iconophilia » PHOTOGRAPHY

only in California…

Nigel — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:07:39 +0000

…would you Occupy Oakland with your iPad! Occupy Silican Valley, maybe… This from Mark Murrman’s coverage at MoJo.

concrete poetic

Nigel — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:35:10 +0000

Put your critical eye to the test! Found at Anonymous Works…

readymade and fruity

Nigel — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:54:02 +0000

Aren’t you amazed at how some curators juggle ideas? Here’s MoMA curator Sarah Meister: “You can’t look at Duchamp the same way after seeing that Watkins picture.” Whatkins? And when you’ve read the full (formalist) rationale to see how such arguments are made by transhistorical visual conjunctions alone, you’re left with what Tyler Green, at ArtInfo, calls curatorial “rhyming”. And hence, another illicit visual “argument” is created, (this time, suggesting that you can find proto-modernist, or even proto-avant-gardist roots in Western naturalism) which messes with history, and creates yet another “history”, annoyingly. And so, following ArtInfo quoting the NYT, if “the word ‘curate,’ lofty and once rarely spoken outside exhibition corridors or British parishes, has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting,” (as wrote the New York Times in 2009), now, apparently, it’s the “culling and selecting” of the historical narrative that remains the elevated domain of museum “curation”. So, it seems, history is all there’s left to ~~mess with~~ curate.

historical advice

Nigel — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:34:33 +0000

We can deduce this photographic postcard of the Khyber Pass was taken at some time before 1923, on the evidence of the Annual Report of The Christian and Missionary Alliance of Chicago, Illinois (1922-23), which reads: “The heroism of our pioneer missionaries shames and stirs us. How dare we forget those who are invading Moslem strongholds at the peril of their lives! Can we pray for our paltry needs and forget the missionary who never leaves his home on the frontier of Arabia without giving his wife a farewell kiss, for they both know that, in all probability, some day he will not return? Can we turn away from the secret place of prayer without thinking of those brave young men who are determined to carry the light into a land at the entrance to which is a placard which reads: “It is absolutely forbidden to cross over this border into Afghan territory”?

The borders of Afghanistan were closed following the 1919 War of Independence (aka the Third Anglo-Afghan War).

more (tele)phonography

Nigel — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:15:53 +0000

A visitor photographs Tracey Emin’s “And I said I love you” at the Frieze Art Fair in Regents Park, central London October 12, 2011. REUTERS/Andrew Winning. By: Mike Collett-White. Via ArtDaily.

Bob goes PoMo

Nigel — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 22:05:21 +0000

What was Bob Dylan thinking? I’ll just copy these photographs and show them at Gagosian? See at ArtInfo.

Phonography

Nigel — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 04:06:22 +0000

Aisha Gaddafi as the mermaid sofa: from The Guardian slideshow: Sergey Ponomarer/AP

Prison Photography

Nigel — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 06:22:16 +0000

here.

photography in museums: NGA vs MONA

Nigel — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 01:19:08 +0000

Here’s an engaging piece in the Canberra Times by Jenna Price…

well that’s a relief

Nigel — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:05:18 +0000

Dr Google’s image search didn’t find me! At least they’re all human. Well, to a degree…