Thomas Ruff is one of the most successful German photographers working today. Drawing inspiration more from the fine art tradition than that of photography, the Düsseldorf-based artist who trained under the influential husband and wife team Bernd and Hilla Becher constantly challenges our perception of what photography is and can be. Conceptual in nature, his work often subverts common techniques and styles, with digital manipulation and appropriation recurring themes. His work has ranged from computer-generated prints of lush psychedelic color fields to night vision photographs made to resemble military and espionage techniques. In the last few years he’s experimented more and more with appropriation, culminating in the 2003 collection of “Nudes,” which were based on Internet pornography and then digitally processed and obscured, and the “jpeg” series, which takes compressed files and enlarges them to the breaking point, creating an abstraction in the process.

American Photo contributor Joerg Colberg interviewed Ruff in German and translated the text into English.

Joerg Colberg: Photography from Düsseldorf is so successful that it is being equated with German photography in general. I would be interested to learn how you, as one of the most important photographers from Düsseldorf, see this development? Did the success come as a surprise to you?

Thomas Ruff: Thirty years ago, when we studied at the art academy in Düsseldorf, we would have never dared to dream of such a success. We belonged to the first generation that was able to study photography at an art academy, and that is why we were mostly influenced by art and not photography. We thus viewed our work more in the context of art galleries and museums and not so much of photography magazines.

But it seems we used the medium so clearly and precisely that it had repercussions for the rest of the photography scene.

JC: In an international context, and especially in the U.S., photography from Germany is being taken as photography from Düsseldorf. What do you think about that?

TR: Of course, that is a very narrow way to look at things. After all, there are people like Wolfgang Tillmanns and Thomas Demand, who found international acclaim. And there are photographers like Joachim Brohm and Michael Schmidt, who are recognized mostly in Germany and Europe.
What is more, there exists a plethora of younger German photographers who have not been visible internationally.

JC: Over the past years we have witnessed a trend towards very large prints. It would now almost seem that no gallery show can do without large prints — at least not in New York. But bigger is not necessarily better — or is it? How do you decide about what size you want your prints to have?

TR: Each image needs its own size, and because of that I don’t have a standard format that I apply to all photos. Larger photos might not be better, but of course physically they are more impressive than smaller ones. I assume that’s one of the reasons behind the boom of large-scale photography. Maybe, an additional reason might be is provided by the competition with painting. A third reason could be provided by the history of photography: Over the first 150 years photos tended to be of small size, comparable with sketches. Only through time did advertising images start to grow, and larger photography paper was being developed. It looks like there is a big urge to make up for past size restrictions now.

JC: What impresses me about your own work is your desire to explore new paths and to often work in a very conceptual manner. How do you develop ideas for projects, how do you find projects that you find interesting?

TR: The images or themes come from my daily life. I read newspapers, watch TV, surf the Web and meet people. When I notice or run into something that I won’t get out of my head again I start to work on it.

JC: Over the past years you have worked on a series of projects in which digital image processing plays a large role, be it the “Nudes” or your “jpeg” series. For these series you manipulated images found on the Web. I personally find it very interesting how this stresses digital work and the Internet. However, it seems that digital image processing in fine-art photography is still not being accepted in many circles. I was often asked whether that’s still photography. Your thoughts on this?

TR: Of course digital photography is photography — what else would it be? The manipulation of photographic images has a long tradition.
Retouching was always done, in front of or behind the camera, be it by choosing where to place the camera, by the arrangement of the scene, dodging and burning when printing in the dark room, retouching of the negatives, etc. Digital manipulation merely is a new tool in the history of retouching and manipulating photographic images.

JC: In what direction will photography evolve? Do you want to dare to predict something?

TR: I’m not clairvoyant, and because of that I can’t give a prognosis, what kind of images the next generation of photographers will produce.

The only thing that seems clear already is that technology will be developed further, and this will have far-reaching consequences for how images are being made. Analog photography will become an anachronistic niche product.

JC: And how do you view the Internet’s role for photography? Do you read blogs? Do you think blogs, which especially in the U.S. have come to play an increasing role, are a useful way to talk about photography? And what do you think about Websites like Flickr, where, as was recently reported, there are now more than two billion photos to be found?

TR: For me, the Internet is an important database and place for information, which will change our consciousness. The process of exchanging information and making news available has become faster and more encompassing. However, it cannot replace seeing a photo on the wall.

For me, blogs are not really interesting; I find it tedious to sift through opinions.

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A native New Yorker, Adam Bartos became interested in photography at an early age, inspired largely by the work of Magnum co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson. Through frequent trips to The Museum of Modern Art, he was well acquainted with the black and white street photography of Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and Diane Arbus. But in 1974, while studying film at NYU, Bartos struck up a relationship with color pioneer Joel Meyerowitz that inspired his transition away from 35mm black and white work.

Focusing on the contemporary landscape, Bartos infuses everyday scenes — a lone car in an abandoned parking lot, an empty street corner — with iconic importance. Time is an important motif in his work, particularly the way it’s represented in objects and architecture that point to a bygone era. His 1995 book, International Territory: The United Nations, 1945-95, a collaboration with writer and provocateur Christopher Hitchens, illustrated the effects of time on the modernist United Nations building in New York.

The following Q&A with blogger and American Photo contributor Jörg Colberg focuses on work produced for the 2001 book Kosmos: A Portrait of the Russian Space Age (Princeton Architectural Press), and 2005’s Boulevard (Steidldangin), featuring images made in Los Angeles and Paris. — Jay DeFoore
Joerg Colberg: Your portfolio contains portraits of places like Los Angeles or Paris. How do you approach taking such portraits? Do you have ideas in mind when working somewhere, or you just let things happen and see where that takes you?

Adam Bartos: I think it happens both ways. Sometimes I have an idea of a particular place or subject to photograph and occasionally that has developed into a project or book. At other times, especially in the past, I employed the paradigm of the “traveling” photographer. So my destinations were more general, as in cities or countries I had an interest in visiting and photographing. I lived for a time in LA, part of ’79 – ’80, and I visited Paris often in the ’80s and ’90s.

The Paris pictures evolved partly as the result of reconciling all the still and moving images I had in my mind, from Atget to Gene Kelly to Godard, Matisse etc., — all these images of Paris that are the property of western romantic consciousness — with the pleasure and excitement I had of walking the real streets, off season, and photographing in color. In that sense, the pictures are a riff on the idea of “Paris,” but also a sincere response to the city. At a certain point, I realized I was accumulating pictures of gas stations, dry cleaners, and travel agencies, and other characteristic pieces of everyday Paris that had an allure for me — and that became a motif to elaborate.

