my home is where you are

Cover detail, courtesy my iPad

Last week, I received an e-mail from a nice young man called Filipe Cacasa, a Portugese photographer who has recently published his own photobook (well done, Filipe), titled a minha casa é onde estás ('my home is where you are'). This collection of 15 black-and-white photographs, selected from a larger body of work made over 3 years, have Cacasa's wife Teresa as a subject and explore intimacy, domesticity and a strange kind of theatricality that emerges when the photographer takes his camera into a private space. The book is available, in a limited edition of 300 copies, from a bookstore near you (stockists, I am told, include Photo-eye, Santa Fe; Dashwood Books, New York; Tate Modern bookshop, London; Flotsambooks, Tokyo; Tennis Club Bookshop, Amsterdam; and Ivory Press, Spain). However, Filipe very kindly offered to send me a comp copy of the book and to answer a few questions I had about him and the work – so, you can see our mini Q&A and my review of the book below!

As you can see from some of my (poor) photos, 'my home' is a pretty serious production, reflecting an apparent desire for this book and the work within to be absorbed quietly and thoughtfully. In terms of production, this desire translates into a straight-forward, even sombre, black cloth case-binding (no tricksy 'Blurb' design for this Lisboan), and the choice of weighty, classy materials within (200gsm Gardapat paper, seeing as you're asking). There is a little too much of this studied quietness for me – the severe design of the book, for example, doesn't necessarily reflect the wittier images in the series, such as a photograph in which the photographer's feet are held to Teresa's breasts, creating an atmosphere at once tender and surreal and a figure at once humorous and humanised.

c. Filipe Cacasa

There are also niggling issues with the production; a slightly lighter paper stock, for instance, might have made the book a more natural, flexible object without harming the dignity of the photographs. However, these are fairly minor qualms and, as much as I like a jaunty book design, I've also got a lot of time for the way in which Cacasa's more reserved choices (and no doubt those of designer Ana Fatia) reference his photographic concerns; what is hidden and what can be shown, what is in shadow and what in light, and what can be known about another person from their physical presence. This is a recurring theme in the photo series presented here – a combination of images that plays with the conventions of recognition and identity. Some of the photographs are pure, formal explorations of the body's appearance in space, the shapes it takes. These shots work individually as elegantly formal investigations of light and dark, and physical gesture.

c. Filipe Cacasa

However, taken in series, these (often faceless) physical portraits also strike up a conversation with both more intimate, 'close-up', facial studies, snapshot-style photographs of props including shoes and lingerie, and apparently staged images, in which the model theatrically veils or otherwise obscures her face. The series works well as an illustration of the ways in which we see those closest too us. Most of these photographs are taken from a domestic, 'colloquial' viewpoint, with the photographer's model and the camera moving in relation to one another with apparent independence. While the choice of black-and-white photography, the high contrast printing (which leaves areas of extreme, obscuring shadow) and simple 'set-up' and props of most of these images imply a kind of universality or impersonality, this never translates into a cold or exploitative aesthetic. Rather the overwhelming impression is of warmth, playfulness and, somehow, conversation.

c. Filipe Cacasa

I would like to see more of Cacasa's work, particularly his work from Asia, in book form. There were moments in a minha casa é onde estás - the simple, formal studies of discarded shoes and hanging lingerie, for example – that are well-made and evocative in series, but don't necessarily leave me hungry for second and third viewings (though I'm aware my taste always runs to more complex, 'messy' imagery as a general bias)! Nevertheless, Cacasa clearly has an eye for mood and an ability to work intelligently with space and sensitively with the human figure, and I would love to see more of his well thought-out books. He is clearly investing in the way he tells his photo-stories and I'm left with a desire to invest the time in reading them.

It's not often I get to quiz the photographer behind the work on this blog, but Filipe has very generously answered some of my questions about his work below. Enjoy!

Your training and exhibition history are pretty international - China, Japan, Portugal – what drew you to these different countries to take photographs or was it all pure chance?

