Augenblick, Book : Pagan by Andrei Liankevich

Belarusian Photographer Andrei Liankevich has produced a book on Pagan Culture in his native country. It is an interesting look at some ancient ritual , a black and white view full of an interesting mysticism and poetry which I do advise to buy. The book is on sale at Anzenberger book gallery .
Here an extract from the text written by Svetlana Poleschuk :

Christmas, Strechannie, Summons of the spring, Palm Sunday, Easter and Funeral rites, St.George’s Day, Whitsunday, Midsummer, the Saviour, Zazhynki, Dazhynki, Dziady. Nowadays they are called folk holidays or rites and are even depicted in schoolbooks. In the units “Belarusian legends, myths, and stories” our ancestors are described to explain all nature and life phenomenon by the existence of living creatures – spirits. House, forest, and field had their spirits. Brownie mastered the house, wood-goblin mastered the forest, and mermaids mastered the river. Lightening is an enraged God, and stars are people’s soles. People worshipped stumps and stones, sun and thunder, animals and birds, plants and ponds; these were respected, afraid of and asked for help. Sometimes at schools and folk hobby groups the brightest rites are reconstructed to achieve better knowledge of traditions, just as the amateurs of medieval culture reconstruct knight tournaments. Examples of such rites installed are: Shrove-tide together with ceremonial burning of man of straw or Christmas walk of the dressed up mummers group singing Christmas songs and wishing people rich harvest asking presents for it. It’s also possible to take a great interest in Midsummer romanticism by once visiting the festival in the city park or by going to the country for a corporative party. Midsummer is the shortest night of the year when people search for the fern-flower, jump over the fire, sing and dance in a ring, twine wreaths, and foretell the fate. Perhaps these are all the options for the city inhabitant of Belarus of today to get acquainted with folk holidays. However in contrast to the knight culture, that remained in the past, folk or pagan traditions still exist in the villages. These traditions by some miracle survived seventy years of communist atheism that reorganized all the fields of people’s everyday life. Peasants continue bringing home birch twigs on Whitsunday, they do not send the herd to pasture before St. George’s Day, and do not eat apples before the Savior, or leave an unreaped sheaf in the field binding the ears in so called “beard”, they do not go to the forest and do not bathe during the “mermaid week”. One should at least once face with such peasant’s way of thinking, to which many unusual restrictions and rules are appeared to be important, to understand that the school material concerning our ancestry do not resemble folk tales any more.

Augenblick , Book : The Merci Project / Inochi by James Whitlow Delano

The Merci Project / Inochi is a book created and curated by american photographer
James Whitlow Delano which has put up a good list of 118 photographers
which accepted to donate their photos for a special fund raise. Worth to buy if you look for a good photo book . Here more from the statement of the project which is
possible to purchase also on Amazon.
"The Mercy Project / Inochi features the work of 118 photographersfrom 28 countries from Magnum, VII Photo, Noor, National Geographic, to emerging talent worldwide coming together to create awareness and raise funds for hospice and palliative care. Eleanor Clift, a Newsweek writer who has also been a beneficiary of hospice care when her husband was in need, wrote the postscript for the book. I posed one question to photographers I’d met all over the world (through my reportage work), after the untimely passing of hissister, Jeanne, and last member of his nuclear family to renal cancer: “share with me one photograph that says to you, ‘MERCY’”. I hoped that this collection of photography could contribute in a meaningful, concrete way in the effort to expand awareness about the critical role that hospice care can play, as it is likely to touch the lives of most of our families during the course of our lives. Hospice care, the most humane care I have ever encountered, allowed our family to come together and freed Jeanne from pain so that we could focus more on her final 5 months of life. I have partnered with San Diego Hospice and the Institute for Palliative Medicine in California, which has a tremendously effective outreach program to the community and the medical profession. The Japanese partner is Japan Hospice Palliative Care Foundation."

