I spent a good chunk of my life working in book publishing and have occasionally been told “You must enjoy all those launch parties.” Not so long ago I was involved in a book that really deserved one but didn’t get it. So what went wrong, and why?

The book, Covid Street: Photographers United, certainly merited a fancy bash, with champagne flowing and all the contributors taking their moment of limelight. It was never to happen of course, and not just because pandemics aren’t conducive to parties. After all, it didn’t stop the British Prime Minister!

The book, the brainchild of street photographer Tanya Nagar, was to source the images she had already been collecting on Instagram of the spreading lockdowns around the world and assemble them into book form in aid of MSF. It proved a more time-consuming process than we first hoped – it’s a lot easier to persuade people to share something at low res via Instagram than to deliberately send you print-quality files. 

The main reason, though, was that parties aren’t really a part of a sensibly-funded publishing model. Like any book, I wanted to make more money for this project than we spent, so we could give proceeds to the charity Médecins Sans Frontières. 

It was also true that not every contributor would even be able to afford their own copy of the book or copies for their families so it would seem insulting to fund a venue, snacks, and so forth from the book’s budget even if travel restrictions allowed it. 

And that’s the key point. Most illustrated or photographic books don’t really make a lot of money. They sit in an awkward middle; expensive to print, occupying a niche area of interest, and very rarely of interest to the chattering classes or literary snobs. A party, even a modest one, would be a measurable part of the income of the book.

But would it have persuaded more people to buy it? Perhaps. Though you have to arrange the not inconsiderable costs of shipping copies to the event and, quite possibly, away again. Unlike a novel or monograph, signatures aren’t really desirable.

This is why, in the better part of two decades in publishing, I only once went to a launch party, and that was futile self-indulgence on the part of the author. (Or, seen differently, a generous re-distribution of their advance, back in the days when such a thing existed, to the minions.)  

Now, sure, the one percent seem gleefully able to dance from one charity ball to the next, and perhaps that was our mistake. Instead of thinking of the book as, well, a book with a proportion ring-fenced for the charity, we should have spent more time tapping up potential donors. Who knows?

It is Always Summer Somewhere – Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos

Calm water under a serene sky is the very image of relaxation. For others, however, the sea is a frontier, synonymous with danger and, potentially, death. For two months, Kosmatopoulos divided her days between a summer holiday and her work in the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. Her pictures, edited with white blocks to hide pleasure boats, refer this double symbolism of the sea

Kent Andreasen’s distinctly sharp yet ethereal style combines an entirely self-taught photography approach with studies in cinematography. The Cape Town-based photographer’s energy for adventure and intuitive sense for a story made him the perfect match for the new Kisawa Sanctuary, photographed for Wallpaper’s June 2023 Travel issue, a ‘resort-to-research’ hotel in Mozambique which harnesses the power of luxury tourism to fund scientific projects. Here, Andreasen tells us more about predetermination as a process and his exploration of memory. 

Wallpaper*: Describe your style/process

Kent Andreasen: It’s sometimes hard to articulate the way I work because I find it very simple, but I think that’s also because I have worked at making it that way. When it comes to commercial work, I generally do a bit of research on the place I am set to visit, and other than that, I take the equipment I feel I need and let my stay almost come to me. I go out and remain receptive to the experiences while asking the right questions. The work ends up making itself.

With my personal work and fashion images, the process is thought out, admittedly sometimes too much. I come up with a set of ideas that I then formulate into a shot list. I accompany them with the type of person I am keen to photograph, as well as any props they may need, and I go from there. The images are predetermined as best as I can.

W*: How did you bring your way of working to the Kisawa Sanctuary shoot for Wallpaper*?

KA: I kept it simple and straightforward. The weather wasn’t playing along for most of the trip, but you adjust, and as with most trips, you make a set of images that make sense when curated properly together. I’m quite lucky with how I work because it doesn’t require these massive moments to unfold in front of me.

W*: What’s the most interesting thing happening within photography now?

KA: I would say the fear response to AI. I find it more fascinating than the technology itself. Other than that, the photography book Some Say Ice by Alessandra Sanguinetti is probably the most exciting set of images I have seen so far this year.

