New York/Eggleston/The Whitney


The Whitney Museum (digital) © Brian Rose

Neither the Guggenheim nor the Whitney allow photography in their galleries, which makes it difficult for me to review shows in the way I would like to. I’ve said it before, and will repeat–this does not help the museums or the artists being exhibited. It stifles free speech and hinders the discussion on blogs like this one. I do not buy the usual excuse about protecting copyright. All the images in the Eggleston exhibition, for instance, are readily available in book form, and snapshots taken in a gallery context in no way harm the rights held by the artist.

So, it is with some reluctance that I write about the Whitney William Eggleston show, ironically called Democratic Camera.

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Photo by William Eggleston

I’ve been meaning to write about the Eggleston show for a while now–I’ve actually been to it twice–once with my son to also take in the Calder circus and early wire figures, and a second time for a more considered look. Before addressing the exhibit specifically, I’d like to talk about how I first became familiar with Eggleston back in the ’70s when color photography was relatively new territory.

When I began began taking pictures, like most everyone, I worked in black and white. I learned to develop and print before going to art school, which was around 1975, and always had a home darkroom. I was interested in color, had shot some slide film, and had had a few drugstore prints made. But there was little support from my professors for pursuing color in a serious way. Color was still relegated to commercial photography.

I recall the one color class offered at the Maryland Institute (MICA) in Baltimore where I was at school. For a whole semester students seemed to do nothing but test prints and technical exercises. There was little emphasis on making photographs, so I avoided the class. At some point in 1976 or 1977 I came across Eggleston, Meyerowitz, and Shore in a magazine–just a handful of images–but a light went off in my head, and knew instantly that I would quit black and white photography and pursue color.


Photo by William Eggleston

In 1977 I went off to Cooper Union in New York where Joel Meyerowitz was teaching, and came into contact with other photographers who were shooting color. Although I did not see Eggleston’s famous show at the Modern, curated by John Szarkowski, I did get a copy of Eggleston’s Guide, which was based on the MoMA exhibition. Those photographs occupy the central galleries of the current Whitney Museum exhibition.

The Guide photos were imprinted in my brain–the vernacular subject matter, the ascerbic color, the utterly unsentimental tossed off quality of the pictures–what I perceived as Eggleston’s almost disdainfully insouciant manner. It sat well with this 23 year old photographer.


Photo by William Eggleston

Although I was aware of the themes and places in Eggleston’s photographs, I was initially drawn to their formal qualities–how they encompassed the street photography styles of Winogrand and Friedlander–but with the added element of color seemed to rely less on the serendipitous collisions of things within the frame–and allowed for a “blander” less actively composed frame, that dared the viewer to question why? Why point the camera at this building, this street, this oven, this hound dog slurping from a puddle, this flash blinded red room, this monumental tricycle?

More to come…

New York/Czech Center


Photo by Antonin Kratochvil

Last night I went to the Czech Center to see my friend David Hrbek from the Czech Republic. He was leading a panel discussion–much as he does back home–with three distinguished Czech photographers: Antonin Kratochvil, Vladimír Birgus, and Jindřich Štreit. Kratochvil is the one of the three I had heard of, a photojournalist who was documented wars and the human condition all over the globe.


Photo by Vladimir Birgus


Photo by Jindřich Štreit

Although Kratochvil’s photos exhibit the most panache in the strange way that gritty photojournalism can have a stylish aspect. Streit’s more prosaic documentation of village life–particularly during the pre-Velvet Revolution days–have a humanist dimension that tugs more at the heart. Birgus’s color street photography are skillfully poised compositions, sharply seen.

One tangent of the conversation had to do with prison experiences of the photographers. Kratchovil has been arrested or detained many times in his role as a photojournalist. But Streit told the story of his arrest by the Czech government during the communist years. His photographs of farm life were deemed anti-state, and according to the website Amber Online, he was sentenced to 10 months in prison for “defamation of the republic and the Head of State, based on an interpretation of his photographs. Even his camera was confiscated as an instrument of the crime. The case is probably unique in the history of photography.”