Augenblick , Books : New Photography From China

Interesting look into modern China by different artists. "New Photography from China" edited by Wu Hung and Christopher Philipps explore the different aspect of Photography also through interesting statements from artist such as Al Weiwel, An Hong, Bai Yilou, Cao Fei and others.
Here a note from Wu Hung
"During the past twenty-five years, Chinese artists have reinvented photography as a art form. Before 1979, and especially during the Cutural Revolution mobilized by Mao Zedong to reinvigorate Communism in China between 1966 and 1976, publications and exhibitions of photographs served strict propagandist purposes; unofficial photography remained private. The apperances of the first unofficial photo club and exhivition in Beijing in 1979 changed this situation fundamentally. Since then, many such clubs have been organized by independent curatiors and artists. In the process, contemporary Chinese artists' use of the medium has evolved from imitating Western styles to developing an original language and character."

Augenblick , Books : Chinese Interior by Robert Van Der Hilst

Robert Van Der Hilst  will introduce his new book  Chinese Interior at the Glamour Bar in Shanghai this coming sunday 13th of June. The book is a long term project which has took him to visit many houses and places in China. Is an excellent work which is rare to find among foreigner photographer who visit or live in China.

Augenblick, Blog on photography - Books : Somewhere there's music by Larry Fink

Beautiful book on Jazz by Larry Fink, the book offers a great view of photos from different Jazz musicians , here the introduction by George Panichas:
Larry Fink secured enduring fame with the book Social Graces, which mixed images from working-class Pennsylvania with a portfolio from upper-crust Manhattan, observing manners and mores on the long, curvy couches of Studio 54 and in the chaos of Pat Sabatine’s eighth birthday party, where the screen door is always just about to slam. Fink has always been interested in what high and low culture have to say to one another, and has continued to seek the best of both behind the scenes at fashion shows in Runway and in the ring with sparring fighters in Boxing.Somewhere There’s Music collects Fink’s mostly-unpublished black-and-white jazz photographs from the 1950s to the late 1970s. In these photos Fink captures the cool heights of the Beat era, from Harlem’s famous Lennox Lounge, where the reader can almost hear John Coltrane serenading with his sax, to the Village Vanguard, where Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis made history. Other legends captured by Fink’s lens include Marion Brown, Roland Kirk, Steve Lacey, Leroy Jenkins (Revolutionary Ensemble), Archie Shepp and Lightning Hopkins, among many others. Sit back and be transported to another time with the hip cats of the jazz era in this passionate book featuring more than 80 duotone prints.

Augenblick, Blog on Photography , Book : Andy Warhol in China

Andy Warhol in China is a book with pictures from the visit of the American Artist in China.
A short note from Publisher:
A documentation of Andy Warhol's 1982 visit to China, this volume offers a unique glimpse of the international pop star by Christopher Makos, his personal photographer. With the advantage of hindsight, this volume becomes complexly ironic-in China in the 80s, almost no one knew who Warhol was. Just a few decades later, in 2006, Warhol's 1972 'Mao' sold for $17.4 million to a Hong Kong real estate tycoon. And Chinese artists have, for years, been incorporating Western pop iconography into their work. Photographer Christopher Makos became known in the 1970s for his candid shots of Warhol. Henry Geldzahler, the former Curator of Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has written: 'It is a great asset in Chris Makos' photographs that they reveal new and unfamiliar faces of the legendary pop figure...' 
Photographs of Christopher Makos. Foreword by Ai Weiwei.