The Los Angeles pictures were made differently, with 5×7 instead of 35mm, but again, I was looking at a place that carries lots of associations. I didn’t have the sense of working on anything in a particular vein, but just driving and looking for pictures.

JC: So with the Paris photos you ended up somewhat away from the images you had in mind early on. Is that something that happens a lot when you work on a project?

AB: It has to be that way. I don’t try to make pictures that refer directly to anything I have in mind, except in the way of self-editing a group already begun, or deciding where to go. When I’m photographing, I’m responding to what things look like, which is always different than what’s already in your head, even if you’ve managed to find what you were looking for.

JC: When one goes to Paris or New York and takes photos there’s always the risk of falling into the cliché trap. Places like Paris have been portrayed so often that it seems like the whole city has a photo cliché waiting around each corner. Is this something that you were worried about when working there? And how does one go about avoiding cliché photos?

AB: I often choose places to photograph that have some symbolic significance — the UN, Paris, Russian space program, Chinatown, southern California etc., all of which I suppose can be represented as a cliché. Nevertheless, the clichés can contain and conceal verities that are interesting to examine since they signify some kind of agreement on what is pleasing or of value, and possibly, therefore, something outmoded or in the process of disappearing. For some reason, I’m drawn to try and arrest that process. However, the choice of subject matter — which is what we’re talking about here — doesn’t determine the content of a photograph or what it looks like, so you can probably turn anything into a cliché, and the reverse. Reprocessing and re-photographing clichés has been a very rewarding “fine art” strategy, and one that in my opinion, is even more tired and clichéd than it was 15 or 20 years ago.

JC: For your “Kosmos” series you traveled to Russia to portray their space program. How did you come up with the idea? And I could imagine taking photos there where things are so different from what we’re used to in the West must have been a challenge. How did you approach that series? Was there anything that you would not have done elsewhere, or was it “just” another project to do?

AB: I had the idea after coming face to face with artifacts from the program on display at Sotheby’s in New York in 1993. I was bowled over by the extraordinary aura these things emitted, and I decided to go, there and then.

The logistical aspects of doing this project were truly daunting. I was incredibly fortunate to find a uniquely qualified person who helped me in Moscow, or I never would’ve been able to complete it. I also went as a complete space novice and so early on, I had no idea of how to organize or prioritize my program. Also, there wasn’t a clear theme. Since you’ve asked me about clichés, the space program is endlessly commemorated in Russia and I wanted to skirt the obvious kitschy stuff — monuments and pictures of cosmonauts. On the other hand, the subject itself is so vast, and I wanted to address it in a way that I felt was appropriate to its scale. Eventually, I structured the project by focusing on the legacy of the space program’s legendary “Chief Designer,” Sergei Korolov. This helped me to tie a lot of varied subjects together, portraits of retired engineers, domestic interiors, manufacturing plants, the launch site in Kazakhstan, etc. The time represented in the book (KOSMOS) is elastic, it jumps around from a 1950s era switchboard to a modern rocket launch, and sometimes it might be difficult to tell whether what you are seeing is abandoned, in active use, or part of a museum — but that’s really how it is.

It was an extraordinary project and I probably managed to do it in the last moments that it was possible to have access to that world. Many of the gentlemen I photographed have died since, and during the Putin years everything has been closed back up.

JC: I read that some of your photography was done in the 1970s, a period that more and more people are interested in now, since it is the era when color entered into the fine-art photo world. I’d be interested to learn a little bit about your thinking, your approach to photography back then — who influenced your work? And how has your approach changed, given that now color is widely accepted, and now people are instead debating whether digital photography should have the same status as film?

AB: I was taking pictures in black and white in the early ’70s. I was fascinated with [Magnum co-founder Henri] Cartier-Bresson and I went to The Museum of Modern Art often and was well acquainted with Winogrand, Friedlander, Arbus, etc. While I was a student at NYU film school, I co-founded a “friends of photography” club and we decided to project slides — partly in order to stay out of the darkroom and concentrate on making images, and also just for the fun and beauty of seeing the color and large scale. Around that time (’74) I came across some Joel Meyerowitz pictures published in ArtForum. They excited me greatly, and I looked Joel up in the phone book. Very generously, he introduced me to some of his students, who were making color prints, and that began to change how I approached making pictures. I was also becoming familiar with Eggleston’s and Shore’s work, and my friend Richard Pare was showing me astonishing 19th century material he was collecting for what became the Centre Canadien d’Architecture. Also, looking back, I had a fabulous film education in New York in the ’70s — it was possible to see everything, and I tried to. That was the thinking!

The question about digital versus film is a non-issue. It’s one choice of many made in the process of making something — and it doesn’t affect the final quality of the work — unless it was the wrong choice!

JC: When you compare the photo scene back in the ’70s with today — how have things changed? And what do you think of the role of the Internet?

AB: I think that in one way the Internet and electronic photography are making people more sophisticated about image-making because they are doing so much more of it, and there’s no technical challenge to making a picture that “looks good.” But then, as PL di Corcia said, even more “people think photography is a foreign language they can speak” and so there’s a kind of emphasis, also enabled by electronics, on making pictures that are heavy on production value, size, weirdness, etc. etc. to distinguish themselves in the ever growing art market. What worries me is that the audience for photography may lose the capacity to make distinctions about what was formerly appreciated as a circumspect medium — although, to be honest, I’m not sure that’s happening.

–Jörg Colberg is founder and editor of the fine-art photography blog Conscientious. He works as a research scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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The decision caused quite a stir at the time, especially when paired with his departure from the prestigious Magnum Photos, but Delahaye’s artistic journey is now bearing considerable fruits. His latest work, “History,” might be considered the culmination of his artistic development. The series of panoramic photos shot with a large-format view camera often show vast scales, such as the whole UN assembly hall while President Bush was giving a speech. Shot in typical photojournalistic situations in a non-typical way, the large-format images (often printed 4 x 8 feet) take on a broader historical perspective.

American Photo recently spoke with Delahaye about his work and vision.

Q: I think the first images that I saw from you were those published in “History,” and I was instantly somewhat confused. Even though these photos are/were clearly photojournalism, in my head I also placed them into the context of contemporary photography. For example, “President Bush Addressing the U.N.” reminded me of some of Andreas Gursky’s work, like his photos of stock traders or of a rave. What was your motivation to move away from your run-of-the-mill photojournalistic practice – where one would have taken a photo of just President Bush and the podium at the UN – and to get vast panoramas instead?

