„Fuck the midtones“ – How to make a book with Steidl

This Thursday for the first time on tv: the german documentary “How to make a book with Steidl”, Thursday night, 04.10.11 at 3sat.

“How to make a book with Steidl” is a documentary on Gerhard Steidl and his work as a printer and publisher in the art and photography world. The film was awarded the “Golden Dove” and received positive reviews so far, so I’ll definitely see that one!

Watch the trailer on http://www.howtomakeabookwithsteidl.de/file/Trailer.html, buy the dvd here.

Best moment of the trailer: Steidl discussing proofs with a (famous) photographer, who seems to be worried about the midtones of the pictures. Steidl’s reaction: „Fuck the midtones“

Read more here.

Casey Templeton’s Self promo

A bunch of my friends just gratuated (see a list of them at ausserordentlich2010.de ) and are now starting out as photographers, and as there are so many talented photographers out there (also here in Germany) self promotion is an important thing to do and to pay a lot of attention to. I found the following self-promo by us-american photographer Casey Templeton and it shows very well that mailings still can work if they come with an extraordinary idea and a good design. I personally have the feeling (but I’m only guessing) that email promo isn’t very efficient anymore, because photo editors, art buyers, gallerists etc. probably receive loads of these emails from random people, but they don’t have the time to read and see everything and are maybe even annoyed by the amount of emails they receive.

Templeton put together a “lunch box” with various items, see the video from his blog here:

I’m wondering what kind of self-promo german photographers send out. Any examples available? Would love to get some feedback from you!

I don’t know if you all have seen the Blog/book “No plastic sleeves”, but there you can also find some inspirations when it comes to self promotion, designing portfolios etc.

The photographic dictionary

The photographic dictionary is a project by Michelle Kanderson that was edited very well. It’s a pleasure to look at as it surprises the viewer with unconventional photographic interpretations of the given words from A to Z.

Travelling

Hey everybody,

for the last weeks this blog was pretty lame, sorry for that, but I was very busy in September and now I am travelling till almost end of november, and probably won’t habe the chance to post new stuff.

But come back then and find some new interesting post!

CPC: Conscientious Portfolio Competition until August 31st

Over at Jörg Colbergs Weblog he recently announced a portfolio competition – the winner will be featured on his blog (that I really like a lot!). I guess this is a great opportunity for young photographers – I’ll definitely participate.

More infos here.

Website down

Hey everybody, danielhofer.com is down at the moment and I’m just moving to Berlin and have no time to fix it – thus i’m redirecting everything to my blog.

BTW, on the 7th of August (07.08.09) there will be an interesting group show @ TZR Gallery in Duesseldorf called “Abbildung ähnlich”. For the first time, I’ll show photographs of my series “Sunday morning”. Hope to see you there!

Dan Winters’ new book – Periodical photographs

Dan Winters has been one of my favourite photographers for some time now. I always considered him to be a master photographer, but I was surprised that he’s still quite young – only 38 I guess. What I like very much about Dan Winters is that he found a very special way how he uses light and how he shows his subjects. When I see a picture of him a can tell immediately that it must be his, and that is a quality and uniqueness you don’t find too often. He says:

“As photographers, we are hired for our opinions to a certain extent. It will be a visual take, a very subjective interpretation,” says Winters. “I really think the strongest ally (above any technique) any photographer can have is the ability to really look at something and formulate an opinion about it. My goal is to have enough freedom with my clients to know that I am using my judgment in the best way I can, and that they know I’m working hard for them.”

His subjects, he says, have compared sitting for him to ”going to the dentist. But in a good way. Not having root canal. Maybe just having X rays done.”

And there is another thing that is really special about Dan Winters: it seems that he does extremely tight edits, which means that he only sends 1 (!) picture to the magazine after a shoot. This is consistency!

When doing some research for this post I also came across of a lot of illustrations he also does, not only photographic illustrations but also hand-drawings. He’s really talented whith transforming strories and complex circumstances into interesting and sometimes even funny illustrations. Must be a big pleasure for an art director to work with him.

That last one is from a cool story for WIRED.

Now, Mr. Winters has a new book out called “Periodical Photographs” that shows is assignement work.

One of my favourite spreads:

Over at WTJ you find a flip-through through the book… I guess for people interested in book design and great portraits, this book will be a must have.

More articles on the book here and here.

PDN call him a legend and have a nice online presentation with interview here.

