Bernd and Hilla Becher’s method of teaching photography at the Staatliche Kuntsacademie in Dusseldorf, Germany.

The Bechers instructed each student to choose a plentiful subject - preferably a class of architecture, but in any case something belonging to the social rather than the natural realm. Next, adopt a uniform style of picture making … so as to minimize the contingencies of expeience and thus the obtrustiveness of the photographer’s point of view, both literally and metaphorically. Finally, make a lrage number of pictures of individual examples, which, because of the rigor of the method will constitute a typology representing the generic identity of the subject through the range of its particular incarnations.

source: Peter Galassi: “Gursky’s World” in Andreas Gursky

candid camera: the cult of leica. brilliantly written piece by new yorker film critic anthony lane on the enduring allure of the leica. snip:

Lee Friedlander, photographing a child in New York, in 1963, thought nothing of bringing the camera down to the boy’s eye level, and thus semi-decapitating the grownups who stood beside him. (All kids dream of that sometime.) Men and women were reflected in storefront windows, or obscured by street signs; many of the photographs shimmered on the brink of a mistake. “With a camera like that,” Friedlander has said of the Leica, “you don’t believe that you’re in the masterpiece business. It’s enough to be able to peck at the world.” One shot of his, from 1969, traps an entire landscape of feeling—a boundless American sky, salted with high clouds, plus Friedlander’s wife, Maria, with her lightly smiling face—inside the cab of a single truck, layering what we see through the side window with what is reflected in it. I know of long novels that tell you less.

spontaneity/experimentation and not worrying about mistakes is what got me hooked on photoblogging. i was (unknowingly) trying to emulate the work of the photographers like cartier-bresson, friedlander and eggleston as well as some of the early nyc photobloggers like red, quarlo, and fred. where the leica is compact and unobtrusive, digital cameras (with practice and to accomodate shutter lag) share the same attributes with the added benefit of the immediate feedback and the “delete” button. the only missing piece is the sharp glass.

i miss that spontaneity; too often i find myself saying “i have taken that shot” or “i’ve seen that picture already”, or “light’s too low”.

relatedly: nyc photobloggers 10 is on this wednesday (9/26) at the soho apple store. yours truly is a previous presenter.

photography: viviane sassen photography
music: M.I.A. “Kala“. rootless globopop influenced by everywhere but from nowhere in particular. personal favorite: “hussel” featuring afrikan boy”
music: melissa young be-freckled indie soul singer. [via great interview on sugatreats (WHCR) this past monday night.]

rappin hood, one of brazil’s premier hip hop artists, states simply, “i’m black”. it seems an unremarkable assertion in a land where more than half of brazilians can claim african descent; where samba and capoeira have heavy doses of african influence. the largest population of african descendants outside africa lives in brazil. we all believe the mantra repeated, unchallenged, across latin america “there is no racism”. but after watching the latest episode of “wide angle” on PBS brazil in black and white, that turns out to be a profoundly complex statement. brazil is finally waking up to the realization that poverty in brazil has a color: that color is black. the government under luiz inacio lula da silva is trying to right that wrong by instituting affirmative action to get more blacks in colleges/universities and in the corporate world. but while the problem is clear, the solution isn’t; who is “black” in a country that is so racially mixed? how do you decide who is black, without creating arbitrary standards?

and this is not just a brazilian problem. a multimedia presentation from the miami herald “a rising voice: afro-latin americans” shows that things are changing all across latin america, as this most racially diverse region re-examines the notion of identity and its effect on social and economic equality.

racial identity and racism in latin america are quite different from the brand that i am familiar with that splits cleanly along the black/white divide and affects all on the wrong side of that line equally (badly). in africa or america you are black or white (which confuses some mixed race kids as they are neither). but in latin america being black is sometimes a choice; based on social/cultural factors as well as pigmentation. this means more nuanced definitions of darkness. to wit:

“To many Dominicans, to be black is to be Haitian. So dark-skinned Dominicans tend to describe themselves as any of the dozen or so racial categories that date back hundreds of years — Indian, burned Indian, dirty Indian, washed Indian, dark Indian, cinnamon, moreno or mulatto, but rarely negro.

The Dominican Republic is not the only nation with so many words to describe skin color. Asked in a 1976 census survey to describe their own complexions, Brazilians came up with 136 different terms, including café au lait, sunburned, morena, Malaysian woman, singed and “toasted.”"

whatever the labels, the resulting racism means that black people are overrepresented in the favelas and jails, and underrepresented in the corporate world, and in colleges/universities.

black latin americans are starting to re-assert their blackness/africanness. in addition to fighting for affirmative action afro-brazileiros, it includes doing things like preserving garifuna culture in honduras or activism to ensure land where quilombos or freed slave settlements were established are preserved as such.

“i’m black”. it’s a simple label, but it is a label that belies the the mind-boggling diversity of the people who claim it. also it doesn’t highlight the often conflicted relationship black people all over the diaspora have with that label and its connotations. i am most fascinated to see how public policy in places like brazil will be used to re-dress black racism and inequality.

in 1971 eric monte and mike evans wrote a script for 2 characters who first appeared on the show “all in the family”. those 2 characters were spun off into the sitcom “the jeffersons”. in 1971, eric monte and mike evans pitched a humorous story about a black family struggling to get by in the cabrini-green projects of chicago where monte grew up. in 1974 that script became “good times”. tired of fighting norman lear and the show writers on how to keep the show true to the reality of inner city life, he quit the show after the first season and went on write the semi-autobiographical “cooley high”. that seminal film was spun off into a tv show called “what’s happening!!”; although monte had minimal involvement with that show, beyond writing the initial script.

it is amazing to think how much impact one man had on changing the tv landscape, post civil rights struggle. before he appeared there were few significant real black characters on television. after he left, aside from the cosby show, no other show on network tv has broken new ground in portraying the realistic AND positive experience of being black in america (monte even claims he gave the idea of that show to cosby executive producer marcy casey). and like many revolutionaries, he did not benefit from the fruits of his efforts. when this npr interview [audio] was done in 2006, he was living in a homeless shelter, blackballed from hollywood for being “hard to work with” (read: fighting against stereotypical black characters, fighting for control over the direction of shows he had created).

source: waxpoetics, issue 20 dec/jan 2007 pp. 30-33