November 2004 Archives

"Snow Management" from the BMW-Paris Photo award winning series by Jules Spinatsch.

Jules Spinatsch, a Swiss-born photographer, was awarded the 1st annual BMW-Paris Photo Prize for Photography, at the international photography exposition in Paris November 11-14, 2004. The winning series of photographs, large-format abstracts of machine-groomed ski slopes illuminated only by the headlights of the snow cat machines that groom them late at night, is part of work-in-progress ironically named "Snow Management". Upon reviewing Spinatsch's earlier bodies of work, one can see the photographer's consistent examination of human obsession for control — over nature, politics, each other, and public perception.

In an audio interview for Lens Culture, Spinatsch talks about his recently completed multi-year series that he made showing the "Temporary Discomfort" created when summits of government leaders temporarily take over cities around the world — and change those cities dramatically for the sake of "security".

Look for the interview and a portfolio of his work in an all new edition of Lens Culture in early December.

Other artists featured in the upcoming new edition: Mona Kuhn, Jeff Cowen, Rene Burri, Mario A, Thomas Robinson, and a review of a current show at the Nailya Alexander gallery in New York about Soviet-era propaganda. Come back and check it all out on December 6.

This summer I started this website about "photography and shared territories". I have hopes that it will become an active forum of ideas and thinking about "traditional photography" as well as what it means to be living in societies where cameras and lenses are everywhere and commonplace -- cellphone cameras; 24-hours surveillance cameras in public spaces, building lobbies; web cams; and the ubiquity of digital cameras "documenting" every ritual and banal detail of daily life on the planet.

Why was it that not until the photos of Abu Ghraib were published that government officials showed the slightest concern? Why did these "amateur" photos incite more emotion than other hard-hitting images from professional photojournalists covering wars and other daily atrocities?

Do we value photos from our vacations more than the moments of vacation themselves?

Since starting this project, I've encountered many engaging people who have weighed in on the domination of digital images in our world. Keith Davis, curator of photography for the mammoth Hallmark Collection, shared a fear that society may be approaching an inevitable age of "visual amnesia" with reliance on digital photography rather than film and negatives. This is what will happen when photos are kept inside a computer, not printed, and then the computer becomes obsolete and is discarded. He fears there will be no opportunity for future generations to hunt through albums and shoe boxes of family photos to remember or reconstruct their family history and the way things used to be. (Yet it doesn't seem so different from boxes of unexamined negatives or mountains of undeveloped rolls of film as Gary Winogrand left behind).

Professional photojournalists are bemoaning the fact that so many amateurs are able to scoop the news with their consumer cameras that the news media is less and less willing to hire professionals. Is digital the death of photojournalism, or an explosion of opportunity for sharing facts and images in the real-time democratic world of the internet?

I've talked with executives at software and telecommunications companies who are embedding mobile phone cameras with the power of one-click instant uploading to personal photo blogs. Is this a fad or vanity? Or will this become a new important source of communication?

The more I learn, the more questions arise. Please let me know what you think. Thank you.