James Hyman is also dealer in fine art and photographs. On the eve of his participation in the AIPAD photography fair in New York, James gave Photomonitor his first interview about the collection.

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Christiane Monarchi: You studied History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, and have written, taught, curated and broadcast.  Did you come from a background where art was important?

James Hyman: My father is a book publisher and my mother a psychologist, but as a child, my parents often took my brother and sister and me to exhibitions. I remember peering round corners from one vast gallery to the next at the Tate Gallery’s Constable exhibition in 1976. But my parents were always very good. The moment we showed signs of boredom they would whisk us out. So it was never an ordeal being dragged round exhibitions. I suppose those visits planted the seed and I decided to read Art History at University.

As a child I never knew that there were people who owned great pictures. I assumed they were all in museums. But in my late teens I got a summer job at Hatchards, the famous old bookshop on Piccadilly, and in my lunch breaks I discovered Cork Street and the galleries around Mayfair. I was amazed to discover Waddington Galleries and realise that if you had the money you could buy a Picasso. Also as a teenager, the parents of one of my best friends had a wonderfully focused collection that included Chaim Soutine, David Bomberg, Willem de Kooning, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. I learnt a lot about the expressive, emotional power of paint and the psychological charge of the best painting. Each time I went round there his father would show me his latest acquisition and challenge me for a response. But it never crossed my mind that one day I might be an art dealer or a collector.

I did my BA at Manchester University before spending a decade at the Courtauld Institute where I did my Masters, PhD and then taught. This was a time when the painters of the “The School of London” were comparatively accessible and by the time that I was twenty I was regularly visiting Leon Kossoff, seeing Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews and Kitaj, and had met Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. In my early twenties no one had a bigger influence on me than Leon Kossoff. I have never felt another painter’s work so deeply. My doctorate The Battle for Realism. Art and Politics in the Cold War (1945-60) (published by Yale University Press in 2001) had many of these painters at its centre. What was particularly exciting for me was not just learning about their own work but visiting exhibitions with them. I had a breakfast time visit to the Grand Palais with Mike Andrews to see their Seurat exhibition, went round a Picasso show with Lucian Freud and to a Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud exhibition with Francis Bacon. None of these artists, even Bacon and Freud, had the level of fame that they do now, so being obsessed with their work seemed like being part of small elite.

A little later, friendship with Bridget Riley also meant an enormous amount to me. Our wine-fuelled conversations, about politics as well as art, would extend late into the night, so late that on one occasion when Bridget came round for dinner, Claire was so exhausted from working nights as a doctor at the Royal London Hospital that she fell asleep. I don’t think Bridget ever forgave her!

Friendship with Derrick Greaves is also very special. He has such a gift for friendship that it crosses generations. It’s extraordinary to think that he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale as long ago as 1956 and is still producing paintings of such wit and originality.
 

CM: You and Claire first began collecting art together in the mid 1990s focused, initially, on the School of London painters and young British artists. What were your first purchases?

JH: Claire and I began collecting soon after we met. In fact our second date was lunch followed by Sunday afternoon viewings of the contemporary auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. The first major works we acquired were Anya Gallaccio’s floor-piece of ten thousand fragrant red English tea roses, Red on Green, which I was stunned by at the ICA in 1992; and Sam Taylor-Wood’s five screen video work, Pent-Up (1996). I still consider these pieces to be their greatest works. They were crazy but exciting purchases. I couldn’t believe that it could be possible to acquire works of such significance.

Then, on a trip to New York in 1996, we went to Nan Goldin’s exhibition at the Whitney Museum. We both found Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency slide show with its great sound track incredibly moving. We bought some works by Nan Goldin and by Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley and Raymond Pettibon but they were never really Claire’s thing.

Claire and I married in 1997 and in 2001 had our first child. I remember talking about what art we wanted around us. We explicitly decided that it should be art works we would be comfortable for the children and their friends to see. Goldin’s Jimmy Paulette, Kelley’s rag doll and McCarthy’s exotic dancer had to go.

That’s not to say that the work we have around us today isn’t challenging. The scroll in our hallway by Jin Feng, An Appeal Without Words, is an incredible, metres-long, photograph that addresses the lack of a voice of the ordinary people in today’s China. An oil painting by Peter de Francia of the effect on civilians of the bombing of Sakiet in the 1950s is also prominently displayed. So is a Bill Brandt photograph of a family in the coal mining community of Jarrow that was aimed at exposing poverty in northern England in the 1930s. So all very socially concerned!

CM: When did you start to focus on collecting photographs?

JH: At school I wanted to be a photographer, so photography was always an interest, but I was steered, I think rightly, towards a more academic path and went to study History of Art at University. I virtually stopped taking photographs until in my mid-twenties I took it up again. I was very excited when my photographs of Anselm Kiefer’s studio were used by the Metropolitan Museum for one of their books.

At that time, many of the London painters that I most admired were very anti-photography. They were at pains to stress that they did not use photography in their work and dismissive of it as an art form. But from school days I loved Andre Kertesz and Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, Brassai and Bill Brandt. I had a pocket sized copy of Andre Kertesz’s On Reading, which I loved, and a show at the Barbican American Visions in 1985 was also a huge influence. The show’s focus was mainly on people, on street photography, which is what I liked. The show had a very European feel: what I liked about Bill Brandt or Andre Kertesz I could also admire in their selection of Robert Franks.

Later I visited the Paris Photo fair each year, but purely as a visitor not as a buyer. So I had a long time looking and learning before ever thinking about buying anything, let alone forming a collection.

I was inspired by a good friend of mine Gary Sokol, one of the greatest photography collectors in America. We met in the 1980s on a boat going down the Li River in China! This was before he, or I, began collecting. Then over the years we visited photo auctions and fairs together, him as a buyer, me simply to admire. At a London auction at Sotheby’s we both loved an aerial view by Moholy-Nagy. Gary was put off by the condition but I encouraged him to go for it. He won the lot and after cleaning it turned out to be a spectacular purchase.

So it was Gary whom I called when I decided to start collecting and he introduced us to the legendary American photography dealer, Margaret Weston. Claire and I spent a wonderful day with Maggi at her gallery and her home in Carmel, California. From Maggi we acquired our first major vintage photographs: a rare Edward Weston Dune and two platinum prints by Paul Strand. Gary also recommended other photography dealers, among them, Stephen Daiter in Chicago. In those early days Steve taught me more than anyone else. As a young collector I had a lot to learn! We would have long transatlantic phone calls. I would ask Steve a question about Kertész, Callahan, Siskind, Meatyard and he would still be answering the questions half an hour later! Those conversations were very special.

CM: It seems like the photography collection has a very Modernist focus.

JH: It had. But it wasn’t conscious. I was finding my feet; obsessively reading books and catalogues, asking questions, learning. The collection soon changed direction to focus on early French photography.

CM: Where did the idea of collecting nineteenth-century pictures come from?

JH: I think Gary must take credit for that as well. When Claire and I stayed with him in San Francisco he showed us his incredible pictures and then in New York he took me to visit Hans Kraus to look at very early works by Talbot. They were small, faded, barely there: whispers of the past. Yet for me these scraps were magical, like sacred relics. I loved the theatre of it, the shadowy forms emerging from the twilight in Hans’s dark rooms.

Hans also showed me some early British and French paper negatives. I bought two works on that first visit, both British paper negatives. Since then paper negatives and early salt prints have remained a passion. A great moment for me was meeting André Jammes, the greatest collector of nineteenth century photographs. Hans introduced me as a collector of paper negatives. “Vous avez raison” declared the great man. Our collection includes several important pieces that were formerly in his magnificent collection including spectacular works by Talbot, Negre, Regnault, J.B. Greene, and Em. Pec.

I used to joke with Gary about our different approaches. Looking at a nineteenth century photograph he would see the future and I would see the past. He would respond to its modernism, I would be attracted to the echoes of earlier times. In the work of Humbert de Molard I could see his conscious recreation of seventeenth century Dutch genre paintings and looking at Paul Strand or Robert Adams, I could identify in their landscapes their awareness of nineteenth century photography.

I suppose I’m drawn to people, genre scenes, traces of man, a sense of timelessness, to continuity rather than change. My favourite pictures include the multi-figure tableaux of Humbert de Molard and the genre scenes of Charles Nègre. I love their intimacy, tenderness and sensitivity.

Back in London I began to get regular visits from Robert Hershkowitz, one of the greatest dealers in nineteenth century photographs: an American, living in England, he consistently showed me great things by great photographers. But he also showed me that a poor photographer could still produce a great picture. I think that the early French photographer, Tillard, was pretty mediocre but the paper negative of a tree that I bought from Bobby is a wonderful image.

CM: So it sounds like a very American story…

JH: Well for several years almost everything we acquired was from American dealers or, occasionally, American auctions. There just wasn’t the material in London. Auctions were drying up and vintage material was almost impossible to see at London dealers. It’s a pity that to this day, with the exception of purchases from Robert Hershkowitz and some contemporary works, we’ve bought virtually nothing from dealers in London. It’s certainly not been conscious. We have, for example, bought a lot of good vintage work in France.

But London is changing. Michael Wilson, one of the world’s greatest photography collectors, has done more than anyone to try and stimulate a photography community, personally though his generosity and publicly through the Wilson Centre for Photography. Philippe Garner, as auctioneer and author, has also been a wonderful influence with his knowledge, enthusiasm and judgement. There are also major institutional developments. The Photographers’ Gallery has opened a new gallery, the National Media Museum will be opening a space at the Science Museum and the Tate’s recent engagement with photography generated a lot of goodwill. There is also a growing audience for vintage as well as contemporary photography. More commercial galleries are also opening. So the signs are encouraging.

CM: What advice would you give to collectors starting out today?

JH: See as much as possible. I was lucky early on not only to see great works at dealers such as Hans Kraus but also visit institutions to see pictures that were not on display. For example, Gerard Levy, one of the old school French dealers took me to the Société Française de Photographie (SFP) where we looked at J.B. Greene, Regnault and Humbert de Molard. It gave me a canon of excellence against which to judge the pieces that I was being offered. It also made me appreciate the fundamental importance of vintage rather than later prints. Without this sort of visual experience it’s easy to be seduced by the image not the object.

A vintage print can have a fundamentally different feel to something printed later or even posthumously. No curator of prints in any major museum would stage a show of printed later Rembrandt’s even if the etchings were from the original plates, yet in photography there can be a tendency not to appreciate the difference between a vintage and a later print. 

