MELANIE MCWHORTER: Interview with PhotoBook Designer Elizabeth Avedon

12.29.2010 Melanie McWhorter posted:

Interview with Photobook Designer Elizabeth Avedon

I first met Elizabeth Avedon when she was the Gallery Director at photo-eye. Since the time Elizabeth departed Santa Fe, she established her own blog which has become a recognized voice in the photography community featuring portfolios and interviews, including my first interview about my photography. I am delighted to turn the tables on Ms. Avedon and allow her to discuss her profession: Book, Exhibition and Web Design + Curatorial Consultant. Here she discusses the photobook, print-on-demand, and some of her favorite projects.

Melanie McWhorter: At what point is it important to involve a designer in your project?

Elizabeth Avedon: There are different stages for a designer to step in for every project. It really depends on the artist/photographer. Some photographers will start talking to me years before they actually are ready to begin the layouts, others hand me a complete, finished edit when I first meet them. I can easily begin to sequence the work for them from that, but I think it's an important step in the overall process for the designer to be involved in the edit of the work from the start, to get a feel for the point of view of the photographer. Many times the designer will see an interesting "book" the artist hadn't imagined for themselves. Other times the photographer will be overly critical in their edit, second guessing themselves and their audience, leaving out images that may show important steps in the evolution of their work. Other photographers may not be critical enough with their work, unable to edit out images because of the people, place or action going on which may not actually come across so well in the image as they think. They are still visualizing the moment, but we don't see it in the frame. It's important for everyone to have an outside eye.

MM: Are most of your clients individuals and do you consult with them one-on-one or are most publishers?

EA: I'm not really a trade book designer, although I love the work I've done for them in the past. (Favorite was An Open Heart by The Dalai Lama for Little, Brown & Co). Almost all of my clients have been individuals or at least the projects start out as someone approaching me and then suggesting to their publisher they would like to work with me. I'm mostly asked to work on special projects. I recently had lunch with the son of a late great photographer to discuss a book of his father's iconic images. Fortunately I knew his father and many of these images are part of my own history, so it could work out well for both of us. We discussed whether to bring in a publisher at this juncture or design the completed book and package it to a publisher. Other times I'll design and print a 20-page dummy for someone to shop around to publishers.

MM: What do you feel is the role of a designer in a creating a photobook?

EA: I think a designer is there to organize the work, whether through a timeline, chapters, subcategories or just by the sequencing into a narrative. The way the works flows from one image to the next, one spread to another, should intuitively guide the viewer through the photographer's world - his or her intention with their work. It's really fun to do a very creative design, with crazy fabulous typography and collage the images and show off as a designer, but that isn't going to showcase a photographer's work. I try to let the work dictate what kind of book it wants to be and stay out of the way. Let the work speak for itself. I've worked on several long-term projects that began as one kind of book and when they were completed, I could see they wanted to be an entirely different kind of book. The work needed to be organized into its first incarnation, to see it was meant to be as an entirely different kind of entity...read more HERE

...Richard Avedon's 30-year retrospective of fashion work: AVEDON: 1947-1977...Authors Mary Virginia Swanson and Darius Himes...'Real Photography' books vs Print-on-demand Books and Blurb Books...read more HERE

Melanie McWhorter Photo Blog

Photographer Melanie McWhorter has managed photo-eye BookStore, the best online Photography Bookstore in the world, for over 13 years. She is a regular contributor to the photo-eye Magazine, co-founder of FiniteFoto Magazine, curator and lecturer.

CAIO FERN: Slam Magazine Artist Interivew

Acrylic on Canvas (c) Caio Fern 2010 /All Rights Reserved

Sometimes in Brazil the word ambition is seen as a sin...

Slam Magazine Interview
Interview with Artist Caio Fern by Terri Lloyd
Caio Fern Paintings, BlogJournal, Photography

ZWELETHU MTHETHWA: An Interview With Larissa Leclair

from the “Interiors” series
Photograph (c) Zwelethu Mthethwa /All Rights Reserved

From the series Sugar Cane, 2006
Photograph (c) Zwelethu Mthethwa /All Rights Reserved

from the “Interiors” series
Photograph (c) Zwelethu Mthethwa /All Rights Reserved

Aug 1st Last Day to Enter
Flak Photo Zwelethu Mthethwa Book Give-Away!
Enter Here!

