Wisconsin on my mind

War Photography in Libya

Tyler Hicks, Moises Saman, and the crew over at the NY Times are doing some incredible work in Libya that is both sad and extremely powerful. Check out this slide show here. I wish things were going better for the opposition...

(c)Tyler Hicks/NY Times

Fotografins Hus (House of Photography)

If you happen to be in Stockholm the next few weeks please come check out my show at the House of Photography.
It is running from this Thursday, March 10 - April 23. The show is a selection of portraits from Figure and Ground, Bus Travelers, Fall River Boys, and 49 & 50.

Schoolhouse Editions

Check out new prints by Vincent Cianni, Elinor Carucci, and Benjamin Lowy in Charles Lane Press' print program Schoolhouse Editions.

Homeland

Somehow I missed, and just now discovered the series Homeland by Larry Sultan featured in his new book Katherine Avenue. This work is really incredible and it is a shame that Larry Sultan passed away still quite young and in the midst of this important body of work. Sultan hired Mexican and Central American day laborers looking for work to be actors in this series of landscapes made in Southern California. Straddling the line between documentary and fiction these images feel wholeheartedly sincere to me. Looking both inward to Sultan's own childhood and outward towards the pressing social issue of immigration Homeland is a rare example of successful "staged photography".

on photography

Karlheinz Weinberger

Two for the price of Free!
There are two exhibitions currently up of Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger's biker portraits. If you do not know this work already, it's a pretty incredible document of a very creative and inspired group of Swiss youth strongly influenced by American culture in the late 1950's & 1960's. The exhibitions are showing at the Anna Kustera Gallery and the Swiss Institute here in NYC.

Sampling

of some of my new work from Indonesia...

Shooting Back

While recently traveling through Indonesia, I encountered on more than one occasion, people that were as interested in photographing me as I was them. This was rather new for me - and I found the interest in me from the Indonesian people rather curios and hard to explain. It also wasn't only me they were interested in photographing - Seth took on an even greater aura of "celebrity." If anyone has any thoughts or explanations I'd be interested in hearing them posted here...

Bringing it All Back Home

Book Signings for both Outerland and Fall River Boys this Thursday at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts - Photography & Imaging Dept.
721 Broadway, 8th Floor
6 PM - 8 PM
Room 844

Detroitism

Conscientious recently posted a link to a great article about "Ruin Porn". Published by Guernica Magazine and written by John Patrick Leary - check it out here.





















Photograph by Yves Marchan and Romain Meffre

Letter from China

letter from Seth Boyd - Publisher Charles Lane Press

Totally, totally weird here, as you predicted. The two guys, Ian and Fai, picked me up from the hotel in Hong Kong early this morning, and I was looking for some older dudes, but I think they're both younger than me! The ride into China was cool. We drove through Shenzhen and I got to experience firsthand what Peter Hessler wrote about in Country Driving. Nothing but factories, factories, factories for 50 miles, and attached to each factory are dormitories, dormitories, dormitories. All concrete; all gray.

At first I thought it was just extremely foggy, but the deeper we drove into China, the lower the visibility got. This is the worst pollution I have ever seen. All the articles and books we've read, all the 60 minutes and Frontline pieces we've watched are correct. The entire province is under a thick, heavy blanket of the nastiest, most foul smelling smog you'll ever see. And it's not just outside. It's in my hotel room, it's in the plant, it's in the conference room I'm sitting in right now, that
smoky, burning smell that we caught whiffs of in Indonesia.

Got settled into my hotel here, which is very Chinese. I mean tacky, Chinese with gold and brass and mismatched tiled surfaces
everywhere. A real hoot of a place. Right next to the hotel is one of those famous Chinese landfill type garbage heaps, so
that's a major draw right there. Trash everywhere, markets motorbikes, bicycles, chaotic traffic, but not as bad as Indonesia.

Got to the plant and was shown to my "Guest Room" which is more like a cell. There is terrible third world fluorescent lighting, no heat and it's freezing. I began to wonder when I was going to be allowed to see my lawyer. There is a couch and a large bookcase with other books, and there's a refrigerator. While I was arranging my things on the desk, they decided to bring in another refrigerator for me. And not just a little one. A regular-sized kitchen one. I do not know what they think I need to keep cold in this room that wouldn't get plenty cold if you just let it sitting out.

Then we went down to the press room to check the first form. It was my first glimpse of the plant. And to tell you the truth, if I hadn't had Sue's and Bob's stamp of approval on this place, I would have been worried. Everything is old and dirty. The equipment is like ancient. There are huge binding machines that do the cover stampings and they're like sets of giant jaws that open and close automatically. Every time they open, the guy quickly sticks his entire arm in the thing to position a new cover. And it just goes and goes like that. If the guy does not get his arm out before the jaws close, you bet your ass that arm will be flatter than paper in a second. I told Sue, "that does not look safe."

Looking around the place I thought this is not somewhere I'd even print a third grade spelling book let alone our beautiful Charles Lane Press books. But guess what? When I got to the press to look at the first form, it was stunning. It was a very close match to the proofs, except the form was better. The images are sharp and clean and smooth, the color is awesome and the images printed on this New-G paper are just luscious.

But anyway, we are in good hands here. Ian and Fai are totally professional. They are passionate about fine printing and they are very easy going, accessible and amenable to discussion and consultation. The press guys are great - they know their
shit - and the prints are looking absolutely beautiful, so we won't have compromised in any way on the quality. The dots in the press prints are smaller and sharper than the wet proofs they sent. So Shen's and Ian's books are looking as good as FRB and Outerland.

Java, January 31

I was walking through a slum in Jakarta a couple days ago, and I did make some photographs. But I feel like this scene that Seth pulled up from The Year of Living Dangerously sums up some of the thoughts I had about the experience best...

Scene One: Year of Living Dangerously
  
BILLY
And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? 

GUY
What's that?

BILLY
It's from Luke, chapter three, verse ten. What then must we do? Tolstoy asked the same question. He wrote a book with that title. He got so upset about the poverty in Moscow that he went one night into the poorest section and just gave away all his money. You could do that now. Five American dollars would be a fortune to one of these people.

GUY
Wouldn't do any good, just be a drop in the ocean.

BILLY
Aah, that's the same conclusion Tolstoy came to, I disagree.

GUY
Oh, what's your solution?

BILLY
Well, I support the view that you just don't think about the major issues. You do whatever you can about the misery that's in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light. You think that's naive, don't you?

GUY
Yep.

BILLY
It's alright, most journalists do.

GUY
We can't afford to get involved.

BILLY
Typical Journo's Answer

Asia Bound

Seth & I will be heading to Indonesia this week for a bit of travel - so the blog will be quiet for a while. I hope to have many new photographs and stories upon my return.
Happy Trails.
-Richard

Loving these...

Found this work by Irish photographer Kenneth O Halloran via Conscientious

Amazing Guitar

via Charles Boyd

Excellent Dance Video

Girl Walk // All Day from jacob krupnick on Vimeo.

PIER 45 - A Multimedia Presentation

Pier 45 by Richard Renaldi
Best viewed in Full Screen Mode.

December 25, 2010 The Christmas day the Christmas tree fell over...........................

Just Kids

I recently finished the Patti Smith book about her relationship/friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe and their coming of age in New York in the 1970's. It is a great book and a wonderful window into the downtown art and music scene when New York was still accessible and affordable. They both fed off of and encouraged each other's creativity - which is extraordinarily valuable. A great read!