Jindřich Štreit‘s Village People: 1965-1990 presents Štreit’s work in various Czechoslovakian villages during the waning years of Communism. It was Charcoal Book Club’s photobook of the month for November, 2021.
Continue reading “Jindřich Štreit – ‘Village People: 1965-1990’”Bumdog Torres – ‘#findthebumdog’
#findthebumdog: A Homeless Man’s Development as a Street Photographer While Living on the Streets traces Bumdog Torres’ path from having a faint idea of a single project, to being a fully realized art curator, filmmaker, and photographer with multiple gallery shows, feature-length films, and a handful of photobooks to his credit. If, like me, you live a life of relative luxury, with the Masters Degree in Art History and Criticism and all the toys cameras and film and developing tanks and bulk loaders and photobooks that your little heart desires, and if you just look at all that stuff and feel self satisfied—again, I’m talking more about myself than anyone else—then do yourself a favor and maybe try to think more like a Bumdog.
Panoramic Park Views
I love the little Minolta Freedom Vista (Riva Panorama) camera I scored in a $50 grab bag from Dad last year. I don’t always have a roll of film in it, but I should…
Continue reading “Panoramic Park Views”Blake Andrews – ‘Need Clean Fill’
Back in 2020, I saw something about @swerdnaekalb‘s zine on his Instagram. I had a brief Insta-chat with him and thought I arranged to purchase a signed copy from him, but I’m pretty sure he thought I dropped it. Oh well. During his interview with Simon Kossoff, Andrews mentioned his zine again, and I jumped right on it without the slightest hesitation.
Continue reading “Blake Andrews – ‘Need Clean Fill’”Simon Kossoff – ‘Sonder’ and ‘Descendant’
I learned about Kossoff and his zines from the Blake Andrews’ interview last month (November 2021), and when I found Bump Books offering both of his zines for £10.00, I jumped at the chance.
Continue reading “Simon Kossoff – ‘Sonder’ and ‘Descendant’”Grapevine Lake & Other Bad Photos
After finding all the overlapping in the last half roll of Lomo Berlin Kino that I shot for Holga Week, I wondered if film thickness was to blame. Berlin Kino is perhaps 2% thicker than normal film and maybe the camera got fooled somehow? I somehow didn’t think to check the first test rolls for overlapping (FPP RetroChrome 160, Kodak ProImage 100 both normal sorts of commercial film). Ends up, they didn’t overlap at all.
Anyway. I happened to load a roll of FPP Derev Pan 400 into the Minolta Vista Panorama one day and noticed how incredibly thin that film is, and so quickly grabbed the other roll I had and stuffed it into the 135BC…
How did it do? Well… there was no overlapping, anyway.
Continue reading “Grapevine Lake & Other Bad Photos”Jim Goldberg – ‘Fingerprint’
I’ve been on the Stanley/Barker email list for some time now… for many months, this posed a problem stemming from an undiagnosed compulsive disorder, whereby I bought pretty much every photobook or photobook-adjacent object that came to my attention. If it was just the Stanley/Barker list, it would be bad enough, but I’m also on the Mack and Aperture lists, and they put out far more books than do Stanley/Barker.
Anyway, sometime in early 2021 they announced the forthcoming Fingerprint, a collection of facsimile polaroids (the peel-apart type) from Jim Goldberg, made during his time working on Raised by Wolves. I somehow skipped the first round… maybe I waited too long and it sold out (it did so in 5 days). Then, in March, 2021, they announced a second printing and I jumped on it.
Continue reading “Jim Goldberg – ‘Fingerprint’”