Larissa Leclair teamed with Flak Photo's Weekend series featuring photographs by Zwelethu Mthethwa. Larissa corresponded with Zwelethu as he prepared to travel from South Africa to the U.S. for the opening of “Inner Views” at the Studio Museum in Harlem, July 15-Oct 24. They talked about his monograph, his Sugar Cane series, the South African photography community, and about the current show at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Below is an excerpt from their Interview courtesy of Larissa Leclair.

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LL: Your work as a whole addresses the economic and political reality of marginalized communities primarily in South Africa. Can you talk about your personal interest in these communities and professions (miners, sugarcane workers, etc.). Are you personally an outsider or is there more of a connection to these people and circumstances -politically, economically, culturally?

ZM: The work is about my personal history and personal observation. I grew up in contact with these different communities all the time. I was always interested in how the migrant workers would be ostracized from the main community, which was the community that I came from. The migrant workers were always seen as “the other” – they looked different, talked different, dressed different – they were just so different. As a kid I was curious to understand the dynamics of these differences, mainly because we were all black, I assumed we were all the same. Growing up as an artist I came to realize that I was also an outsider because with my views on life I probably didn’t belong to any of the communities, even the mainstream community.

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My first attraction to the sugar cane workers was that they were wearing skirts, and that they looked to me like Samurai warriors. I then found out that, not only were they wearing skirts, but also many other layers of clothing. This was odd to me because Durban is an incredibly hot and humid area. I thought they must be crazy to be wearing so many clothes and still doing manual labor. I discovered, through speaking with them, that the reason was to protect themselves from the burning ground and soot (sugar cane is burnt before harvested); from the very sharp leaves of the cane; and also from the many snakes that like to live in sugar cane fields. The most difficult part of taking these photographs was stopping them from working. These guys are paid according to the weight of sugar cane that they harvest; there is no hourly rate. I felt guilty that I was interrupting and taking their money away from them by asking them to pose for me. So this forced me to move in and out as quickly as possible, interrupting their flow of production as little as possible.

Read The Entire Interview Here

Zwelethu Mthethwa: Inner Views
Exhibition July 15-October 24, 2010

The Studio Museum in Harlem
144 West 125th Street, NYC

MONA KUHN: Native Exhibition + Interview

Marina
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn /All Rights Reserved

Kuhn's new work at AIPAD 2010

Virgin Forest
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn /All Rights Reserved

Emerging Boy
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn /All Rights Reserved

Jungle Roots
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn /All Rights Reserved

Doppelgänger
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn /All Rights Reserved

Silent Waters
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn /All Rights Reserved

MONA KUHN NATIVE
APRIL 9 - MAY 15 • FLOWERS GALLERY NYC
ARTIST TALK APRIL 10 3 PM

One of my favorite contemporary photographers, acclaimed artist Mona Kuhn, has an exhibition of her latest series of photographs in conjunction with her new book, Native (Steidl) opening this week at the Flowers Gallery in New York City. Kuhn will also conduct a Gallery Talk April 10th.

"Mona Kuhn, best known for her alluring figurative studies in a French naturist colony, returned to her birthplace of Brazil after a 20 year absence to produce this new body of work. While this personal journey home was an attempt to reconnect with her past, Kuhn soon found that only traces of it actually remained. Through the discovery of new people and places, Kuhn was able to create her abstracted dreams and desires of both the past and the present. The result is a sensual and pensive narrative depicting lush jungle landscapes, rustic interiors, and captivating nudes.

