through the electronic catalog. And this one of the things we came across:

László Moholy-Nagy's lost photogram

It’s an early photogram by Moholy-Nagy. The Director later told us that, apparently, only three of those from that period had been previously known. (I can’t vouch how accurate that information is, but the number is supposed to be low in any case.) When the institution got hold of the personal archives of Sergei Eisestein, the famed Russian/Soviet film director, they discovered this – allegedly No.4 – in his correspondence, signed. Moholy-Nagy had sent him one as a gift, and no-one, not even the photographer’s daughter knew about its existence. It’s unfortunate we had to make do with an eyestrain-inducing 800-pixel thumbnail instead of the real thing, but I still asked for a printout. Makes you wonder how many other great works of art are waiting to be found…

Just over a week ago I once again had the pleasure of visiting FOAM, Photography Museum Amsterdam. It actually reminds me a lot of The Photographers Gallery new home in Ramillies St., pre-expansion: a small building in the city center, around 4 floors, compact exhibition rooms… The stairs in Amsterdam are much narrower, of course!

I digress…

The main display at FOAM at the moment is Anton Corbijn: inwards and onwards. It’s a fine show as far as portraiture goes with me. I think the best image by a long shot was this one of Lance Armstrong:

Lance Armstrong by Anton Corbijn

It just pulls off the feat of being more than mere likeness, and the image crosses over into surreal territory (a little Wild Palms-esque?). It works even if you don’t know who the person in the frame is. For me, it also calls to mind this amazing portrait by Herb Ritts (Sorry, Mr. Corbijn, I’ll still take this one over yours above!):

Kim Basinger by Herb Ritts

Reading through the intro essay on the wall, I couldn’t help but pick up on a major discrepancy (a habit from my sociology days). On the one hand, the portraits are praised for the “deliberate and exacting way they capture the character”, but on the other, a claim is laid to intimacy that “comes more from Corbijn’s vision than from how well he is acquainted with his subject.”

Erm.

The thing is, you can’t have it both ways. It’s a contradiction in terms that is symptomatic of the widespread confusion about the relationship between photography and understanding. This textual encounter spurred me finally to write down a few thoughts – in a rather compressed manner, I apologize. I’ll be talking quite specifically about portraits, for looking at one we naturally seem to want to understand what that person is like. Add to that the persisting popular notion that photography is somehow inherently truthful, and voila! Sometimes something clicks and the viewer feels that yes, the photographer has succeeded in conveying the true character of the person; s/he knows it now.

In interpretative sociology, to understand is to abandon one’s own presuppositions and categories of thinking and instead to learn to speak the language of the subject, to see with the subject’s eyes. The subject is given a voice. Normally this would be achieved through qualitative interviews etc. and a thorough mapping of the idiom. For portrait photography then, the assertion that character can ever be captured or that the viewer can ever “know” it becomes incredibly tenuous, for in the ménage á trois between the photographer, the subject and the viewer, it is precisely the voice of the model that gets muted.

Some photographers have tried to circumvent this limitation. In Zona Sur – Barrio Piedra Buena (originally Autorretratos), Gian Paolo Minelli employs a participatory visual strategy in letting his subjects choose the location of the shoot, the pose and the moment when the shutter is released. It is a nice power sharing arrangement that opens up some channels for the subject to express his/her identity. Yet one mustn’t forget that the angle, precise composition and pairing with other images (many of the works are diptychs) – all powerful instruments – are still in the hands of the photographer. Where this strategy stumbles is in providing any real insights as to what these visual codes mean to their users.

Chicas, from Zona Sur – Barrio Piedra Buena by Gian Paolo Minelli

Alberto, from Zona Sur – Barrio Piedra Buena by Gian Paolo Minelli

David Goldblatt explores a textual approach in Ex-offenders, a series exhibited at this year’s Venice Biennale as well as at the V&A in London. He takes pictures of felons at the scene of the crime for which they were convicted, and supplements the images with accounts of their lives, time spent in prison and what they have been up to since as narrated by the subjects themselves. It’s a step closer to understanding, a compassionate step, only ultimately Goldblatt does not assume responsibility for interpreting. Instead, the focus here shifts to the possibilities for refraction of the subjects’ stories around the viewer’s prejudice.

Ex-offenders by David Goldblatt

Other photographers’ work can show variations on the text theme, say, when the subjects hold up signs with personal quotes or scribble on the photos directly. Regardless, the question is, at which point do personal tales (most of which tend to be of the harrowing variety) start overshadowing the image? Would the narrative really make any less of an impact if you take the image away altogether? For an example of a photographic project gone illustrated research paper see FT’s review of Taryn Simon at Tate Modern.