Left to right: Vladimir Birgus, Jindrich Streit, and Suzanne Vega
© Brian Rose

My friend Suzanne Vega was at the Czech Center as well. A couple of years ago, she and I had been invited by David Hrbek to take part in a film festival in the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of David, but he did a terrific job moderating the discussion, and it was good to see him again. It was David’s first visit to New York.


East 68th Street/Hunter College
© Brian Rose

On my way home via the 6 train at 68th Street. The sign says: Day for Night Day for Night…

New York/Swastika


Williamsburg, Brooklyn, behind a building on Metropolitan Avenue (digital) © Brian Rose

We live in ugly times. I woke up this morning and looked out our window in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A swastika had been drawn in the parking lot behind a newly completed, but unoccupied, apartment building. I know that this building, and the construction site next door, are owned by Hasidic Jews, who have a large presence in the neighborhood, especially on the south side of the Williamsburg Bridge.

The parking lot is locked, but easily accessible through the sloppily maintained construction fencing next door. But someone would have to know where they were going. The swastika was crudely drawn, but unmistakable.

Given the current situation in the Middle East, there is tension in the air–there were protesters at Union Square yesterday. But whatever one’s opinion concerning Israel and the Palestinians, such expressions of hate and/or ignorance are an affront to us all.

New York/Guggenheim


The Guggenheim Museum, Marquee by Philippe Parreno
© Brian Rose

I went to the Guggenheim and Whitney museums to see a couple of photo exhibits–Catharine Opie and Williams Eggleston. The Opie work was relatively unknown to me, and I wanted to see what or why she was given a large retrospective at the Guggenheim. Her career was launched by gender identity work, portraits of lesbians and transgender individuals, and self-portraits. This stuff seems dated to me at this point, which means I think it’s work with a limited shelf life, now expired. The poses are wooden, the references to old master painting pretentious. But I give Opie credit for giving visibility to people who are at the margins of mainstream society.


Opie exhibit at the Guggenheim

I liked the ice houses and surfers waiting for waves in one of the galleries–not so much the individual images, but the way they were lined up to form multi-panel panoramas. There’s a lot of textual mumbo jumbo accompanying these beautiful pieces, however, and they would be better off without it.

Around the time that this series was completed she summarized her artistic project: “I concentrate on disturbing the devices that society imposes on variant communities to keep them ‘ghettoized’ by class, race, sexuality, and gender. It’s important that my work be seductive as a visual language, as I want to keep the viewer engaged. This allows for multiple readings which challenge viewers to consider both people and space in their various complexities.”

What I like about the two series is the way in which the panoramas are comprised of individual images made at different times. The line of surfers never exisited in real time as seen across the panels, and there is a progression from fogginess on one side to clearer images on the other. Only a few surfers are shown riding the waves–most paddle about waiting for a wave.

The freeway flyovers and empty city street photographs do not connect with me. They suggest meaning that I do not think is sustained in the images.

We’ve somehow lost sight of what America was originally. Think about the power of Ellis Island, the melting pot, and how all that is disappearing in favor of white-bred America. . . . America’s not about multiculturalism anymore. And that’s what I mean, that cities still hold this utopian notion of what America once was.” To help bring home this sense of loss, starting with St. Louis, she once again portrayed her chosen cities bereft of their populations.

I don’t agree with the statement about white-bred America. We just elected a black president, and we are gradually becoming less white, less homogeneous.


Opie exhibit at the Guggenheim, (digital) © Brian Rose

The domestic series–large scale images of lesbians in family/home situations–is not as compelling as the intention implied. There’s supposed to be a tension between the ordinariness of the activities in the pictures and the extra-ordinariness of the couples and families depicted. OK, I get it. I do like the image of the pregnant woman floating in a pool–heaviness and weightlessness. But too much of Opie’s work is about telling rather than allowing the viewer to discover.

There’s a ton of laudatory opinion about Opie on the Internet, much of it from the star making machinery of the art world. Feel free to Google.

On to William Eggleston at the Whitney.