In the throes of passion the hardest thing is to be patient. But things do appear, new discoveries are made, and works do come back on the market. It’s true that great collections such as the Gilman Collection are now in institutions, but others such as the Buhl collection have been dispersed at auction. It’s easy to be envious of the opportunities in the past, to lament the lack of material today, or its quality, and the escalation in prices. Of course I wish I’d started earlier, but there are still opportunities. For example, some stunning, exceptionally rare salt prints by Firmin le Dien and Gustave le Gray recently appeared at an obscure auction house in France.

I’d also recommend reading as much as possible. Photography until recently was a terra incognita but there is a growing literature on the history of photography and a growing amount on the internet, from museum websites that illustrate and catalogue each and every work, to a multitude of blogs. Early on, Alex Novak’s newsletters provided an incredible entrée into the world of photography collecting.

CM: You also collect contemporary work. How does that fit into the collection?

JH: We have many famous pictures, icons, but we also like to collect less familiar works. The earliest French photography is so rare that there are few private collectors and it is drying up.  Less and less is to be found outside museums. So it’s also exciting to engage with what’s going on today. Here in Britain we have a generation of extraordinary photographers several of whom were the subject of a MOMA New York exhibition, Photography from the Thatcher Years, as far back as 1991, yet they still remain under-appreciated. I’m fascinated by their forms of subjective or conceptual documentary photography.

Often these photographers have worked, series by series, with each project culminating in a book and/or exhibition, so rather than acquiring single prints, we’ve tried where possible to buy entire bodies of work: Anna Fox’s Work Stations, Ken Grant’s Close Season, Karen Knorr’s Belgravia, Martin Parr’s Last Resort, Mark Power’s Shipping Forecast, Paul Reas’s I Can Help, Paul Seawright’s Sectarian Murders, Jem Southam’s Painters Pool … it’s a long list!

CM: What are your favourite pictures in the collection?

JH: It’s always the latest acquisition! But I’ve been very fortunate, too. Years ago I saw a museum show in Paris that included genre scenes by Humbert de Molard. I’d never seen his work before and I loved it. I discovered that it was exceptionally rare – couldn’t find any records of his work appearing at auction or see any dealers with work by him. I mentioned the work to Robert Hershkowitz, unaware that he was by then about the only source of Humbert de Molard’s work, and was fortunate to acquire several really important works from him. I also love our early Charles Nègre image of a woman asleep, Regnault’s golden salt print of the Seine and Robert’s Chardin-like portrait of his daughter reading.

CM: Does your collection have a theme? Do you think that a collection should have a theme? 

JH: Some of the greatest collections have a theme and some of the greatest collections don’t. There are no rules. I immensely admire the collections of Paul Sack on buildings, Bill Hunt on unseen eyes, Henry Buhl on hands, Gary Sokol on Modernism, but equally I admire the quality of Michael Wilson and Thomas Walther’s diverse collections and the mind-blowing range of The Archive of Modern Conflict. 

So I suppose our collection has it both ways. It has a thread – intimacy – but the collection also has a wider historical aspect and includes important milestones in the history of photography. As an art historian, I love all the research and it excites me that the collection includes works of such rarity and importance.

CM: Isn’t it a conflict being an art dealer and a collector?

JH: I’m very new to being a photography dealer so the core collection predates me dealing in photographs by several years. But obviously you do have to be careful. No collector wants to think that they’ve not being offered the best work. It’s amazing going to the Beyeler Foundation in Basel and seeing what he kept! Great Monets, Picassos, Giacometti, you name it. It must have frustrated a lot of collectors.

So recently when I’ve bought new things, I’ve made a point of showing them to my clients and in exhibitions at the gallery or at art fairs. At the AIPAD fair I’m including an amazing paper negative by Charles Nègre of the artist’s hand from around 1850. It belonged to the great collector, Henry Buhl. I’d love to keep it, but feel that it is right to offer it first. If I sell it I will be happy but if I don’t then I’d be delighted to have it in the collection. Similarly, I recently acquired some wonderful Edouard Baldus salt prints of Paris in the 1850s. They were in impeccable condition and I would have loved to have kept them all. But instead I did a show of Baldus, the first ever in London. It was extremely successful, so now many of my favourite Baldus photographs have gone into other collections. But it felt right to do it this way round. At AIPAD I’m showing some other Baldus prints in celebration of the Bicentenary of his birth and again there are pictures that I love. But I can’t keep everything.

CM: You’ve quietly collected for several years. Why publicise it?

JH: We’ve anonymously lent works to museums across the world so it’s not really about wanting to be known. In fact, as young collectors, we’ve liked being under the radar.

But the collection is now so big that we’d love other people to see it. It really is about wanting to share, wanting people to see remarkable works by exceptional artists, that they might not see otherwise.

It’s interesting that in recent years it’s not just been collectors such as Paul Sack, Gary Sokol and Henry Buhl who have exhibited their work in public institutions, but also photography dealers such as Maggi Weston, Howard Greenberg and Eric Franck. I appreciate the ethical issues for a museum, but think they are more relevant when it comes to young contemporary artists, for whom a museum show may shift the market, then for deceased and already established artists. I think for the public the main issue should be whether the material is of the highest quality. Whether it is publicly or privately owned is a side issue.

I’d love it if somewhere like the Courtauld Gallery wanted to show the French collection as the work is little known in London and would brilliantly relate to their Impressionist paintings.

CM: If you had to choose one work to keep, which would it be?

JH: For me the excitement has been meeting fascinating people, learning about amazing artists, the thrill of the chase, then living with the work and deepening my relationship with it. But I don’t really consider myself materialistic: I think the impulses are psychological and emotional. So although there are pictures that I love, ownership is not actually the prime issue. So I’m not sure that there is any single work that I’d select. I’m passionate about all these pictures and believe that they form a coherent, historically significant whole. I also have no wish to split the collection. It would be wonderful if one day the whole collection found an institutional home.

So, for sentimental reasons, what I would keep is a book that I was given. In my twenties I had the thrill of meeting my hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson. I went to his apartment overlooking the Tuileries Gardens to interview him for an essay that I was writing. I was terrified, as he had a reputation for being impatient with interviewers, and nervous as I wasn’t sure whether we would be talking in French or English, but he was completely charming. Fortunately, he liked what I wrote and he sent me a book inscribed – “for James, with thanks for your encouragement, Henri Cartier-Bresson” – I should have retired there and then!

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James Hyman will be exhibiting at the AIPAD Photography Show, 4 – 7 April 2013, at the Park Avenue Armory, New York. 

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Anna McNay: How did you come to be curating Photo50?

Nick Hackworth: I believe Sue Steward, the photography critic for the Evening Standard who curated last year’s Photo 50, kindly recommended me.

AM: And where does the title, ‘A Cyclical Poem’, come from?

NH: ‘History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man’ from A Defence of Poetry by Shelley.

AM: You are the director of the contemporary art gallery, Paradise Row. How different is it to curate an exhibition like this, compared with a gallery based one?

NH: Being completely free from commercial pressure was interesting.

AM: Were there any guidelines/constraints on what you could do?

NH: Only that the show had to comprise around 50 images. Beyond that the organisers of the London Art Fair were extremely open minded.

AM: The exhibition, which questions the nature of historical change through 50 images by eight photojournalists and documentary photographers working between 1970 and the present day, includes both digital and pre-digital era images. How do you feel about the advent of digital imagery? What impact has it had on photography as a whole, as a form of truthful documentation, and as an art form?

NH: I’d say rather that the exhibition focuses on the relationship between photographic images and time and memory. Obviously that’s a huge subject and this is only a partial look. In a short introductory text to the show, I wrote, ‘Many of the images included date from well before the digital era. Since digital culture has fundamentally altered the relationship between image, time and memory, one reading of this exhibition might be to question the nature of those changes.’ So my question about digital culture is not about its relationship to ‘truth’ per se, but memory. What does it mean to young individuals who’ve grown up immersed in digital culture, who have a tendency to record and publish so much of their lives online? Does the selectivity inherent in the approach of each of the photographers in Photo 50 make for a more mindful relationship with memory, or does the constant engagement of new digital culture make for a richer relationship?

AM: You’ve chosen to focus here on documentary photography. Do you still see this field as an art form? (Given that the context of the show is within the London Art Fair.)  

NH: Whilst it’s unlikely to be apparent to many, one of the inspirations for A Cyclical Poem was Everything was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s, that has just closed at the Barbican, and especially the work of Ernest Cole. I simply found his images so moving that they sidestepped some, say, rather academic concerns that I thought I had about the potential power of documentary photography now, in an age where the ubiquity of images might be thought to undercut their potential to affect.

Despite the exponential growth of the digital universe, the real world, meat space, is our reality. Things happen in it. You can take images of them. Those images can still matter. So rather than discuss whether or not documentary photography is art or not, I’d say that it still has the potential to be vital. The more pressing issue is how much visibility documentary and serious photojournalism receive in the mainstream media which is increasingly dominated, almost to the exclusion of all else, by images generated by the celebrity and entertainment industries.

AM: How did you select your eight photographers?

NH:  I made the selection along with Ashley Lumb, Assistant Curator on the show. We were looking for works that had a highly charged relationship with time and memory. So we picked some photographers who returned to the same or similar subjects over or after long periods of time, such as Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen returning to Byker or Paul Hill physically collaging new work onto images he took in the seventies. Other bodies of work we selected because they were made with a very conscious relationship to time, such as work from Chris Steele-Perkins’ series Echoes, images shot in one year, 2001.

AM: Were there any on your shortlist who didn’t make it into the show, or any whom you’d have liked to include but couldn’t?

NH: The theme is expansive and naturally inclusive, so there were many very good photographers we could have included.

AM: Once selected, did the photographers themselves have any input into which works were included in the exhibition?

NH:Naturally there was a dialogue with each photographer about which exact images to include.

AM: Is there one image that stands out more than any other for you? If so, which, and why?

NH: No, because each of the selections from the eight photographers are rich microcosms, taken from bodies of work that are filled with their own stories and moments. However I find the works of Ian Beesley and Homer Sykes especially moving as they record worlds that have disappeared almost entirely. From Ian’s work, perhaps, I’d single out Foreman of the plate-laying gang having received his redundancy letter.

AM:What is the main message, or thesis, of the exhibition? What would you like visitors to take away with them?