Augenblick, Books : Shanghai : a History in Photographs, 1842 - Today

I will attend the launch of the Book : Shanghai : a History in Photographs, 1842 - Today and the speech of Karen Smith which together with Pulitzer Winner Shing Heung Liu have worked in compiling a remarkable collection of Photographs of the Chinese Metropole. I am also proud to be part of this collection with a contribution of 2 photographs from my archive on Shanghai. Here the note from the publisher Penguin :
Shanghai is a visual history that tells the story of modern China as witnessed by this romantic city. The end of the Opium Wars in 1842 effected a dramatic transformation, turning a sleepy backwater into a bustling treaty port. Over the intervening 160 years, Shanghai has been shaped by outside forces - foreign concessions, Japanese invasions, the arrival of the Communists and the cult of Mao, they have all played their part in sculpting today's Shanghai. China's turbulent history is traced through Shanghai's evocative, beautiful, and sometimes painful images. As we reach the present day with its helter-skelter development, lavish wealth is juxtaposed against grinding poverty, and documented through the lenses of Shanghai's most important contemporary artists. Told through rare official archive photographs, images taken from private collections, new commissions, and co-author Liu Heung Shing's own work,Shanghai is the definitive history of the most beautiful of China's cities. Shanghaiwill be available in both hardcover and paperback, and will be for sale inside the Shanghai hall of the World Expo 2010

Augenblick, Books : Wien 2 by Annelies Oberdanner

A book on Vienna, city where I lived for 6 years. Always good to look at the many interpretation and views of the city. This time from the book "WIen 2" by Annelies Oberdanner.
Here the presentation of the book from the publisher:
Photographer Annelies Oberdanner’s second book of images of Vienna, this volume deepens her exploration of this magical city, delving even further into its color and atmosphere. At first glance, Oberdanner’s photos seem to be telling only part of the story, but they reveal a mystery as the viewer studies each image. Don’t expect picture-postcard scenes: she focuses on non-descript areas of town, looking behind the obvious facades at the surprising beauty of bare-branched trees mantled in snow, a potted plant abandoned on a sidewalk, high-rises sprouting from rubble. These unembellished, almost casual, scenes give a truer portrait of Vienna than any glossy guidebook.

Augenblick, Blog on Photography, Books : The Face of Forgiveness

The Face of Forgiveness is an excellent book as a result of a project which took american photographer  Steven Katzman in different places shooting the cult of religion on the matter of forgiveness. Here the introduction of the book:
Prayer is an interesting social phenomenon. At the basis of every major religion is found the admonishment to 'turn to God' and offer prayer. In that abstract sense it is universally upheld around the globe. But the particular manifestations of prayer-how groups of people have defined for themselves the proper practice of it-are wildly diverse. For some, it is an extremely private act, something to be performed in the privacy of one's own chambers. For others, though, the act of praying in public, in a group setting, is an intensely confirming experience. Katzman's photographs bear witness to this. Working with a flash equipped hand held 35mm camera, Katzman has frequented the prayer/revival meetings of western Florida, in particular the Brownsville community. The specific congregations are Southern Baptist; sociologically they are racially and economically diverse. But to look at this body of work objectively, from a position of distance, as though we are to 'learn' about a culture foreign to us, is to miss the uniqueness of the project. What Katzman offers is a view from someone who is part of the community, a participant, a 'believer' so-to-speak. This necessarily raises numerous questions. How does this affect his photographic abilities or sensibilities? And further, what can photographs tell us of an abstract, interior, spiritual experience (as prayer must surely be defined)? If nothing more, I can at least guarantee that this book will raise more questions than not, and that no two people will get the same thing from this body of work

Augenblick, Blog on Photography , Book : The Chinese

Approaching Chinese New Year in China is like to look at a picture , elements of happiness but also element of movements , people reaching their homes , 700 millions of people on the road. China is a different "world" and perhaps hard to describe , also photographically speaking only Chinese can describe better themselves, the book "The Chinese" from Liu Zheng is a good project in that sense, showing the diversity of the society of this immense country.
Here a small introduction of the book from essay of Christopher Phillips and Gu Zheng:
In 1994, Chinese artist Liu Zheng conceived of an ambitious photographic project called The Chinese, which occupied him for seven years and carried him throughout China. Inspired by the examples of August Sander and Diane Arbus, he has captured a people and country in a unique time of great flux, providing a startling vision of the deep-rooted historical forces and cultural attitudes that continue to shape China and its people. Liu seeks out moments in which archetypal Chinese characters are encountered in extreme and unexpected situations. His photographs are divided among a number of topics which betray a dark vision, albeit one that is laced with mordant humor. His main subjects to date have included street eccentrics, homeless children, transvestite performers, provincial drug traffickers, coal miners, Buddhist monks, prison inmates, Taoist priests, waxwork figures in historical museums, and the dead and dying. This is the first monograph of his work to appear outside of China and will accompany Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, a major exhibition at the International Center of Photography, New York.

