Lots of general overview
LINK
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Nixon Summed Up
(his best known photo series) "series which show us again and again why his work with the slow, contemplative large format camera surprises and enthralls viewers. It is because the results are more than portraiture; large format has never been used in quite the way Nixon uses it. Technically, his photos are always thrillingly composed and lovingly detailed. Emotionally, his photos inhabit a world somewhere between the action click and the thoughtful composition, capturing fleeting but meaningful moments. His subjects' expressions combine a buoyant hopefulness with an ominous cognizance of human frailty. These qualities are what give his photographs their poignancy."
-New York Institute of Photography, Photographer's Spotlight
-New York Institute of Photography, Photographer's Spotlight
Fink and Model
It is worth noting that Larry Fink studied with Lisette Model. Lisette Model, "Woman with Veil," 1949, Right
Forbidden Pictures - More Images
Fink on Teaching
"In a commercial culture, imagination is the last element to be nurtured. I try to give students the courage to exercise and enjoy the pleasure of their imagination."
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Nicholas Nixon - Lovers
Nicholas Nixon, M.P., M.J., Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, 2000
Nicholas Nixon, M.C., P.G., Brookline, 2000
Nicholas Nixon, K.S., J.Z., Somerville, Massachusetts, 2000
Disturbing Similarity
Larry Fink Paris, France January 1996
Nicholas Nixon, Tom Moran January 1988I have to say- there is a disturbing similarity between Fink's runway photos and Nixon's photographs of AIDS patients.
Nicholas Nixon, Tom Moran October 1987
Larry Fink Christian LaCroix Haute Couture, Paris, France, January 1996Surely I'm not the only one who sees this.
Links: Nixon 1, Nixon 2, Fink 1, Fink 2
Depictions of the Elderly
Larry FinkNice, France July 1988Nixon's most famous photos of the elderly depict patients in nursing homes, all seemingly in their last few days of life. There is a certain amount of truth to this, in confronting the issue of death in this way (he has certainly dealt with the issue in several projects over the years), but the photos are a little harsh, lacking in compassion perhaps. Fink's photo shows more hope, more life than Nixon's depictions of the elderly generally do.
interesting thoughts by NIXON:
as taken from "Family Pictures"
Why do you use and 8x10 view camera?
I use it to get a contact print; it's no more complicated than that.
Sensuality seems to be prevelant in your work. What's that about?
It's just my pleasure---just me. It has to do with the way I love the contact print,
and what I love about people: their bodies, and gestures, their separateness, and
their eyes.
Also, there is alot of contact between people--touching and caressing--just physical stuff going on.
Partly thats what happened when I was there. But these are the moments I choose
to like. It's just my taste. It's what I love, and what I believe in intelectually, and
what I love to look at. It seems inexhaustible, and connected to other aspects of
culture and history that matter to me.
Aging is a major theme in your work. Is that something you've always been interested in?
Instinctively, yes. But it's not something that I'm methodically trying to prove or to
chronicle. It's simply part of my energy to be interested in things that are
ephemeral---the feeling that everybody's mortal.
as taken from "Family Pictures"
Why do you use and 8x10 view camera?I use it to get a contact print; it's no more complicated than that.
Sensuality seems to be prevelant in your work. What's that about?
It's just my pleasure---just me. It has to do with the way I love the contact print,
and what I love about people: their bodies, and gestures, their separateness, and
their eyes.
Also, there is alot of contact between people--touching and caressing--just physical stuff going on.
Partly thats what happened when I was there. But these are the moments I choose
to like. It's just my taste. It's what I love, and what I believe in intelectually, and
what I love to look at. It seems inexhaustible, and connected to other aspects of
culture and history that matter to me.
Aging is a major theme in your work. Is that something you've always been interested in?
Instinctively, yes. But it's not something that I'm methodically trying to prove or to
chronicle. It's simply part of my energy to be interested in things that are
ephemeral---the feeling that everybody's mortal.
