Give us the nice, bright colours..

Businesses file for bankruptcy everyday. Indeed, it's reported on everyday. In the 'Business and Finance' section of newspapers. You know, the bit no one ever tweets about. But the demise of Eastman Kodak (at least in its current form – the firm apparently plans to relaunch itself in 2013 with digital photography as its sole focus) has gone mainstream in, I think, quite an unexpected way.

The news that Kodak is filing for bankruptcy has prompted a wave of articles analysing the demise of Kodak's once thriving business - a decline that is largely blamed on the company's tardiness in 'going digital'. The first digital camera was developed by Eastman Kodak in 1975, but the company sat on the technology for fear of damaging their own film-making business and were overtaken, in the meantime, by Japanese companies such as Nikon. More interesting, however, has been the slew of overwhelmingly nostalgic articles looking back over the history of Kodak and its products. This is partly down to the appeal of George Eastman, founder of the company, as a figure in our collective cultural history. Eastman's own rags-to-riches biography – left school at 14, invented revolutionary technology (roll film), founded pioneering company, became legendary philanthropist – is interwoven with the history of photography and, therefore, the history of the last century, in an almost irresistible way. Eastman made it his aim to make photography portable and accessible, putting the first Kodak 'Brownie' camera on sale in 1900 and instantly creating a new market for a previously cumbersome, specialist technology. By the 1970s, the company was at it's peak, selling 90% of all photographic film in the US in 1976. It's an extraordinary legacy.

The brand has also always been extraordinarily visible - Kodak and advertising have historically gone together like Guinness and Pelicans - and even inspired a 'Mad Men' episode where Don Draper is tasked with marketing the companies 'new' slide carousel and comes up with... well, with this, drawing on the sentiment and nostalgia we all associate with domestic, personal photography. This is the point, isn't it? Photography is often described as inherently nostalgic, or a least backwards looking, especially in the context of personal or 'vernacular' photography. Kodak has become a focal point for this nostalgia, and I for one am not immune.

My own Kodak memory relates to a book I worked on at Aperture Foundation - William Christenberry: Kodachromes – which documents Christenberry's archive of work made using 35mm (Kodak) Kodachrome slide film. Christenberry (b. 1962) made this work over a period of 30 years, in his home of Hale County, Alabama, and it is beautiful, as is the book. We received hundreds of 35mm slides from the artist (which had previously been kept in his refrigerator) and these were edited by editor Denise Wolff and book designer Dave Chickey into a dreamy sequence of beautifully framed snapshots - usually devoid of people, often documenting structures, signs and places which had become iconic in Christenberry's oeuvre. I love the work, I love the book and it reminds me of a really happy time in my life!

Let me know your Kodachrome memories and I'll do a post if I get a few! Either way, there is more archival Kodachrome action to come on the blog, so watch this space!

Happy New Year!

Well hello to you all, and here's hoping it's been a good start to 2012 for 'PLATE' readers! Ive been tweaking the front page of this blog a little in readiness for the ONSLAUGHT of posting that I'm planning for the new year (somebody's been making new year's resolutions..) and one of my changes has been the addition of a couple of new sites to my blog roll. I'm continually updating this list, mainly because I find it useful to have a round-up of good art and photo resources in one place, but also to share new finds (artists, bloggers and publications) with anyone who reads here. I hope some of the new listings are of interest to your good selves and provide good browsin' in the difficult first days back at work after hols.

I can't lie, the additions here are mostly cribbed from an article on the topic of photo blogs by Joerg Colberg, which appears in the first digital issue of the British Journal of Photography. I have been ushered into the world of apps and digital publishing by the generous Christmas gift of an iPad and have been hungrily downloading books and magazines that I enjoy in print form to see how they stand up in the digital format. The British Journal was recommended to me by a friend and it's a really impressive example of how the print magazine can be expanded and adapted to a digital platform - the first (free) issue contains audio, video and links to outside resources alongside full-length, easily navigated articles and beautifully presented sideshows of new and archival photography. Ive never been a reader of the print magazine previously, having found it a bit fusty and 'gadget'-heavy on first browse and assumed it is intended as a community forum and tech-guide for professional, usually editorial photographers. While this may have been true in the past, a re-design of both print edition and website seems to have been directed at a more 'arty' readership, and the content of aforementioned digital edition has also been cleverly skewed so that it addresses those with an interest, not just in photography as a discrete art form, but as a medium of communication disseminated through books, magazines and websites. See the 'Profile' of Michael Mack's ambitions for digital publishing, or the feature on documentary photo projects, as cases in point. Essentially then, this is still an 'industry' magazine, but given a tweak to appeal to an increasingly design- and tech- savvy audience..

I advise readers to beg, borrow or steal (maybe not steal) an iPad and take a look at the magazine if you haven't already. I'm sure it's going to get lots of competition in the coming months - the beautiful Aperture magazine have just launched a digital editon, for example - but it's a lot of fun and gives us a taste of what might be possible for photo-publishing and photo-writing in new formats!

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.

The Book

This is a slightly off-piste post: partly, I cannot lie, it is a way of apologising to readers for the shocking lack of other posts recently! 'PLATE' is not dead and there are items on the way, but, in the meantime, I'm just posting a link to layouts from issue 2 of The Book, a free culture magazine for London founded and published by my friend Kohinoor Sahota. The magazine is bi-monthly (this issue is for Dec/ Jan) and features reviews of forthcoming events and releases in film, theatre, technology, art and more, alongside regular features, interviews and 'issue' pieces. If you're reading this in England, think of it as Time Out-slash-the culture section from your favourite paper (as long as your favourite paper isn't the Socialist Worker - the theme for this issue is 'shopping'). This issue's 'headline act' is Emeli Sandé.


Anyway, I'm responsible for the art pages of the magazine  - not much chance to review or feature photography yet but I'm hoping to get some more photo-writing into forthcoming issues. If you know of a show in a London venue that you'd like to see featured in the Feb/ March pages, just drop me a line and I will take a look. In the meantime, enjoy the magazine itself - you can read online or pick up an issue at Bloomsbury theatre, Oval theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, Young Vic, The Book Club, Queen of Hoxton, Whitechapel Gallery, Proud Camden, Old Truman Brewery, and more exciting locations!