My portraits of some friends from the Village Zendo.
Category Archives: Photography
Andrea Bruce, “Uncovering the Sadness of Young Deaths”
Photo: Andrea Bruce
A photo essay by Andrea Bruce for the NY Times, on infant deaths in Afghanistan. The chiaroscuro lighting she uses (or finds naturally, in huts with small windows) links her to Renaissance religious painters like Caravaggio. An ugly subject like a dead child in a poor country is made beautiful and tragic.
Read the whole Times story on Bruce’s photo essay. There are 12 photos you should see, and info on how you can help.
The Times has some great women photographing in war zones, particularly Lynsey Addario.
Photos of Old Animals
The Times the other day linked to an excellent photo project, Isa Leshko’s “Elderly Animals”. The Times says,
Ms. Leshko was inspired to carry out her project after spending a year caring for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease and is now in a nursing home. She considered documenting the experience through pictures but soon decided against it. “A number of fine-art photographers have gone that route and produced really powerful work,” she said. “It just didn’t feel like the appropriate response for me. I didn’t think my mother could provide consent, and I wanted to be present as her daughter and caregiver.”
Richard Avedon’s upsetting photos of his sick father come to mind, and Phillip Toledano’s “Days With My Father”, which began as an award-winning website and was published last year as a book.
I’m particularly interested in Leshko’s “Elderly Animals” because it’s a novel subject, and because I typically find animals childlike, and the old animals in her photos are both recognizably old and still cute and innocent.
August Sander and Seydou Keïta
Photo: August Sander
I trudged to Chelsea through the disgusting rain tonight for a lecture on August Sander and Seydou Keïta at The Walther Collection. Art historians Shelley Rice and Lisa Binder gave a quick, entertaining intro to the two photographers.
August Sander, who worked in Germany in the 1910s and 20s, set out to be a social documentarian, but as Shelley Rice pointed out, his photos have a majesty beyond a mere census-taking. Each archetypal subject—the doctor, the bricklayer, the revolutionary—presents himself to the camera as a representative of his class, and ultimately the German civilization. The farmer or librarian in the photo is practically anonymous, but he trades his personal identity for the force of his whole nation.
Although Sander was constantly on my mind when I made Strangers, I hadn’t seen his original prints before. Old prints are so small! But the tonality of the ancient negatives and papers is astonishing.
Photo: Seydou Keïta
Seydou Keïta was a commercial photographer in Mali in the 1940s and 50s. Only in the last two decades have his portraits been promoted to fine-art status. Lisa Binder delightfully summarized Keïta’s mythos as a “discovered” artist and hinted at the reality behind the myths, though she didn’t have time tonight to give the details. Each time I encounter Keïta I seem to hear the same conversation about the blurry distinctions between European art and African commercial photography, and I hear the same open-ended questions about whether we’re honoring Keïta or in some insidious way re-colonizing him. Regardless, Lisa Binder provided more interesting ideas about Keïta’s subjects’ effortless blending of African tradition and global modernity. The gallery walls displayed recent reprints of his negatives in the contemporary style: high-contrast, clean, and large. A small room on the side showed a handful of Keïta’s original contact prints for his clients. The originals were small, cracked, yellowed, and heart-breakingly intimate.
When I took the “Photographing Communities” class at ICP a few years ago with Dina Kantor, day one was August Sander and Seydou Keïta. If you want to photograph people and their culture, these two photographers are the starting point. To see them juxtaposed in a white Chelsea gallery will make your head spin—it’s worth the trip.
Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery
Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis
Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois.
More photos of Scott
Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis
More photos from September of Scott in Chicago.
Photo Fire Sale – Everything Must Go!
Luca Pizzaroni. Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis
I want to sell the remainder of the prints from my solo show at the Lower East Side Visitor Center. All prints are sold framed, 16 inches square for $75. View these prints at the Lower East Side Visitor Center, 54 Orchard St, or in the Flickr set. These prints must sell by Dec 20, 2011! You can pick up your framed print at the Visitor Center, or you can receive the print by mail by January 15th at the latest. Email me: ajdavis@cs.oberlin.edu.
Scott
Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis
September 17, 2011. Scott in Chicago.
Matthew
Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis
November 7, 2011. Matthew in Union Square.
Dharma Combat
Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis
August 2010. Dharma combat with Enkyo Roshi during the Village Zendo’s summer ango at Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY.
Dharma combat’s the most fun you can have at a Zen temple. A senior Zen student or a teacher—in this case my teacher, Enkyo Roshi—sits at the front of the room and takes on questions from all comers. She answers instantly, speaking from her direct experience, rather than reciting dogma or playing mind games. The ritual simulates a competition, but of course it isn’t really. The teacher and the questioner demonstrate Zen together. Both of them jump free of all the religious show business and uncover their real selves for everyone.