Comparing Family Photos
Nicholas Nixon, Bebe and Sam (1995)
I was looking through Nixon's photos of his family, and Fink's photos of the Sabatine family at the birthday parties, and noticed something. While Fink's photos are certainly more candid than Nixon's, they seem far less intimate. He seems to have photographed as an outsider, peeking in at another family's celebration (which very well may be what he did). Nixon's photos of his family (in general) seem very posed, but yet they retain a sense of intimacy that Fink's photos of the birthday parties lack. Even in Fink's photo of himself with his daughter(?) Molly, the effect is harsh, quite unlike the softness of Nixon's photos.
Larry Fink, Self with Molly (1982)
Larry Fink, Self with Molly (1982)
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Thoughts on Nicholas Nixon:
"Once decried as another victimization of the person with AIDS, Nixon's photographs are now being reconsidered as historically important and aesthetically significant, as highly exceptional counterpoints to the by now entrenched iconography or the healthy and beautiful person with HIV/AIDS."
- A New York University literary review of People with Aids
(on his School series) "His pictures persuade us that we see individuals, not symptoms of a problem, or worse, heroes of a solution."
(Nixon's work) "embraces the idea that sympathetic photographs of ordinary... people can address the deepest human values."
- Peter Galassi, Chief Photography Curator at the Museum of Modern Art
"Once decried as another victimization of the person with AIDS, Nixon's photographs are now being reconsidered as historically important and aesthetically significant, as highly exceptional counterpoints to the by now entrenched iconography or the healthy and beautiful person with HIV/AIDS."
- A New York University literary review of People with Aids
(on his School series) "His pictures persuade us that we see individuals, not symptoms of a problem, or worse, heroes of a solution."
(Nixon's work) "embraces the idea that sympathetic photographs of ordinary... people can address the deepest human values."
- Peter Galassi, Chief Photography Curator at the Museum of Modern Art
Thoughts on Larry Fink:
"I love working with him. I can count on a picture that goes beyond the obvious, a picture that is both stylistically strong and in content reflects the story for which it has been taken."
- Elisabeth Biondi, picture editor at New York Magazine
"Larry Fink's photographs are like the stage in a darkened theater. His hand-held flash splendidly illuminates the details of the drama before us and reveals the nuance of the personal moment"
- Susan Kismaric, associate curator, Museum of Modern Art.
- Elisabeth Biondi, picture editor at New York Magazine
"Larry Fink's photographs are like the stage in a darkened theater. His hand-held flash splendidly illuminates the details of the drama before us and reveals the nuance of the personal moment"
- Susan Kismaric, associate curator, Museum of Modern Art.
Monday, November 5, 2007
From the start of his career, Larry Fink has exhibited a sharp eye for sociological detail and a consistent aim: to explore human beings as wonderful, flawed creatures. Whether prowling weddings, bar mitzvahs, high-society galas or the boxing ring, his favorite subject is the social animal. Through photography, Fink connects with his subjects on an emotional level, using flash to extract moments of startling honesty... Fink’s work is also marked by a sympathetic portrayal of social conditions and a relationship between photographer and subject that is affectionate and empathetic, yet unflinching.
[source: http://www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum/maylectures2005_06.html]
[source: http://www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum/maylectures2005_06.html]
The Human Condition
One thing that strikes me about both Larry Fink and Nick Nixon is the way they handle their subject matter (the human condition) with a gentle, human touch. Whether it is Nixon's AIDs patients or Fink's boxers, the idea that these are individual, feeling, living, breathing people is always very apparent. The sadness, the joy, the growth, everything thing about being human is in their work.
School
In the mid to late nineties, both Larry Fink and Nicholas Nixon published photos of grade school classrooms/students.
Larry Fink Cleveland School of the Arts 1998
Larry Fink Cleveland High School of the Arts 1995
Nicholas Nixon, from School 1998
Nicholas Nixon, from School 1998
Nixon spent nearly a year photographing at various schools, including Perkins School for the Blind and the Tobin School, among several others. This collection of photos was published in the book School in 1998 (coauthored by Robert Coles), and has become some of Nixon's most famous work.
Fink's photos were taken over the course of several years, and are often overlooked in favor of his more theatrical works.
