Lauren Simonutti: If I do not have a photograph...I cannot be certain it happened

This is Lauren Simonutti's super-tactile handmade book for 2010, available from her blog, The Madness is the Method.


Simonutti's work is, in her own words:

"The misfirings of my beloved/despised mind that conspire to convince me to destroy all have rendered me housebound and led to a solitary life. I am a creature of past, proof, memory and imaginary friends."

"I have reached the point where if I do not have a photograph of something I cannot be certain it happened. So, locked inside the house with nothing else left, I shoot this"

Xavier Antin

 

Via Mrs Deane comes the work from Xavier Antin's Printing at Home and Just in Time or A Short History of Production, projects that put the potato back into printing. Oh, and don't believe everything you read on your computer. I don't know if Antin ever got the potato printer working, but God Bless him for even imagining it.

Kim Jong Il Classics

Continuing from the thoughts of Kim Jong Phil, for the weekend here is North Korean classic and the Team American World Police thesis on Neoconservatice US foreign policy in the post-Soviet age.

Picture from Kim Jong-il looking at things.

The thoughts of Kim Jong Phil

Phil Toledano is productive and imaginative and takes the piss - so a good combination all round. I liked his American Gift Shop and I like his latest project, Kim Jong Phil. The title alone takes it into a different league. The best thing is he's sent snaps of North Korean propaganda posters to Chinese on-demand painters (which I've been tempted to use but never quite managed to dare send a credit card number to) and they've painted the pictures with Phil's face in.

What irks me is that Phil doesn't really have an ideology to go with the pictures and he mixes up Saddam Hussein and Laurent Kabila in with Kim Jong Il - which just strikes me as perverse. Or perhaps I'm just sore that he didn't go the extra mile and use Maoist propaganda posters - the finest propaganda posters to be found.

In any case, Toledano didn't mind any of that. He just said "fuck it" and got on with it - and damn fine he did too. The quotes below are from an interview over at A Photo-Editor.

On top of all this,  his phenomenally popular Days with my Father is being made into a film. 

Well, I’m doing a project called “Kim Jong-Phil.” It’s also straightforward.That was a revelation for me, was this parallel between artistic self-delusion and narcissism, and how a dictator is fueled by the same kinds of desires and urges. So what I did was I found paintings and murals from North Korea, photographs of them, and I had them copied in China into 30×40 oil paintings, and they replaced the dear leader with me. So this is a project about me, again, because since “Days with my Father,” everything has been inward facing.




PT: You have to just say “Fuck it.” That’s the best advice I can give to people is to just say “Fuck it.” Just do the thing you want to do. If you want to take pictures of your balls, then take pictures of your balls. I’m serious. I know that’s not the kind of advice that Rob can probably publish, or you can write, but I really mean it. Because the world is composed of millions of people always telling you things you can’t do or shouldn’t do. There’s always a reason “why not” for everything. So that’s why I find this Kim Jong-Phil thing so resonant with me as a person, is because I spent my entire life being a pathological contrarian. It’s a reflex, it’s in who I am. I have to do the thing that I want to do. I just have to do it. And the more people tell me I shouldn’t do it, the more I want to do it.  The more wrong it seems like it might be, the more I’m interested in it. So that’s the thing. People don’t do stuff because fear is immobility. So you just have to be moving at all times. Which is why I’m terrified right now because I have no projects in front of me. “Kim Jong Phil” is done, “A New Kind of Beauty” is done, “The Reluctant Father” is kind of done, so I have nothing in front of me so that terrifies me because I feel like I’m going to start slowing down and I’m going to sink to the seabed.

Panos Pictures Call for Submissions

A call for Submissions from Panos Pictures. Here is an interesting interview with Adrian Evans on what Panos in  lookinf for in a photographer and how the submission process has changed over the years.
 
Submissions guidelines are here.

I love the Tod Papageorge quote: If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not reading enough. 

 

What makes a photographer stand out to you?

‘Put bluntly someone who can explain why they take photographs, what they are trying to say in their photography and who they are trying to say it to. In other words photographers who think about their practice and their audience. It is incredible how few photographers do this.
I’m looking for photographers who can interpret the world around them, rather than just illustrate it – Panos isn’t a wire agency. A photographer should have their own vision and aesthetic.’


‘Equally important is the ability to tell new stories or to tell existing stories in new ways. There is nothing more refreshing than seeing a story or subject I haven’t seen photographed before. Too many photographers forget about the importance of identifying and researching stories. Think before you shoot. I recently came across a quote by Tod Papageorge on David Campbell’s excellent blog. He said “If your pictures aren’t good enough then you’re not reading enough.” That sums it up for me.’

Swedish Muslims and the Lebanese Civil War

The latest slideshows and radio documentaries by Ben Chesterton and David White at Duckrabbit are well worth checking out.

Both slideshows and documentaries are here: Swedish Racial Tensions and Lebanese Civil War.



It's interesting to see how different the slideshows and radio pieces are - what exactly does the addition of the visual element do to the voices, how do the two combine and what effect does this have on the listener/viewer. The radio pieces are longer and more in-depth, with the Lebanese Civil War using translators for the piece and the Swedish documentary using English-speaking Swedish residents. These are World Service/BBC Radio 4 type documentaries, which often have an annoying element of the generic Radio 4 voice (hugely irritating in other words) about them - what effect does the voice, its timbre, accent and harmonic qualities (can I say that) have on the listener?

Andris Feldmanis's Estonian Interiors

More TV watching from Andris Feldmanis from Estonia, who got in touch after doing a workshop with George Georgiou and Vanessa Winship - a wonderful experience. I especially like the interiors in Feldmanis's pictures - my favourites are of the cramped and cosy interiors where the viewers huddle as though they are in little nests - you can see more of them here.