W*: What’s on your radar? 

KA: Like most South Africans, I am quite concerned about the state of our country at the moment and our leaders’ complete inability to make any informed decisions on how to run this beautiful place. I feel like I need a break from the place and to figure out how I want to continue working here and in what capacity.

W*: What’s next for you this year? 

KA: I have a book coming out in the next few months called Memory Bank. It has just entered the design phase. It’s about my memories, failed memories, and all that makes me human. I’m looking to head to Europe and the US once I have a dummy of it to show to publishers and galleries. I’m also working on a few other projects that I hope to wrap up by the end of the year but they aren’t worth talking about just yet.

kentandreasen.com

An iconic South Central Pa. amusement park is open for the summer season. One photographer is capturing all the sweetness, proving nothing is out of her reach.

While the subject of new technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) floods our news feeds and prompts ample discussion, the 27th edition of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto embraces new imaging technologies, and the ability to question, and push against, the perceived boundaries of contemporary photography.

Throughout the month of May, CONTACT presents lens-based exhibitions throughout the city foregrounding work by local and international artists. With more than 180 exhibitions on view, it offers a journey through galleries, artist-run-centres, and non-traditional spaces, as well as outdoor installations, many complemented by talks and panel discussions with artists and curators

New technologies are also making a place for themselves in the festival. Images are no longer only created with a lens but through digital infrastructures. Rodell Warner’s exhibition at Trinity Square Video features a series of animated GIFs derived from public-domain archival footage and enhanced digitally. At Evergreen Brick Works, Jawa El Khash presents holograms that respond to the flora and fauna of the site, in iridescent and engaging images that imagine a re-populated and diverse future ecosystem. Featured at street level on the exterior windows at Onsite Gallery is an aerial photograph by Robert Kautuk. Depicting ice floes in Canada’s Arctic region, the image was taken using drone technology.. These examples show the creative possibilities that have recently developed in the field of photography, but also testify to the richness of interpretation that these practices allow.

However, semantic novelty and technical progress quickly come up against the boundaries that have until now defined photography: is an image still photographic if it was not initially captured by a lens? This debate was at the centre of a recent debate at the Sony World Photography Awards, where an image created using AI garnered an award, and, similarly, an AI-generated film also won an award at the Nikon Film Festival. From a historical perspective, these new formats and tools should be studied alongside everything else that is practiced in photography today. For CONTACT’s Artistic Director, Heather Canlas Rigg, “Photography is a vast medium that exists in various modes of materiality and immateriality. We welcome all of the poetic and surprising ways in which artists work with camera technologies, transgressing their limits.” She adds: “I am very interested in the directions that artists take in terms of experimental moving images; this is an aspect that I would like to see featured more substantially in future editions of the Festival.”

Without putting them on the same level as “traditional” photographs created with a lens, these new imaging practices hold a lot of promise and present uncharted terrain ripe for exploration by artists and photographers.

More information:

From May 23 to June 6, Christie’s presents its Photographs online sale which brings together major photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries: Helmut Newton, Richard Mosse, Zanele Muholi, Shirin Neshat, Wolfgang Tillmans, Irving Penn, Guy Bourdin, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman or Hiroshi Sugimoto. The selection offered for sale covers a vast panorama of different photographic genres including fashion photography, documentary photography and conceptual photography.

Roselyne, Château d’Arcangues, 1975 by Helmut Newton is the flagship work of the sale. This large size print uses a technical process rarely used by the photographer: tintyped silver print. Helmut Newton particularly appreciated its technical qualities and speed, but also its singular aesthetics. Thanks to its brilliant rendering which inevitably evokes the glamorous universe of glossy magazines, it fits perfectly with the tone of Newton’s images which are then part of the pictorial movement of the 1970s that the New York Times ushered into history under the name of “porn chic”. (Est. €80,000-120,000).

Seven contemporary women photographers with committed works will be highlighted in the sale, through prints by Cindy Sherman, Ellen von Unwerth, Shirin Neshat and Zanele Muholi (Vukani II, Paris, 2014, €12,000-18,000) to whom the European House of Photography has just dedicated a first retrospective in France.