It was not by chance. For a long time I have had a strong interest in Chinese and Japanese culture. I feel drowned by the relation between it's past, it's history and that influence in the present day, despite  a great influx of foreign cultures through the years. The assimilation of foreign cultures by the ancient cultures created new identities. I like the way people think in Japan, the way they organize space, whether interiors or urban areas. And photography! Japanese photography is a big influence on me; their unique way of seeing and showing something personal associated with the subject of their work. I know that I have a strong need to know and understand Japan. Portugal is where I live and, strange as it may sound, it is much more difficult to work here, maybe because I have a few pre-conceived ideas about my environment that come across in my photos. But this is something I am working on.

I think 'my home is where you are' is quite an intimate, personal series. Is it representative of your work, or is this project different from your previous work?

It is very representative of my work. Speaks a little about me, about my private space and mostly about my wife. When I started to photograph, my subject was my friends, their spaces and sculptures. This series started after I meet Teresa and developed in our home. I think this series is like a performance. But it is my performance. The (photographs) are of Teresa as performed by my mind’s eye, which is different from anyone else’s. It is very difficult to photograph someone you know. The fact that I know her doesn’t make it easier. It actually makes it much more difficult. There is a tendency to bring our opinions of somebody to bear on the photographs we take of them, projecting on them that image we’ve created, which doesn’t always correspond with their own self-image. That’s what’s most interesting: showing her an image that she hasn’t seen before. And that’s what these images are about, about the way her body is, the movements she might not even be aware of.

Why present this series as a book? Did you always intend for it to take book form, or is that a decision that came about later?

When I photograph I normally think of editing in series, of a body of work and not independent images. I think in book form. It is essential that people see these photos with time, step by step, to get into the feeling. You have to see it photo by photo, page by page, to understand that all these photos are one photo. Another strong reason to present this work as a book was because I see it as a gift from me to my wife. With this book she can understand better how I see her through the years.

Are there any photobooks in particular that influenced you? Which other photobooks do you admire? (Love Filipe's answer here by the way, I have to look some of these up!)

The books that influenced me: Rinko Kawauchi - 'Cui Cui'; Nobuyoshi Araki – 'Sentimental Journey'; Jin Ohashi – IMA; and the work of Dirk Braeckman.

And I also admire: Miguel Rio Branco – 'Silent Book'; Daido Moriyama – 'Farewell Photography' and 'Memories of a Dog'; Antonio Julio Duarte – 'Peepshow' and 'White Noise'; Larry Clark – 'Teenage lust'; Andre Cepeda – 'Ontem'; William Eggleston – 'Los Alamos'; José Pedro Cortes - 'Things here and Things still to come'; Shomei Stumato – 'Hiroshima–Nagasaki Document 1961'; Paulo Nozolino – 'Para Sempre'; Nan Goldin – 'The Other Side'; Kohei Yoshiyuki - 'The Park'.

Do you any advice for young/ new photographers about to make their own book. Do you have any words of wisdom?

I don´t know if I have “words of wisdom”…my advice to young photographers is work hard. Not all of what we do will be perceived as 'good' or as a 'master piece'. Some work is a personal improvement of our way of seeing, of thinking and feeling, and this only comes with persistence and dedication. A book is the best investment a photographer can make. We can learn a lot in that process of thinking, and this will open new paths in our work method.

More Cooning With Cooners, Kalev Erickson

As a British citizen, I have to confess I didn't know much about 'coon hunting before I opened this book. Now having closed it, I'm not sure how much better informed I am. This is simultaneously the most confusing and the most beguiling thing about this book. It is not an obscure, difficult or even unfocussed publication – More Cooning With Cooners is as much about raccoons, and the hunting thereof, as a sixty-page photobook can be. Even the cover is designed to resemble a raccoon pelt, with the bloody red endpapers inside evoking the inevitable conclusion of the chase. It's just that, alongside this thematic coherence, this blatancy about its theme, there is an ambiguity about the photographs within, and the book project itself, that far exceeds one's initial expectations.