What about Corbijn, who doesn’t seem to pursue either strategy? Well, while he doesn’t provide textual references, he barely needs to. Celebrity portraiture is a special case where strong ready-to-consume narratives exist outside the work and intent of the photographer. Sure, thinking of the other examples I used, labels like the “deprived” or “offenders” imply pre-existing narratives too, but these tend to be anonymous whereas the celebrity ones are highly personified, hence the illusion of more immediate knowing and intimacy. Any “successful” “capture” of “character” (that’s a whole lot of quotation marks) arises from these narratives being corroborated in the viewer’s mind by the picture. Some of the images in the show, like the one of Armstrong, are lifted from this dependency by clever composition and visual references reaching beyond celebrity. Others, in my view, seem a little ordinary without the names attached.

None of the above should be construed as an attack on the work of artists mentioned. Most of it I quite like. I just take issue with how it’s commonly explained. Ironically, if understanding is really the goal, photography must retreat from pure image and effectively become something else. Alternatively, accept the indeterminateness. Either option is valid, depending on what kind of artist you fashion yourself as, but both further the erosion of the camera’s veracious authority and autonomy. No offense, but I wince every time I hear a [young] photographer say that s/he shows the world “as it is” or reveals some unalterable truths about it. (Why would one so readily renounce one’s creative agency?) In surprising numbers they don’t seem to be clued in on the complexities. Specifically with regard to portraiture, many will seek out some obscure social group and, purely on instinct, impose on it a detached deadpan aesthetic for its perceived authoritative, unbiased qualities. They will write in their essays that the work not only sheds light on the hitherto under-the-radar lives, hardships, eccentricities, etc. but also helps understand these fringe communities and their values, completely oblivious to the fact that the deadpan evolved from exercises in positivist typology. In last year’s Talent Issue of FOAM Magazine, the editors [sort of] commented on the glut of such submissions.

Perhaps it’s an indication of the persisting discomfort many practitioners feel with photography’s position between visual transcription as it were and creation. While I fully embrace photography as an art form, and precisely because of this, I will be the first one to say that it doesn’t, cannot possibly, and should not equate understanding. There exists a trade-off between that and visuality. A photographic portrait is a rather messy open-ended three-way inquiry, not the definitive answer (something Cindy Sherman only knows too well). And this just happens to be its greatest asset. If you like figure in photography to begin with.

(Song Dongas)

After an entire day in Giardini, Arsenale was next on the program. (Biennale tickets are valid on two consecutive days but you can only enter either section once.) It was off to a funny start. I was trying to locate Martin Creed’s piece, which, according to the map, was installed right by the main entrance. Having yo-yoed around the supposed spot a few times, I still couldn’t find it and turned to staff for help. I was then told that the artist decided to keep the installation off during visitor hours and on at night, so you never really get to see it. How very ILLUMInating indeed…

Once I got inside the vast building, I felt right at home. Arsenale isn’t that dissimilar to Atelier de mècanique of Rencontres d’Arles. The second part of the main project opens with another para-pavilion; an elaborate construction by Song Dongas serves as the centerpiece. His recreation of his parental home in China dominates the space and makes surrounding works look like supporting acts. They are far from, however, and my favorite in the room was actually one of these ‘satellite pieces’, Yto Barrada’s Hand-me-downs, an hilariously incredible fictional narrative of her family history.

Overall, it seemed that here at least, as opposed to the main pavilion in Giardini, works were better able to speak to and feed off each other. The quality of this interaction was still uneven: while Urs Fischer’s gigantic waxworks/candles provided a fittingly decadent, if easy, interlude following a  restrained photography-centric display, Anya Titova’s timid color-panel sculpture looked flat leading up to Christian Marclay’s The Clock. Regardless, even if the experience fell short of revelatory, there was a certain flow to it and the space felt ‘inhabited’. The last room, taken over by Monica Bonvicini was a great way to conclude the show.

Then, past the second helping of national pavilions, there is the sculpture garden and a few video pieces showing in previously disused vaults. The indisputable highlight is Sturtevant’s Elastic Tango, a multiscreen medley of internet-sourced footage. Another featured video (forgot the artist, will try to look up), with two Lego-like figurines talking dirty to each other and having sex, seemed to have borrowed heavily from Rick & Steve, minus the funny parts – an interesting example of how pop culture is sometimes ahead of ‘high’ art.

By the way, this was the third time I saw The Clock and James Turrell’s The Ganzfeld Piece, each time in a different city: London, Moscow, and now Venice!