Christie’s : Photographs
Online sale in Paris from May 23 to June 6
Exhibition from May 22 to 26 and from June 1 to 6
https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/photographs/lots/3444

The time has finally come. Leading to this moment, you sat in the hot sun for hours, waiting for the grazing of the bird’s toe on the water, creating mesmerizing concentric circles, and boom: you got it!

Or perhaps you set up an expertly crafted four-strobe lighting, and after repetitively throwing kombucha left and right, you nailed your splash shot (then mopped all night). Maybe you worked for weeks on a mood board, pulling the latest trends in fashion, coordinating with other vendors, and using your new optical spot, you created a resplendent fashion shot. You edited it in Lightroom, then in Photoshop, and now the time has finally arrived: you get to share your masterpiece with the world. And then…

“Did I forget my hashtags? Nope, they’re there.”

Meanwhile, a reel of an 18-year-old doing bicep curls gets its 763rd like and 26th comment.

You wait until the next day and check your insights.

“It only showed it to 374 people of my 7k followers?!”

It is so easy to get discouraged as a photographer, especially if you’re the kind of photographer who is not into reels, social media trends, or taking videos of yourself sipping lattes and doing an orchestrated song and dance to the latest popular audio clip.

If you are one of the photographers who hopes that people will love and engage with your work because it shows a high level of skill, patience, ingenuity, and crushes the checkpoints of  “seven elements of art,” you may often find yourself discouraged. You may feel like no one cares about your brilliant shots, and they just want you to shake around brainlessly in your studio to the latest trending audio.

There are several reasons that can leave you feeling disheartened as a photographer. One of them is having to deal with clients who always try to negotiate for the lowest possible price while demanding the most amount of work from you. This constant devaluation of your work can leave you feeling frustrated and demotivated. Another source of disappointment for photographers is submitting their landscape images to magazines, only to receive no response at all. While rejection can be tough, being completely ignored can be even more defeating. With all of these challenges, it’s no surprise that photographers feel tempted to throw in the towel. 

But this is why you don’t give up: because you’re an artist. You continue to make art because you are an artist. You don’t make art because people give you a three-centimeter pixelated heart on a cell phone. You make art because you are art — an art maker. You don’t make art because you want people to stroke your ego; you make art because you have something in you that you want to express visually. You don’t make art because people validate the art. You make art because you have ideas, curiosities, and visual explorations inside of you that need to come out. You make art because it makes you happy to make art. Period. You make art for the sake of making art. The way to not quit at making art is to remember why you make art.

We can get fall into discouragement when we lose our why. It’s important, when battling defeat, to come back to that earlier version of yourself. The one that launched you to become a creator. The one that existed before you started building your website, making your YouTube channels, sending your work to publications, and posting it on Instagram. Come back to the person that loved creating photos for the joy of expressing your unique interpretation of whatever is behind your lens. Try to detach yourself from everything else that comes with the business of being a photographer, and come back over and over to the love of expressing your unique vision. 

Let me leave you with this closing quote. I have shared it before, but it’s so fitting in this instance. It’s a Michelle remix of an Andy Warhol quote and it has kept me many times from throwing in the towel in the illiterate Insta art world:

Make art, and while everyone is deciding whether they like it or not, make more art.

I’m wishing everyone a week of making art: for the pleasure, purpose, and end aim of making art.

In banner, left to right: 

@ludmillo_pierre, @beautymarkdebbie, @epicactionimagery, @lightnlense, @germainephoto, @afcasallas35, @sflphoto_com, Pete Coco.

Presented in collaboration with students from ANU’s School of Art & Design, Photography is Dead! Long Live Photography: An evening celebration of the life and death of photography as we know it will feature a funeral procession, a specially commissioned lament, and a history of photography and its rise and fall, as well as an open-casket viewing of the corpse (you’ll have to attend to see what the corpse of photography looks like).

How did we get here – and where do we go now?

A new exhibition has opened in Chester to explore the state of British society – as well as allowing the public to contribute their own experiences.

The show, based inside an empty retail site, explores fifteen years of work by the photographer Simon Roberts, while a series of workshops and open sessions, where visitors can share their response, will itself be turned into a new artwork called the Public Gallery.