The Unphotographable (Fraenkel Gallery)

 

My review of The Unphotographable (Fraenkel Gallery, 2013) is now available on photo-eye. You can get the book here.

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Despite its complex indexical nature, photography allows us to document and record the world unlike any other medium. However, the lens not only captures, but also transforms the world around us. It makes visible things and phenomena both seen and unseen. The unique, alchemical quality of photography to reveal and transform its subjects is one of its chief delights. The Unphotographable, the latest anthology and catalog by the Fraenkel Gallery, gathers together a collection of vernacular, scientific and artistic images that all in one way or another attempt to capture what lies outside the power of the lens.

From one of Alfred Stieglitz's famous Equivalents to a vernacular image that captures what appears to be Christ's profile in the branches of a lakeside tree, the book gathers together a diverse and striking collection of images. Although the various photographers' motives vary, the images almost all (intentionally or unintentionally) capture the seemingly unphotographable or unseeable. As Jeffrey Fraenkel states in his introduction, these subjects include but are not limited to "thought, time, ghosts, god, [and] dreams." Like Fraenkel's previous anthologies (i.e., Furthermore, The Eye Club, The Book of Shadows and others), the book demonstrates Fraenkel and his gallery's great eye and unique ability to gather memorable images from a variety of different photographic sources. 

All images © artists and Fraenkel Gallery

In naming the book The Unphotographable, they are also being playfully ironic. While the photograph's nominal subjects may be 'unphotographable,' the results are purely photographic. From the ghostly apparitions of double exposures to the mystical evanescence of long exposures, photography can capture the world in ways ripe with metaphorical possibilities that point beyond its literal roots. As Fraenkel notes, "photography's paradoxical ability to render the immaterial and evanescent have been acknowledged since its earliest days." This ability, coupled with our own desire to capture phenomena that lie outside our perception, has long been an important aspect of the medium and its history.  

All images © artists and Fraenkel Gallery  

All images © artists and Fraenkel Gallery

Fraenkel's book is not the first to explore this topic. Tucked in the back of the book, Fraenkel acknowledges its debt to two recent museum shows – The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (MET, 2005) and Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible (SFMoMA, 2008). Each addressed photography's relationship to the immaterial, both real and unreal, and play an important role in fleshing out this history. Present since its invention, images like these have tested the boundaries of photography and complicate any simplistic understanding of photography as a mere recording device. Although not as focused as these two previous shows and books, and lacking the institution weight usually associated with large museums, The Unphotographable is nevertheless a welcome addition to this rich history and contains a host of wonderful images.  

All images © artists and Fraenkel Gallery

 The book is beautifully designed and has a wonderful trompe l'oeil image of the book on its own cover. While it contains numerous fantastic photographs from artists like Liz Deschenes, Chris McCaw, Adam Fuss, Paul Graham and others, as is often the case, it is the older scientific, vernacular and lesser-known images that really shine. In one untitled vernacular image from 1935, a giant flame shoots up into the darkness illuminating an ominous sign that states – "Trespass with or without permission at your own risk." Another image from 1895 by Jakob Ottonowitsch, entitled Spark captured on the surface of the body of a well-washed prostitute, records a spark of electricity that resembles a shimmering amoeba. An already fantastic image rendered all the more surprising and strange by its perplexing and unbelievable title. Although not a new strategy, the mingling of vernacular and scientific images with intentionally artistic images creates a surprising and rich dialog that highlights the generosity of the medium.

All images © artists and Fraenkel Gallery

Photography has always flirted with and tested its own representational boundaries. As this collection attests, when the alchemical magic of photography intersects with our own desire to test the limits of what we can see and make visible, the results are often astonishing. But, as the aforementioned sign suggests, it can be dangerous and scary territory. We may not always give ourselves permission, but if we can't see it, what's there to be afraid of

Please note: This review originally appeared on photo-eye on March 18th, 2013. You can get the book here.

Concrete Geographies [Nomads] by Xavier Ribas

My review of Concrete Geographies by Xavier Ribas (Bside Books, 2012) is now available on photo-eye. You can get a copy of the book here.