More pictures after the jump // published using my webOS TouchPad

(Song Dongas, Ryan Gander)

(Urs Fischer)

(Monica Bonvicini)

I will own up straight away to this having been my first trip ever to the Venice Biennale. There isn’t really a good excuse for having missed out on all the previous ones, but at the time of its previous edition I was still focused quite specifically on photography career-wise. Arles seemed like a more rational and accessible choice, with a portfolio review thrown in – no such thing in Venice!

I’ll haste through the part where one waxes lyrical about the backdrop that Venice provides for displaying contemporary art. Yes, it’s really cool; amplifying at times, contradictory and distracting at other. But whatever you think of the setting, one thing is indisputable: there is A LOT of art. So much that it makes one wonder how the hell they crammed it all on a few crumbling manmade islands.

ILLUMInations is the theme of the main project this time, curated by a Swiss Bice Curiger, of Kunsthalle Zurich. So, supposedly, light as a revealing, transformative, unifying and creative force guided the selection of works for the international showcase. I say ‘supposedly’ because, this being my first close encounter, I’m not sure how radical an influence a theme exerts from edition to edition. After all, as art can be said to shed new light on, well, whatever you please, the remit here seems rather wide. At any rate, there are indeed plenty of things flashing, projection, reflection, optical illusion, translucent color panels etc.

There were two surprise moves this year. One, some artists were invited to create para-pavilions – in essence, their own curated mini-salons embedded in the project. Two, the main exhibition opened with three large canvasses by Tintoretto (1518-1594), a classical master and a “painter of light” as he is also characterized (he was one of the first painters to use a dark ground). The statement says, “Far from seeking to trace superficial formal analogies between Tintoretto and art of the present, it concerns a form of pictorial energy that is altogether ‘anti-classical’ but is also the kind fuelled by the friction that results from letting a reckless Old Master become involved in a contemporary context.’ Ironically, but for obvious reasons of preservation, this is also the darkest room not showing video in the entire pavilion.

Technically, before you are ‘initiated’ by Tintoretto, you walk through a grove of bare flagpoles by Latifa Echakhch, then dive into the pavilion right through the middle of giant blue scribbles by Josh Smith overlooked by a handsome batch of Maurizio Cattelan’s pigeons (Turisti), and pass under a miniature version of Philip Parreno’s Marquee. The last one is way smaller than it should be in all honesty and, considering its role is to point to the irony of the spectacle ahead, ends up being a mockery of itself instead.

An unhurried stroll through the central pavilion in Giardini did not, alas, bring to light any new perspectives, even to my unjaded freshman eye. For the most part, the project felt like a nicely done survey of the contemporary art scene, one artist per room, with minimal interventions few and far between, like Ryan Gander’s 25-Euro coin stuck to the floor. It showed but didn’t challenge, and instead of interacting and expanding on each other, be it through juxtaposition or sequence, works were too often thrown into solitary confinement. You can’t just stipple stuffed pigeons all the time!

A direly needed interjection came in the form of Monika Sosnowska’s para-pavilion. Both bright-lit and claustrophobic, it actually added up to an environment in which the sounds emitted by Haroon Mizra’s flickering installation and David Goldblatt’s bleak photo-stories of South African ex-offenders fed off each other for a somewhat eerie effect. (Goldblatt was only recently on show at the V&A in London).

The Arsenale came some way in alleviating the shortcomings of the first half, but I’ll talk about it later. First batch of pictures after the jump.

Cindy Sherman

Monika Sosnowski's para-pavilion

Sigmar Polke and Maurizio Cattelan

Ryan Gander

Christopher Wool

Lots and lost of things I want to share. Let’s open with…

A QUICK SUMMARY OF MY IMPRESSIONS OF THE MAIN PROJECT

• ILLUMInations: the Arsenale display felt more coherent than the one in Giardini
• Main pavilions I personally enjoyed most: (in no particular order) Austria, Uruguay, Greece, Japan, Canada, Italy, Saudi Arabia / Argentina / India / Chile, Latin America, Denmark
• Pavilion I’d like for my house: Nordic (Sweden)
• Biggest annoyances: no schedule of US performances available at the ticket office (they only take place twice a day 3 days a week); can’t leave and re-enter the Biennale grounds – come on, other fairs manage somehow!
• Oops!: “Due to the dimensions and the complexity of my work ‘Crystal of Resistance’, the work is momentarily not visible under satisfying conditions.” – notice by Thomas Hirschhorn, Swiss pavilion
• Miscellaneous: Quite possibly best value coffee+cake in town!

The resuscitation of my WordPress is the final step in setting up my mini social network empire. I’m just trying to get a little savvier with the dizzying array of platforms available these days so you can pick your favorite way of following me.