A: The picture you mention was made at a time – 2002 – when I was more interested in including the broad context of a given situation than I am now. It was probably in reaction to photojournalism, where I was coming from. I think that photojournalism is at its best when conceived as a series – the picture story. But I was never really interested in telling stories, I’m more into the production of individual images with strong narrative structures, and at that time there was a necessity to formalize clearly what I was standing for: simplicity, some clarity, the refusal of a “photographic style” and the mystification of reality that comes with it. Working with the complexity of the real was one thing. The other one, probably more difficult, was to work towards the restoration of the autonomy of the image.

Q: Can you be a little bit more specific by what you mean when you say “the autonomy of the image”? Also, I find it interesting that you’re speaking of the complexity of the real. We’ve come to get used to the idea that reality is just so simple, that simple stories and simple images show us what is real and what isn’t. But it seems to me that’s just really not true, and you can look anywhere in the world where reality is just so much more complex than the black-and-white pictures people are presented. Is this something that you are interested in?

A: If an image has a sort of organic unity – the internal coherence of a mesh of elements that work together, respond to each other and therefore produce “intelligence” – then you can say that it has a level of autonomy. It’s self-sufficient in the sense that it doesn’t rely on the outside to exist; and this is precisely a condition that makes possible an interesting relation with the outside, the viewer. I think that these qualities are sometimes emphasized by the size of the work – when some elements and information begin to exist, and when the image is independent from the context in which it is shown: the picture as a physical object. But I can’t say that I am consciously trying to achieve this, it doesn’t work that way. It’s enough if I just recognize it when it’s there or seems to be there.

Q: We’ve lately seen the development of photography that lives at the intersection of photojournalism and art. For example, recently, photography from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has reached art galleries, and books have been published. In a sense, there never was such a clear distinction between photojournalism and fine art in the first place, with many photographers, like Henri Cartier-Bresson, working right in that gray zone. But, I think, in the eye of the public, photography still is either art or photojournalism, or something that is not necessarily real or outright fabricated and something that is a depiction of reality. There are all kinds of problems I see with this. For example, shouldn’t we be a bit concerned if the aftermath of a natural (and, to a large extent, man-made) disaster can only be found in museums or art galleries – the places where many people expect to find, well, art – something that doesn’t necessarily reflect “reality”? Don’t we move things that need to be discussed in quite a bit of seriousness into a space which might suppress this discussion?

A: A work of art is always a document: a document about the artist, about its time and the context in which it has been made; and sometimes a photograph contains enough information about a given situation that you can say it has some journalistic value. But it’s different – in nature – from photojournalism, and I think ignoring the difference between the two generally produces something which is neither good journalism nor it is convincing art. That said, I don’t really feel concerned by this issue – the issue of the classification of my pictures by their viewers.

Q: It’s quite interesting that your work was discussed in three of my other interviews. In each case, your photo of the dead Taliban soldier from your “History” project was brought up, and I’m quite grateful that I now can talk with you about this particular photo. Can you maybe give us a bit of a background first? Under which conditions did you take the photo?

A: I was staying since two weeks with a small group of Northern Alliance fighters in a farm on the frontline, waiting for the offensive. It eventually happened and in great confusion, on foot, we crossed the no man’s land and reached the Taliban lines. That’s where I made this image. The morning after, we reached Kabul.

Q: I think the photo has generated quite a bit of a controversy not because of its content, but because of how and where it was displayed (and sold). These days, people are quite used to seeing dead foreign (but certainly not their own) soldiers on a regular basis in their newspapers, but seeing a huge print of one in an art gallery is quite different. And I sense a certain uneasiness about seeing it sold for a lot of money. I am sure you have encountered this problem before. What do you say to people who confront you about this?

A: I’m avoiding these discussions.

Q: OK, let’s not talk about it then. But then I’d be curious to find out why you’re avoiding these discussions now? Do you think that the photo and its presentation have been a bit misunderstood?

A: There can’t be a misunderstanding, because I’m not “saying”
anything through my pictures. They are just there. If they are good enough, they will not need me to justify them afterwards. In any case, photography is essentially a phenomenological practice: no matter how complex or obscure a picture can be, it will always show the nature of the photographer’s relation to the real with a degree of clarity.

Q: The photo of the dead Taliban reminded me of paintings of old masters – who regularly showed historical or religious settings or events. The advent of photography made painters move their subject matter away from the realistic to something else, but it was never quite that obvious that photography was moving in. Maybe we’re now at a point where photography creates our contemporary version of paintings of old masters? Is this something you had in mind?

A: No, I don’t feel the need to do what has already been done. I’m trying to work with what only belongs to photography, and I think there’s more to be done.
–Jörg Colberg is founder and editor of the fine-art photography blog Conscientious. He works as a research scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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Most fans of contemporary photography know Martin Parr for his high-saturation color photos that take a satirical, slightly off-kilter look at modern society. An avid collector, author, and curator, Parr has his hands in about 20 different projects at any one time.

His latest venture is “Colour Before Color,” an exhibition of early 1970s European color photography, opening at the Hasted Hunt gallery in New York June 7. Parr’s exhibit starts from the premise that the history of color photography is tilted too far in the direction of the Americans like William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld and Joel Meyerowitz. While he concedes that these masters helped the medium gain acceptance in the art world, Parr argues that Europeans were producing color work before or contemporaneous with William Eggleston in the U.S.

“The purpose of the current exhibition is to demonstrate that an equally lively colour photography culture in Europe was operating both before and during the 70s,” Parr writes in the introduction to the exhibition. “This work had been largely overlooked as it was not put together as a movement, nor was it promoted by high profile institutions.”

Jörg Colberg, author of the Conscientious blog and an American Photo contributor, recently spoke with Parr about the upcoming show. –Jay DeFoore

J. Colberg: Why did it take so long for colour photography to be accepted as an art form?

M. Parr: I guess because the museum/art world was rather dismissive of it. Although, as soon as colour was invented it was used for commercial purposes, and there were indeed some photographers who did their own work in it. It wasn’t ever taken seriously. If you did serious photography, it had to be done in black and white. Colour was regarded as rather commercial or as “something from the album.”

JC: And then it was John Szarkowski who broke it into the art world.

MP: He was part of the machinery in the 1970s or the institutions in the 1970s. There was a change in perception because of the famous Eggleston show.