NH: I hope the exhibition works on a number of levels. One is to reflect generally on transience. Whilst the subjects in these works vary from the highly personal to, more widely, the social and political, the theme of loss runs through each body of work, tying the exhibition together. I think any examination of loss, naturally brings to the fore an examination of the value of the lives we live. What losses are to be mourned? What is worth preserving?

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Alongside Photo50, a number of galleries at London Art Fair are exhibiting work by contemporary photographers, including Art First, The Art Movement, BEARSPACE, The Catlin Guide, The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Danielle Arnaud, Envie d’Art, French Art Studio, Hannah Barry Gallery, Jack Bell Gallery, Jenny Blyth Fine Art, Purdy Hicks Gallery, Richard Saltoun, SALON VERT, Sarah Myerscough Fine Art, Troika Editions, The Wapping Project Bankside and Whitford Fine Art.

A Photography Focus day at the Fair on Wednesday 16 January sees talks programmed by Photovoice and Photoworks, as well as a discussion on African photography.

More information on the events programme can be found at: www.londonartfair.co.uk

Felicity Cole: How would you describe an ‘artists’ book’ and why do people collect them?

Victoria Browne: Some people might describe it as a genre and other people might describe it as a medium. I look at the form of the book as a sculpture or a structure that can engage with all forms of art. An artist’s book is an exhibition in itself, the books are easily transportable and you can keep a collection on a shelf. A book is something that is intimate, that you share with your friends and bring out on a special occasion rather than looking at it every day on a wall. There is also certainly a price element in that anyone who comes into an art book fair can afford an artist’s book. The American tradition of collecting artists’ books stems from Ed Ruscha, who produced a book as a political tool to disseminate his work without the use of the gallery network, and he disseminated it at a price that was affordable.  That legacy has continued in America. The European collecting tradition stems from medieval illuminated manuscripts and the small editions of incredible high quality artists’ books that were commissioned during the Impressionist era. The European approach was completely different from the American approach, with smaller editions, and the price was completely different.

FC: What was your reason for founding KALEID Editions in September 2009?

VB: KALEID Editions focusses on representing European-based artists who do books. They are not necessarily predominantly ‘book artists’, but they may have a book that they have made within their practice that deserves recognition, support and representation, and KALEID Editions can do that because it represents the book, not the artist. The artists we represent may well be represented by galleries, but those galleries don’t necessarily show the books of those artists, either because it’s not their focus for their clients or because books don’t conform to the normal gallery environment. I founded KALEID Editions in September 2009 to develop a platform, which didn’t exist at the time. I knew there were collectors out there, but collecting artists’ books is a very small niche. The collectors are often people who are very well educated within the arts but have a budget which means they can’t necessarily go out and purchase an Anselm Kiefer painting, but they can afford to purchase Anselm Kiefer’s book. The price of artists’ books can often increase exponentially: if you look at the value of an Anselm Kiefer book now, it has increased more than the value of any other piece of work that he has produced.

FC: Who are the main collectors of artists’ books today?

VB: The best artists’ book collection of all is the one at the Chicago Institute: it has every Dieter Roth book, every Sol LeWitt, every Ed Ruscha: that is the ‘holy grail’ of artists’ book collecting. In terms of institutions, you’ve also got the American libraries, that are young libraries in comparison to Europe, so they are new to collecting and they collect in different ways. They have some fantastic collections of artists’ books.  In the UK, Tate, the British Library and the V&A  all collect. The Tate and the V&A have always had artists’ book collections but people are not aware of that. The institutions all have different ways of collecting, so for example the Tate defines an ‘artist’s book’ in the American tradition, as a book which has an edition of over 100 and which is affordable; they won’t purchase something which is over a set price. The V&A, on the other hand, follows the European tradition of collecting. They purchase fewer books but at substantially higher prices. Their books are held within the National Art Library so there is a cross-over there between an art collection and a library function.

As well as the institutions there are individual collectors, who often start by collecting other genres of art and then discover artists’ books and what a good investment they can be. They are also attracted by the ability to collect work by artists they thought they would not be able to afford. There is no clear route to collecting artists’ books and people tend to fall into it. Those people who do collect tend to really know the market well. They usually start out as art collectors, gallerists, people within the world of the arts. They are people who are informed, know what they are doing and decide they want to develop their own collection. 

FC: Is there a surge of interest in artists’ books at the moment?

VB: The artists’ book captures the zeitgeist of today, because of the death of mainstream publishing and the printed book. Also, the tools that are now available online to develop and create your own book mean that people have a completely different way of looking at the genre. That creates a whole new era, when you are not confined by the rules of publishing.

FC: What sort of photo-books do you represent?

VB: The books we represent are artists’ books that a photographer has curated. The photographer has artistic control over all aspects of making the book. The photographer is considering the material, the scale and the sculptural, tactile quality of how a photograph is received by the viewer, so it’s no longer just a two-dimentional, flat surface.

FC: Could you please give an example of one of the photographers that you represent?

VB: One of the photographers we represent is Gabriella Sancisi. She typically works with large-format, super-real C-type prints mounted on aluminium. She was  looking at her body of  work over a period of 15 years and wondering how she could disseminate it to a new audience and maintain control over it. She usually works in series which works well with books. She had no experience in layout and design but she had her archive and she spent the next 18 months developing a volume of artists’ books, of which we now represent two: ‘Girlfriend’ and ‘Boyfriend’. They relate to a personal collection of photographs of herself and her friends. They all have their eyes blacked out so you don’t know who they are. Then at the end of the book there’s a short description in the first person of how they all relate to her. They are presented almost as ‘baby  books’: one is in a pink square format and the other is a blue square and they are in limited editions of 100. There is no longer the idea that an artist is represented by one gallery. It’s common now for an artist to be represented by a number of different galleries, online and through lots of different media. That means that her book can be purchased through KALEID Editions to the collectors that we have connections with and show to, or through Culturelabel, which is our new partner that we are now using to help us develop an online visibility.

FC: What advice would you give someone who wants to start a collection of artists’ books?

VB: Book dealers all specialise in different areas, and they all overlap, so if you’re going to start collecting, the first thing you need to do is to go to all these dealers and immerse yourself. The second thing is to go to the public collections and  learn about the history of artists’ books; you will be struck by just how many well-known, celebrated and successful artists have made a book at some point within their practice. It’s only the public collections that have sourced those books and hold them. You can also meet the dealers at book fairs, such as the London Art Book Fair. I think it’s for you as a collector to decide what you want to focus on. That might be photo-books, in which case you would go to Paris Photo, and you will be looking at the newly published artist’s books that are also photo-books.

FC: In 2012 KALEID Editions launched its own artists’ book fair, KALEID 2012. What are your plans for the KALEID 2013 fair?

VB: It is a submission-based model where we invite artists from all over Europe to submit a maximum of four books. They can chose whether they would like to show their book within a curated exhibition, on a stand or within a demonstration of making the work. There will be a one-day invitation-only private event for artists and collectors and a one-day public event. Last year we received over 300 people at the public event. This year’s event will be in July at the Art Academy in Borough. We would really like to attract more photo-books in 2013. From the submissions at KALEID 2013 we will select 20 -25 books to take to the London Art Book Fair where they will be represented to another audience.

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For more information visit KALEID Editions http://www.kaleideditions.com/   and Culture Label http://www.culturelabel.com/shop/k/kaleid-editions/

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Christiane Monarchi: With your experience working with photographers first at Getty Images, most recently through your own consulting practice and at Gallery Stock, you have advised many artists wishing to maximise the financial potential in their photographic practice outside the art gallery network. How can a photographer considering the spectrum of commercial opportunities begin to choose the right path for their practice?

Zoe Whishaw: There probably isn’t such a thing as a single ‘right path’, but whenever I talk to photographers who may be interested in exploring new opportunities outside their usual arena, the initial consideration would be to assess their work as to whether or not their philosophy and approach to photography lends itself to the commercial marketplace.

To move into this competitive space it is important that they are interested in applying their signature style to situations that they may not have considered previously. I think if photographers are open minded about how they express their ideas beyond their current domains, then they could start to tap into a commercial world that expects original visual expressions of concepts and metaphors. Often fine art photographers may have explored styles and treatments deeply and experimentally and could be well placed to consider different and perhaps more commercially-orientated subject matter.

An important point to make if any photographer wants to be successful in the world of commercial photography is not to be afraid of a cliché and instead embrace the challenge of their reinvention. It might sound as if this would be the furthest place an artist with a fine art background would want to take their work, but therein lies the opportunity and a chance to beat the odds by coming up with something novel and give their take on a well worn notion.

CM: What is a cliché in commercial photography?

ZW: A cliché could be something as simple as representations of ‘love’ or ‘success’ or ‘growth’. Images that spring to mind might be a kiss, a handshake or a seedling cupped in a hand, but actually there is an infinite number of other ways to interpret these concepts in a way that doesn’t make you want to run for the nearest exit. This is what the commercial world is looking for; photographers who have ways of interpreting ideas and metaphors with a fresh visual language.

CM: What are the opportunities available to a photographer just starting out, to consider having their work seen outside the gallery network? 

ZW: From my experience of working with a wide range of photographers at all stages in their career, most can find themselves feeling isolated at some point. Finding objective assessments and opinions on their work can be hard to find and trust.

I would say the first and most important thing is to get out there and discuss your work as much as possible amongst fellow photographers, art buyers and image users, be it at private views, workshops, seminars or industry events. This will take some investment of time and possibly money too.

Admittedly it can be hard to get an audience with a creative, but you can go to formally arranged portfolio reviews and deliberately seek out the commercially orientated reviewer to get their feedback. You could also talk to a photographers’ agent, to get their unique view or try to see an art director/art buyer face-to-face at an ad agency (tough to get their time, but be tenacious as this will provide valuable feedback).

It’s always important to have an idea of who your ideal client type would be so that professionals can help gauge your work with this in mind. Listen to their feedback and seek their view on your imagery and its relevance to the various markets in which they are experts to see what they have to say.

There are plenty of internet-based resources available as well as workshop and seminars, where wide-ranging themes and discussions can help draw out other areas of creative interest.  

Of course there are other, more bespoke ways to get guidance, which can be tailored to individual needs where you can discuss your imagery, website, marketing and your creative direction in a more holistic way with less of a time constraint and more of a personal approach. Professional photography mentors, though rare, do exist and will meet on a one-to-one basis, either as a one-off or as part of a series of sessions.