So, what are you looking at? A short note at the beginning of More Cooning explains that the images within have been edited from 'a family collection of Kodachromes taken during the 1960s in Ohio.' We never find out who this family are, how editor Kalev Erickson encountered their photographs or, indeed, how he knows for sure that they are 'the work of a single, but unknown, photographer with a clear enthusiasm for the hunt' (all of the photographs are presented without captions). Other minor mysteries pervade the book: where one would normally expect to find a contextualising, critical 'essay' on the body of work presented, there is a short, straight-faced prose piece on 'The Art and Craft of Cooning,' describing the sport’s history and traditions. Similarly, the 1924 vernacular poem 'Dat Scanlus Coonhunt Itch' is dropped into the book without introduction – yet another element in a patchwork of references that circle the 'coonhunt' at the centre of this book, but never quite state their relationship to it.

Perhaps what I'm trying to get at is the problem of attitude posed by this book – what and who it is for. It is not simply the document of an enthusiast, though it makes reference to the eponymous 1924 'Cooning' manual whose cover illustration is reproduced on the title page. Nor, quite obviously, is it a sentimental campaign against blood sports, though the violence of the kill is emphasised in a number of individual photographs in the book and echoed in the raccoon skull line-drawing featured towards its end. It is conspicuously an 'art' book, an edition of 500, but without the patronising discussion of 'vernacular' photography and its charms that can appear in such collections.

What this book captures is the strangeness of going through someone else's photo archive – their memories and their passions caught on film – and the inevitable editorial distance that is created when one tries to order or 'archive' this work in any way. It is impossible to know the names, lives and motivations of the men captured in these photographs, and so they are reduced to a series of gestures and poses – presenting their dogs, sweeping their flashlights, posing with their kill – which we read from a distance. As a work of art in its own right, the book belongs to a tradition mined by photographers such as Zoe Crosher, working with 'found' material, who are interested in what is gained and lost when we 'read' a foreign group of photographs. The publishers of More Cooning, the resolutely mysterious Archive of Modern Conflict, have won international awards and garnered themselves a cult following by releasing a number of beautifully-produced titles in this vein, in which often historically fraught collections of photography (see Nein Onkel – a collection of playful domestic photos taken by Nazi soldiers) are mined for their significance and their conflicting effects.

So much for the conceptual ambitions of the publisher, what about the images themselves? Cropped with rounded corners, to emphasis their antique origins, and with errors of exposure and colour intact, these are enthusiastic, playful photographs edited with an eye to their humour and energy. While there is an element of threat about the images which juxtapose hounds with young children (and this is a recurring theme in the edit), emphasizing the contrast of vulnerability with strength, domesticity with animal instinct, there are equally images included that are about tenderness (a young man holds a hound puppy) and also, simply, routine (identically dressed men sit, blankfaced, outside a hunting lodge at night). Erickson also gives free rein to the excitement of the chase, as captured in a number of blurred, close-up shots showing hounds as they pursue their victims to the treetops. The images themselves are taken with an eye to composition and colour, while the editing – which focusses emphatically on the volume of kill towards its end, with repeated photographs of 'trophy' walls of raccoon tails – usually allows the emotional and formal range of the images its full play.

You may feel like you've been on a hunt after finishing this book, but whether for raccoon or a couple of cold, hard facts, it's hard to say. How much you enjoy it will depend on how informative, how eloquent, you like your photobooks to be. I, for one, only wished there was more of the book to hunt through.

This review was originally published in photo-eye magazine, 2nd February 2012, and can be viewed in its original form here. All photographs are from More Cooning With Cooners, by Kalev Erickson. Published by Archive of Modern Conflict, 2011.

About Love, Gay Block

'Through photography, I have learned about love.' The words that open this anthology of Gay Block's work, and give it its title, really are the best possible introduction to her warm and sympathetic photographs. Photography as a way, almost an excuse, to connect with others and as, fundamentally, an empathic medium - these are the principles that shape this collection of portraits.