In these photographs, Kuhn encapsulates the emotions of living in Brazil through the personal memory of the green, yellow and pink palette of the landscape as well as her intimate connection with its people. By contrasting the vitality of the dense Brazilian countryside with the sparse interior of an abandoned apartment, Kuhn establishes her own fantasy of time and place. As in all of her portraits, Kuhn develops a trusting relationship with her subjects, allowing her to portray the complexities of human nature both tempting and provoking the viewer’s imagination. The intertwining of these aspects forms what one could consider Kuhn’s most mature work to date."–Flowers Gallery

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INTERVIEW
HEATHER SNIDER + MONA KUHN

Curator Heather Snider graciously allowed me to reprint her interview with Mona Kuhn about this new body of work and Kuhn's experience of returning home to Brazil after 20 years.

HS: It has been a long time since you lived in Brazil; you’ve spent your adult life elsewhere. Though you undoubtedly expected things would be unfamiliar, what things surprised you the most as you dug under the surface and tried to operate in this new yet familiar situation?

MK: I wasn’t so surprised because it was very familiar. It was more like the reoccurrence of something you once knew but had forgotten. I was surprised by how connected I still am, emotionally, to everything there: the smells, the taste, and the feel of my own body in such a familiar environment.

HS: What were the biggest challenges you faced?

MK: My biggest challenge was finding the people that I wanted to photograph. I’ve been working in a naturalist community because I want to do nudes and I want it to be an authentic experience, where people are already in the nude. But Brazil is, despite the images of bikini beaches and Carnival, a Catholic, Latin American country, and not as open as you might think. Interacting with the people there, and old friends, took time. Trust had to be established. But once it all started rolling then it grew by word of mouth which is in the end most fulfilling. Through good fortune I was able to find a place where I could bring all the people to photograph, a place that had been empty for 20 years and coincidentally had the palette that I wanted to use. A friend of mine told me about an apartment, and offered to show it to me. When we opened the door I knew immediately that it was the place. In France I have my own closed environment to work in but in Brazil I didn’t have that place. I didn’t want to use my own personal house because it wasn’t about exploring my own attic. I wanted it to be more abstract than that, to be a fantasy and not autobiographical. I didn’t want the sepia reproduction photographs of my grandparents.

HS: The whole process of working in Brazil was quite different from how you have been working for the past few years, yet you achieved a remarkable consistency in your imagery. How much did you have to consciously work on this? What were the parameters you set to make sure you stayed within the rather specific visual language you have delineated in your work up to this point?

MK: I like researching. When I realized I wanted to do something in Brazil, something that would interpret my own feelings about Brazil now, as an adult, I looked at things that had been done. I knew what I did not want to do: Carnival, the beaches, the poor people in the streets, and the images of happiness and Bossanova. I started narrowing my thoughts, becoming more and more personal, and realized my interest was in the internal, the emotions of living there. l wanted to use colors that I always felt were part of my life there, the greens the yellows and the pinks. The way I worked with the people was similar to how I usually work, it was just a bit more moody perhaps. But with photography, inside your parameters, you have to leave it loose and open, to allow for the spontaneous and let life be what it is, so that was an important part of it too.

HS: Would you say you were searching for something in particular, or wondering what you would find? If so, what was “it?”

MK: There is a quote of Eugene Smith’s that has always been important to me: “You must be lost before you can find yourself again”....that thought was often in my mind. When you go back to your childhood place, certain things seem so mundane, but you have to remind yourself (that they might be wonderful to someone else) and try to see things with new eyes. I was working intuitively, not knowing what was going to come out, letting myself react, putting myself into situations. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, which was good, because my antennae were open to everything. When I found the apartment it started coming into focus. The first trip I made was very broad and open, but it was like being a cat: you throw it and it has to land on its own feet.

HS: Would you say that this series is more about yourself than earlier work?

MK: It is about myself because it is my homeland, but I’d say that my other work is equally about myself in other ways. I also still go to France to work and that work is a big part of who I am and have been for the past 15 years. Native is about my first 20 years.

HS: Was this work done mostly in São Paolo? Can we talk about choosing to portray only interiors and nature in the midst of one of the biggest urban environments in the world?

MK: I worked mostly in the state of São Paolo, though some of the forest regions were further out, in different areas. But many of these portraits were taken in the city, in the very heart of the city. I didn’t really want to capture reality. I wasn’t interested in portraying where it was, more in entering the thoughts. In the editing, the way the apartment photographs and jungle photographs work together, my intention was to be inconclusive. It’s not meant to be about São Paolo. It is about a mood, about Brazil, about a bird returning to a nest in the forest. Just like my work in France is not about the Medoc region. It is about a fantasy place.