CM: That sounds helpful for photographers just starting out. What about areas available to a more established photographer to monetize his or her images?

ZW: Interestingly, during the years I have been working as a mentor I’d say that over 90% of my clients have been established professional photographers (not just those just starting out) who have wanted some commercial guidance and/or an opportunity to re-establish their creative spirit. Having some one-to-one feedback and guidance can be a refreshing change to the solitary life of even the most successful photographers.

To try to answer your question: the images a photographer has in their archive or portfolio may or may not be monetizable per se, but as I mentioned earlier their approach to photography could be what is absolutely spot on, and that is something exciting for somebody like myself to spot in a photographer.

The ideal combination for an established photographer is when both their existing work (and archive) and their approach suit the commercial world. This could mean a pretty swift next step in considering a syndication agency (‘photo library’ or ‘stock agency’ as they are referred to) to try to get these assets working harder for them and earning money.

The key here is not compromising the aesthetic of the photographer’s work but to explore this opportunity by developing personal work with this commercial potential in mind. Different agencies look for different types of imagery – it’s important to do plenty of research here so that there is a potentially strong ‘match’ with what they may be looking for.

Fine art photographers can have a place in this world, contradictory though that might sound given the rather predictable images that are often associated with this industry. Ad agencies and more sophisticated image users are always looking for less typical, more challenging and inventive ways to help sell their product or service. It is vital that this choice is available to image users and indeed photo agencies are constantly seeking new photographer talent to help satisfy this voracious hunger for something ‘new’.

CM: Where the commercial and fine art sectors may have been separate and distinct, are there now examples of successful cross-over?

ZW: Absolutely. There are many serious fine art photographers out there already putting their work with the higher end agencies and earning valuable income from their syndication. Much of this work may be from their archives as well as on-going projects. I could name a few here: Massimo Vitali, Ben Stockley, Stephen Gill, Stephen Wilkes, Joel Meyerowitz, Laura Letinsky, Mitch Epstein, Nadav Kander;…and many others. Their work has been assessed by the agencies and relevant content selected for potential licensing. This is where the cross-over can be both successful and rewarding. (images on the right) 

One thing is for sure:  you can never be 100% sure what image a customer wants to purchase, but there are certainly some very strong industry insights that help to determine which images have most potential. With guidance and a better understanding of how this marketplace works, photographers could potentially find themselves with an additional revenue stream.

CM: This sounds like an interesting process, how does it work in practice? And once you ‘sign on’, what happens next?

ZW: If your work does get accepted by an agency you will be asked to sign a contract which essentially says that they are able to sell licenses for your images to be used, for which you receive a royalty. You still retain copyright of your images.

The high-end agencies will only sell right-managed content (as opposed to royalty free) where the cost to the customer will depend on how they want to use the image. This is where the fee can start to get interesting if the usage is extensive, reaching 5 figure sums at times. Gallery Stock is an example of such an agency. They work with some of the world’s most celebrated photographers, many of whom would never have put their work through an agency before, but now find they are rubbing shoulders with like minded creatives while their work is earning additional income through further licensing.   

Some agencies are able to give constructive feedback to their photographers on content submitted, though increasingly it can be tough to get one-on-one time with an editor as resources are often tight. As the former European Director of Photography at Getty Images and having worked with photographers in this industry for twenty years, this is an area (amongst others) I can help photographers with.  Together we can spend time looking at edits, talking about projects, developing ideas, not just for syndication but for portfolio work. Important questions to consider might be:

- How big should a photographer’s collection be with an agency to garner a decent income?
- What imagery is best suited to the editorial vs commercial market?
- Does a forthcoming personal project lend itself to syndication?

Something I am very mindful of is to ensure a photographer retains their signature style while considering producing content that may have strong commercial potential in the global marketplace. Only by ensuring that the imagery is ideal for their portfolio and indeed helps to develop it further, can this opportunity be fully optimized. Producing imagery that ‘might be what the commercial world wants’ rarely works if it doesn’t come from a true personal creative drive.

CM: Thanks, Zoe, I think this has started to lift some of the mystery surrounding the ‘commercial’ world, and maybe there will be some artists who may like to explore other areas outside galleries for their work to be seen.

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Zoe Whishaw is a Commercial Photography Consultant providing creative direction, strategic advice and mentoring services for photographers and photo agencies. She is an expert in the visual language of stills photography within commercial contexts.

As a seasoned Editor and Art Director she has had many years of experience analysing and critiquing ideas and photography intended for commercial use across a broad spectrum of subject areas. Zoe has developed and contributed to the success of leading media company, Getty Images, where she worked for 17 years in senior creative and strategic positions, latterly as European Director of Photography. She recently held the position of Creative Director for leading independent photo agency, Image Source and has recently consulted with Gallery Stock on content acquisition.

As a passionate believer in photography’s power to communicate at all levels, Zoe transmits her enthusiasm and excitement through speaking widely at workshops and conferences (including guest speaker at CEPIC 2010, Magnum Professional Practice 2010-11, World Photography Organisation Photography Festival 2011 and Wildphoto 2011) and through one-to-one mentoring. She has judged international photography competitions, including Wildlife Photographer of the Year, STA Travel Photo Competition, the Association of Photographers Open Awards and the 2011 annual Association of Photographers Awards.

She will be participating in a Professional Practice weekend workshop at the London agent, Balcony Jump on 2 -3 February 2013. 

www.zoewhishaw.com 

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Often overshadowed by the reputation of her husband, László Moholy-Nagy, to whom she was married for thirteen years, it is perhaps now timely to reconsider Lucia Moholy’s individual career and her contribution to the development of twentieth-century photography. Paul Klee in his master’s house studio in 1927, balance study sculptures by Irmgard Popitz and Corona Krause, and performers in Kurt Schmidt’s Man at the Control Panel (1924) are examples from a small selection of photographs by Lucia Moholy shown in the Barbican’s impressive recent exhibition Bauhaus: Art as Life. As the exhibition content suggested, Moholy is known for her photographs documenting daily life among the art school’s masters and students, and the production of its many workshops. However, her career in photography extended long after her days at the Bauhaus.

Born Lucia Schulz in Karolinental, Prague, in 1894, Lucia read philosophy and art history at the University of Prague, before working as head of the editorial office of the Weisbadener Zeitung (1915) and for Kurt Wulff at Hyperion Publishing in Leipzig (1917). Her first experiences in photography are described in a diary entry ‘My first flight into the world’ (3 February 1915):

“The interest in photography awoke in me. I am a passive artist. I can capture impressions and would surely be able to record everything from its most beautiful perspective, put them through chemical processes I have learnt and allow them to appear how they affect me...”

Lucia continued her career at Heinrich Vogeler’s Barkenhof in Worpswede (1918-1919) and Ernst Rowohlt publishing house in Berlin, where she first met László Moholy-Nagy in April 1920. Following the couple’s marriage on January 18 1921, Moholy-Nagy was appointed a master at Walter Gropius’s newly formed Bauhaus school, with Lucia joining him in Weimar in 1923.  She worked as an apprentice to professional photographer Otto Eckner and took courses in reproduction photography at the Leipzig Academy for Graphic and Book Arts. Moholy was already an experienced photographer before taking photographs for the Bauhaus, as weaver Gertrud Arndt recalled in an interview with Sabina Leβmann in 1933:

“Nobody could take a photograph when I arrived in Weimar, the only one who could use a camera was Lucia Moholy, she had learned it. She came to the Bauhaus as a photographer.”[1] 

From 1923-28, Moholy consistently recorded the architecture, interiors, lives and works of the leading artists of the Bauhaus school. Her documentary practice was representative of a ‘New Objectivity’ which aimed to capture a subject as closely as possible to reality, without subjecting it to self-representation by the artist. Moholy did allow herself limited self-expression in her printing techniques, often using retouching paint to create darkening effects. Walter Peterhans, who taught photography classes at the Bauhaus from 1929, further advocated the use of reportage photography, with many of his students later becoming professional photographers including Irene Bayer, Katt Both, Hilde Hubbuch and Lotte Beese.

Lucia Moholy and László Moholy-Nagy enjoyed a highly collaborative creative union. However, their individual creative approaches represent two very different directions in early Modernist photography: the ‘reproductive’ photograph true to reality and the ‘productive’ art photograph respectively. The latter as represented by Moholy-Nagy was often characterised by extreme visual angles, optical distortion and deliberate abstraction achieved through the use of materials such as glass, metal or mirrors. It was an exploration of both these forms of photography which led to Moholy and Moholy-Nagy’s advancements in the development of photograms. Moholy writing in her essay ‘Das Bauhaus-Bild’ (Werk 6/1968) recalled:

“…During a stroll in the Rhön Mountains in the summer of 1922 we discussed the problems arising from the antithesis Production versus Reproduction. This gradually led us to implement our conclusions by making photograms, having had no previous knowledge of any steps taken by Schad, Man Ray and Lissitzky…”[2]

Their experiments were published in magazines including De Stijl (7/1922) and a chapter was devoted to photograms in the book they co-wrote Malerei, Photografie, Film (1925/27). Knowing their unique nature, Moholy also reproduced their creations with a camera for future publication. Moholy and Moholy-Nagy’s achievements in this medium became famous and widely published as the exclusive work of her husband, with Malerei, Photografie, Film being published solely under his name. Moholy later attempted to address inaccuracies found in the published histories of her and her husband’s artistic and personal lives with the publication of Moholy-Nagy Marginal Notes (1972).

Upon leaving the Bauhaus in April 1928, Moholy and Moholy-Nagy moved to Spichernstrasse, Berlin; they separated a year later, and were divorced in 1934. In Berlin, Moholy established her own studio and worked for the Kroll State Opera and Mauritius Picture Press Agency. She also succeeded former Bauhaus member Umbo as head of photography classes at Johannes Itten’s private art school in 1929. By 1933, Germany was under the rule of the National Socialist Party, and Moholy was forced to emigrate, travelling in August to Paris via Prague and Vienna. Unable to take her photographic archive of 560 glass negatives with her, she entrusted her work to Walter and Ilse Gropius for safekeeping.