New York/New Year’s Eve


Richmond, Virginia, 1977 (35mm) © Brian Rose

It’s the end of 2008, and the calamitous Bush reign comes down to its final days. The economy–capitalism itself–lies broken, while almost 150,000 American soldiers remain in Iraq. I look to 2009 with trepidation, but with measured hope, that all is not lost, as a new president comes to Washington.

The photograph above was taken in downtown Richmond, Virginia, when I first began shooting color. I was struck by a photo of the earth, made a few years earlier on one of the moon missions, taped to the wall in a dusty window of a café. It was one of the first images of the earth seen as a ball floating in the darkness of space. That image changed the way we saw ourselves forever.

New York/South Bronx


The South Bronx, 1980, 35mm slide, © Brian Rose

I’ve been up to the Bronx a number of times in the past year shooting some new buildings for an architecture client. For anyone old enough to remember the devastation of the 1980s, the rebuilding that has taken place in the South Bronx in recent years is amazing, and heartwarming. While doing my Lower East Side project in 1980, which also dealt with urban desolation, I made my way up to the South Bronx a few times. The image above, scanned from a 35mm Kodachrome, is from one of those trips.


The South Bronx, Ray Mortenson

There is currently a show at the Museum of the City of New York that provides a vivid look back at the Bronx of that time–Broken Glass, photographs by Ray Mortenson. Mortenson photographed the abandoned buildings of the area with a dogged comprehensiveness. His work, evoking Bernd and Hilla Becher’s building typologies, is suspended somewhere between documentary and art. But unlike the Bechers who approached their subjects with absolute consistency, even to the point of shooting only on cloudy days, Mortenson’s photographs are less rigorously composed, done with a smaller camera, and are the result of more haphazard wanderings through the streets and cadaverous tenements of the Bronx.


The South Bronx, Ray Mortenson

It’s hard to tell from the pictures themselves what Mortenson’s motivation was exactly besides a wide-eyed astonishment gazing on such a desolate landscape of failure and ruin. They offer no explanation, no political engagement, no connection to the fragments of community that remained in the Bronx through the worst years. But that detachment makes them stronger historical documents–evidence rather than commentary.


The South Bronx, Ray Mortenson

That said, however, I can see Mortenson schlepping day after day through the streets with his camera, tip toeing gingerly through the rubble not knowing who or what lurks around the corner or in the next darkened room. That personal sense of mission, of passion–or whatever it was–comes through in these otherwise cooly realized images of destruction.

More images from Broken Glass.

New York/Film


Washington, D.C., 1977, 35mm slide
© Brian Rose

The other day I went to Fotocare on 22nd Street to buy some 4×5 film–Readyload Portra VC 160 to be exact. These are pre-loaded packs that do not require individual holders, a pricey convenience, but a great saving in weight, bulk, and time. Although I had just bought some a few weeks earlier, I was informed by the staff person that Kodak had discontinued the film. Boom. Apparently, Kodak had announced this a while ago, but I was unaware of it.

So, my only option, other than carrying 20 film holders on shoots, was to revert back to Fujifilm color negative film, which was still available in Quickload format. My guess is that it came down to something trivial having to do with the company Kodak employed to package the film into the paper Readyload sleeves. It’s the same film, after all, as the individual sheet film.

It has been a rough ride staying with film as the industry massively shifts away from analog materials. For the moment, Fuji seems committed to picking up the pieces as Kodak abandons us. And their 4×5 instant film is the only way to go now that Polaroid is out of the film business.

I remember years ago talking to a Kodak executive on the phone imploring him to drop the the two sheet Readyload film packs they were making as so unwieldy and inconvenient that every photographer I knew had jumped ship to Fuji. He defended the company’s position. But within a year they joined Fuji with one sheet packs.


Washington D.C., 1977, 35mm slide
© Brian Rose

Kodak has lurched from one corporate/marketing decision to another seemingly without a long range plan–akin to other giant American corporations now feeding at the public trough. Almost no photo equipment of any quality is made by American companies, which has been the case for a long time.