HS: Jungles are such potent metaphors: thick, dense with life in a dangerous sort of way, a fecund, untamed environment. As a child growing up in Brazil, what was the jungle of your imagination, or real life experience? What is your adult perspective on the jungle, and on the Brazilian jungle in particular?

MK: When you enter a forest, deep into a forest, and walk under very tall trees, you realize how overpowering nature is. It has a spirituality that draws you into it. It is also a place where you can escape and create your own reality. For an adult, it has the power of bringing your instincts out. You have to be aware of what’s happening around you, your instincts are turned on, and human nature comes out. This is a different set of instincts than those of day-to-day street life. It is humid, you can smell your sweat, and feel the moisture in the air, your senses become more acute. The Brazilian forest is also very sultry, and makes your sexual senses more acute. There is also a feeling of adventure, and fear, balanced by a sensual element.

HS: Were there any artists you had in mind when you set about photographing, artists that you had in mind either for the idea of returning home or who portrayed similar environments?

MK: I was definitely looking at Rousseau, whose forests look like paradise, idyllic with beautiful fruits and so full of detail. But one thing I did not want to do was to pose people in the forest setting. I wanted the forest to be separate, a psychological atmosphere more than a real place. In the instances where I did photograph people there, it was because I happened to find them there or I was walking in the forest with a friend and we just decided to try it. I also looked at Gauguin, particularly a painting titled Where Do we Come From: What Are We? Where Are We Going? Gauguin was looking for clues, learning about life. He submerged himself in Tahiti and it became part of his life.

HS: There has always been a certain artifice to your photographs, of subjects being posed or placed, which is tempered by the very natural atmosphere of your work, the relaxed lack of self-consciousness. In most of these new images, your subjects weren’t found in the environment, they were introduced for the purpose of making photographs. How did this change your working process and the photographs that you ended up with?

MK: I wanted to create a narrative, and it was important to put parameters in place as we mentioned earlier. Unlike Avedon traveling across America, or Irving Penn’s use of a backdrop in many settings, I didn’t want to isolate my subjects from their environment, or to photograph them as the “other” or the exotic. I wanted to photograph contemporary people that are part of my generation in Brazil, the people I might have been if I were living in Brazil today. The apartment we worked in was in the very center of downtown São Paolo, one of the oldest areas of the city. At one time it was a prominent neighborhood but now it is a marginal area, decayed and empty at night, not really a residential area. It took some time to get there from other areas of São Paolo and more than once the people I was photographing mentioned that the long drive getting there helped them to detach a bit from their everyday. Visiting this place we wouldn’t normally go helped to enter a different state of mind, to abstract the moment.

HS: The interiors have a distinctive atmosphere, suggesting decay, abandonment, and to me are quite unfamiliar and mysterious. Are they, or are certain elements, particularly Brazilian? Do you think they would resonate differently to a viewer from Brazil than to someone who has never visited or lived there?

MK: I guess they are very Brazilian because there are hints about what the culture has gone through. The green walls reference the geography, the forest, and also the militarism in Brazil’s history. There is also the decayed matte gold curtain, a sign of the early Euro-baroque influence and a light fixture that is very 1950s, an era in which Brazil was letting go and having their own cultural enlightenment. This was when Brasilia was built, and Brazil developed a tropical Modernism. There was this girl named Veronica who is wearing a crucifix. When she came to the apartment she asked if she should take it off but I thought it was perfect, just a hint. All these things made sense to me, touching on the symbols of culture without entering it completely.

HS: I spoke with you the night before you left on one of your first trips for this project and you described to me a dream you’d had filled with anxiety, about the fears you had of the real dangers present in Brazil, and your concern that you might be putting yourself in harm’s way. How did this anxiety work its way out in the process?