JC: What I’m curious about is why did Europe mostly miss out, at least in the early stages of getting colour photography into museums?

MP: The whole point of this exhibition is to demonstrate that there was intelligent colour photography being viewed in Europe, but because we didn’t have the powerful art institutions behind the photographers, or there weren’t the exhibitions that became the landmark pointers, they weren’t particularly known. So the purpose of this show is to just really say, “Yes, we all know about the ’70s in America when colour became accepted part of the contemporary practice, but did you know it happened in Europe as well?” We show photographs from different photographers, starting with Keld Helmer-Petersen, who did probably the first intelligent colour photography book in 1947.

JC: I discovered one of the photographers, Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken, just last year when I was in Holland. I was really surprised because at first I thought, “Wow, this is great!,” and I couldn’t really find anything online, apart from some few samples. I thought that those were very interesting if you compare them with what people in America were doing. So if you compare these European colour photo pioneers with their well-known American counterparts, what similarities and differences do you see in what they were doing?

MP: Van der Elsken was a maverick photojournalist or documentary photographer, and he did colour and black and white. His most famous book was done in black and white. But he also did colour. He did it without really thinking. It wasn’t a big issue. He just did it, because colour was there.

Most of the photographers in America had started out in black and white — even Eggleston, even Shore — and they all moved to colour as a conscious statement: “Why shouldn’t we shoot this in colour?” It is almost political, whereas Van der Elsken was highly intuitive.

The one that has the most similarity to the mentality that happened in America and that you’re more knowledgeable with because its history is quite well known is Luigi Ghirri, who has the most overlap with that sensibility from the American colour photography of the ’70s. I’ve never seen a black and white picture of his. I think he was really an early colourist. He was doing colour pictures in the late ’50s, rather than moving from black and white to colour. Even Eggleston moved from black and white to colour in the early part of his career.

JC: You might know I have a blog where I link to photography. I’d be interested to find out how, apart from going to your show at Hasted Hunt, what’s another good other way to see the works of those early European pioneers? Are there any books available? Are there websites?

MP: There are books, and they’re very obscure. It’s unlikely that any American book shop would have any of them. It’s as simple as that.
Aperture is finally doing a book about Ghirri next year. Helmer-Petersen’s book, “122 Colour Photographs,” was published in 1947 and is out of print, of course. You can get Van der Elsken’s books; “Hello,” for example, is in colour, but they’re not particularly his best colour pictures. No one has even heard of Carlos Siquier in America, let alone knows he has a book. There’s one book by Peter Mitchell, which has some black and white and some colour, but he never did a book with his earlier body of work. John Hinde has a book out, in fact the one that I edited, “Our True Intent Is All For Your Delight: The John Hinde Butlin’s Photographs.”

So these people are written out of history. The history of photography is so subjective, and the more we go on, the more we realize how subjective it is. I think this is another interesting example of how things are being overlooked, because nobody knew about them. Either people didn’t know about them, or they were just too lazy or lacking of interest to include them.

JC: I’m sure lots of people will be surprised to actually see that photography and to realize that there were people in Europe doing this. And I think that’s why the show will be immensely valuable. I certainly hope that maybe some of these books will be re-printed so that the photographs will become more widely available.

MP: Yes. Ideally, there eventually would be a catalogue along these themes and ideas, but there’s nothing at the moment and the time.
Nothing yet.

JC: Do you have any plans on getting the show to different places, or is it just that one show?

MP: I do have interest from a dealer in California, but other than that not really. It could eventually become a museum show. The great thing with a commercial gallery is that you can have an idea and do it in six months; you have a museum show and then you might do it in five years’ time if you get the money. That doesn’t sound very exciting to me. And remember, the institutions in America are often very slow at responding to things.

JC: But then of course, there’s a little bit of a European aspect to it, too, because lots of people in Europe don’t know the whole story, either. Are there any shows being planned in Europe?

MP: Not yet. Some of these photographers I have shown individually, but never as a group. With Hinde and Helmer-Petersen, I’ve been a party to people’s reawakened interest. I’ve known about people like Siquier for years, but even in Europe I’d say he’s pretty obscure. In Spain they know him, because he is Spanish, but outside of Spain, people wouldn’t.

— “Colour Before Color” runs from June 7 to July 20, 2007 at Hasted Hunt in New York City, and is part of the Magnum Photos 60th anniversary celebration. The exhibition features works by Keld Helmer-Petersen, Luigi Ghirri, Ed van der Elsken, Carlos Perez Siquier, John Hinde, and Peter Mitchell. Jörg Colberg is founder and editor of the fine-art photography blog Conscientious. He works as a research scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Press Release:
Colour Before Color, curated by MARTIN PARR
June 7 – July 20, 2007

HASTED HUNT is pleased to announce a very special exhibition, COLOUR BEFORE COLOR, curated byMARTIN PARR. The show will be on view from June 7 to July 20, 2007.

For COLOUR BEFORE COLOR, Martin Parr has selected a group of European photographers who were working with color photography in the early 1970’s. These artists were producing work before or contemporaneous with William Eggleston in the US.

The six artists in COLOUR BEFORE COLOR include Luigi Ghirri (Italian, 1943-1920), Keld Helmer-Peterson (Danish, b.1920), John Hinde (British, studio with Edmund Nägele, Elmar Ludwig, David Noble), Peter Mitchell (British), Carlos Pérez Siquier (Spanish, b. 1930), and Ed van der Elsken (Dutch, 1925-1990).

Martin Parr writes:

In the rather dysfunctional history of colour photography, the seminal exhibition by William Eggleston in 1976 at MOMA New York is often cited as the start of serious colour photography. This statement often riles and confuses many people, as colour photography had been around for 90 years. However, previous to Eggleston’s exhibition and book, colour work had predominately been associated with commercial or even snapshot photography. His show gave colour practice the status in the museum world that had previously eluded it.

It is quite significant that the American photography had become so institutionalized as it was this world, especially with the all-powerful John Szarkowski, that fueled the acceptance of colour work. We should also mention the work of Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld and Joel Meyerowitz who all contributed to the establishment and acceptance of colour photography in the 70s.

The purpose of the current exhibition is to demonstrate that an equally lively colour photography culture in Europe was operating both before and during the 70s. This work had been largely overlooked as it was not put together as a movement, nor was it promoted by high profile institutions.

The American colorists who became known in the 70s are now enjoying a renaissance, while the European pioneer equivalents remain relatively obscure.