Intertwined with these concerns, and essential to the structure of About Love, is Block's own biography – born and raised in a wealthy, Reform Jewish community in Houston, Block followed what she felt to be the typical 'plan,' leaving college when she was 19 to marry and raise a family. She discovered photography later in life, having returned to college at the age of 31 after the death of her father. In the coming years she also, this book suggests, discovered herself, eventually entering a long-term relationship with her current life-partner, Malka Drucker. This story emerges only gradually, through the extended texts that Block appends to each 'chapter' of About Love, and would not be afforded so much importance in this review were it not for the fact that the core themes of Block's 'story' – of curiosity, self-education and discovery – are reflected so strongly in the construction of the book and its content. Photography was, as Block herself states, her 'vehicle to consciousness.'

Arranged chronologically, in loose chapters that are more like families of related works than formal 'series,' the photographs presented here (and the films included on two attached DVDs) relate Block's exposure to ever-widening circles of society and acquaintance – from her own family in Houston, through Jewish pensioners in South Beach, Miami, touching on her record of Holocaust Rescuers (exhibited in MoMA in 1992) and on to her studies of America's female spiritual leaders and Santa Fe's lesbian nightclubs. Her personal and creative development is perhaps best illustrated by comparing the two chapters titled 'Early Portraits' and 'Late Portraits.' The first of these largely consists of portraits taken within the Jewish community of Houston – these appear slightly limited, in both content and technique, compared to the later works, in which a much wider variety of styles and sitters appear. In the later collection, Block's eye hones in on signs of difference (as perhaps is to be expected from journalistic commissions) and on the trappings of style and lifestyle, as well as on the physical markers of age. A number of photographs here depict scars and Block's use of colour highlights the varieties of 'costume' on show among her subjects.

However, Block's work is never detached or disdainful and the abiding quality of her photographs – their empathy – can be traced back to the earliest, and most substantial, body of work in this book. Yes, the world of her early subjects in Houston is strictly delimited and David Chickey's thoughtful book design, with a great deal of bright white space surrounding smallish frames (Block also credits David Skolkin for his design input in this regard) emphasizes both the claustrophobic, suburban atmosphere of these shots, as well as our sense that we are only 'glimpsing' a world set apart. Block often accentuates the careful choreography of this social milieu through artfully arranged shots in which family members postures echo either each other or the objets d'art in their homes. However, at the same time, these photos often feel convivial, with Block taking photographs from across a table or a couch, in an intimate fashion. Their subjects are individuated and gaze straight into the camera, frank, so that the images carry no formal atmosphere of pretence or hypocrisy. Here, as throughout this book, hands are important – people hold or gesture towards the people and objects they hold dear, in a physical, visual expression of inner feeling. The experience of reading these pictures seems to echo the process Block describes of taking them; of being puzzled, curious and then increasingly sympathetic as her knowledge of these subjects deepened. It is no wonder that Block felt a twinge of frustration in her 'Camp Girls' series when, on returning to her subjects after 25 years, she felt unable to get beyond their polished appearances and homes to see 'what life might have in store for them.'

The autobiographical, personality-centered approach of this photography, and this book, has its limitations. A grid of colour photographs of 'People I'm Close To' feels uninformative and a little self-indulgent. Similarly, none of these photographs are accompanied, on page, by captions; they are arranged, not in strictly chronological order, within chapters corresponding to periods of Block's life, rather than within clearly described projects. The approach can feel a little unclear and scatter-shot. Still, the work at its best is dense and powerful and feels like a coherent, humane vision – no doubt down to its clear-sighted, humane author.

This review was originally published in photo-eye Magazine, 1st December 2011, and can be viewed in its original form here. All photographs are from About Love by Janelle Lynch, published by Radius Books, 2011.

Los Jardines de México, Janelle Lynch

Photographs by Janelle Lynch. Published by Radius Books, Santa Fe, 2011.

Los Jardines de México is a meticulously crafted book, with every aspect of its production – from the choice of paper stock through to the finishing on the page and the choice of image printed on its endpapers – calculated to facilitate and enhance your experience of the work contained within. This care over the details of the bookmaking is particularly fitting, as Janelle Lynch uses photography to conjure up a very particular and rarefied world – she cultivates an atmosphere that you can’t help but think would suffer in less sympathetic conditions.

