Femme Fatale

Image credit: Roadside Scholar

I first noticed Thomas Allen's book, Uncovered, about a year ago, but given that I was unemployed at the time, I had to make do with a mental note rather than an impulse buy. My mental note failed me, and I'd all but forgotten about Allen's incredible paper-cut photography until I stumbled across his work whilst hop skip jumping around the net last week. I love all things vintage, including found imagery, so it isn't surprising that his work appeals to me. Moreover, I like the idea of a photo of an illustration on a meta-imagery level -- it subverts the notion that a photograph is somehow more true than a painting or drawing, and allows the illustration to live in a 3D world. I guess at a fundamental level, the little kid inside me just likes the idea of a drawing coming to life, even if it is a drawing of a dangerous broad with murder in her eye.

I particularly like these shots from Allen's website, showing his work in progress:

If you think that's awesome, just wait til you see the finished works:

 

 Image credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Hanging out with Susan and John

Magritte, La Clef des Songes, 1930. Reproduced on the cover of Ways of Seeing.

On my reading list this summer: On Photography by Susan Sontag and Ways of Seeing by John Berger. They belong to the list of iconic art history texts that I have always felt guilty about failing to read. Well, guilty no more: I can happily move them from my 'to read' to my 'done and dusted' booklist. Some of my favourite snippets:

Through photographs, the world becomes a series of unrelated, freestanding particles; and history, past and present, a set of anecdotes and faits divers. The camera makes reality atomic, manageable, and opaque.

-- Susan Sontag, On Photography chapter one, In Plato's Cave

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug a camera.

-- Lewis Hine, On Photography, anthology of quotations

Photography is a system of visual editing...Like chess or writing, it is a matter of choosing from among given possibilties, but in the case of photography the number of possibilities is not finite but infinite.

-- John Szarkowski, On Photography, anthology of quotations

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the world.

-- John Berger, Ways of Seeing

The way we see things is affected by what we believe... when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions about art.

-- John Berger, Ways of Seeing

The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purposes.

-- John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Hee hee hee...

Really wish I could remember where I found this!

I want it...

I am always vaguely browsing for books which manage to combine a) photography and b) Italy, and today I found two. One in the flesh, and one on the world wide web. Can I have them both? Probably not. One? Maybe. Do they both make me feel like I really ought to stop window shopping and do something creative with my own photos of Italy? Absolutely.

Booklove number one, found at Greville St bookstore:

Andiamo: Capturing My Italy - Kelly Barber

This is a newly published, hardcover photoessay in the same vein as Carla Coulson's Italian Joy, which I have loved for a long time, and someday soon will finally bite the bullet and buy. Barber's photos are not quite as amazing and creative as Coulson's, but then again, Italy makes for some fine material, and I do have a bit of a thing for the word 'andiamo' (it means, roughly, "off we go!" and the story as to why I like it is too long and silly even for this blog).

Booklove number two, found on the world wide web:

The Doorbells of Florence: Fictional Stories and Photographs - Andrew Lowosky

This guy loves a story. There is even a story to the book itself (Losowsky has an author's blog on Amazon, and it's well worth a read) . And I like that its entirely amateur, unprompted, spontaneously inspired. Ahhhh Italy, and the fascinating details of everyday life. And photos. It's pretty much everything I like, wrapped up in a book, and though I really need to stop buying books, I may not be able to resist this one for long.