In 1947, KELD HELMER-PETERSEN self published a book entitled 122 Colour Photographs. It was perhaps the first intelligent book featuring only colour photographs and was distinctively Modernist in its look. Helmer-Petersen enjoyed a brief moment of recognition when Life Magazine published a folio. For a short period he taught photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, before returning to his native Denmark to pursue a career as an architectural photographer.

LUIGI GHIRRI, who died in 1992, was perhaps the colour photographer whose work overlapped most with an American sensitivity. A real spirit of adventure propelled this brilliant Italian artist to explore so many ideas well ahead of their time. Aperture will publish a book and mount an exhibition by Ghirri in 2008.

ED VAN DER ELSKEN, the maverick Dutch photojournalist switched effortlessly between colour and black and white without considering the status of colour in the art world for one moment. His long-term project to shoot on the streets of cities produced many iconic colour images.

CARLOS PEREZ SIQUIER, like many colour photographers started his career in black and white and moved to colour in the 1960s. He photographed in his native Almeria, in Spain and finally took to the nearby beach with a medium format camera in the 1970s and produced a remarkable body of work during this decade.

JOHN HINDE was an English photographer who was a pioneer of colour work. He started a hugely successful post card company and in the late 1960s picked up a commission to photograph Butlins holiday camps. By that time he was employing other photographers to continue this and other assignments. The images of the camp interiors are in luscious colour, and are packed with information about dress and décor of this period.

PETER MITCHELL, also an English photographer, had the first landmark colour exhibition in the UK entitled “A New Refutation of Viking 4 Space Mission” at the Impressions Gallery, York in 1979. Mitchell photographed the factories, owners of small shops and other features of Leeds, the city in Yorkshire where he lives .He does this in a very formal style, with the aid of a stepladder. The idea being this is how Leeds may be viewed when the Mission from Mars finally lands on this unsuspecting city.

More than 30 years after these images were produced, the language of colour photography that these photographers have employed is now very familiar. This exhibition gives a unique opportunity to re-assess the short and confused history of recent colour photography by showing the work of European pioneers who have been overlooked and eclipsed by their American counterparts.
– Martin Parr, January 2007

In addition to the works on view in the large exhibition, there will be representative works by these artists in the gallery inventory. These are the US debuts for SIQUIER, MITCHELL and the color work by VAN DER ELSKEN.

The Hasted Hunt exhibition will feature contemporary prints commissioned from the original negatives and will include works unfamiliar to the US audience and, in a number of cases, previously unavailable in any form.

MATIN PARR is a well-known Magnum photographer as well as author and curator. He has a large retrospective show on tour in Europe. He co-authored (with Gerry Badger) The History of Photo Book, Vol.1 and Vol. 2 (Phaidon), and served as the Artistic Director for the 2004 Rencontres d’Arles in France where he included the Helmer-Peterson work.

There will be a panel presentation with Mr. Parr and special guests (to be announced) on Wednesday, June 20 from 5 to 6 PM, followed by a reception from 6 to 8 PM. This is the first in a series of exhibitions to be guest curated in the coming months at Hasted Hunt.
529 West 20th Street, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10011 T 212 627 0006 www.hastedhunt.com

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Jörg Colberg: Looking at the different series of work that you’ve done, there appears to be a development towards the abstract as you move from portraiture (“Platteland”) to people who are increasingly part of a surreal setting (“Outland” and then “Shadow Chamber”) to your new work, which is much closer to paintings than to photography. What caused this evolution?

Roger Ballen: The change from being a documentary based photographer to an artist was a gradual process that occurred over quite a long period of years. To the best of my knowledge sometime around 1997-98 I started to feel that the purpose of my photography was primarily to explore my own interior rather that the South African culture I was living in.

During 2003 the nature of my work started to change dramatically. I started to deliberately avoid including the faces of my subjects in my photographs as I felt there were other aspects of my images that could not come to the forefront as long as direct human presence existed in the images.

JC: What are these aspects that you would like to show?

RB: The formal qualities of my photographs have always been crucial to the overall meaning of my images. On many occasions I have mentioned “that the forms in my images create the content.” When ones refers to form in my images it comprises a whole host of variables such as texture, tone, lines, shapes, all of which interact in organic fashion to create a layered, complex meaning. Most importantly, the forms must be clear and to the point; but it is my hope that the end result of composing these relationships is to create an essence of ambiguity.

JC: I would like to talk to you a little bit about your portrait work, especially the portraits from “Platteland,” since many of my past conversations have at least brushed this subject matter; and I personally find portraits infinitely intriguing. Can you tell me a little bit about the series, in particular how you decided whose portrait to take? I read on your website that you said you weren’t prepared for the controversy that the series created. What was it about the controversy that surprised you, and in retrospect would you do anything different if you were to shoot that series again?

RB: The book Platteland, Images from Rural South Africa, published in 1994, depicted a marginalized, isolated group of white people that habituated the South African countryside. The photographs were taken during a period of political upheaval in South Africa and the book attracted world attention as it was a real revelation to many individuals inside and outside of South Africa that many whites were poor and alienated.

I have never taken photographs for “the market” and consequently would not change any aspect of what I created in this series. Up to this time photography was purely a hobby; I earned my living as a geologist, and having never really spoken about my work I was forced to defend my intentions which I was fundamentally unprepared for.

The issue of why one chooses to photograph a particular individual over another individual is a very complex issue [and] one I find difficult to answer. Ultimately the choice involves a whole host of subconscious and conscious decisions. It is almost as problematic as the question of why one color or taste is more appealing than another.

JC: What do you think was the effect of showing that there were indeed a large number of poor white people in South Africa? Especially what did it achieve inside South Africa?

RB: It is very difficult to know what these images ultimately achieved, but for some reason many of these images have become icons in and outside of South Africa. One of my more important goals as an artist is to change or expand human consciousness hopefully in a positive way. The fact that so many people know my images means that they have been affected in some way.

JC: What do you think is needed to take a good portrait? What kind of interaction is needed for that? And who, the photographer or the sitter (or both?), ultimately is the key person?

RB: I believe the process that is required for every photograph is different; and the fact that one must continually improvise to the particular circumstances is crucial. Ultimately if one is to create a significant impact as an artist the work must reflect one’s vision and style. Consequently, then the key person is the artist; I sincerely believe that it is virtually impossible for anybody to create an identical essence to that pervading most of my images.

