{"id":42618,"date":"2021-09-06T23:45:29","date_gmt":"2021-09-07T03:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=42618"},"modified":"2021-09-08T16:24:37","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T20:24:37","slug":"fall-back-bits-and-pieces-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2021\/09\/06\/fall-back-bits-and-pieces-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall Back: Bits and Pieces 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ADColeman<\/a>I took the summer off to take care of other business and regroup my forces. I also hoped to relax, but the total lunacy that surrounds us now \u2014 which began with The Donald descending the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 and has mainlined steroids \u2014 made that impossible, at least mentally.<\/p>\n

No man in all of American history has ever failed upward more precipitously than Donald J. Trump, nor done as much damage to the nation along the way. And he’s not even on trial yet for his crimes, much less in jail, where he’ll wind up. Between his ongoing rampage, the accompanying radicalization of the Republican Party, the collusion of the packed Supreme Court, and the primal screams of the wingnut right, along with the marauding gangs of treasonous insurrectionists, I feel as if I’m watching the dismantling of democracy in real time. Exhausting. Scary.<\/p>\n

Not to mention the plethora of willful unintelligence concerning the pandemic, medical science, and common sense that daily verifies Richard Kirstel’s sage observation: “Ignorance is a condition; dumbness is a commitment.”<\/p>\n

So how was your summer? Did you have a nice Labor Day weekend?<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Given the havoc that social media has wreaked, never more so than during the Trump era and at his hands, should we give thought to abandoning this technology? Perhaps we might at least engage with that as a possibility. See “Why some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity,”<\/a> by Shirin Ghaffary, Vox.com,\u00a0

\u2022<\/p>\n

Long-term readers of Photocritic International<\/em> will remember that, back in this blog’s salad days, I covered at length and responded to the brouhaha over California housepainter Rick Norsigian’s claim to have purchased 65 Ansel Adams glass-plate negatives at a yard sale in 2010. The story went more or less viral, ultimately involving the Ansel Adams Trust, the Center for Creative Photography at the Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, and a flock of major and minor characters: Norsigian, convicted felon and L.A. gallerist David W. Streets, flamboyant attorney Arnold Peters, “Wild Bill” Turnage of the Adams Trust, and a dozen others. (For an index page with links to the complete coverage, click here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\"Collector<\/a>

Collector Rick Norsigian. Image courtesy of Rick Norsigian.<\/p><\/div>\n

Melinda Pillsbury-Foster became a recurrent character (I use the term advisedly) in this melodrama. A journalist herself and granddaughter of pioneering photographer and cinematographer Arthur C. Pillsbury, she got involved due to her conviction that her forebear had actually made the Norsigian negatives. Pillsbury ran a large and successful photo studio in Yosemite National Park that mysteriously burned to the ground after one Ansel Adams apprenticed there; Pillsbury opted not to rebuild, and Adams effectively took over the extremely profitable Yosemite photo franchise.<\/p>\n

Pillsbury’s descendant has become convinced that Ansel himself set \u2014 or commissioned the setting of \u2014 that fateful fire, and has now laid out a case for Ansel Adams as arsonist in a series of articles at the Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation website that she publishes and edits. Here’s her article about her connection (and her grandfather’s) to the Norsigian negatives<\/a>. Here’s the article proposing that AA burned Pillsbury out<\/a>. And here’s a link to an article detailing peculiar and suspicious interactions between the National Park Service and the Pillsbury family<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Still from “The Lost Negatives.”<\/p><\/div>\n

I intend this simply as an addendum to the earlier coverage, not an endorsement of (but also certainly not a refutation of) Pillsbury-Foster’s claims. Definitely worth reading. Where there’s smoke there’s often fire. And, as Honor\u00e9 de Balzac once put it, “The secret of grand fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.” (“Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oubli\u00e9, parce qu’il a \u00e9t\u00e9 proprement fait.” \u2014 Le P\u00e8re Goriot<\/em>, 1835.) Often paraphrased as “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.”<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Michael Becotte’s Bella Roma<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in 2002 the American photographer Michael Becotte commissioned from me an introduction to a monograph he called “Bella Roma,” comprised of black & white images he made while teaching in Rome from 1985 through 1986.<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/a>

Michael Becotte, Bella Roma (2020), cover<\/p><\/div>\n

He got as far as printing the plates for the book and then, for reasons of his own, shelved the project. After querying his once about its status in the interval, I completely forgot about it.<\/p>\n

Last year he decided to revive and complete it. The result is now available, complete with my introduction (now almost 20 years old), which I titled “Foreign Exchange: Michael Becotte’s Bella Roma<\/em>.” Published under the imprint of Becotte’s own Zora Press, it’s now available on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From my introduction:<\/p>\n

\u00a0… the “Bella Roma” of Michael Becotte’s suite of penetrating small-camera glimpses represents a version of “Rome the beautiful” that conforms to nothing any guidebook or travel agency would even recognize: a ratty, grubby, almost claustrophobic network of streets and squares that function collectively as a palimpsest for the placards, graffiti, and litter of its natives and visitors alike. No Vatican, no Coliseum, no Forum, no Michelangelos, no Berninis, no perfect plazas, no expansive views: just the dingy, decrepit sidestreet stalls, sloppily glued-up posters, scribbled slogans, and trash-strewn sidewalks of the generic inner city worldwide.<\/em><\/p>\n

Was it ever otherwise? …<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s a video interview with Becotte from 2013<\/a>, produced by Senior Artists Initiative, a nonprofit organization that strives to preserve the heritage of recognized artists in the Philadelphia (PA) region.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

An eBay seller from Sweden who identifies himself as harrylikom_0<\/a> offers an array of new 8×10 copy prints of vintage photographs using the descriptor (new to me) of “oldered”<\/a> \u2014 by which, apparently, he means that he or his supplier have artificially aged them, presumably by soaking them in sepia toner or tea or coffee or some other colorant. A charming neologism that we will likely see adopted by dealers and gallerists in the coming years.<\/p>\n

But of course it has a much wider potential use. For instance, it perfectly describes my self-perception in relation to my field: the current generation of professional colleagues has definitely oldered me. Brings to mind the famous refrain from octogenarian Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages”: “Ah, but I was so much oldered then \/ I’m youngered than that now.”<\/p>\n

\"eBay<\/a>

eBay screenshot of “oldered” D-Day photo, 2021<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

NU21<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the past four years, I have provided commentary on a shifting set of collaborations between a photography program at Yrkesinstitutet Prakticum in Helsinki, Finland, which sponsors and organizes the project, and other programs for vocational education students in the Nordic countries.<\/p>\n

\"NU21<\/a>These take the form of physical exhibitions while also going online, in both forms under the rubric “Nu” plus the year. So they titled this one “NU21.” Its theme was “Distance (& Closeness).”<\/p>\n

You’ll find my response to it here<\/a>, titled “How Far is Away?” From the introduction:<\/p>\n

I write this in early February from my New York City home, far from Finland and Sweden. Yet I have lectured, taught, and published in both countries since the early 1990s, concentrating on the photography scenes in both countries. And this is the fourth time I have introduced this unique NU collaborative project, one of the ways in which I keep current with the zeitgeist of emerging photographers there.<\/em><\/p>\n

This moment marks almost exactly a year since bits of news about a deadly virus with origins in China began to surface and circulate. …<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

I have numerous posts for this autumn and early winter lined up on the runway, with others in various stages of production. Coming over the next months<\/p>\n