The options are:

Facebook (www.facebook.com/pages/Nikolai-Ishchuk/235482503138862)
I’ve made an artist’s page that you can ‘like’. It will also be the home of most Russian-language content.

Twitter @Nikolai_Ishchuk (twitter.com/#!/Nikolai_Ishchuk)
Minutiae and links to my other resources. Mainly in English but sometimes in Russian too.

Tumblr – trim version (nikolaiishchuk.tumblr.com)
A tumblog for updates relating to my own art and activities

Tumblr – extended version (therealimage.tumblr.com)
Same as the trim one, plus general arts and culture updates from wherever the hell I happen to be at the moment

WordPress (i.e. here)
A blog for longer art-related musings, opinions, reflections, and maybe an occasional sociopolitical rant

and let’s not forget my portfolio Website! (www.therealimage.eu)

It will probably take me a while to settle into a coherent pattern of distributing, syndicating and linking information between all of these, but I’ll get there. So bear with me, and hopefully it will start paying off soon

The first one, The Night before the Attack, by a Russian artist Alexander Brodsky, is an enormous dark vault with miniature translucent tents scattered throughout. They house humanoid figures squatting around little fake fires made of lights, fans, and ribbons. The visitors are left to roam the space freely; the only audible disturbance apart from their footsteps is the subdued humming of the fans. Some archways are tiled, throwing back colored specular highlights evocative of a starry sky (most likely an inadvertent enhancement). In a word, immersive.

Though the description states that “[w]hat we see is a military camp”, it is hard not to approach the work from the other end: a community bracing itself for potential destruction — be it military, cataclysmic, supernatural, or metaphorical — yet staying put in the face of this invisible but impending danger. It brings up themes of social cohesion and resistance, fatalism and faith, and serves as a stark exposé of how our discourses of togetherness, on all levels, are shaped by the idiom of war, conflict, siege and threat. In the fanciful purple light of the installation, we are made to feel precisely as we should, seduced and uneasy. And none the less alone.

Alexander Brodsky. "The Night before the Attack". Courtesy M&J Guelman Gallery (Moscow)

Slave City. Cradle to Cradle by Atelier Van Lieshout has been ongoing since 2005. In this case, it is a two-floor exploration of the city of the future that is highly complex (hey, it’s even got brothels!) and completely self-sufficient — it only consumes what it produces, including energy etc., and even people’s bodies are recycled as a resource at the end of their lives. The top floor is dedicated to the more formal aspects of the city’s organization (urban planning, energy grids, architecture, interiors…) , whereas the basement hosts something akin to a torture chamber, i.e. the human recycling plant.

According to the official exhibition guide,  ”[the] workforce is comprised of slaves, slaves who are only exploited to accomplish more or less sophisticated chores”. What results is a “‘perfect’ urban machine” that “[discards] today’s notions of good and evil” and is “a perversion of a modern achievement-oriented society”, a “dystopia”.

I for one don’t think it perverts or discards anything. But it does show how values are realigned when the ethos of rationalism and the ethics of sustainability are conflated. As disturbing as some viewers would have found the lower floor, and perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, the project takes on distinctly Gaian and hence actually utopian overtones. One question of paramount importance, the answer to which constantly eludes us is, are these people happy? Spotting “slaves” in the title and looking at the disfigured human remains, we are instinctively inclined to think that they couldn’t possibly be. However, though this project is supposedly futuristic, it is presented as a quasi archeological site and should be read as such. We can typify the structures and artifacts all we want, yet a complete understanding of this society and its raison d’etre isn’t ever going to be fully accessible. But it sure helps to let go of whatever assumptions we might have about our own.

Atelier van Lieshout. "Slave City. Cradle to Cradle". Courtesy Atelier van Lieshout / Winzavod (Moscow)

here (hostgalleryblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/blog-post_14.html)

I’m always grateful for any publicity, and they’re a nice gallery too!

A lot has been happening, not least my trips to portfolio reviews in Arles and Birmingham, which went surprisingly well (I excel at self-doubt). On top of that, I’ve been toiling on a new series, developing ideas for two or three more, and dealing with some personal issues. While I’m in this triple-C (conceptual-creative-contemplative) phase and getting my thoughts together, here are a couple autumnal pictures (shot on my LX3) from the rather weird town of Blackpool. Brood with me.

Some cropped and slightly tonally adjusted in Adobe software. The color is mostly off, but what are you gonna do!

Bayswater, London

Battersea, London

Battersea, London

On the plane back to London from somewhere

St. Malo, France

St. Malo, France

St. Malo, France

St. Malo, France

Rome

Rome

Clouds over Brixton, London

Zermatt, Switzerland

on the way to Geneva