Settling in London from June 1934, Moholy lived at 39 Mecklenburgh Square, WC1. After receiving support and encouragement from admirers of her work including Stephen Spender’s grand-mother Hilda Schuster, Moholy established a private studio. She lectured on the Bauhaus at the Central School of Arts and Design and taught photography at the London School of Painting and Graphic Art. Portraits of leading scientists, writers, and society figures made during this period include forty-five studies in the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection. The majority of these vintage prints were generously given to the Gallery by the Bauhaus Archiv in 1995. Moholy’s tightly cropped portrait studies sometimes photographed from slightly unusual angles, present intense character studies, where indications of social status such as interiors and possessions are removed.  She never learnt photography via the soft pictorial traditions of her predecessors, and she frequently used high contrast, darkening, and shadows to create drama and graphic elements in her compositions.  However Moholy’s eye is one of a truly sympathetic and ‘passive’ artist, who serves her subject with her camera.

While living in London, Moholy was commissioned by Penguin Books to write A Hundred Years of Photography (1939), a ‘Pelican Special’. The book which was the first history of photography in English, sold 40,000 copies in two years. Reprints were never made owing to wartime shortage of paper, yet today it still remains an appreciated introduction to photographic history. She often faced extended periods of considerable poverty, and Moholy-Nagy tried unsuccessfully to secure her a US visa, inviting her to teach at the School of Design in Chicago, where he had been Head since 1937. During the war, Moholy established a photography programme recording valuable manuscripts on behalf of the American Council of Learned Societies, which became the basis for the use of microfilm in science and technology. She later developed products for UNESCO, mainly in the Middle East, before moving to Switzerland in 1959. She lived here for the rest of her life, working as an art critic for publications including The Burlington Magazine.

Moholy enjoyed recognition in her later years. She was voted a member for the Swiss section of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art in 1975 and in 1985, aged ninety, her first biography by art historian Rolf Sachsse was published.  The delay in her decisive role at the Bauhaus being fully understood and documented can perhaps be attributed to a number of factors. Firstly, there was the male culture of the ‘master’ at the Bauhaus which was discussed by Moholy herself in Frau des 20 Jahrunderts (Twentieth Century Woman). Furthermore, the loss of control of her archive in 1933 had significant consequences in the decades which followed. The first unauthorised use of her images began appearing in publications in the United States during the war, and in the 1950s, Moholy entered a dispute with Walter Gropius regarding the return of her negatives. In May 1957, the dispute was resolved when fifty original negatives were given to her in compensation from the Busch-Reisinger-Museum. While some additional negatives were gradually sourced from private individuals, only a small proportion of Moholy’s pre-war archive from the period 1923-28 was restored to her in her lifetime.[3]

Lucia Moholy’s journey as a photographer runs parallel with a much wider history of women’s struggle for gender equality and financial and professional independence during the early decades of the twentieth-century. At the end of the 19^th century only a limited number of women had access to studying at art academies. The Grossherzogliche Sächsische Kunstgewerbeschule in Weimar was one of the few academies accepting female students in the winter of 1912-1913, with a ratio of 55 women to 99 men. In 1919 Walter Gropius’s opening programme for the Bauhaus announced applicants would be judged by talent and previous education alone, irrespective of age and sex. The summer semester of 1919 received 84 female and 79 male applicants based on this new promise of gender equality in arts education. The story of Moholy and her contemporaries including Marianne Brandt, Marianne Breslauer and Florence Henri is one of modern photography, but also one of the ‘New Woman’, as reflected in the many explorations of female identity in photography from this period, especially through self-portraiture. 

Artist, art critic, and photographic historian, Lucia Moholy struggled for much of her life to secure her own status in photographic history. She should be celebrated today for her individual role in the pioneering developments in photography which were achieved at the Bauhaus. Moholy-Nagy is recorded as having told his second wife Sibyl, “Her intellect was like a beacon which lit up my emotional chaos. She taught me to think.”[4] Moholy’s academic writings on photography helped preserve the legacy of the Bauhaus, and that of her husband László Moholy-Nagy. We can be grateful that near the end of her life, she witnessed her own distinguished body of work made since the 1930s, including her significant contribution to scientific documentation through photography, be appreciated by a younger generation devoted to the medium.

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Dorothy Hunter: Migration is obviously a fundamental component of Ireland itself, in terms of its history and the effects of the economic collapse; any movement is always going to carry the weight of previous, similar migrations by others.  As the festival covers such a wide remit of history and geography, how have the main themes of the festival presented themselves to you?

Moritz Neumüller: It is certainly a very important subject for Ireland. The Irish are always interested in discussing the emigration from their country, the so-called Irish diaspora. Yet in the last 15 years, when the Celtic tiger was still roaring, there has been a lot of immigration to the country, and there wasn’t as much talk about these new communities. Whilst many of these immigration patterns are mirrored in the UK or other European countries, some are very particular to Ireland: for instance, Lithuanians makes up the second largest group of foreigners within Ireland.

So it is an Irish theme, but also very much linked to the time we collectively live in. There are some exhibitions in the festival that focus specifically on what I would call the Irish diaspora. Living/Leaving, for example, features two projects on Irish migration. Maurice Gunning looks at present-day Irish diaspora in Argentina, and alongside the photographs he exhibits letters from Irish immigrants, written from the country in the 19^th Century. The content is more or less indistinguishable from what would be written today, discussing emotions, money and everyday life in the same manner as someone would write an email home.

As we are an international festival for photography, our mission is to enrich the Irish context of migration with international voices, both from the curatorial side and the artists’ side. On Migration at Moxie Studios features photographers from all over the world, and mostly early to mid-career artists. Probably the most well known photographers of On Migration would be Andrea Robbins and Max Becher.

DH: I felt that their 770 series was the strongest work in the show, along with Tumulus (Pitt Lake) by Roger Eberhard and James Nizam. The symbolism behind the buildings was very potent in both series.

MN: These projects revolve around migration, but I didn’t want to be very literal in my curatorial focus. I wanted to show things that happen around the subject. In the Tumulus series, these summerhouses in British Columbia are destroyed after their land’s lease has expired. It shows a strategy of burning things down so that nothing is left to benefit those who remain, which is a common strategy of the white man throughout history. Taking the trouble to destroy everything, that is apparently the human soul.

Project 770 is a funny one. The building was not of any importance to the rebbe’s community, it was a former medical clinic; and yet when he bought it for his Lubavitch congregation in Brooklyn, it was replicated across the world as they migrated. These are projects that I included in the show as even though they are not purely migration centric, it makes for a wider approach to the topic. There are very few photo-reportage projects in the festival, because we see them in the papers every day. I didn’t feel that was necessary.

DH: What was prevalent in a lot of the work in On Migration is the subject’s uncertain awareness of the camera. In some projects it’s quite apparent, such as The Mother Of All Journeys by Dinu Li; being partly composed of staged family portraits that are reframed in the context of the exhibition. In others there is often no knowing how informed the subjects are, or how staged the image is. To what extent does this matter, and how do you feel the work within On Migration navigates the realms of art photography and documentary?

MN: I think there are hardly any projects that could not fit into the field of art photography. Perhaps some of the work featured in the book exhibition is on the brim of photojournalism and art photography, such as Sebastião Salgado, or even Dorothea Lange. Her American Exodus was done in one particular documentary context, and is now a classic in museums.

It’s an old problem of photography. I don’t think it’s so different in our context (of an exhibition). Photography includes many dialogues, and one is the artistic dialogue. But there is also a very practical history of photography, of the direct, propagandistic, information or media-based history. If you take Dinu Li’s example, these pictures are photography of his family who left their home country in the 70s, when he was a boy, to come to England. As an adult he went back to the area that they first moved to, making the journey backwards to their old home and corner shop. So his project mixes old family photographs with new images that he has taken as an adult, of the same or similar places.

For me it is more of a legal issue if someone is aware that they are being photographed, but not so much in art photography, because you can see if there is a special relationship in the portrait taken. In Anthony Luvera’s assisted self-portraits he gives the camera to the person and assists them only, taking out the role of the photographer completely. He is a photographic coach, and the subject becomes both image and photographer. Normally the roles of subject and photographer are quite clear-cut, but here the role of photography is a big issue, although perhaps not the main one.

It’s more about each work and what it means, and if the people are aware of the camera or not may be of importance, or of secondary importance. It’s the same issue as “Is it important if there is other media than photography?” and that depends on the project. Sometimes it’s important if something is glued on the wall, or if it comes in a book, or if it is a video. Sometimes it’s very important and sometimes it’s more about the image itself.

DH: There seems to be a strong relationship to the printed image in On Migration, as it merges with the Books on Migration and Magazines on the Wall exhibitions. What do you feel the photobook as a vehicle has to offer the topic of migration?

MN: Practically speaking, the photobook is the main vehicle of the image in migration. Hardly any artists in On Migration, for example, live where they were born. Nomadism and being an artist seems to be quite highly connected nowadays, and they take books with them, carrying the knowledge and works of other photographers with them. So the book is a migratory vehicle in itself.

In the magazine exhibition, we invited five magazine editors from central and Eastern Europe to showcase photographers they have featured in their publication. These are areas which have a lot of migratory issues: some photographers were chosen due to the themes of their work, whilst others were chosen because the artist had actually migrated somewhere else, or because of the visual language or personal story, and so on. In this case, we wanted to make the point that the process of editing magazines is like an ongoing curatorial process.

Whilst the works are on the wall, it’s still a kind of homage to a magazine. Maybe we will expand upon this link in a future theme for PhotoIreland. This year it was migrations, last year it was collaborative change, and next year it will be something to do with nature, voyage, the afterlife…I haven’t given it the right form yet. But whatever the concept is next year, there will again be the third foot of the printed matter.

DH: As a whole, PhotoIreland seems to look toward the effects of an increasingly globalised society. As a subset of this, would you say that traditional cultural distinctions in photography have changed in recent years? Have you noticed any particular shifts in the subject matter people are looking at, or the formal qualities that would traditionally be quite distinct?

MN: I think it’s difficult to make statements like “The Americans don’t work with nature as much any more”, as it’s just very hard to say who is American and who is not. I’m Austrian and I live in Spain, and I was once asked to present Spanish photographers at a festival focusing on work from the home countries of curators. It was wrong because I’m not Spanish, but I’ve lived and worked more in Spain than in Austria; I wouldn’t even know that many Austrian photographers. We can’t even say where people are from any more, which includes myself, but also many other curators and artists.

I think the problem is much deeper than which nationalities keep working on which themes, as it’s based on the interchange between what people do and where people live. It’s more a case of which community to which you count yourself, which is a label that you can put on yourself that can be removed when you go elsewhere.