A last cite:

“I get up every day and that’s what I do, make photographs, whether I’m being paid to or not. I love it, love it, love it.”

More Links:

@ ppmag

http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2007/10/08/oh-god-not-dan-winters-again/

http://jankesnergallery.com/jkgartists/winters-dan.html

http://www.lamag.com/article.aspx?id=16884

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS POST  COPYRIGHT DAN WINTERS.

ROMKA Magazine 3 is out now

Joscha’s new Romka Magazine, issue 3 is out now. He also is about to publish a book called “Was macht die Liebe in Mexiko“. Check also out the rest of his stuff.

Bruce Wrighton

The way I find interesting material for this blog is that I just see things online or in an exhibition, do some research and post it. With Bruce Wrighton it was both: I saw pictures of him in a blog some time ago, and only shortly after that I saw his prints on the wall at the booth of Laurence Miller Galery at the Art Cologne. From that moment I have to say this photographer was and is one of my favourite photographers.

Bruce Wrighton (born 1950, died 1988) lived in Binghampton, New York, and there is only very little information on him and his work available online. He is not a well known documentary photographer (yet) and as he died way too young there is only limited material to show, but that what he produced is in my opinion really strong. At the Art Cologne I had the chance to speak to his gallerist and he told me that many years ago, he had shown Wrighton’s Car series in his gallery. And then only a few years ago, the gallerist approached Wrightons widow and asked if there were more photographs, so they “found” two more series, portraits and interiors. Laurence Miller Gallery then in late 2008 showed the “new” material and Bruce Wrighton obviously got some acclaim posthumously.

Here some of his portraits:

About his picture, Wrighton said:

“Yesterday I saw a parking attendant who had just the right look in his eyes. I didn’t even introduce myself, I said, “Can I take your picture?” And either because I was so forceful, or he was so open, or there was something in my sincerity, he just said, “Sure”.

He was a fairly young kid. Weeping eyes. Eyes that really spoke of the pain of having to struggle versus really wanting to find a home. As I chatted with him as I was making the picture–again setting up the 8 by 10 is not like the snap-snap of an SLR. It takes 15 minutes to get the whole thing together. It’s a commitment and it’s building a relationship.

I find that important because I need to develop some kind of rapport with these people. So during that rapport building session, he mentioned he was going in the army. I said to myself, gee that’s just so fitting. To me when a young kid tells me they’re going in the army and they’re working in some parking lot or something like that; I don’t know for certain, but I say this kid’s looking for direction. But in his eyes I got the sense that the direction had to come from within him.

Anyway the kid had a nice pink shirt and red hair and a red hat. There were aesthetic reasons as well (he laughs), the psychological and spiritual element have to be there, but as well a successful image for me has to be aesthetically balanced.”

-From an interview with Bruce Wrighton by Sean Phelan, August 2, 1988 for the Weekly Pennysaver

So I asked myself what is it that I like so much about these portraits? Why were they stuck in my head for the last months? Why did I seriously think about buying a print (soem portraits come in a new edition of 20 / appr. 12*18 inches with 2000 Dollar each – reasonable I think ) ?

I think Wrighton picked quite interesting characters for his pictures and composed them beautifully in their surroundings. The colors a really gorgeous and so natural, it just feels good to me to see the quality of these prints (made with a 8*10 large format camera) especially when you compare them to these bad, flat digital prints you see nowadays way too often. The guy in the second picture reminds me of a worker or miner in a Richard Avedon picture… In general I see a connection to the portrait work of Avedon, but also to August Sander e.g. Wrightons work is because of his early death not comprehensive enough to make him a real classic, but I’d say at the moment he his absolutely undervalued.

German publisher Hatje Cantz will, as far as I know, publish a book on Wrightons work later this year.

Here some more pictures from the interior and car series:

I finally found this one that was in an auction last year. Also a beautiful one.

What do you think about him? Post your opinion!

Andreas Mühe

One of my favourite german portrait photographers is Andreas Muehe. He recently shot german chancellor Angela Merkel for Spiegel magazine and though he is only 30 he has shot a wide range of interesting people, including politicians, actors etc, but also some advertising. In my opinion, he has found his very own,unique style and makes great pictures with very special light and colours. He doesn’t copy other photographers and their light, but found at a quiet yoiung age his own way of portrait photography (not only). Unfortunately, he took his website down some time ago, there are only few polaroids to see.

www.andreasmuehe.com

More on  camerwork’s website.