Larry Fink Cleveland School of the Arts 1998
Larry Fink Cleveland High School of the Arts 1995
Nicholas Nixon, from School 1998
Nicholas Nixon, from School 1998Nixon spent nearly a year photographing at various schools, including Perkins School for the Blind and the Tobin School, among several others. This collection of photos was published in the book School in 1998 (coauthored by Robert Coles), and has become some of Nixon's most famous work.
Fink's photos were taken over the course of several years, and are often overlooked in favor of his more theatrical works.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
"I know that I often fail – in the grand hope that a good one (photograph) might evoke everybody’s home – but I want to try anyway. It’s a way of making moments of whim, of feeling, have more shape than words could ever give them."
"I always look hard at whatever is in front of me. If I like what I see, I have to make a photograph of it. I just can’t help myself. That, and because I love them so, are why there are so many pictures of my home and my family."
Nixon talking about his Lodima Press Portfolio Book "Home" from 5B4. Link
"I always look hard at whatever is in front of me. If I like what I see, I have to make a photograph of it. I just can’t help myself. That, and because I love them so, are why there are so many pictures of my home and my family."
Nixon talking about his Lodima Press Portfolio Book "Home" from 5B4. Link
Fink Boxing Review
Larry Fink
WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART / BOXING, POWERHOUSE BOOKS, NEW YORK, USA
In the course of a long career as a self-categorised leftist social documentarian, Larry Fink has insinuated himself among rich white people at their social gatherings, and amongst poor white trash at theirs. The tension between the objective and voyeuristic aspects of this kind of work is not uninteresting, but problems of finding an appropriate viewing distance may arise. Boxing, the subject matter of his latest exhibition, is especially open to this criticism. Not only is it rife with racial complications, but its intensity is a lure for people who wouldn’t normally have anything to do with it (Joyce Carol Oates comes to mind).
Perhaps Fink is wary of this, for only one of his 23 black and white photographs of boxers, mostly club fighters, taken between 1989 and 1995, shows a fight in progress. Boxing, Blue Horizon, Philadelphia, PA, 1990 (1990) depicted two fighters taken from a steep angle, high up in the crowd at the legendary Philly venue. But the real focus is on a spectator in the foreground, with his back to the camera, who has jumped from his seat with his arms raised. There are equally few fight scenes in the more extensive book version of the project. Instead, Fink has chosen to concentrate on the immediate, grimy, sweat-soaked periphery of the ring: the gym and the locker room.
Many of the images are about men preparing to fight. There are a number of photographs of locker-room scenes in which the boxer is curiously alienated from his surrounding trainers, seconds and various hangers-on. A photograph from the Blue Horizon in 1991 is particularly tense: a black boxer lies on a training table in a white robe, his hands wrapped and folded on his chest. But he goes almost unnoticed at first glance, beneath the oblique gaze of a white man in a suit, at whose shoulder stands a white fighter in street clothes. In another image, from Champs Gym, 1993, a small, intense, white boxer is warming up with his back to a dingy wall. His eyes are downcast and his wrapped hands reveal the swollen knuckles of his little fingers, his slight frame dwarfed by the back, shoulder and stubbly profile of his trainer. In another image from Champs, a black boxer crouches in a dark training ring, but the image is dominated by the trainer’s arm extending out of the shadows, his hand on the boxer’s head.
In the foreword to the book, Fink quotes approvingly from the writer Katherine Dunn, suggesting that the boxing gym is a space for intimacy between men, unsullied by questions of motive, etc. But little of this intimacy is revealed by the photographs.
What does emerge is all too familiar. Boxers are typically working-class men from minority populations, some of whom develop extraordinary physical skills and mental discipline. But in the course of doing so they are, also typically, exploited and patronised. That Fink understands this is clear from the evidence of an image so dark that the gym can barely be made out: a young, edgy-looking black man is being spoken to by a much larger bearded white man in a suit. But does anyone really need to be told, yet again, that boxing is a crucible of both masculinity and hope, or that it is an avenue of escape (however qualified) from the ghetto?
