"Fair Play" Photos Featured on Leica Website for 2011 Oskar Barnack Award

Dunk the Clown, Peekskill, NY 2010
© Robert Forlini

Selections from my portfolio, "Fair Play", a series depicting country fairs, carnivals and amusement parks, have been posted on the Leica camera website. The pictures are contenders for the 2011 Oskar Barnack Award. An international jury awards the Leica Oskar Barnack Award to photographers whose unerring powers of observation capture and express the relationship between man and the environment in the most graphic form in a sequence. Entry submissions must be a self-contained series of images in which the photographer perceives and documents the interaction between man and the environment with acute vision and contemporary visual style – creative, groundbreaking and unintrusive. All photo series submitted will be displayed in a special online gallery in the "Contest" section. The award is named after photographic pioneer Oskar Barnack (1879–1936), the inventor of the Leica.

Calf Feeding, Rhinebeck, NY, 2008            © Robert Forlini

"Home is Where the Camera Is" at Vermont PhotoPlace Gallery, March 1-26, 2011

Mother's Day, Lake Peekskill, NY 2004       ©Robert Forlini

I will be exhibiting Mother's Day, Lake Peekskill, NY 2004 in an exhibition entitled "Home is Where the Camera Is" at the PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont. The exhibition runs from March 1-March 26, 2011, with a reception on Friday March 18 from 5-7pm. The exhibition was juried by photographer Julie Blackmon, and sets out to explore how we use the camera to record our lives and the lives of others. There will also be a full color catalog available for purchase. To quote from the Juror's Statement, "When it comes down to the themes of family life and home. . . some things never change. The intimacy, the tenderness, the passion for life and those we love, the small stories found in the most ordinary everyday moments, and even the sometimes inescapable angst built into all of it, are the same things that have defined "home" long before our digital cameras and computer software came along." The PhotoPlace Gallery is located at 3 Park Street in Middlebury, Vermont, just a few doors down from the Sheldon Museum in the center of town.

• Contact information for the PhotoPlace Gallery is: 3 Park Street,  Middlebury, VT 05753. Telephone (
  

  802)989-2359; 

  email: photos@vtphotoworkplace.com
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  Exhibition dates: March 1- March 26, 2011. 
  

  Reception: Friday March 18, 5-7 pm.
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  Gallery hours: Tuesdays through Fridays 11-4; Saturdays: 10-2. 
  

  By appointment only on Sundays and Mondays.

"Street Photography Now": A New Book Featuring the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Street Photography Now, edited by Sophie Howarth and Stephan McLaren (Thames & Hudson, London, 2010) is a recent compendium of street photography which features some excellent photographers of the genre but is inconsistent in the quality of the work presented. "Street photography" itself is an imperfect definition. It is a term that Garry Winogrand despised ("Just because I did a book about zoos doesn't make me an animal photographer," he said). For him, still photography was the distinctive term. And so arises one of the problems of trying to put together a collection of so-called street photography. As is true with so many areas of photography, it places a misleading emphasis on subject matter and literalness, rather than on artistic approach and underlying meaning. As Richard Lacayo aptly put it in Time magazine, "I'll call it, imperfectly, subjective street photography, though nearly all photography is to some degree subjective and this kind doesn't have to take place in the streets." So right off the bat, you're constraining yourself based on subject and perhaps including work of lesser merit simply because it took place in the street. Another limitation of this book is that it seems to draw heavily upon photographers who happen to be members of the iN-PUBLIC web site. We are informed in the accompanying essay that street photography is enjoying a Renaissance, perhaps because of interest generated on the Internet. Well, I'm glad it's getting attention, but for some of us it never went away. What this book really needed was some stricter editing. Many of the pictures are trite and cliched, or too easy (what Phil Perkis has called "shooting fish in a barrel"). Some of the photographers are outstanding, however, in both their styles and messages. The stand-out bodies of work for me include those of Richard Kalvar, Trent Parke, Martin Parr, Raghu Rai, Otto Snoek and Ying Tang. Others, such as Cristobal Hara and Alex Webb, have some brilliant individual images but lack a sustained vision. The accompanying essay does provide some insight into the historic traditions, even if incomplete (it seems to start with Walker Evans and has many glaring omissions). A cogent analysis of the pitfalls of practicing street photography in these paranoid times is also provided, although the text is sometimes prone toward hyperbole ("Street photographers still wait patiently on dismal street corners while gales of diesel fumes clog their lungs and sting their eyes.") All in all, this is a book worth having; you'll just find yourself skipping around a bit.

• Street Photography Now is available at amazon.com and elsewhere.
• Many of these photographers' work can be seen at the iN-PUBLIC: The home of street photography website.

Qibao, Shanghai, 2007  ©Ying Tang

A rickshawman taking a nap in Jama Masjid Market, Delhi, 2005
© Raghu Rai

2010: The Year in Pictures

Midtown Shoppers, NYC, 2010 © Robert Forlini

Mother's Day, Elmsford, NY 2010
© Robert Forlini

The pictures in this case are not newsworthy, but they are new and noteworthy. I have just posted Recent Work from 2010 on my website, Robert Forlini Photographer. Please have a look, and as always I welcome everyone's interesting comments and general greetings and salutations. Happy viewing and Happy New Year!