JC: So then to make sure that the photo reflects you vision and style how do you influence your sitters? I realize that ultimately, this might be a very hard question to answer, but I also know that there is widespread interest among photo enthusiasts about this. The question “How did he (or she) do this?” might be the one that I most commonly see in e-mails. To what extent is this whole process something that happens unconsciously?

RB: It is important to note that most of my photographs over the past few years do not contain people. Animals, objects, and drawings are far more prevalent then a direct human presence.

I believe there are literally thousand of conscious and subconscious decisions that assist in the construction and culmination of one of my photographs. Consequently there is hardly the slightest possibility that someone photographing a similar subject in an identical environment will be able to create a photograph with an essence that is aligned to mine.

Ultimately each photograph requires a different approach; to the best of my understanding the process is dominated by my imagination.

JC: You have a background as a geologist, and you live in South Africa, which is somewhat remote from the world’s big photography scenes. So you started out as an outsider, maybe with a somewhat different artistic sensitivity. Is this something that you were ever aware of, and if yes, did you see it as a strength or a weakness? And who were your main influences as an artist?

RB: It is impossible to surmise what would have happened to ones’ life in another situation. Nevertheless, thinking back over the past 25 years the isolation that I experienced living in South Africa forced me to look “inward” rather than seek answers from others’ work. I have always believed that the most important source of inspiration should come from the process of understanding one’s existence. I have been very fortunate as photography has allowed me to delve into my interior and externalize it.

My main influences as an artist over the past decade have ultimately been nature and the deeper aspects of my own psyche. I could name a whole host of people such as Bacon, Picasso, Dubuffet, African Art that have affected me on some level.

JC: If you had to pick one photo to take along onto a deserted island, which one would that be and why?

RB: Unfortunately I am not able to answer this question as each important photograph conveys some important part of me.

— Jörg Colberg is founder and editor of the fine-art photography blog Conscientious. He works as a research scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University. You can also read his Conversation with Andrew Moore on PopPhoto.com.

— Click here for a gallery of Roger Ballen’s images, or for more information see his website.

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Dresie-and-Casie-twins-Western-Transvaal-1993

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Chamber-of-the-enigma-2003

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Jörg Colberg: I was very impressed by your photography in Russia, especially given the wide range of locations you were able to use. Given Russia’s history, this must have been quite the endeavor. How did you manage to get access to so many different sites, some of which I would have thought to be completely inaccessible to Westerners with big cameras?

Andrew Moore: I have to admit that one of the aspects of being a photographer I enjoy most is the opportunity to play both detective and spy. As a child, I seem to have been attracted to forbidden places. It actually got me into quite a bit of trouble later when I was a teenager, and even today my son teases me that I will go anywhere at anytime until the dogs chase me out.

I imagine that growing up during all the propaganda of the Cold War, it was inevitable I would eventually seek out places Americans weren’t supposed to go, especially those behind the Iron Curtain. In the early 1980s, I traveled quite a bit in Eastern Europe, especially in Prague and throughout what was then Czechoslovakia. Although the party system was tremendously oppressive, especially for any nonconformist, the secretive and at times absurd atmosphere was impossibly seductive for someone like myself. As a traveler, I felt a mixture of constant apprehension and keen admiration for the resourcefulness of the Czechs. In the mid-’90s, when I first went to Cuba, I felt something of the same ambience, although the controls by the state there were much better integrated into the society, and thus less visible but more effective.

I mention all this to point out that by the time I did my project on Russia, I was quite familiar with the workings of Communist and police states and had some idea how to navigate through them as a foreigner. Although one method is to work through diplomatic channels to gain entry to controlled places, my approach has always been to fly below the radar, so to speak. The first thing I try to do is find someone who has the contacts, charm, and curiosity necessary to get things done in a bureaucratic maze, as well as someone who understands what kinds of pictures I’m trying to make. I was quite lucky in Russia to meet two young individuals, one a photographer and the other a location scout, who were amazingly adept at gaining access to unusual and difficult sites.

By the time I started working in Russia in 2000, the Communist system itself had been mostly dismantled, but the mentality was pretty much the same as before, in that foreigners were generally viewed with some suspicion as well as with a certain degree of envy. Although I don’t speak much Russian, I did try to blend in as much as possible by doing basic things like buying clothes and shoes in local shops. When dealing with the authorities, there were several tactics to take. Sometimes we would apply for permits to make a low-budget Russian movie, which required a small fee to be paid. Sometimes it was a matter of charming the babushka who sternly manned the front desk; often in these cases we would show her my notebook of pictures I’d taken thus far, and as she flipped through the images, the iciness of her composure would slowly melt, she would begin to chat about this or that place, and soon enough she couldn’t stop talking and everything was fine. This picture book was certainly one of the best ways to engage individuals who by their whim could grant access with a nod or phone call. We also occasionally paid a small “tip,” as when we wanted to photograph this radar base near the Mongolian border. The soldier on duty there accepted 500 rubles (about $15, maybe a month’s salary for him) to let us take pictures.

The most difficult cases were in the Far East, where some cities still remain off-limits to foreigners. There I pretended to be an Estonian assistant to my guide, who in turn posed as the photographer. Although my Estonian is no better than my Russian, it was a convenient ruse for everyone. They have a saying in Russian to the effect that “What is forbidden is still possible,” and I found this to be very often true, which I would say is not the case in the United States at present.

JC: Given what you said, for you, as the photographer, a project like Russia must then be so much more than those photos, with all the stories and the memories behind the photos. I know that you also teach photography at Princeton and School of Visual Arts. To what extent do you share the non-technical aspects of your work? Or is this something that the students will eventually have to find for themselves, each in his or her own way?

AM: My friend Julius Shulman is very fond of saying that the camera is the least important aspect of taking pictures. With students I try to emphasize that photography is an extended process of decision-making and not about a singular “decisive moment.” (One revelation of the digital era is that this notion of “process” has been made quite explicit.) So in my classes we talk about everything from very detailed technical issues, to questions of strategy for finding and approaching a subject, as well as personal and philosophical questions about the ideas that illuminate their images. I feel strongly that the collaborative aspect of picture making is ultimately what enriches and expands one’s ability to see and to know, and perhaps as their teacher, I’m one part of that collaboration. Often photography students start out thinking that they have to work alone, which may have something to do with cherished myths regarding the secretive or isolated artist. However, the best student work I come across is both inclusive in a personal sense and expansive with regards to culture and the world at large.