It is certainly true that very specific forms of intimacy develop in the gym. It is also true that they develop within a certain framework, motivated by the prospect of making some money. Even the trainer wants to make money off the boxer he loves (listen for him saying ‘we’ before a fight, and ‘he’ after his man loses). The successful boxer must not only beat his opponent, but come to terms with the corruption of the business he’s in. Fink comes closest to capturing this in one of his simplest images, a portrait of a black fighter in a locker room at the Blue Horizon. Robed, with hands wrapped, gloves beside him, he has the ageless face of a veteran in a sport that shortens lifespans, and is utterly alone and self-absorbed, throwing miniature punches as he visualises what he knows is to come.
The problem with Fink’s vision of boxing is that it is ultimately too peripheral. He seems not to have come to terms with the other side of the relationships between men in the gym. That is, the intimacy that develops between opponents in the ring, when everything else becomes secondary. Fink doesn’t demonstrate much grasp of the respect, the tacit agreements, the spite, the wide range of understandings that develop within fights. So he can’t always persuade us that he really sees what he’s looking at, outside the ring. He risks only giving us more of the stylised seediness that is stereotypical in representations of boxing.
Frazer Ward
Link
WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART / BOXING, POWERHOUSE BOOKS, NEW YORK, USA
In the course of a long career as a self-categorised leftist social documentarian, Larry Fink has insinuated himself among rich white people at their social gatherings, and amongst poor white trash at theirs. The tension between the objective and voyeuristic aspects of this kind of work is not uninteresting, but problems of finding an appropriate viewing distance may arise. Boxing, the subject matter of his latest exhibition, is especially open to this criticism. Not only is it rife with racial complications, but its intensity is a lure for people who wouldn’t normally have anything to do with it (Joyce Carol Oates comes to mind).
Perhaps Fink is wary of this, for only one of his 23 black and white photographs of boxers, mostly club fighters, taken between 1989 and 1995, shows a fight in progress. Boxing, Blue Horizon, Philadelphia, PA, 1990 (1990) depicted two fighters taken from a steep angle, high up in the crowd at the legendary Philly venue. But the real focus is on a spectator in the foreground, with his back to the camera, who has jumped from his seat with his arms raised. There are equally few fight scenes in the more extensive book version of the project. Instead, Fink has chosen to concentrate on the immediate, grimy, sweat-soaked periphery of the ring: the gym and the locker room.
Many of the images are about men preparing to fight. There are a number of photographs of locker-room scenes in which the boxer is curiously alienated from his surrounding trainers, seconds and various hangers-on. A photograph from the Blue Horizon in 1991 is particularly tense: a black boxer lies on a training table in a white robe, his hands wrapped and folded on his chest. But he goes almost unnoticed at first glance, beneath the oblique gaze of a white man in a suit, at whose shoulder stands a white fighter in street clothes. In another image, from Champs Gym, 1993, a small, intense, white boxer is warming up with his back to a dingy wall. His eyes are downcast and his wrapped hands reveal the swollen knuckles of his little fingers, his slight frame dwarfed by the back, shoulder and stubbly profile of his trainer. In another image from Champs, a black boxer crouches in a dark training ring, but the image is dominated by the trainer’s arm extending out of the shadows, his hand on the boxer’s head.
In the foreword to the book, Fink quotes approvingly from the writer Katherine Dunn, suggesting that the boxing gym is a space for intimacy between men, unsullied by questions of motive, etc. But little of this intimacy is revealed by the photographs.
What does emerge is all too familiar. Boxers are typically working-class men from minority populations, some of whom develop extraordinary physical skills and mental discipline. But in the course of doing so they are, also typically, exploited and patronised. That Fink understands this is clear from the evidence of an image so dark that the gym can barely be made out: a young, edgy-looking black man is being spoken to by a much larger bearded white man in a suit. But does anyone really need to be told, yet again, that boxing is a crucible of both masculinity and hope, or that it is an avenue of escape (however qualified) from the ghetto?