The particular quality of Lynch's work can be felt most intensely in the fourth and final series presented in this book: La Fosa Común. Here, 11 full-page images are arranged, one per spread, on large, glossy leaves of paper, beginning with Untitled 8 – a photograph of one, spreading, moss-encrusted tree, whose branches reach round and through each other and out of the frame into the surrounding foliage. Like all of the images in this series, the photograph is visually complex, the frame crammed with textural information, and, as with all of the works in the series, the subject is plant life, to the exclusion of all else - no animals, humans or signs of human civilization intrude upon the tangle of bushes, grasses and trees. The effect is claustrophobic and not a little repetitive, but also decidedly, intensely, eerie and otherworldly. The combination of abundant foliage with a lack of any other visual reference – even the sky is obscured – and Lynch's frequent use of soft, misty lighting conditions gives you the impression of stepping into a science fiction novel in which humans have receded and plants reclaimed the surface of the earth.

This sense of animism and almost threatening fecundity is picked up by author and architect José Antonio Aldrete Haas in his essay for Los Jardines. He argues that Lynch's photography is informed by the notion that life and death are not separate but continuous and 'of the same reality,' and points to another series – there are four presented in this book, made by Lynch between 2002 and 2007 – to illustrate his point. Akna (translated by Aldrete-Haas from the Mayan as 'mother') is a series of portraits of individual tree stumps. These remains – dead or decaying matter appears throughout the book - are in fact now burgeoning with life, each of them sustaining communities of smaller plants and grasses. They are even given names by the photographer, 'Vladimir' and 'Albertina,' to go with the focused, individualizing portrait style of her photography in the work.

Loss, through violence or through simple neglect and decay, is another theme of the book, drawn out by author Mario Bellatín in the fictional element he contributes. The fact that Bellatín's short story deals with the death of a child gives Lynch's work in the series El Jardín de Juegos added resonance, as it is the abandoned pieces of playground furniture in the overgrown parks photographed here that give them their special sense of stillness and absence. Again, this lack of human presence is made conspicuous by the way Lynch arranges her photographs, emphasizing the anthropomorphic qualities of slides, climbing frames and basketball hoops to somehow evoke the playfulness and liveliness that is now only present in this space as a kind of haunting.

All of the above-mentioned elements are bound together in this book in a tightly-structured narrative, so that one has the impression of wandering from series to series like the last human survivor exploring a post-apocalyptic world. This idea is even made explicit through the foot's-eye view of photos in the Donde Andaba set, which show fragments of green foliage as they appear through the cracks in buildings and sidewalks in an urban setting. These images even seem to have been treated differently in production, so that they have a grainy, gritty texture subtly evocative of the dusty streets they depict. The overall effect is of moving through a world carefully constructed by the photographer, as if it were a stage-set.

It can sometimes feel, moving through Lynch's world, like a too seamless experience. The claustrophobia I mentioned earlier slips into tedium occasionally, and the book itself could feel a little overcooked for some readers. Why is it necessary for the cover of this book to be a close-up of the grass shown in countless photos within? Why use the same image again as a graphic theme within – monochrome and negativised, so that the washed-out feel of neglected spaces is stated yet again? These details can feel a little forced rather than poignant, as is perhaps intended. However, this is not to detract from the work within, which is a rigorous, yet affecting, statement on the natural world and its ambivalent beauty.

This review was originally published in photo-eye Magazine, 17th October 2011, and can be viewed in its original form here. All photographs are from Los Jardines de México by Janelle Lynch, published by Radius Books, 2011.

River of Shadows/ Motion Studies Guest Review!

UK edition, published by Bloomsbury Publishing

As mentioned here some time ago, I've managed to manipulate my fellow bookclub members into generating some blog content.. That is to say, for our last meeting, they all kindly read Rebecca Solnit's book River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (also known in the UK as Motion Studies: Time, Space and Eadweard Muybridge), discussed said book, and one of their number has now gone above and beyond the call of duty to contribute some of his thoughts to PLATE!