JC: Coming back to your own work, how do you deal with this? In Russia, how did you pick the sites that you wanted to take photos of? Russia is a huge country with a very complex — and, in the West, poorly understood — history. How did you decide what to include in your portrait of the country?

AM: One can’t help but be a tourist the first time you visit a foreign place. My method has always been to take repeated trips back to a location I’m interested in, and so each time I return I get a bit deeper and slowly peel back the layers. One helpful tool in this process is a notebook I keep of the pictures I’ve shot up to that point, which helps me determine what holes to fill when I return, and lets me keep in mind the overall scheme and arc of the project.

In the case of Russia, I was quite familiar with both its history and culture before I arrived the first time, but I hadn’t yet linked that knowledge to the more intimate understanding one gathers on the ground and in person. There is an amazing story of the poet Anna Akhmatova, standing in a line of women outside a prison during the Stalinist purges, all of them waiting in the remote hope of possibly seeing their jailed husbands. The women beside her knew she was a famous poet, and one whispered to her: “Remember this for us.” Perhaps more than any other country, Russia is a place where history weighs mightily, and every individual’s memory is laden, if not burdened, with the past. So I would say that despite what I knew of country’s history before I went, the most crucial and enlightening ideas were gathered from the stories people told me.

In thinking about the Russia book, I had two guiding principles. One was to avoid as much as possible any well-worn stereotypes. There are very few pictures of big housing blocks in my book (and none of Red Square) because these seemed like the most ready-made and clichéd images of life in the former Soviet Union. Instead I tried to work more around the edges of things, and in fact many of the places I photographed were actually located along the periphery of the country. I ended up shooting points east, west, north, and south but not so much in the middle of the country. Although this was somewhat an arbitrary choice, it worked out rather well, as one of Russia’s great historical problems has been a lack of clear boundaries with which to define itself.

The other idea was the use of contrasts, both within the subjects themselves and in the layout of the book. The type of subject I am most fond of shooting is that which presents a multilayered pattern of use and history. So, for example, I photographed a former synagogue that had been turned into a radio station, a monastery used as a gulag, a nobleman’s mansion transformed into a children’s theater, etc. For me these kinds of subjects present a cross section through time: they address Russia’s complex past, as well as the larger compacting and collapsing processes of contemporary history. In laying out the book I was able to address the same issues across the page spread. One of my favorite examples of this type of contrast in the book is an image of a worker sleeping in his dark and crowded shop surrounded by banners and girlie photos, juxtaposed against a picture of two scheming executives in their well-lit but empty “constructivist” office.

JC: That image of the monastery turned Gulag turned monastery struck me, because I had just read Anne Applebaum’s “Gulag: A History.” Despite the fact that the book contained a fair amount of details, some of which I had even known beforehand (like the infamous visit by Maxim Gorky, who refused to see the place for what it was), seeing your photo sent a chill down my spine. It seems like photography has to power to show things in a different way, and especially contemporary fine-art photography appears to be getting increasingly involved in this process (as, for example, the images from New Orleans show). It seems the boundaries between pure photojournalism and fine-art photography are not that clear any longer, or maybe it is just that one takes photos with people and the other one without. But seriously, what do you think about this development?

AM: I think this debate about pictures with or without people is inconsequential as a matter of overall artistic value. However, and again referring to Julius Shulman, if you look at his best pictures, the people are as carefully orchestrated as the construction of the architectural space. His “characters” locate the image in a particular point in time, and moreover, they enact a fantasy about American life, which is what I admire most about those images. Julius chose with care the models (or friends), clothes, props, etc. which most closely fit his vision of that space and accompanying lifestyle. Yet what he did best, and I have talked often with him about this, involved the “direction” of the people in his images, both their placement within the frame and their physical gestures. What makes his pictures extraordinary is the complex mixture of the real and the ideal, because in Shulman’s photographs his characters are both imitating life as well as offering up an idealized version of it.

For example, there’s a fantastic picture of a house shot from poolside in Palm Springs: a man in a bathing suit holds a towel wrapped around his neck with both hands while speaking to a woman who’s reclined in a chaise longue and shading the sunlight off her face with her raised hand (on the other side of the frame is the architect himself, Richard Neutra, seated and reading some papers). The couple’s relaxed pose balances out the aggressive industrial shapes of the house, and also embodies the idyll of postwar American life. Julius, even at 96 years of age today, is incredibly observant of the behavior of people, and he intuitively understood, much like a film director, how to get people into “character,” as well as how their poses would play out within the context of the larger “scene.” (Just by way of contrast, consider an artist like Saenredam, the 17th-century Dutch painter of church interiors and perhaps the first purely architectural artist. He created beautifully complex spaces out of Reformation interiors, but the little genre figures that provide a sense of scale and populate the lower parts of the panels were actually painted in by another artist.) As someone who loves and photographs architecture all the time, I truly admire Julius’ ability to place figures in his spaces: it’s extremely difficult to do well, perhaps more difficult than anything else, especially in large format, and Julius is absolutely a model to study for anyone interested in this problem.

As to your question about the blending of boundaries among the various modes of photography, I can only say this is a most welcome development. It reveals the continuing maturation of photography as a form of expression, and as a matter of practice, frees up the photographer from adhering to a set of fixed conventions. In fact, I think it is self-evident that the most interesting work of the moment is being done at the intersection of these formerly distinct styles, methods, schools, etc. (A rough analogy might be the phenomenon of “fake” news programs, such as The Daily Show, which is far more content rich than the standard fare on broadcast news.) We can disagree about the choice of subject or the meaning of the content, yet as a question of form, this process of shifting boundaries is not only inevitable, but also a very positive sign of photography’s continuing ability to create compelling images.

JC: I talked to Alec Soth about this already, and I’d like to ask you about it. There are many places or ideas which have become photographic clichés. For a photographer it might be one of the biggest challenges to avoid simply falling for the cliché trap. Would you agree that this problem exists, and — if yes — how do you deal with it?

AM: I believe that the problem of the cliché image is endemic to the making of art. One has only to look at the plethora of stagnant history paintings so favored by the art academies of the 19th century to see that the problem of the “subject” is a profound one faced by artists of all periods.

Our particular moment in time has compounded this problem through the massive overproduction of images. I am not saying that there should be less art, as a general principle, but because of our ever-improved technology, we are able to produce images at an overwhelming pace, and not only that, we are also able to distribute them with extraordinary speed. So it’s no wonder that contemporary artists feel both overwhelmed and constrained given such a large-scale and efficient system of manufacture and distribution.

