Happy Holidays and New Year!

Holy Shit!

During this annual holiday season, one can find some of the most outrageous and ridiculous shopping window decorations here in New York. I would like to share my personal top three with you: polar bear Knut-look-alike sniffing the Virgin, Nutcrackers amongst lingerie, as well as a x-mas tree made of neckties. Hmmmm.
(click on image to enlarge)

T Magazine Blog (New York Times)

Just a brief note in regards to my commercial work: the New York Times' T Magazine used one of my portraits of Richard Phillip in a recent post on their blog.

Holiday Extravaganza

A friend, who works for the New York office of the German magazine Stern, invited us to tonight's Holiday Extravaganza, co-hosted by the before-mentioned magazine and Magnum, the famous New York photo agency, at DUMBO's powerHouse Arena. Magnum launched its new book titled ... uhm ... "Magnum Magnum". And of course, it's another heavy-weight coffee table book (if you even have space for the required size of coffee table in your New York apartment). Is there some sort of arms race going on between publishing houses? Couldn't we just hand Taschen the crown for most ridiculous book formats?

Anyway. Stern hosted what the magazine called its First Annual Photo Forum, which basically consisted of a continuous slide show of images by invited photographers on large flat screen monitors. Unfortunately, it was merely a back-drop for the drinking and elbow-rubbing in the Arena. Nothing spoke of "holiday" (except for the light snowfall outside the large windows) and very little seemed truly extravagant. It was just another typical New York event with lots of people drinking free booze. Prost! Yup.

Well, it was nice to see a friend, though. That's what really matters anyway, right?

Review: New Photography 2007?

On Sunday, I went to the MoMA to see the showcasing of the museum's annual New Photography, recently acquired works of "emerging" photographers. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I have to admit, it was rather disappointing.

First, there is Tanyth Berkeley. One cannot help to feel uncomfortable looking at these images. Not that the people who she portraits are more odd than the rest of us New Yorkers, but Berkeley seems to pick her models for specific traits, like extreme paleness, skinny bodies or a certain gender ambiguity. It is her close distance from which she shots, the collapsing of personal space, that makes looking at these apparently voluntarily posing models such an disquieting task. I assume the examples of Diane Arbus' work in the next room are no coincidence.

Then, there is a strong trend in current photography -- started, or at least co-started, like many other trends in this medium by the Becher School "Strufskys" -- where several images are digitally seamlessly combined into one. Although some of these photographers are more successful in doing so (e.g. see Beate Gütschow's intriguing landscapes), in most instances nothing new is gained by this digital practice. Sure, it's another inquiry into the truthfulness of photography -- with some admittedly perplexing results -- but the arguments about the manipulation of reality remain the same. So, when Scott McFarland shows a garden scene in which he photographed the same location during different seasons and edited them into one view, with fall-colored trees and spring blossoms side by side, one cannot help but feel somewhat indifferent about it.

In the end, I was most drawn to the quiet, pensive and rather sensual images of Berni Searle, depicting a woman in a huge pile of what appears to be grape skins. She photographed the woman in different places within the pile and then combined the images to form a continuous wave of piles from one frame to another. The beauty of these images along with their allusions to various contemporary issues makes this series a generous invitation to linger, look and contemplate.

New York's first snow this season

Central Park, NYC (12/02/2007)