US edition, published by Viking Adult

I'm really interested in the conflicts and connections between the written word and visual materials and I wanted to read Solnit's book, in particular, to see how she would incorporate art criticism with biography of Muybridge and cultural criticism. I had been really impressed by (for which, read, 'I fell in love with') her book A Field Guide To Getting Lost, after it was recommended to me by a colleague, and came to River of Shadows hoping for the same absorbing, lyrical, reading experience. I was also interested to see how the bookmakers would present the photographs in question.

I have to say, I was slightly disappointed by the book. I felt that, despite Solnit's in-depth knowledge of and passion for her subject, she struggled to weave together all of the historical and cultural strands in the book into a coherent whole (I'm inclined to agree with Carl, that the book's cultural analysis becomes too repetitive). As a fan of photography - and particularly the work of Muybridge - I was also hoping for more extended criticism of his work, and was only really satisfied by the section discussing his 'Yosemite' photographs in this respect. However, there were lots of things to like as well, and I will leave my excellent guest writer, Carl Fulbrook, to give you an idea what these were!

US edition, published by Penguin

Carl Fulbrook - I had few expectations before beginning River of Shadows; I hadn't heard of Eadweard Muybridge, I barely knew anything about the history of photography, and I (still) have only obscure notions of American history during Muybridge's. In frankness, these are not subjects I'm usually drawn to. But that's the beauty of a bookclub: you read things your friends want to read and discuss, and this usually yields a reading process of enjoyment and critical analysis in a more-or-less fruitful balance.

So I began Solnit's book knowing only that it was about one of the great innovators of photography and cinema. And it is in part a biography of Eadweard Muybridge. But the great strength of this book is that it is a lot more than biography; Solnit deftly traverses several usually discrete genres to develop a book that is at once the life story of Muybridge, a history of photographic technology and Silicon Valley, a cultural critique, and a portrait of an era in America's mid-West that is too often distorted by myth - including fascinating accounts of the so-called 'Indian Wars' and the General Strike. There's even a bit of sassy murder trial courtroom drama and, at the very end, a nostalgic personal postlude. In fact, one salient feature several people noted during our bookclub discussion was that Muybridge the character is almost the book's ellipsis. Something of his tenacity emerges through his achievements, but his photographic career was so varied (in the best sense) that it is hard to gain any definite impression of him through his work, and the brief flashes of personal drama (most obviously, murdering his wife's lover) occur like aberrations in a rather anaemic account of the externals of his life. No matter - Muybridge was evidently not remarkable for his charisma.

At her best, Solnit handles her subjects with a confidence that figures genre as irrelevant: it is quite often a very carefully woven narrative. I didn't find that this level was maintained throughout, however, and there were a several passages that seemed repetitive and didn't maintain my interest. I found The River of Shadows most compelling when it placed the concerns of Muybridge and his contemporaries in a larger historical frame. It was sobering and unsettling to realise how rapidly and dramatically technology have altered our relationship with both other people and with the physical world. By the twenty-first century almost every experience of our lives is structured and mediated by increasingly bureaucratic technological apparatuses. As Solnit points out, in a commentary inflected by Marxism, new technologies did not simply feed but created an appetite for a commodified representations of the world. By framing and freezing phenomena through human innovation, we lent ourselves the impression we were mastering the world; by converting this spirit of innovation into a means for profit, we commodified and alienated ourselves from it, although in doing so feverishly stoked the desire to innovate. Solnit is nostalgic in her commentary, although not wholly bleak - cinema is, after all, a very exciting and potentially reflective technology. The book ends in a very ambivalent key, and I'm grateful for it: it is rich food-for-rumination.


If you've read River of Shadows and have your own thoughts about the book that you'd like to share with PLATE readers, just drop me an e-mail at platethephotoblog@gmail.com - I will aim to publish a collection of new comments on the blog in a month or so. Even better, if you have photography-related book recommendations for me, the bookclub or other readers, send them over and I will incorporate these into another post!