Augenblick, Blog on photography - Auction : Shijuku 1965-97 by Katsumi Watanabe

I like to follow auction , especially on fine art photography, prints and rare books, reason is not because i can effort to buy some of these precious stuff but because is interesting to see how good photography can reset his value with years. Bad photography is often forgotten, used for one or two publication, perhaps fashionable photo editor who were able to make it famous for a couple of years and then out of fashion and not good anymore...
I was looking at this rare book of Japanese Photographer Katsumi Watanabe Shinjuku 1965-97 which has been put it on sale with an opening Bid of 150 dollars, I don't know how ended up (by the time i am scheduling this post the auction is still on ) .
Here a brief description of the book :
The subjects in Watanabe's photographs are the prostitutes, street people, Drag Queens, entertainers and gangsters (Yakuza) that populated Tokyo's notorious Shinjuku district at night. Essentially, Watanabe made his living by selling the photographs to his subjects. He would offer three prints for 200 yen. A modest gentleman, Watanabe had a keen sensitivity to the natural posturing of his subjects which allowed them to uninhibitedly reveal their identities. He saw Shinjuku as a kind of stage and his photographs as documents the performers.

Augenblick, Blog on photography , Books : Assignment Shanghai by Jack Birns

My friend Rosa Chen, photographer and great help for my current project on Cosplay series has brought me to look at a interesting book from Life Magazine's photographer Jack Birns called "Assignment Shanghai", I have to be honest I did know his name and I cannot find much from him in the net. The book shows the City of Shanghai in the eve of the Revolution which took Mao Zedong in power and he witnessed the terrible years of the civil war . The photos were done with a Rolleiflex depicting the end of the golden days of the Chinese metropole. The book was published in 2003 and it is an important document for Shanghai history.

Jack Birns worked one year in China at the age of 28 and he has done many assignment for Life Magazine. He died in 2008

Augenblick. Blog on Photography , Books : Italian Riviera by Mark Cohen

Book on Italian Riviera with photographs by Mark Cohen released last year

here the note from publisher :

Mark Cohen adheres to the fundamental principles of street photography. He uses small format equipment and chooses the urban context as his unique field of action. Despite this he does not haunt large metropolises but, almost without exception, produces his work in small towns and, above all, in his hometown of Wilkes-Barre, a coal mining suburb of Pennsylvania, where he was born and where he has always lived. This is also true of the series he produced along the Levante Riviera in Liguria, during his stay in Rapallo. The scale of places in which the American photographer moves, as well as his attitude, is essentially unchanging. Unlike fellow photographers working on the streets of New York, Paris or London, Cohen is actually unable to disappear into the crowd and remains constantly visible. The act of photography becomes a veritable performance for him, made up of ambushes, agility and a rapid encounter/collision with his subjects the moment the shutter is released . . . The aesthetics and the content of the American artist’s photographs are essentially the same on the Ligurian coast as they are just a few steps from home. Wherever he is, Cohen continues to use the same method and remains sensitive to similar influences. His work presupposes a strong ability to plan. Although, as we mentioned earlier, his work contains the street photographer’s instinctiveness, this acts within the boundaries of a plan which corresponds to his idea of the world and of photography. Beyond the genius loci (geography, even if recognisable and typical, proves to be a chance element in his work) and the decisive moment, in Italy as elsewhere, Cohen uses photography to tell his own story.