It is certainly true that very specific forms of intimacy develop in the gym. It is also true that they develop within a certain framework, motivated by the prospect of making some money. Even the trainer wants to make money off the boxer he loves (listen for him saying ‘we’ before a fight, and ‘he’ after his man loses). The successful boxer must not only beat his opponent, but come to terms with the corruption of the business he’s in. Fink comes closest to capturing this in one of his simplest images, a portrait of a black fighter in a locker room at the Blue Horizon. Robed, with hands wrapped, gloves beside him, he has the ageless face of a veteran in a sport that shortens lifespans, and is utterly alone and self-absorbed, throwing miniature punches as he visualises what he knows is to come.
The problem with Fink’s vision of boxing is that it is ultimately too peripheral. He seems not to have come to terms with the other side of the relationships between men in the gym. That is, the intimacy that develops between opponents in the ring, when everything else becomes secondary. Fink doesn’t demonstrate much grasp of the respect, the tacit agreements, the spite, the wide range of understandings that develop within fights. So he can’t always persuade us that he really sees what he’s looking at, outside the ring. He risks only giving us more of the stylised seediness that is stereotypical in representations of boxing.
Frazer Ward
Link
Monday, October 29, 2007
Fink: how the working-class throws parties
Pat Sabatine’s Twelfth Birthday Party, May, 1981
Pat Sabatine's Eighth Birthday Party, April 1977Tying in with Maggie's earlier post of Fink's work with the nightlife of America's VIPs & Hollywood power players, Fink also explored the celebrations of the working class in Pennsylvania. Pat Sabatine’s Twelfth Birthday Party, May, 1981 features neither the celebrating child nor what Fink refers to as the “holy mess” of the Sabatine family kitchen, but simply an anonymous hand and the geometry of a gesture. Such intimacies underscore Fink’s belief that all of his subjects, regardless of social status, share the same underlying of emotions, political ideals, and alliances.
[source: http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/fink_larry.php]
Thursday, October 25, 2007
"Can This Marraige Be Saved?"
An article published in The New York Times Magazine by Laurie Abraham on August 12, 2007 described a year-long couples therapy session given by psychologist Judith Coché. The photographs that accompanied the article (all taken by Nicholas Nixon) are of the couples it described (and of Coché) and were taken in Coché’s Philadelphia office.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Nixon, People With AIDS
In 1986, Nicholas Nixon and his wife, Bebe, began the People With AIDS project in 1986. They intended to show honestly and compassionately what it is like to have AIDS, and how the disease affects family and friends of those afflicted. They wished to demonstrate why AIDS is "the most devastating social and medical issue of our time."
The most famous photographs in this series are those of Thomas Moran (above), though fourteen other individuals suffering from AIDS were also photographed.
When it was first shown in 1988, the series of work was seen as "one of the first and most controversial mainstream art exhibits on AIDS, becoming a kind of standard by which to measure dehumanizing, degrading representations of the disease." Several rights groups vehemently protested the photographs, stating that it only showed the negative side of AIDS, that it only showed death and despair. These groups wanted more diverse and more positive representations of people with the disease.
Today, however, this series is seen as historically important; they are described as a stark contrast to the abundance of images of happy and healthy people with AIDS. Perhaps they're a warning of the pain caused by the disease, or perhaps they were simply a documentation of a few people's lives.
The most famous photographs in this series are those of Thomas Moran (above), though fourteen other individuals suffering from AIDS were also photographed.
When it was first shown in 1988, the series of work was seen as "one of the first and most controversial mainstream art exhibits on AIDS, becoming a kind of standard by which to measure dehumanizing, degrading representations of the disease." Several rights groups vehemently protested the photographs, stating that it only showed the negative side of AIDS, that it only showed death and despair. These groups wanted more diverse and more positive representations of people with the disease.
Today, however, this series is seen as historically important; they are described as a stark contrast to the abundance of images of happy and healthy people with AIDS. Perhaps they're a warning of the pain caused by the disease, or perhaps they were simply a documentation of a few people's lives.
as they died, NIXON
april 25, 2005
feb. 15, 2005As They Died
Nicholas Nixon, study of illness and dying. He photographed people and thier loved ones as they went through the stages of dying from terminal illness. Some photographs were taken days before the subject passed.
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