Esko and Nan

A little bit of background on Esko Mannikko and Finnish photography from a lecture
given by Asko Makela in Iceland a few years back.

"Esko Männikkö is a good example of a mythical Finnish man. He does not talk much. Actually he talks quite seldom - like all the men in northern Finland. There is a story of Esko Männikkö’s exhibition opening in New York where he was present. Nan Goldin comes in and asks if they could exchange an artwork. Männikkö says slowly to her: “I hate your works. I change nothing.” He has also surprised galleries by staying in Finland and going for fishing with his silent friends instead of going to the opening of his exhibition.

True or not, Esko Männikkö was the mystical man from the beginning. His success started when Peter Schjeldahl wrote an article about his works in ARS 95 to Artforum. In the article he tells that he bought one of Esko Männikkö’s work for himself, which was a quite unusual statement. On the day when Artforum came out, New York gallerists tried to find out who represents him in New York or in Finland. They smelled business. But *Esko* Männikkö did not have a gallerist and did not even talk so much and even less in English. Claes Nordenhake started then to represent him from Stocholm. Esko Männikkö was the first internationally marketed Finnish photography artist.

Esko Mannikko

Esko Mannikko is up for his retrospective exhibition, Cocktails. It shows people from Finland in their country homes ( as shown in his fabulous book, The Female Pike) , the empty houses of rural Finland, a region depopulated because of universal economic and demographic pressures along with details of the animals that live in the places where Mannikko shoots.

“I photograph because I can’t do anything else,” says Mannikko. “And I don’t have a clear mission in my mind of what I want to show. I started with people living around me and photographed these people because they are like me. They live in the country and hunt. That’s what I do, so my work is a landscape of my own soul - but what my soul is I couldn’t say.”

Mannikko will be giving a talk at The Photographers' Gallery on Friday, which has to be good. John Davies, Fazal Sheikh and Jacob Holdt will give talks in the following weeks.

John Davies

John Davies is the next nominee for the Deutsch Borse, nominated for The British Landscape exhibition. I love his work because it is so simple, direct and uncomplicated. His pictures are very familiar to me (Stockport Viaduct above is a couple of miles from my home ) and instantly recognizable. I also like him because he is a straightforward documentary photographer, something of a rare breed in the UK, and the layers of meaning in his images, the conflict between the rural and the urban reflect the layers of Davies' own life and British society as a whole.

The Gravy Train is Long and Crowded

The gravy train is long and crowded.

Which is perhaps the real reason why fashion icon and Afghanistan president, Hamid Karzai is seeking the death penalty for local journalist, Sayed Pervez Kambaksh.

Kambaksh has been sentenced to death for "...blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed."

But another reason is that he wrote articles outlining the endemic corruption of Afghanistan's political, religious and economic elite.

You can sign an online petition here.

Jacob Holdt

One more from Jacob Holdt.

Jacob Holdt

Jacob Holdt (pictured with Mary - that's her house burning) is up for the Deutsche Borse Prize for the Steidl version of American Pictures. Holdt is pretty nonchalant about the Steidl book, saying its publication was down to two curators who wanted a catalogue for a show of Holdt's work they were putting on. The curators were so nice, Holdt just couldn't say no. All Holdt did was go to the receptions and drink the wine.

If you haven't seen the online version of the book, you can see it here. It is phenomenal and chilling work. Holdt reckons its only the hairstyles and cars that have changed in America since he made his pictures, and that his work was made at a time of hope.

The worst place Holdt visited was Immokalee in Florida, a place of slave camps, murder and hopelessness. Immokalee was in the news at the end of last year and not much has changed it seems.

Fazal Sheikh

The Deutsche Borse Prize is upon us again. Last week I spoke to the four shortlisted photographersfor an upcoming feature in the BJP and a rare pleasure it was. The winner is always good, but sometimes the shortlist can be patchy. This year it's incredibly consistent - an anti-art list of committed/committable photographers who really don't care about the art world.

Fazal Sheikh has been nominated for Ladli, a book in which Sheikh gets behind the illusion of India's economic development to examine a country where, as he says in the book's introduction, a girl's "...very gender, from conception, makes many women the potential victim's of a patriarchal system which tacitly condones their exploitation, mistreatment, even death."

The photography is simple and direct and so is the text, deep photography dealing with deep political and cultural issues. You can see the whole book online here.

One of the organisations Sheikh worked with was Shakti Shalini, which is run by two women (one muslim, one hindu) whose daughters were murdered for dowry payments. You can read about Shakti Shalini and other issues that are the flip side of India's economic miracle here.

And as Sheikh points out, the horrors of forced labour, forced prostitution and domestic abuse aren't confined to India - you can also find them closer to home, right on our doorsteps.