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Spread throughout Europe, the Roma constitute one of the largest ethnic minorities in the region. More commonly known as gypsies, the Roma are also among the most routinely persecuted and reviled. Dismissed as thieves and vagrants, the Roma's traditional nomadic lifestyle often places them at odds with the cultures they inhabit. Constantly seen as outsiders, they are regularly driven from their homes, or simply pushed to the fringes and displaced. On February 24th of 2004, over 60 Roma families were forcibly evicted from an industrial plot on the outskirts of Barcelona. Workers drilled and upturned the landscape, turning what was once a concrete lot into ravaged and brutal landscape of cement slabs and coarse rocks. Xavier Riba's Concrete Geographies [Nomads] offers an intimate and affecting picture of this willfully torn landscape. While Ribas never shows the people or lives of the displaced, his restrained images show us a landscape of discrimination, displacement and social injustice. 

All images © Xavier Ribas and Bside Books, 2012

Beautifully composed and rendered in black and white, the book documents the rubble-strewn landscape of the devastated lot. Turning his lens downward, Ribas' images of concrete shards form geometric abstractions whose formal beauty masks the horror of their creation. Twisted rebar sprouts out of the ground and fractured painted lines suggest a broken order. Heavy stones and sharp slabs of cement jut upwards rendering the landscape inhospitable and treacherous. Like most acts of urban renewal, where the displaced quickly make way for the affluent, the destruction of this space was a violent effort to control the space and to push aside the unwanted. However, in the years since the displacement, there is no evidence anything has been done to reclaim the land. The numerous cracks and fissures have allowed weeds to take root and thrive, and litter and graffiti have piled up. More fitting of a angry child than a modern municipality, the brutal eviction of the families was an act of a petulance and exasperation.  

All images © Xavier Ribas and Bside Books, 2012

While the work offers no further contextual information about the actual day, the city's decision or the families involved, it is nevertheless a powerful document about a landscape wrought with history and absurdity. The formally elegant images are infused with a feeling of anger and bafflement. When installed in its exhibition form, images that otherwise appear to be disparate fragments cohere into an informally knit panorama. Ribas never shows this installation in the book, instead we catch glimpses of the connections and continuities between the images. Painted lines and concrete slabs continue into subsequent frames. Moving through the book there is the sense that we're standing amidst the rubble as our gaze panning out over the destruction that surrounds us. 

All images © Xavier Ribas and Bside Books, 2012

All images © Xavier Ribas and Bside Books, 2012

The book contains almost no text save a brief statement about what happened on a February morning in 2004 and a poignant quote from Walter Benjamin at the end. A single color image of a stormy cloud-filled sky occupies double page spread in the back of the book. The location's GPS coordinates hover in the middle of the page and ground us in what is an otherwise ethereal space. Following this image, a grid of images taken from Google Earth reveals the lot and its surrounding area. From the sky, there is only an empty lot and little hint of the devastation or the lives shattered.  

More properly titled Nomads, the work is actually part of the much larger project entitled Concrete Geographies. Spanning several years and including several subseries, the larger project explores a variety of different landscapes marked by violence, history or politics. For example, Invisible Structures [2] looks at the Mayan village of Panabaj that was tragically buried under a mudslide that killed an estimated eight hundred people. In another two series, Ceuta Border Fence and Melilla Border Fence, Ribas examines two highly militarized border towns along the southern coast of Spain. The book owes a clear debt to the equally politically charged and conceptually minded landscapes of artists like Lewis Baltz and John Gossage, or perhaps Anthony Hernandez, Roy Arden and Donovan Wylie. 

All images © Xavier Ribas and Bside Books, 2012

Limited to 687 copies, each copy is signed by Ribas and is beautifully produced with luscious tri-tone reproductions. Like Ignacio Lopez's Agroperifèrics, another excellent book by Bside Books, Xavier Ribas' Concrete Geographies is a smart book about a politically charged landscape, the vagaries of land-use in the urban setting and their often-tragic consequences.

Please note: This review originally appears on photo-eye on March 4th, 2013. You can get the book here.