MK: I was very afraid, because I had experienced dangerous situations when I lived there and there is always the threat of random criminality. It was an anxiety about destiny. I was wondering what it meant for me to be returning and if I was tempting fate. Part of my creative process, a big part of the project, was to throw myself into unknown situations. Especially working in downtown as I was, and even in the forests there is the possibility that people can be hiding there. I did everything alone. I didn’t have an assistant. I didn’t have security. I was putting myself into situations and had to be aware and alert, but the work is not about that. There certainly were risks, but I was not interested in documenting or portraying any of that in the photographs. This was just part of the territory I was working in. It did manifest itself twice while I was working there, but it wasn’t part of the work.

HS: Will you go back to photograph in Brazil? Do you feel that this project is complete?

MK: It feels complete now. If I went back, I would do something else. My curiosity about coming to terms with the past is resolved. I was searching for the past but it was an oxymoron because you can never find the past. You can’t go back. The people I met there represented the present.

HS: In one of the essays in your new book, Wayne Anderson mentions the quietude and silence of your photography. Do you agree with this observation? How did this change in regard to the above project, when you were literally working with sound?

MK: I do relate to the idea of slow motion, a pensive state, and the moments in between thoughts. Though my photographs show nudity, they are quiet as opposed to sexy. In making the video we weren’t really working with sound, it was placed afterwards. We knew we had a five-minute space we had to create and I knew the music and the lyrics, but it was a visual process.

HS: Are you already working on your next project, what ideas are next on the horizon?

MK: I have been working on a side project for the past couple of summers in the Bordeaux region of France, that one is a collection of portraits over a long period of time, all taken in the same room. It is quite traditional, and it may take as long as wine to reach maturity. Meanwhile, I’ve started researching my next active project. I’d like to do it about my present time and place, which is Los Angeles. I’m still defining it, but it will be about my present, where I am now.

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Mona Kuhn has exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe and South America. Steidl published her past two monographs Photographs (2004), Evidence (2007), as well as her most recent Native (2009).

FLOWERS GALLERY 529 WEST 20TH NYC
View Mona Kuhn's Gallery Talk Video's

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: AN INTERVIEW / Update: Sculptor Louise Bourgeois died at home at 98

An Interview With Louise Bourgeois
Front Cover: Photograph (c) Richard Avedon /All Rights Reserved

Back Cover: Polished Bronze Sculpture (c) Louise Bourgeois

Maman by Louise Bourgeois
Spider Sculpture outside the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain

Arch of Hysteria, 1993
Polished Bronze (c) Louise Bourgeois /All Rights Reserved

Art is not about art

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New York Times Obituary

Artist and sculptor, Louise Bourgeois, born in Paris December 25, 1911, died at home May 31, 2010 at 98 years old. She began her career as a draftsman at 12, providing drawings for the missing pieces of tapestries for her families business. At 15 she studied mathematics at the Sorbonne, then began studying painting at the École du Louvre and the École des Beaux-Arts, later working as assistant to Fernand Léger. After moving to the U.S. with her American husband, art historian and Director of the Museum of Primitive Art of New York, Robert Goldwater, she studied at the Art Students League of New York.

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The following excerpts are from An Interview With Louise Bourgeois, by American Art Critic, Donald Kuspit, published under the imprint "Elizabeth Avedon Editions | Vintage Contemporary Artists" by Random House (Here):

DK: You have spoken of (your art) as encompassing the whole history of art, but I wonder if you have any special consciousness of modern art. What do you think about modern art in general? How do you see yourself in the history of modern art?

LB: I am not interested in art history, in the academies of styles, a succession of fads. Art is not about art. Art is about life, and that sums it up. This remark is made to the whole academy of artists who have attempted to derive the art of the late eighties, to try to relate it to the study of the history of art, which has nothing to do with art. It has to do with appropriation. It has to do with the attempt to prove that you can do better than the next one, and that a famous art history teacher is better than the common artist. If you are a historian, you have to have the dignity of a historian. You don't have to prove that you are better than the artist.