Prize Winner, State Fair, Syracuse, NY, 2010
© Robert Forlini

Paul McDonough Exhibit at Sasha Wolf Gallery Showcases New Book

Three Musicians, 1978 © Paul McDonough

For me, Paul McDonough is one of the unsung heros of photography. Although he has been creating images of keen observation and wit for many years, his work has remained largely under appreciated. Now, his second exhibition at Sasha Wolf Gallery in New York is accompanied by his first published book, hopefully bringing him more widespread notoriety in order to help correct this oversight. The exhibition entitled New York City, 1973-1978, together with the photographs from Paul's previous show at the gallery, comprise the work included in the monograph Paul McDonough: New York Photographs, 1968-1978 (Umbrage Editions, Fall 2010), which includes an essay by Museum of Modern Art curator Susan Kismaric. The book covers Paul's early work in photography when he was a new arrival in New York City. He was introduced to Garry Winogrand by childhood friend Tod Papageorge, and was soon inspired to switch from easel painting to street photography as a mode of expression. The pictures themselves not only capture the essence of the City during a time of turmoil and ferment, but have a timeless quality and irony found in spontaneous human drama. Paul has an eye for strange juxtapositions and split second coincidences which are simultaneously poignant and funny. His cast of characters include a encounter between a blind beggar and a hare krishna, three hungry car salesmen waiting for their next prey, a group of Japanese tourists at an exhibit of the first atomic bomb and a crazy collection of tree-climbing kids, bicycles and lovers (among others) in Central Park. The sum total effect of the work is bittersweet. Paul was a teacher of mine at Pratt Institute in the 1980's, and I remembered much of this work from exhibitions back then, an indiction of how well these photographs have endured the test of time. It was a pleasure to be able to experience them again, along with seeing the newly edited pictures for the first time. As Susan Kismaric concluded in her appreciation in the book, "In these pictures, working within a revered tradition so suitable for the pace of modern life, McDonough has applied his finely tuned intuition to show us nothing less than the poetry of daily life." 

War Museum Display-West Point 1975 © Paul McDonough

• The exhibition at Sasha Wolf Gallery runs through January 8, 2011. The gallery is located at 548 West 28th Street in the Chelsea section of Manhattan and is open Tuesday through Saturday 11am-6 pm. Phone 212-925-0025, e-mail info@sashawolf.com.
•  The monograph, Paul McDonough: New York Photographs, 1968-1978, is available from amazon.com.

Central Park Pond-Kids in Tree 1973 © Paul McDonough

Lee Friedlander's "America by Car" at the Whitney Museum is a Disappointment

Please don't get me wrong: Lee Friedlander is one of our greatest photographers, and his work often amazes and delights me. But his latest dispatch, "America by Car", on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art through November 28, is a huge disappointment. Friedlander is still an acute observer of quirky American culture, but the newly added gimmick of photographing through the interior of a car using a Hasselblad Super Wide camera creates a formal distraction and a mitigating factor to accessing the pleasure and meaning of these pictures. The interiors are not that visually interesting in the first place, and become monotonous when repeated ad nauseam. I felt like yelling, "You've come this far, just get out of the car, Lee!" The most engaging parts of the pictures are out there, reduced to mere incidental details which would be better explored on foot. As John Szarkowski once observed, the secret to photography is standing in the right place, and sitting inside the automobile isn't it. Even Friedlander's other recent pictures taken with the Super Wide seem like a retread of his prior work, a deliberate reprise of the same subject matter through a lens that caricatures his previous accomplishments. Is the photographer getting lazy, or making a nod to Postmodernism? I am reminded of how much more successful were André Kertész's later Polaroid SX-70 photographs in their construction and pathos. Even though the photographer was limited by his age in his ability to move about, he managed to turn this apparent disadvantage around in order to create images that built upon his past achievements. I believe that this work ingeniously becomes an allegory for his earlier period. Every artist has his or her hits and misses, but what really surprises me is the widespread acclaim that has accompanied "America by Car". What has happened to critical judgement in photography writing? Is there an acceptance that the anointed can do no wrong, or is there too much at stake in the art game to risk tainting the reputation of an investment, if not an artist? I'm sorry to have to be the one to say it, but the emperor has no clothes.

Top left of page: Alaska 2007 © Lee Friedlander

Top right: Montana 2008 © Lee Friedlander                                                                            

Bottom left: January 1979 © Estate of André Kertész

• If you still want the exhibition catalog, "America by Car" by Lee Friedlander is available from amazon.com.

Still Printing in the Darkroom? Try Adox Paper!

Orange is back in style!

When Agfa Photo went belly-up in 2005, I was devastated. The paper and other black and white photo materials which I had used for many years and which in part defined my style were no longer available. I went back to using Ilford materials, which I found to be adequate, but not up to Agfa's superior quality. Now the Adox company of Germany has revived many of Agfa's inimitable photo products, including variable and graded paper, film and chemistry. Adox bought the old Agfa manufacturing machines and claims the materials to be identical to the original. My experience bears this out. The superb quality, including the long tonal scale, deep, rich blacks and ability to produce more contrast (which can save many otherwise unprintable negatives) are all there! For me, a new day has dawned and my interest in silver printing has been renewed, even in this digital age. Both the RC and Fiber versions are outstanding. This is an unsolicited endorsement, and I encourage you to try this paper. I really want to keep this bold venture afloat so we don't lose this excellent product again. Also, if you were a fan of Agfa film and the famous Rodinal, now Adonal, developer (not my cup of developer, but I know many who swore by it), these have been reincarnated as well. Currently available in the USA only from Freestyle Photo. Many worldwide distributors can be found on the Adox website, along with technical data. Happy printing!