Kodak’s fickleness with regard to legacy film products could be forgiven if they were taking the lead in the digital business. But they offer nothing for the professional. So, when Kodak discontinues a critical film product we are basically kicked out for good. You go either to Fuji for film, or if you go straight digital, to Canon or Nikon.

Good bye USA. Hello Japan.

New York/Early Color


Wilmington, Delaware, 1978, 35mm slide
© Brian Rose

Continuing going through my slides from 1975 to 1980. I was looking at a lot of painting as well as photography during those years, and I was thinking about how far you could reduce down an image and have it still be about real things and real space.


Interstate 95, North Carolina, 1978, 35mm slide
© Brian Rose

As flat as the image above is, I would never have taken this picture without including a sliver of deep space–the sky ad pickup truck on the right. Both of these photographs were made on the road, traveling south. As reductive as they are, I was keenly aware of what they were photographs of–the chalk scrawls of children playing in a Wilmington, Delaware parking lot, and a soda machine set against a gas station wall along Interstate 95 in North Carolina.

New York/Early Color


Richmond, Virginia, circa 1975, 35mm Ektachrome

I’ve been looking back at my early color images made mostly on 35mm slide film. Although I was vaguely aware of work being done by Eggleston and a few others, I was pretty much making things up as I went along.

This picture was made in Richmond, Virginia in the older part of downtown–Main Street near the train station most likely. I was particularly interested in compositional density in those days.

New York/Inspiring Space

This blog has been a little quiet lately, but I’ve been busy with a few photo shoots, reorganizing my studio, and meeting with people about the Lower East Side project. It’s too early to say anything specific, but there is reason to be hopeful that there will be a major exhibition of the LES pictures in the foreseeable future


The New Museum in Inspiring Space

One of the people I met with recently is Ethan Swann of the New Museum, which is located around the corner from my apartment/studio. Ethan is heading up an initiative of the museum called the Bowery Artists Tribute, which is an educational and community outreach program having to do with the rich cultural heritage of the Bowery and surrounding neighborhood. There is a website with a map and bios of many of the artists, past and present, who have lived or worked in the area.


Pages from Inspiring Space

A few weeks ago I attended a panel discussion at the museum, sponsored by the Bowery Artists Tribute, featuring several artists talking about how they ended up on the Bowery, and how the surroundings may have influenced their work. Ethan has a great job, part of which consists of patiently listening to people like me rambling on about life and art on the Bowery. And I think it is admirable of the museum to open itself up to the local community.


Bowery images, Inspiring Space

Back in the summer I made photographs for a Dutch publication called Inspiring Space, which is basically a promotional vehicle for a large real estate firm in the Netherlands. I worked with a journalist and put together a series of pictures about new park, cultural, and environmental projects currently underway in New York. The magazine can be read online–although the article is in Dutch–and 10 of my photographs are presented. Part of the article discusses the New Museum as a catalyst for change on the Bowery, and two of my Bowery/Houston Street photos are included.

New York/Rodger Kingston


Rodger Kingston nails a door (digital)

A while back, when the weather was still warm, I was paid a visit by Rodger Kingston down from the Boston area. Rodger and I met online–somehow that doesn’t sound right–and have been corresponding regularly.

We spent a few hours walking around the Lower East Side, and Rodger snapped away using his wide format Lumix camera. It’s territory I’ve covered extensively using a 4×5 view camera, and it’s interesting to see how differently another photographer looks at the same subject.

Rodger often goes at things very frontally using the extended frame of his camera to its fullest. I caught Rodger in the act above firing away at a flaming doorway. He was kind enough to send me the result below.


Flaming door by Rodger Kingston

I didn’t take as many pictures during our walk as Rodger, but I felt I compelled every now and then to follow his lead. One result below.


Bowery restaurant supply with door
© Brian Rose

Be sure to visit Rodger Kingston’s SmugMug site to see more of his photographs including others shot during our walk together. Don’t miss his New American Photographs and recent photos made in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the footsteps of Walker Evans.