Photographs by Mark Cohen. punctum, Rome, 2008. 96 pp., 35 black & white illustrations, 6x8½".

Augenblick. Blog on Photography , Books : Paolo Ventura "Winter Stories"

While I was spending my time in Italy (last may) I am picked up an  interesting work and publication from Italian photographers, Paolo Ventura . He has a peculiar work using miniature to represent a reality. He works since some years in America.
Winter Stories is a new book from Paolo Ventura.
here a note from the publisher:
In this luxuriously produced limited edition, Paolo Ventura invents an imaginative series of photographs depicting scenes from the memory banks of an old circus performer as he looks back on his life.What the performer revisits are not moments of great drama, but rather fleetingly recalled glimpses of an everyday life,“images that he had thought to have never seen, quick moments he unknowingly observed as he raised his eyes to the clock hung at the corner of the block.” Using his own childhood memories, beautiful miniature figures and sophisticated sets, Ventura re-envisions a simpler time in 1930s Italy, but his darker vision—with its shadowy backdrops and retreating figures—reminds us that this is not quite Eden. Skillfully crafted and hauntingly evocative, the work is filled with the sweet melancholy of an era, but remains timeless in its ability to resonate with contemporary audiences. This monograph contains an engaging sequence of images, ephemera from Ventura’s working process and a selection of the artful drawings he creates as guides to his elaborate sets.
Photographs by Paolo Ventura. Text by Eugenia Parry. Aperture, New York, 2009. 120 pp., 65 color illustrations, 11½x14".

Augenblick. Blog on Photography , Books Not Niigata by Andrew Phelps

A new book by Andrew Phelps on the Japanese city of Niigata. I have spent a day in Niigata, one of the best rice and fish I have eaten and some nice coastline view . Apart from that the book is an interesting interpretation of the city by the american photographer. Here the note from the publisher:
When traveling in a foreign place, I tend to be fascinated with both the exotic and the mundane. The two are often one and the same, especially in a place where the gap between old and new is astronomical. But what does it mean to photograph with the pretense of documentation? I find it is easy to get caught up in chasing an illusion of what I think a place should look like; preconceptions are powerful and the quest to understand a place often leads to a greater misunderstanding. The best I can do is tell the story of my traveling and responding visually to a place I don’t necessarily understand. It is the story of not understanding Niigata. -by Andrew Phelps
Earlier this year, Andrew Phelps was comissioned to take photographs in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture for the »European Eyes on Japan Festival.« The volume Not Niigata presents the artist’s selection from the hundreds of images he brought back from his trip.

Books : Bye Bye Polaroid by Daido Moriyama

There is a lot of talk about polaroids, perhaps it will be back with a new managment, what we know is that many good photographers have proved the magic of working with this instant film. To give a good example is one of the many books produced by Daido Moriyama which title the sad end of this beautiful media , Bye , Bye Polaroid:
As the title “bye-bye polaroid” suggests, Polaroid has stopped the manufacturing of instant film. The decision comes into force this summer following the growing strength of the digital market and the subsequent decrease in demand for instant film. Moriyama has photographed the city of Tokyo to pay homage to polaroid, a medium he has used unrelentingly for many years. In a style that hasn’t changed for 40 years, he roams the streets, smoking out the sights and smells of the city. Alleyways, advertisement boards, posters, commercial displays, and pedestrians… The Moriyama world you have seen in monochrome, can here be seen in color.
aka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, 2008. 112 pp., 105 illustrations, 9½x7¼".

Books : Fake Holiday by Reiner Riedler

Austrian Photographer Reiner Riedler has presented his latest project launching it as a book called "Fake Holiday". The Book is the result of a documentary work which took him to travel in different part of the world photographing the many artificial way to go holiday.

Here a short essay written by Jens Lindworsky

When wishes are out of reach, simulation is taking over our leisure time and our holidays. Imaginary worlds are created, often under massive technological exertion, in order to offer us experience as reproducible merchandise. Although the quality of these adventures on demand sometimes proves to be rather dubious, the boom does shed light on one thing: the yearnings and dreams underlying people’s daily lives.

