Chema Madoz

From EV+1: The work of Spanish photographer Chema Madoz is astounding. Every image reveals an inventive mind that thrives on visual incongruities and puns. His images instil a sense of wonder in the viewer; one is repeatedly left with the thought: how ever did he think of that? [Read more...]

© Chema Madoz

Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light

This documentary on Richard Avedon is excellent (though I couldn't get the last few minutes to play).

Vanessa Winship: Black Sea: Between Chronical and Fiction

Like all of her work, Winship's Black Sea: Between Chronical and Fiction is poetic and poignant. It stands alongside the work of any of the great documentary-style photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Josef Koudelka.

© Vanessa Winship

© Vanessa Winship

Cartier-Bresson was more likely to use the words 'surrealist' and 'anarchist' to describe himself than 'documentary photographer'. Walker Evans preferred to call his work 'documentry-style'. Winship alludes to this premise by entitling this essay Between Fact and Fiction. Her work has too much art in it to be called purely documentary.

Imagined States and Desires: A Balkan Journey is an equally brilliant essay; her entire website is essential viewing for anyone interested the travel-documentary and portrait genres. Winship is represented by the VU agency, which was founded by by Martine Franck.

From VU - Vanessa Winship bio

© Vanessa Winship

Born in the United Kingdom, Vanessa Winship lives in London. After studying cinema and photography at Westminster University (Polytechnic of Central London), Vanessa shares her time between photography and teaching. She then fully devotes herself to photography and lives for about 10 years in the Balkans and Turkey. She joins Agence VU in 2005,and the Gallery VU in 2009.

© Vanessa Winship

Laureate of numerous prizes, including the World Press Photo (Amsterdam) twice, the National Portrait Gallery Prize (London), PhotoEspana Descubrimientos (Madrid).

Exhibited her works in numerous museums and festivals such as the Rencontres d'Arles, the Kunstall Museum of Contemporary Art in Rotterdam or the Horst Gallery and Photographers Gallery in London.

Prize-winner of the HCB Award 2011 for her project "Out there: an American Odyssey."

www.vanessawinship.com

Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light

Anyone who has held off buying a comprehensive book on Bill Brandt will very likely be interested in a new volume being published to accompany an exhibition at MoMA: Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light. 208 pages in length, the new book is being published in the USA by MoMA and in England by Thames and Hudson.

New York Times: A Camera Ravenous for Emotional Depth The pre-eminent British photographer of the 20th century, Bill Brandt, took pictures whose balance of art and humanity is frequently called strange, mysterious and irresistible. The best induce us to pore over them, exploring their psychology as much as their form, their implied narratives as much as their brooding blacks or parsimonious whites, their connections to the history of art as much as their documentary realism. Brandt himself wrote in 1948 that he admired photography’s power to make people see the world anew, to experience it with “a sense of wonder.” [Read more...] 

The Boston Globe Review: Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light The 20th century ended more than a decade ago, time enough to erase any doubts about whether Brandt was its foremost British photographer. He demonstrated mastery of social documentary, portraiture, landscape, nudes. His best work in any of those fields would have made him a major photographer. [Read more...]

Time Lightbox: Let There Be Dark: Bill Brandt’s Shadow and Light Henri Matisse, who knew something about color, had a wary regard for one in particular. “Black,” he once said,“is a force.” At “Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light,” the voluptuous retrospective organized by curator Sarah Hermanson Meister at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, you find out just how powerful a force it can be. In Brandt’s inky photographs, the sky can be a tar pit. Lovers in an illicit room can take on the gray scale and density of anthracite. Darkness has more than an aesthetic appeal for Brandt. For him, its charms are metaphysical. It stabilizes a haphazard world and pays due respect to its mysteries.... [Read more...]
The Book Depository (MoMA) NZ $50.32 incl freight
The Book Depository (Thames & Hudson) $63.67 incl freight

Fishpond (Thames & Hudson) NZ $59.57 incl freight
Amazon (MoMA) US $31.50 excl freight