In some cases it may be like the recurrence of themes within films. Whilst American films tend to be about law and order, good and bad, European films often focus on the complexities of life and relationships in a very small space, where everything is cramped and complicated. In regions like Asia or New York City, where there are a lot of cultural mechanisms, the themes within work will probably focus on that; and if you are a photographer who lives in Arizona, and you have a wide landscape before you, you might work about this. It depends on your field of vision, what interests you, and what’s available to interest you.

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Christiane Monarchi: Since the gallery’s re-launch last month, visitors have been treated to a new and highly engaging visual welcome – a digital ‘wall’ made up of 8 screens showing a rotating lineup of over forty animated .gif images in the ground floor gallery entrance and cafe. Could you tell us more about the background to this first exhibition, Born in 1987: The Animated GIF and how you selected the artists, writers and curators who contributed to this project?  

Katrina Sluis: ‘The Wall’ is a new permanent exhibition space in the Gallery which aims to engage with the recent dramatic shifts in the production and dissemination of images. For the opening show, we decided to focus on the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), a 25 year old image file format which has been attracting renewed popularity and interest in recent years.

The GIF could be considered one of the first file formats native to the web browser, and was invented to meet the challenges of sending images across low-bandwidth computer networks. Unlike the ubiquitous JPG, the GIF is limited to 256 colours, and has the advantage of being able to hold multiple frames in an image and therefore be animated (as well as transparent). In an era before flash and video were common online, the GIF brought glitter and movement to a web populated by tables and text. Today, the GIF persists as a highly portable and viral image file format populating social media platforms such as Tumblr.  The technical limitations of the file format and its relationship to visual culture have provided inspiration for creative experimentation with the form. 

In approaching the show, I wanted to resist presenting a ‘canon’ of GIF artists – to do so seemed to be in contradiction to the playful, random and participatory nature of gif culture. Instead, I approached what I hoped would be a diverse array of artists, photographers, writers and other practitioners who might be willing to submit a gif to the show within a short timeframe of 7 days. For many, this was the first time they had attempted to make a gif (Dave Lewis, KennardPhillips, Andreas Schmidt, Dryden Goodwin), whilst others had found online fame through Tumblr (Colin Raff, David Szakaly) or were well known net artists (Spirit Surfers, Ryder Ripps) who may not be known to our broader audiences. This became a starting point for attracting further contributions from the public (many of whom are of course sophisticated gifmakers), which we collated via Tumblr. The Wall has been updated with these submissions on a daily basis.

CM: When curating the submissions for Born in 1987 what kinds decisions did you make regarding visual presentation, viewing time, and grouping of these animated .gif works?

KS: The screen presents very interesting curatorial issues, including the basic problem of remediating ‘analogue’ exhibition practices via a medium which has a very different temporality, weight and cultural significance. In order to place work on the screen, one needs to interface closely with the software used to synchronise, translate and schedule content across the screens. In the context of a show like Born in 1987, issues of sequencing, looping, timing and size became curatorial problems – and I had to adopt multiple roles as producer, designer and technician. Each GIF loops a number of times depending on the original length and specific ‘rhythm’ the GIF. There were also issues of how to acknowledge each contributor without interrupting the flow of GIFs, so we decided to insert of screen after each group of 8 GIFs to address this.

CM: Could you tell us more about the physical makeup of The Wall, as it does not look like a screen or projection often seen in galleries. The top and sides can go completely black, act like a frame, and spring back into life with the next full screen image, a mesmerising feature that may elude viewers. 

KS: Although the location and concept of The Wall was fixed when I joined the gallery, the technological platform was not – and we investigated all the options, from projection to screen. At first, it seemed most practical to work with projection, but the problem with this approach that it would push the photographic image back into the traditions of cinema and video art. Another option was to install a huge TV, but this again came with its own cultural baggage – and the imposed the 16:9 aspect ratio of HD TV. In the end, the video wall seemed the most potentially interesting platform – and one which relates to the circulation of images in visual culture and the wider network of screens one encounters in the city.

We have been able to go into partnership with Sharp, which has been brilliant as their screens have a great feature called ‘local dimming’ which completely transforms photographic images on-screen. Local dimming means that when there is no image content on a particular part of the screen, the pixels switch off completely, creating an incredibly matte black (and making them extremely energy efficient). In practice, it means that when you are not working with content that matches the exact aspect ratio the screen, the rest of the wall recedes into black and the image itself comes forward in a very luminous way. The ‘letterboxing’ effect does not become such an issue because you don’t see the screens as a ‘frame’ so much as a surface on which images ‘happen to appear’.

CM: The internet and fast growing areas of digital media present a vast playing field in terms of areas to explore. As an artist, writer and educator you clearly have an interest in applied research, now you are curating this new programme. Could you elaborate on areas you are interested in exploring and what we could be seeing in the coming months?

KS: Because digital technology is not in itself a new photographic medium, but essentially a hybrid and converged set of technological practices, it raises many interesting problems, both theoretical and practical. Instead of canonizing or attempting to define a new movement or artistic medium, our aim is to develop collaborations with various communities and practitioners, giving us the opportunity to address different avenues and multiple constituencies.

The wider digital programme will hopefully address other areas of practice relevant to photography (for example, augmented reality, social media, electronic publishing, interactive media, mobile computing, synthetic imaging). And because there is a pressing need to understand the relationship between the cultural languages of the photographic image and the language of computer code, this problem will also inform our approach. The GIF is an example of this collision: the limitations and possibilities of the file format intersects with its wider social circulation and significance to online visual culture.

CM: How does the digital programme fit with the other curated programmes at The Photographers’ Gallery, is there overlap in subject matter?

KS: The framework of my post and an associated ‘digital programme’ could be seen as an artificial institutional separation, in a time when the digital is transforming not only the very definition of the word ‘curating’ but the practice of museum education and marketing. In practice, I work very closely with my colleagues who are also concerned with these issues. However I would argue that the digital programme is exciting precisely because it has the ability to operate on a different timetable, with very different outcomes, and addressing potentially different audiences. No doubt there will be projects which relate to the other curated programmes, but this won’t be a defining factor.

CM: As a democratic platform, the internet invites public participation, communication and expression. Indeed, in relation to your present exhibition, some commentators have suggested that the .gif format is ‘the folk art of the web.’  How does public participation feature in this exhibition and in future areas of your programme? 

KS: I think the job of the programme will be to explore and problematise this dominant narrative of ‘democratisation’ and ‘participation’ in relation to the digital turn. One the other hand, public participation raises further issues concerning cultural authority and the museum as a mediator. Instead of presenting the answers, the programme will offer opportunities to reflect on these issues, and generate discussion with our collaborators – whether they are members of our audience or inhabit specific institutions or communities. In this way respect, a show like Born in 1987 could be seen as raising questions concerning the distinction between professional and amateur, artist and audience, and creative production in networked communities.

CM: Could you tell us more about future commissions for The Wall?

KS: Having only just launched The Wall, the future programme is very much still in the process of being confirmed. Our next show on The Wall will feature an ongoing study by Susan Sloan into portraiture using motion capture and 3D animation techniques widely used in entertainment, medicine and the military. These studies refer to the traditions and conventions of portraiture and the changing role of the camera as a recording device. At the same time, her work raises questions concerning the convergence of painting, animation, film and photography in the digital realm.

CM: How might audio be worked in to your programme of visual material?

KS: The Wall presents specific advantages and limitations because of its location – its programme is viewable after gallery opening hours to passersby on Ramillies St. We currently do not have the facility for sound, as we are aware how this would impact what is already a very bustling and lively space on the ground floor. However, with further funding, there is the potential to install highly directional speakers which could isolate sound to a specific viewing position and allow us to programme a greater variety of projects. We are also looking into technologies which will allow us to work with the screens in a more interactive and performative way.

CM: Collectors have begun to add digital art to their collections, via the internet, stored on their devices for their use alone – a seeming contradiction to the many forces of democratisation and accessibility that the many digital platforms can lend artworks.  Are there commercial opportunities for photography in the digital world that you could think may be applicable to exploring within The Photographers’ Gallery? 

KS: This is an area of huge debate, and there is also a related issue concerning how one might collect, archive (and therefore historicise/legitimate) digital art. How can one commodify digital objects whose very materiality works against artificial scarcity and ‘uniqueness’ on which the art market operates? A quick summary of current debates can be found over at ArtInfo: ‘Can Digital Art Make Money?’

Like other publicly funded organizations, The Photographers’ Gallery is keen to diversify and find new sources of income to support the programme. There is potential around e-books and the sale of limited edition digital works, but even this is still very much based on older (analogue) business models. Artists working in the digital realm are of course also facing these problems, and different models are emerging, such as micro-patronage and crowdfunding. I was very interested, for example, to hear the artist Emilio Gomariz explain that he became interested in digital art via the internet, set up the Triangulation blog to document the work he loves, and this now attracts the sponsorship of advertisers which in turn supports the production of his own work.

CM: Many thanks Katrina, and we are looking forward to the upcoming exhibition of Susan Sloan’s work Studies in Stillness: Motion Capture Portraits running from 11th July to 1st August on The Wall. 

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During Britain’s lean post-war years, the sentiment among British manufacturers was ‘export or die’.  In response to this very real threat, The Ambassador, a trade-only publication which flourished from the 1940s to the 1960s, set out to stoke foreign demand in order get Britain’s renowned luxury industries back in the business of selling after years of rations and diverted production.  

It was within the pages of this ground-breaking publication that Irish linen, Staffordshire pottery and Scottish cashmeres and tartans featured in inspired scenarios styled and photographed by Elsbeth Juda, radically defying what had been the stodgy limits of British fashion and advertising photography.  These thoroughly modern images, along with fresh graphics, and illustrations by some of Britain’s leading artists of the time, had a huge impact on the revitalization of British industry, not only promoting British craft, but also the British lifestyle.

Part of the intellectually rich generation that escaped Nazi Germany, Elsbeth and her husband Hans, a journalist, landed in London in 1933.  In that same year, Hans opened the London office of International Textiles, a Dutch magazine which included advertisements, editorial comment and illustrated fashion news on all aspects of international fashion and textiles. It also featured articles on the international economic situation and export markets, as well as reporting on exhibitions and trade fairs.  At the outbreak of  the Second World War communications were severed between the Dutch and English offices and the two journals continued publication independently during the War, both using the title International Textiles. With the end of the War this situation was formalised and from March 1946 the British magazine changed its title to The Ambassador, acting as the British export journal for textiles and fashion with Hans as publisher.