Books : Summer Nights, Walking by Robert Adams

I will have a summer break from this blog, working on some project and waiting for the CHinese government to open again Blogspot (they will ever do?).... but for a while I will stop posting for the August Break. So far since February I have been quite regular in daily posting on what i like and what interesting things coming out from the world of Photography, I have done a forced break in JUne due the censorship of Blogspot here in China until I discover the proxy which allow me to enter and write articles (not without any difficulties....)
I will resume posting after the summer break, meanwhile I will leave you for now with the book from Robert Adams called Summer Nights, walking.
here a note from the publisher:
"In this exquisitely produced book, the influential American photographer Robert Adams revisits the classic collection of nocturnal landscapes that he began making in the mid-1970s near his former home in Longmont, Colorado. Originally published by Aperture in 1985 as Summer Nights, this new edition has been carefully reedited and resequenced by the photographer, who has added 39 previously unpublished images. Illuminated by moonlight and streetlamp, the houses, roads, sidewalks and fields in Summer Nights,Walking retain the wonder and stillness of the original edition, while adopting the artist’s intention of a dreamy fluidity, befitting his nighttime perambulations. The extraordinary care taken with the new reproductions also registers Adams’ attention to the subtleties of the night, and conveys his appeal to look again at places we might have dismissed as uninteresting. Adams observes,“What attracted me to the subjects at a new hour was the discovery then of a neglected peace.”
Aperture/Yale University Art Galler, New York, 2009. 84 pp., 70 tritone illustrations, 8¾x8½".

Books : Mont Sainte Victoire by Risaku Suzuki

Is not an easy book to look at it but is worth to be mentioned as perhaps an interesting photo project : Mont Sainte Victorie by Japanese Photographer RIsaku Suzuki
Here an introduction note from the publisher :
"Featured in over fifty paintings by Cézanne, the Mont Sainte Victoire in Southern France is familiar even to those who have never been there. A century later, photographer Risaku Suzuki has followed in the great artist's footsteps, using a quite different medium to depict the landscape on the way. In Suzuki's photographs there is a feeling of movement and progression, giving the journey a pace that ought to be at odds with a series of static images. Sometimes it is as if the camera has legs and a mind of its own as it strays from the path to take in just one more inconspicuous part of the environment ? and all the while the audience is beckoned to come along too. Using limited depth of field, Suzuki focuses the lens on a tree, a piece of rock, unexceptional segments of a remarkable climb upwards.
Risaku Suzuki is one of Japan's most prominent young photographers. His work has been widely published in Japan, and exhibited in Asia, Europe and the United States. His photographs were included in "The History of Japanese Photography" exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He is a past winner of the Kimura Ihee Award. This beautifully produced, oversized monograph is limited to 1,000 casebound copies. Essay by Hideki Maeda." (Nazraeli)

Books : Eclipse

The sky over Shanghai went dark today, well happening every night but not often at 9 in the morning, I experienced my first eclipse.... and with the occasion I could not avoid to talk about the book of Afghan Photographer Zalmai which has done a project calling with this mysterious word Eclipse, here a note from publisher

Afghan photographer Zalmai's extraordinary and unforgettable photographs capture the slow, distressing drift of exile and dispossession: spectral figures against a stormy sky, a sheared row of peaks frame a figure like a sacred relic, horizons of men, both of this world and of some timeless land. This is a documentation of a journey through ambiguous territories-from Cuba to India, Mali to the Philippines, Indonesia to Egypt, and a return to Zalmai's native Afghanistan/-wartorn once again/-a search for place when one's own land has been destroyed.

Photographs by Zalmai. Text by Atip Rahimi, and Daniel Firardin.
Umbrage Editions, New York, 2002. 112 pp., 70 duotone illustrations, 12x8½".