But I can say this. I studied in Paris in the thirties at a time when artists had the ateliers that were open to students. My favorite teachers among many were Fernand Léger, Othon Friesz, and Paul Colin. Michèle Leiris and André Breton were also part of my education. Also, I taught for a long time and was given many honorary doctorates. Flattering as it is, it has little to do with my ongoing self-expression. Also, I valued my friendships with Corbusier, Duchamp, and Miró, Arp, Brancusi and Franz Kline and Warhol. Today I value my friendships with Robert Mapplethorp and Gary Indiana.

DK: Which artists do you like?

LB: I like Francis Bacon best, because Francis Bacon has terrific problems, and he knows that he is not going to solve them, but he knows also that he can escape from day to day and stay alive, and he does that because his work gives him a kick. And also, Bacon is not self-indulgent. Some people will say, "What do you mean by that? He always paints the same picture." That's true–he always paints the same picture, because he is driven. But he is not self-indulgent. Never.

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LB: I think I know why the Museum of Modern Art did not buy my work. The truth is very difficult to speak of. There was a certain style of collecting at the Modern which had to do with...I think I should watch my words.

DK: Why? Don't watch your words. You have lived long enough to tell the truth.

LB: Well, it had to do with the trustees, with pleasing the trustees. Alfred Barr was not a trustee; he was an employee, like all the rest. The trustees had real buying power. Alfred Barr had special skills, but he was not part of the Board of Trustees. He was on the other side. The artists who succeeded in selling at the time–Calder, Mark Rothko, Ben Shahn, they were the three–pleased the trustees. You had to entertain the Board, and these Three Stooges knew how to do that, knew how to socially entertain these important people, these trustees. I did not mind that, as a woman, but I could not do it.

Women had to work like slaves in the art world, but a lot of men got to the top through their charm. And it hurt them. To be young and pretty didn't help a woman in the art world, because the social scene, and the buying scene, was in the hands of women–women who had money. They wanted to be entertained–they were lazy and sometimes stupid, and they wanted to be entertained by men of a certain age. So these charmers were what was called in the eighteenth century a pique-assiette in French, somebody who picks at your plate, who will come entertain for dinner, like a buffoon–it is a kind of profession that interests me very much. And they are picked from among artists because there is a certain prestige to being an artist, but from a professional point of view they are more entertainers than artists. They relate to the storyteller, which was a profession. The storytellers of the Middle Ages were men who went from place to place, telling their tales, and sometimes reached the top because of their acting and verbal abilities.

Because of the profession of my husband, I lived among these people. It was interesting. And because I was French and kind of discreet, they tolerated me–with my accent I was a little strange, I was not competition–and I was cute, I guess. They took me seriously on a certain level, but they refused to help me professionally. The trustees of the Museum of Modern Art were not interested in a young woman coming from Paris. They were not flattered by her attention. They were not interested in her three children. I was definitely not socially needed then. They wanted male artists, and they wanted male artists who did not say they were married. They wanted male artists who would come alone and be their charming guests. Rothko could be charming. It was a court. And the artist buffoons came to court to entertain, to charm. Now it has changed, now the younger men are in–older women and younger men.

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DK: Why do you think the Museum of Modern Art finally gave you a retrospective exhibition?

LB: It had to do with one person, that wonderful, wonderful woman, Deborah Wye. She worked very, very hard. She convinced them, she got all the information...she convinced them that I was important.

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In 1982, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, exhibited a retrospective exhibition organized by Deborah Wye. Bourgeois was 70 years old. In 2008, The Tate Modern Museum, London, organized and exhibited a major retrospective of Bourgeois’s work which traveled to the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In 2009, the retrospective traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC.

Louise Bourgeois, Les Fleurs, 2009 Gouache and Silkscreen on Paper,
Wooster Group Benefit Auction March 15th. Estimated value $15,000.