As an example of this, I recently brought to America my Russian assistant who had worked with me during my travels for the book. She shot for a month in America with me, and we traveled all over, from public swimming pools in East New York to ranches in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Whenever I asked her what she thought about these places, she said that nothing about them surprised her; she had already seen it all before in books, magazines, and movies. “You Americans have done a very good job of imaging yourselves,” was her comment.

I agree that the United States may be one of the toughest places to shoot in terms of finding new subject matter. And it would seem to be one of the reasons why many photographic artists have turned away from an empirical approach in favor of a way of working that is more staged and suppositional.

However, as much as this dilemma does exist, I think there are two approaches that may help. The paradox is that one relies on technology, the other on history. Although some may feel that art and science share little in the way of sensibility, it’s evident that perception and technology are intimately connected through the history of art, whether it is the discovery of mathematical perspective, the developments of oil paint in tubes (hence plein-air painting), or large-scale digital photography. The question becomes, what can we do today that couldn’t be done twenty, ten, or even five years ago? What new ways do we have of seeing the world? I don’t believe this is an end in itself, but it certainly is one means for an artist to create a refreshed vision of things. I find the best solution is to embrace the entire spectrum of possibilities, from the most traditional methods to the latest and newest techniques, in order to have the widest palette available for my work.

The other approach involves a deepened understanding of history, both the history of image making and the overall flow and pattern of events that have created today’s world. It’s not simply a question of finding a new angle, but of seeing the world as it is evolving today. My sense is that our perception of the world, as influenced by the rapid evolution of information technology, directs us away from history and the past. It’s as though we view reality through a speeding car: the future, which is rushing toward us, appears immediate and vivid, while the past, which can only be viewed through the mirror, falls away into blurriness and quickly vanishes. I believe that if artists are engaged with the past, in whatever manner they choose, it can facilitate the ability to see a continuum between previous forms and the yet evolving contemporary ones. And if the dilemma of the cliché ultimately turns on the act of perception, then anything that helps the artist to see his/her subject in the state of “becoming” (and once formalized, permits the viewer to “re-perceive” this subject) is indeed a valuable tool.

JC: The one thing that surprises me about this development, though, is the following: You would imagine that all these new “information technologies” would remove our ignorance of other places and even our own history, but I just don’t see that happening. I often think of photographic clichés as stereotypes that have become pictures. As a German, the things that I most commonly get to hear is that Germans make good beer and tools, have no sense of humor, and take boring photographs. And it is just so tempting to look for what you already know, and very hard to find something else. Coming back to your role as a teacher again, is this something that can be taught? Or does every photographer have to find it for him — or herself?

AM: Intellectual curiosity, in itself, just like an innate sense of proportion, can probably not be taught. One would hope, as a teacher, to develop in students an attitude toward learning, toward acquiring knowledge, and toward the sense of connectivity in everything they do.

Emmet Gowin, a master teacher, calls this “the quality of attention”: it means developing an attitude in which everything you do, all the way from how you treat a piece of photographic paper, to how you behave with those you dislike, reflects at the deepest level the way you respect yourself. And I’ve always thought this was true, that the best teachers don’t insist on particular techniques and methods, but instead nurture an attitude and way of understanding oneself.

That said, I admit to be being a true believer in science and technology. I think the greatest miracle of the modern world is that we can open up our sleek laptops and through the ether itself, connect to the entirety of human knowledge, mistakes and all. On the flip side are the innumerable and everyday challenges of living in this complex, contradictory, and over stimulated system we’ve made for ourselves. Since unplugging is not really an option, except for the Luddites who can live in the forest and make tintypes, what we need at this point is a new model of reality. One branch of mathematics, which has metaphorical possibilities for what this new mental picture might look like, is something called Graph Theory. (This theory has made invaluable contributions to contemporary computer science and is popularized in such notions as six degrees of separation.) It deals with a mesh of points in space containing multitudinous connections and how best to transfer information from one point to another in this system. It’s stable yet flexible, organized but not traditionally hierarchical, and reflects as accurately as any model I know the manner in which we both receive information and navigate through our contemporary surroundings.

JC: I’ve recently heard quite a few complaints that contemporary photography has to too much an extent internalized what people believe to be the German school (which, in itself, I think, is largely a stereotype). It is said that there are too many photos with empty, drab scenes, portraits have become too detached, etc. Has contemporary photography become too “cold”?

AM: I think this is a most relevant question. Surely the success, especially in the marketplace, of the “Düsseldorf School,” has encouraged photographers in the belief that objective photography is the best means to deal with our complex and contradictory world, and that more intuitive or lyrical approaches lead to a worldview that is out of sync or even nostalgic.

The great value of the German school is that its practitioners continue to look outward, to examine the world empirically, in opposition to the inward-turning, constructed set-ups that have dominated in recent American photography. That said, “objective photography,” as practiced by the Germans and influenced by a typological tradition which runs through Sander and the Bechers, is an intellectual distillation of reality through a precise definition of types and categories. I would say that this way of looking at the world is fundamentally Aristotelian, and it is highly effective when practiced with discipline, as the Germans have, and during periods lacking clarity and definition, which seems to be where we are now. (Perhaps it is not surprising that August Sander created his types during the disorder of the Weimar years.) Even the most intuitive of the German photographers, Thomas Struth, creates thematic unity through this typological approach.

It is interesting to note that the set-up/tableaux approach, with its conceptual roots in performance art and appropriation, often employs romantic themes (lost love, the pangs of adolescence, virginal innocence, the isolated genius, etc). However, these themes are almost always held at arm’s length, and admixed with irony and/or an emotional remoteness. So in a sense, both schools end up feeling a bit cold, although approached from different points of view.

For myself, I am trying to synthesize many of these threads in contemporary photography to approach what might be called “conceptual realism.” As an American artist, some of this is rooted in 19th-century American painting and the empiricism of a thinker such as Thoreau, who saw the material world as the final expression of the spiritual, and not merely a stepping-stone to some higher level. As the poet William Carlos Williams once wrote, there are “No ideas but in things.” If you look at an early work by the painter George Caleb Bingham, such as “Fur Traders Descending the Missouri”(1845), you can see both the empirical and the visionary qualities harmonized together. So I believe that if contemporary photographers are to cast off the “coldness” of both conceptualism and the typological, they have to keep their eyes on the physical world about them, and at the same time see it as a manifestation of something much larger and mythological.

— Jörg Colberg is founder and editor of the fine-art photography blog Conscientious. He works as a research scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University.

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