It was through the Bauhaus legend Lázló Moholy-Nagy that Juda was pushed towards the camera.  As The Ambassador’s first Art Director, Moholy-Nagy recognized Juda’s talent during a photo shoot and sent her to study with his ex-wife, Lucia Moholy-Nagy, one of the most prolific photographers of the Bauhaus, who was teaching photography in London after emigrating in response to Hitler’s fascist threat.   Described by Juda as ‘quite serious and humourless’, Lucia would arrive at the tiny Juda flat and construct Bauhaus-style still lives (whose descendants can be seen within the pages of The Ambassador).   Under the guidance of Lucia, Juda would photograph these constructions learning how to operate the large Gandolfi camera with its cumbersome glass plates. The flat also operated as a darkroom.  ‘It was all pretty primitive’, remembers Juda, ‘with the fixing and rinsing taking place in the bathtub’.  According to Juda, the lessons all became too much for Hans, ‘not knowing whether he was eating dinner or hypo’.

Soon after, Juda did a stint as a ‘dark room boy’ at the Scaioni Studio in Dean Street, London, graduating quickly to the position of photographer.  After the studio was bombed, Juda set up her own studio in London, applying her newly acquired technical skills to the business of commercial photography.  Despite her petite build, Juda would haul her Gandolfi 10 x 8” “on the No. 6 Bus” working for various advertising agencies and magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar. 

By the 1940s, Juda, now known as ‘Jay’, had become the primary photographer for The Ambassador.  As Juda remembers it, shoots were produced within a very tight budget.  While war-time hostilities had ended, coupons continued to be used in England in some form up until the mid-1950s.  ‘We did the best we could do for the money available,’ she insists, adding ‘originality doesn’t cost anything.’  The business of fashion photography had yet to invent the ‘celebrity photographer’ as characterized in Michelangelo Antonio’s 1966 film Blow Up.  Elaborate productions with armies of assistants and staff, were unheard of then.  Juda recalls: ‘it was a matter of let’s see what we can do.’  Whatever the circumstances, she adopted, and often worked with what she had on hand, calling upon untrained local ‘extras’ to achieve her artistic ends – whether it be weavers, glassblowers, or in one case, the Senior Executives of the Calico Printers Association.  She worked quickly, remembered by one of her models as one of the ‘fastest in the business.’ 

After the shoots the film was delivered to the basement darkroom of The Ambassador’s offices.  From the contacts, proofs would be made and marked up by Juda for cropping and retouching.  It was her job to gather all the details concerning the collections.  These were the early years of mixed fibre textiles, and the exact contents information was an essential aspect of the editorial content. The Ambassador archives consist of hundreds of photos marked in Juda’s distinctive loopy hand on their reverse with the merchandise details.  

Through Juda’s lens, British craft was transformed:  uncut swathes of fabric pulled from bails of Lancashire textiles, became evening dress when draped upon the lithe form of top model Barbara Goalen — all the more striking in its variance with the stark surroundings of the industrial mills; a production line of Scottish cashmere sweaters, through decidedly modernist framing, are turned into an belligerent phalanx of competing diagonals and verticals.  Juda’s original aesthetic, heavily influenced by the spread of European modernism, predicted the burst of talent that defined 1960s Britain.

The Ambassador caught the eye of Stanley Marcus, of the Texas-based luxury retail emporium Neiman Marcus. Marcus early on recognized and appreciated the modernist aesthetics of The Ambassador magazine, which had been forwarded to his offices in Dallas, and he made the publication his first stop upon returning to London to re-engage with the European markets. That meeting established a friendship that continued throughout Marcus’s lifetime and when Juda arrived in the United States on a fact-finding trip, he arranged for her access to the Kodak headquarters in Rochester, New York, and the studios of Irving Penn and Richard Avedon.  Juda still clearly remembers Avedon’s daylight studio. ‘That was for me’, she recalls, and it is not surprising that her most remarkable shoots for The Ambassador were those that relied upon natural light, eschewing the artificial staged lighting that defined the merchandise pages of trade publications of the time. 

As a trade publication, The Ambassador was unique in its insistence on the separation of editorial and advertising content.  While Juda is quick to point out that advertisers were taken into consideration, The Ambassador was an early adopter of an independent editorial directive.  As a result, the distinctive modernist aesthetic that Juda brought to the composition of the photo shoots was delivered to the pages of the publication relatively undiluted.

Taking advantage of the new opportunities for jet travel, Juda flew with her models to remote locations, including Brazil, Japan and New Zealand, posing them spontaneously with locals against the iconic landscapes of exotic locations.  And while Juda was certainly not the first to venture outside and surrender to the anarchy of the location and challenge the static, artificial air of studio fashion photography, (that territory belonged to the Hungarian photographer Martin Munkácsi), Juda’s work for The Ambassador distinguished itself through it’s decisive wit and an attraction to the outrageous. 

Juda’s sense of humour sought out the unexpected and she preferred the spontaneous over the stilted.  Props might include a tangle of rough cotton yarn, a giant snowman, the black and white floor tiles of a marble entryway or a stuffed grizzly bear. Upon reflection Juda remembers ‘when it was really absurd, it always tempted me.’

One of Juda’s most memorable shoots is that which she did for her good friend, the painter Graham Sutherland, in 1954.  Commissioned by the Houses of Parliament to paint a portrait of a diminished Winston Churchill on the occasion of his 80^th birthday, Sutherland knew the portrait was not going well and he called in Juda to document the sitting in the event he was unable to complete the commission.  In the end, the story goes, Churchill despised the portrait and had it destroyed shortly after it was received.

The Ambassador ceased publication in 1972.  Hans died in 1975  The archive of the magazine, covering the period between 1933 to 1970 was gifted to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Archive of Art and Design by Elsbeth Juda in 1987.  It has since been extensively catalogued and in addition to the volumes of the magazine, it contains correspondence to and from such artists as Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore, and there are hundreds of photographs, including contact sheets and proofs taken by Juda.

There is currently a small display of fourteen photographs by Juda and selected ephemera from the magazine included in the V&A’s current installation, ‘Island Stories’ (16 March – 19 September 2012).  They have been sourced from this archive and most are tinged with Juda’s irreverent sense of humour including a ‘life study’ style sketch of a ladies foundation garment, and a primitive stick-like drawing photographed at blackboard in the control room of Calder Hall nuclear power plant.  And while Juda will insist that her work is merely ‘job lot’, the viewer cannot help but assume she had a lot fun doing it.

Elsbeth Juda is 101 years old.

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‘Island Stories’ (open until 19 September) is part of the V&A’s British Design Season and complements the V&A’s major spring exhibition ‘British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age‘ (until 12 August 2012), sponsored by Ernst & Young.

Conrad Atkinson, Garbage Strike: Hackney, 1970

We do not usually associate the 1960s with industrial unrest.  Yet, between 1968 and 1970, ‘Swinging’ London experienced a series of huge strikes by refuse collectors that left the city’s streets piled high with decaying rubbish.  It is this less familiar Sixties that forms the background to a major new acquisition for the Museum of London’s photography collection, Garbage Strike by Conrad Atkinson (b.1940). A deadpan record of the rubbish-strewn streets of Hackney during the bin-men’s strike of winter 1970, it is one of the first post-Second World War British works to use industrial relations as a subject within fine art.[1]

On November 7th 1970, Atkinson took a series of photographs over a three-hour period in Hackney, recording the heaps of refuse rotting in the streets.  On the finished prints, he wrote precisely when and where he took each shot, even down to the A-Z street map reference.  Within the space of a week, these small-scale prints were pasted together to create two montages, which were then re-photographed to make two large-format prints, creating a four-panel polyptych.  Although all four are black and white prints, Atkinson applied vivid acrylic washes to the large-format panels.  In part, this was a comment on the idea that documentary photography should be black and white but there is also a nod, in the high-key colours, to the psychedelic hues characteristic of the Swinging Sixties.  Indeed, the piece undercuts the myth of the Sixties as a carefree, hedonistic period and can be read as a rough-hewn elegy for the idealism of that time.

Formally, Garbage Strike developed from the artist’s growing dissatisfaction with the ‘well-crafted painted consumer object’[2] which did not engage with social issues.  In this respect, Atkinson’s work is closely related to the anti-art/anti-commercial tactics of the fluxus movement, which encompassed artists as diverse as Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik and Yoko Ono, and there are also parallels with the work of Leon Golub and Nancy Spero.  Certainly, there is an attempt to utilise art for social change and to foreground material action over theory.  It is hardly coincidental that the artist was born into a working class environment in Cumbria, the epicentre of British Romanticism, and that the Romantics’ political radicalism remains important for him[3].

The opposition to the well-crafted object extended to the slick production values of commercial photography.  Consequently, for Garbage Strike, Atkinson employed a deliberately casual, off-hand approach to composition, focus and finish, resulting in a raw, abrasive image well suited to the subject.  His use of photography within a fine art context was, in itself, contentious at that time.  Around 1970-71, when he was preparing to first exhibit Garbage Strike, at the Sigi Krauss Gallery in Covent Garden, he was refused Arts Council assistance on the grounds that neither photography nor video constituted art.  Indeed, it was not until 1973 that the Arts Council finally employed its first full-time officer to support photography.

The strategy of using photography to record an activity has always been common amongst avant-garde artists, especially those associated with Conceptualism and Performance art. For instance, in the late-1960s, artists such as Hamish Fulton and Richard Long were beginning to document their walks through the countryside in this way.  But, whereas they were exploring the rural landscape and revisiting a traditional subject in British art, Atkinson was intent on tackling subjects outside art’s traditional boundaries.  Certainly, the mounds of bulging plastic sacks spilling litter across grimy pavements provide a sardonic, alternative vision of the British landscape.  The image of the inner city as an urban wasteland would become increasingly common in the 1970s as the collapse of traditional industry, repeated strikes and rising inflation affected the country.

Image details:
Garbage Strike: Hackney, 1970
Four panel photomontage, each panel: 750 x 500; 762 x 486; 732 x 496; 796 x 502 mm
Purchased with the assistance of The Art Fund and the V&A Purchase Grant Fund
© Conrad Atkinson courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Art NY

Christiane Monarchi: From reading ‘Critical Dictionary’ online and in book form, we now have the pleasure of seeing a familiar but expanded set of visual entries in the form of the present exhibition at Work Gallery. Could you tell us more about what makes certain works translate successfully from screen to book to wall?