March 15th Wooster Group Benefit Live Auction

Artwork for auction includes Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Clemente, Chuck Close, Jasper johns, Jeff Koons and view Artists here

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG INTERVIEW: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao "Gluts"

An Interview With Robert Rauschenberg Book Cover
Elizabeth Avedon Editions | Vintage Contemporary Artists Series
Back Cover: Robert Rauschenberg. Metal Assemblage, Swaddle Glut, 1986
Front Cover: Photograph (c) Richard Avedon /All Rights Reserved

Robert Rauschenberg, Greek Toy Glut (Neapolitan), 1987
Metallo Asemblato (c) Estate of Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg, West-Ho Glut, 1986, Metallo Asemblato

(c) Estate of Robert Rauschenberg

I think of the "Gluts" series as souvenirs without nostalgia. What they are really meant to do is give people an experience of looking at everything in terms of what its possibility might be. –Robert Rauschenberg

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The following text is from An Interview With Robert Rauschenberg by American Art Critic, Barbara Rose, published under the imprint "Elizabeth Avedon Editions | Vintage Contemporary Artists" by Random House (Here):

BR: There's a lot of recycling and reuse in your work. You believe that you don't have to throw something away just because it's old. There's always a possibility for a use. This isn't a common idea. People are really into "new" today.

RR: The only thing I like to keep out of a work, no matter what the materials are, is the history of the process of putting it together. I don't bring that into it. I think of the "Gluts" series as souvenirs without nostalgia. What they are really meant to do is give people an experience of looking at everything in terms of what its possibility might be.

BR: Your art has certainly always been available. You don't need to have an enormous background on Rauschenberg's history to relate to his work. There is always something there to which anybody can relate. That's why it's popular. You may not contrive to be popular, but you are.

RR: When I see the sorts of things you are referring to, I try to destroy them. I'm sure that I haven't been able to avoid developing some "classic" qualities, and I don't mind them being hidden. I just object to their being the subject.

BR: You prefer a composition that is not obviously a composition.

RR: I prefer not to brag about it's sophisticated anatomy.

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BR: I have watched you work, and it is an interaction–it is your encounter, and you interact with this material or this image or whatever, but you never plan your work. There is no plan or sketch. It's absolutely pure process. Which comes, I believe, from abstract expressionism. It's the process. You don't know until it's finished what it is, and it's done when you've decided that that's it–I think that's an aspect of your work.

RR: Actually, when I'm painting, I think that my mental attitude is to drive with the brakes on, and when I sense a funny smell, then I turn off the ignition.

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RR: For me, Tibet was a living relationship with people. It was a reaffirmation of the fact no matter what the language is or the customs are, there is a general love between human beings. I know it sounds simplistic, but you could see it in Tibet. Some places it's harder to break through that. These people–perhaps because the air is so thin, or their life is so hard, or because they are so religiously rich–have love all over the place. I mean, every step, no matter how cold it is or how hot or how muddy, is still part of the palette of friendship.

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February 12 - September 2, 2010
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG GLUTS
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

FRANCESCO CLEMENTE: Vintage Interview

Book Cover: An Interview With Francesco Clemente. "She and She" Back Cover Painting (c) Francesco Clemente /All Rights Reserved. Front Cover Photograph (c) Richard Avedon /All Rights Reserved. Click to Enlarge

Sky and Water, Watercolour on paper
Painting by Francesco Clemente /All Rights Reserved

The following quotes by artist Francesco Clemente were excerpted from An Interview With Francesco Clemente by Rainer Crone and Georgia Marsh, published under the imprint "Elizabeth Avedon Editions | Vintage Contemporary Artists" by Random House (Here)

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...about the publication of your book of poems, Castelli di Sabbia. (Naples: L’Arte Tipografica, 1964) "I had been reciting it to my mother since I was five or six, and it was published against my better judgment. It was enormously embarrassing, and it made me into a painter, actually, because I decided that to be a poet was too embarrassing; it was too revealing, and I wanted something more obscure to deal with. I thought of painting that way. That was when I was eleven or twelve years old."

"Paintings are simple things. They are important not so much for what is in them as for what is not there. When we talk of the Renaissance we talk of something fragile; the surprise is that at a certain point, after a thousand years of Christianity, Renaissance artists looked at their bodies again, and looked at their faces, and looked at the world as a sensual place. This feeling of surprise happens again in Tiepolo's skies, and even down to de Chirico's earliest painting. If we talk of Piero della Francesca, what comes to mind is the light. There are two lineages of light in painting. One is a secular light: from Caravaggio to de Kooning. The light is outside; it comes down on things, and makes them what they are. But if we talk of Piero, or talk of Roman paintings, or of the Pompeian paintings, we talk of a light that comes from within and that has nothing to do with the history of man. It is a light that is before the history of man. Giotto is unique because you don't know exactly which way the light goes: his is already a completely secular point of view, but still the light is treated as an inner flow. There is really no one else like him; that degree of mystery is nowhere else. We have to talk in terms of light, because if we talk in terms of formalities, what can we get out of it?"

