Photocritic International

China Matters: Liu Xia, Bruce Davidson

A. D. Coleman — Mon, 07 May 2012 03:48:52 +0000

You can attribute the paucity of posts here over the past two months to my concentration on initiating a new traveling exhibition project: "The Secret Strength of Liu Xia: Photographs 1996-1999." Currently ending its 3-month run at the Italian Academy at Columbia University in New York City, it goes next to Hong Kong, thence to Taipei, after that to Madrid, and returns to the U.S. toward the end of this year. Its tour will continue (if I have my way) until Liu Xia and her husband are free. [...]

Lt. John Pike Goes Viral (6)

A. D. Coleman — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 03:44:49 +0000

I've tracked the "pepper-spray copy" story here at Photocritic International because it's as vivid and immediate an example of the potency of citizen journalism via the lens media as a commentator on lens culture like myself could want. I've said, from the beginning, that without Lt. John Pike's bring-it-on turning of this situation into a police-brutality photo op in front of a crowd of amateur paparazzi, heads would not have started to roll at UC Davis and he would not have become an international symbol of uniformed thuggery. [...]

Polaroid Collection: Update 26

A. D. Coleman — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 03:30:59 +0000

These two dozen works from the Polaroid Collection included in the upcoming April 4 auction represent a very small selection from the almost 700 items consigned to Swann. Keep in mind that while a few of these items were withdrawn from the Sotheby's auction due to protest by the artists, Sotheby's skimmed the cream off the collection for those sales. What's left, then, are either the few globules of fat left floating on the surface or else the best of the skimmed milk that remains — from the perspective of the secondary market, that is. (I'd consider all of this group of works historically significant and museum-worthy, though some of it primarily as study material.) [...]

Polaroid Collection: Update 25

A. D. Coleman — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 04:40:14 +0000

At the request of court-appointed Trustee John R. Stoebner, charged with the task of recovering as much money as possible for the creditors of the collapsed Ponzi scheme created by the now-jailed Tom Petters, the Minnesota Bankruptcy Court has approved the transfer of the cluster of works known collectively known as the "Sotheby's Assets" from Sotheby's in New York City to Swann Auction Galleries in the same metropolis, for inclusion in a series of auctions, beginning with one coming up in April 2012. [...]

Letters to an Emerging Critic (2)

A. D. Coleman — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:30:32 +0000

What I can't do in this blog is create the reputable, influential, multi-author, multi-subject periodical in which my writing on photography coexists with and gets contextualized by writings on different subjects from a flock of equally informed others, as it once did. That's a publishing enterprise far beyond my scope, requiring pockets much deeper than mine and an editorial/managerial skill set I just don't have. [...]

CVS vs. Kiddie Porn

A. D. Coleman — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 04:03:05 +0000

While the California authorities, and the mass media, celebrate the arrest and prosecution of a dangerous predator, let's beware of any tendency to use this case to justify a skein of laws that have resulted in far more persecutions of innocent people than the capture of guilty ones. Meanwhile, this caution for photographers, amateur and professional alike: Do not use a processing lab anywhere in the U.S. to develop or print any images of children (your own or anyone's else's) naked, partially clothed, or clothed but striking poses that anyone might construe as sexually provocative. You've been warned. [...]

George F. Will, the Street Photographer’s Friend

A. D. Coleman — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:30:37 +0000

Perhaps I’m not alone in finding it surprising that a prominent right-wing spokesperson has come out in defense of creative photographers harassed by the police for making pictures in public places. Especially since the police excesses have happened in the name of fighting terrorism. Whether or not I have company, I consider it worth [...]

Cleaning Out the Fridge

A. D. Coleman — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:20:10 +0000

Let me add that I would not and will not castigate anyone for accepting this position [Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography]. The state of the economy aside, the CCP is a unique repository and a major institution in photography. Running it, whether as Director or Chief Curator, is a dirty and dangerous job, subject to the well-documented machinations of a cluster of verifiable weasels. But someone's got to do it. [...]

Guest Post 9(b): Ken Schles on “Infinite Stupidity”

A. D. Coleman — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:55:25 +0000

Our repetitions and replications (Internet echo, photographs and otherwise) are crucial to pass on cultural practice and serve an important social function—even if on the face of it our actions appear, not only infinitely stupid, but repetitive, a bit outrageous, counterintuitive to logic, may serve no obvious purpose or may even hijack what A. D. Coleman and I both thought might be a productive thread. Our dumbness may kill us, or it may save us. The jury is still out. [...]

Guest Post 9(a): Ken Schles on “Infinite Stupidity”

A. D. Coleman — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:40:47 +0000

The Internet in many ways and on many levels promises freedom when, in fact, it can deliver quite the opposite. Its multitudinous and disparate voices can give us all ADD. Walls around institutions have become nearly impenetrable, if only for the sake of the sanity of those within. Discussions remain fragmented and remain, not for lack of intent or purpose, within closed communities. Conversation is encouraged and simultaneously (intentionally and unintentionally) degraded and elevated via the form of its dispersion and by the practice of its participants. [...]