David Evans: Computer screen, book page and gallery wall are connected, but are also very different. Some works translate with ease; others do not. For instance, Poor Photographer edits photographs that are often appropriated from mass media sources and are chosen for their gestic potential, to use the terminology of Brecht. He favours crude thinking – Brecht again – that permits easy translation. But the camera-less imagery of David Hazel is very different. It doesn’t necessarily fail on the computer screen or book page, but its real authority only emerges when it is viewed as a crafted, framed object, hanging on a wall.

CM: In particular, ‘Flickr Sunsets’ (2010) by Penelope Umbrico works very differently when seen online, in the book or in the gallery.  Here it looks made for this space, an entire wall of unframed glossy snaps of sunsets set edge-to-edge in an installation that brings a new dimension of physicality to this work.  In fact, many of the photographic works in the show are elegantly pinned or mounted flat on the wall without frames, almost ephemeral in presentation, while others take on sculptural qualities when presented on plinth.  Could you tell us more about your inspiration to present works this way?

DE: Penelope Umbrico has been collecting sunsets by amateur photographers that she finds on the image hosting website Flickr. Bearing in mind their provenance, it is not surprising that a grid of these photographs works well on a website like criticaldictionary.com, or as a two-page spread in the related book. However, they achieve most impact covering a gallery wall. Wall dimensions were sent to the artist in New York. She made calculations and then uploaded around 400 files that were printed and delivered by ASDA in the UK according to her specifications – 6” X 4”, glossy, full bleed. (ASDA charge a modest 5p per print –  and in addition, new customers also get fifty free!) The end result is a cheaply produced, but stunning, mural that comments on the photographic sunset as cultural cliché. The emphasis of the exhibition is on similar types of industrial production for which fancy frames would be inappropriate, but not always. In the section R / Rotten Sun, for instance, Flickr Sunsets is deliberately in dialogue with a small original collage by Dominic Shepherd and a framed, camera-less print by David Hazel.

CM: Online, your role with ‘Critical Dictionary’ is described as ‘secretary’, in the book you work as the ‘editor’ and with the exhibition you act as ‘curator’.  As someone interested in unravelling and interrogating language, why have you chosen to describe your role in varying ways?

DE: One reference point is the dissident Surrealist journal Documents (Paris, 1929-30) that included a mock dictionary where words and images were deployed to de-classify or un-define selected terms. Georges Bataille was the secretary of this short-lived journal, but also contributed as writer and picture editor. Note also that about this time he wrote the now famous pornographic novel Story of the Eye, under the pseudonym of Lord Auch. Another important reference point is an influential article from the mid-fifties on détournement, in which Guy Debord and Gil Wolman advocate the corrupting, embezzling or hijacking of capitalist culture to create new, radical meanings. The article appeared in the Belgian Surrealist journal Les Lèves Nues and on the cover is credited to André Breton and Louis Aragon. A joke, since Debord and Wolman had only contempt for what the founders of Surrealism had become by the 1950s. And I am particularly taken with the book Appropriation: A Very Short Introduction (2008) by Ann Lee. (Her e-mail interview was published in criticaldictionary.com next to another e-mail interview with Candice Breitz and both pieces are in the Black Dog book under A / Appropriation.) In fact, there’s a lot of Ann Lees about, but this one is a group of inspired art history postgrads from Berkeley who thought that a spoof OUP book, printed on demand by Lulu.com, would be more interesting than the usual end of term papers. Ann Lee and the other historic examples encourage me to be not too bothered about ID cards or precise job descriptions. 

CM: Are there associations or affinities between works or artists’ practices within the group of works shown here in ‘Critical Dictionary’?  Could you give examples of where you have expanded curatorially from the content in the book?  

DE: The exhibition begins with four framed items that act as a visual or scripto-visual preface. Basically, this preface signals Bataille, Brecht and Debord as three spirits who inform Critical Dictionary in its various manifestations. One framed item is the cover of Les Lèvres Nues, mentioned earlier, that shows an outline map of France with the usual towns and cities replaced by Algerian equivalents.

Efficiently, the absurd right-wing slogan Algérie française is ridiculed by being confronted with its opposite. The exhibition works if a visitor engages with this Belgian Surrealist magazine cover from the mid-fifties – and then drifts. Nearby is a vitrine containing a map of Paris made by Paola Di Bello in the mid-nineties. Paola travelled on the metro, taking photographs of the maps found on stations that travellers use to orient themselves. What interested her was the disappearance of the stations that so many fingers had touched to seek reassurance about where they were. And these absent stations were eventually collaged into a map of the metro system. After Paola, there are various possibilities. A neighboring vitrine contains Christian Edwardes’ recent paper boat made from a map, sailing on a two-page spread by Asger Jorn and Guy Debord from the mid-fifties. Nearby is photographic documentation (Asda again!) of Simon Faithfull’s attempt to walk the Greenwich Meridian. And a really intrepid traveller could continue down the corridor and enter the darkened room projecting the archive of The Office of Experiments – photographs of the forbidden places where top secret research on the wars of the future is being undertaken. That’s one hike! Many others are possible!

Two comments can be made in response to the second question. Firstly, much of the material mentioned existed in various media, but what is pleasing about the exhibition at Work Gallery is that it allows one to present the actual map of Paola Di Bello or the actual paper boat of Christiane Edwardes. Secondly, I have not treated the exhibition as a maudlin retrospective. Rather it is an opportunity to present work in progress. Hence the inclusion of Simon Faithfull, for instance, who is in my new book for Black Dog Publishing called The Art of Walking: a field guide, due out later this year.       

CM: In book form, A (Algeria) through Z (ZG) would imply a finished dictionary, but may there be more entries to come in future? 

DE: Conventionally, saying that one is going from a to z implies something comprehensive, definitive, omniscient. Deliberately, the critical dictionary in Documents rejected this structure. My website and exhibition are similarly disappointing. However the book is organized around the alphabet. Not to be systematic, it must be stressed. Rather what interested me was how to deal with the difficult letters like Q, or X, Y and Z.

Certainly there will be more issues of the online journal. Lately I have been enjoying having guest editors. Cian Quayle, Jo Longhurst and Max Fabian edited issues around appropriation, perfection and colour, respectively. And others have guest edited issues from specific cities: Åsa Maria Mikkelsen from Oslo, and Benjamin Beker from Belgrade, for instance. Overall, I will be reflecting on what the website journal can become in the light of responses to the book and exhibition.  

CM: As a curator working in a gallery context, do you work with other galleries in obtaining the work or are you working directly with the artist? Are the works for sale?

DE: The exhibition, book and website have all involved dealing directly with artists, photographers and writers who usually generously donate work because they are sympathetic to the project. Now and again, I go via intermediaries. For instance, A / Algeria in the book includes the work of photographer Omar D, and this was obtained via his agency Autograph that was paid the appropriate fee.

Sales: the exhibition includes small prints by Simon Cunningham, Jo Longhurst and Jo Spence that are for sale on the website as criticaldictionary editions. And Work Gallery has on sale a limited edition print of the production shot for the Michael Clark Dance Company by Jake Walters that is used as the cover image for the book. I like this photograph because of its ambiguity: on the one hand, it has the sumptuousness of an upmarket perfume ad; on the other hand, the four feet of the dancer suggest our closeness to animals that was an essential element of Bataille’s base materialism. Allusions to Bataille, then, without being too obvious!

CM: What plans are there for future exhibitions of work from Critical Dictionary?

DE: After Work Gallery, there are plans to go on the road. Contributors to Critical Dictionary are recommending venues such as artists’ bars, and then I or someone else will turn up with a pack of dress pins and a box of digital prints. In the first instance, we are hoping to go to Oslo, Belgrade and Cairo.

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David Evans teaches the history and theory of photography at The Arts University College at Bournemouth. He recently edited Critical Dictionary (Black Dog, 2011), Appropriation (The Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2009) and László Moholy-Nagy: 60 Fotos (Errata Editions, 2010). He is currently working on The Art of Walking: a field guide (Black Dog Publishing, forthcoming).

In considering Dan Holdsworth’s current exhibition at Brancolini Grimaldi, we become aware of the many levels of collaboration necessary in realising this impressive body of work – scientists, government agencies, many varied technicians working with the artist to create these exquisite, other-wordly landscapes from millions of digitally processed, topographic data points.  

Thinking further along these lines, the collaboration between artist, gallerist, and in this case, Sebastien Montabonel as a guest curator, has enabled the installation and engaging presentation of Holdsworth’s recent works in a  long overdue London exhibition .  

In this online interview, the first in a new Photomonitor ‘Collections’ section devoted to highlighting the work of institutions and galleries in bringing lens-based art to the public, Photomonitor editor Christiane Monarchi discusses with Sebastien his role as curator, working with Holdsworth and Brancolini Grimaldi for this commercial exhibition.

SM: The biggest one is for 2013 with the Harris Museum in Preston. We are showing four of the largest private contemporary art collections in the world. The idea is to quantify the budget cut from the government and what it means for the North West of England. Videos, installation, new media and photography will be displayed across the whole city and a national debate will follow in partnership with the Contemporary Art Society. Also, after the summer I should curate a show between Mircea Cantor (winner of the Marcel Duchamps Award) and Michael Reisch (Student of the Bechers in Düsseldorf); it will be a mix of abstract photography and neon installations. And of course I’ll publish a few more books with Alaska.

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Dan Holdsworth‘s exhibition, Transmission, New Remote Earth Views continues at Brancolini Grimaldi until 19 May 2012. 

Sebastien Montabonel joined Phillips de Pury in January 2009 as European Senior Specialist in Contemporary Photography. He initiated the Private Collector project, which brings to the public some of the most important private art collections, in partnership with the Saatchi Gallery. In early 2010 he orchestrated the first public exhibition for the Franks-Suss Collection and later the same year he secured the Juan Yarur Contemporary Art Collection in partnership with the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Relations. Sebastien was the adviser for the acquisition of the Jacobson/ Hashimoto Collection by Tate Modern which consequently holds the largest collection of vintage modernist Japanese photographs in the western world. He is also Nominator for the Prix Pictet, The Hasselblad Foundation Award and the founder and Editor in Chief of Alaska Editions.