"It could be a step forward to realize that the rational picture of the world is also an imagination; it has the same reality as a myth. It is the product of the mind; it is not more substantial than the mind. When we talk about mythology we are talking about questions of history, of rational thought and rationalized memory of our past. History is the most tragic product of the rational mind–a picture from which there is no way to escape. The picture of the world that history gives us is the picture of a dead person who looks over his own life. It is as if we are all dead, and we are looking at the world in a glass case. How can we get away from this? I have no answer for it."

Exhibition through Feb 27, 2010

FRANCESCO CLEMENTE: A History of the Heart in Three Rainbows
The Goldman Warehouse, Miami

PAINTINGS & BIO | VIDEO I & VIDEO II

GARRY WINOGRAND: 1974 Podcast

Central Park Zoo, New York City 1964
Photograph © Estate of Garry Winogrand

World's Fair, New York 1964
Photograph © Estate of Garry Winogrand

Listen: 1974 PODCAST
"This is the Garry Winogrand I remember.
Worth listening to all the way through." –Tod Papageorge

FLAK PHOTO WEEKEND SERIES TODAY: Conversation With Richard Barnes

Flak Photo | Photography Online | Weekend Series:

"Flak Photo's December Weekend series featured work from Richard Barnes' ANIMAL LOGIC. As part of the project, book designer Elizabeth Avedon Interviewed Barnes in her blog."

"I love the Interview with Richard Barnes...it really broadens an appreciation for the work and gives a real sense about its significance for the artist himself."– Photographer Lisa M. Robinson

And if you missed it: An Interview With Richard Barnes

DILIP MEHTA: Forgotten Woman Documentary

Watch The Forgotten Woman Trailer

Every widow whom I filmed and who agreed to speak on camera was forthright. There was invariably an outpouring of their souls of emotions that were scarred, of feelings that were suppressed, of hopes and dreams that remained unfulfilled.

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DILIP MEHTA was born in 1952 in New Delhi, India. He's been a Founding Member of Contact Press Images since 1977. Early in his career, he won international acclaim for his coverage of the Gandhi family and his five-year reportage on the 1984 Bhopal tragedy, the worst chemical disaster in history. He has since produced extensive work from the US, the former USSR, China, South Asia and, in particular, from his native India where he is a veteran of the political scene. A regular contributor to the National Geographic, GEO in Germany and France, and Fortune magazine in the USA, in recent years he has documented the effects of widespread modernization on Asian society, especially in his own country.

I was first aware of Dilip's work years ago when his photographs accompanied "Tibet In Exile: Looking Homeward", a Geo Magazine photo essay (May 1981, pp 84-110). The article included, rarely seen at that time, photographs of His Holiness The Dalai Lama in his home in Dharamsala, India. Dilip told me recently his fondest memory "was of His Holiness repairing 2 camera bodies that had inexplicably stopped working while I was photographing him at 4:00 am in his bedroom for Geo."

In his award winning documentary, Forgotten Woman, Mehta offers a view of the life of some women forced to live in poverty in rural India once their husbands have died. The documentary follows Dilip's sister, Deepa Mehta's, Oscar nominated film Water. "Deepa's guiding hand has been present for my entire life. 'Water' certainly galvanized me to make this feature length documentary. The inspiration came entirely from the widows themselves," said Dilip, whose documentaries international screenings include the Dubai International Film Festival and the 2009 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

The film opened in New York with 4 stars–“Mr. Mehta puts an unforgettable face on a problem of unimaginable scope.” Nathan Lee- The New York Times.

THE FORGOTTEN WOMAN

Directed and filmed by Dilip Mehta, and written by Deepa Mehta