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Texte zur zeitgenössischen Fotografie und digitalen Bildkunst
Paul Fusco: "RFK"
Aperture 2008, ISBN 978597110792
“RFK” is not a reprint but an extended version of "RFK Funeral train", a hard-to-find collector's item. I will not write about the totally unnecessary photos that have been added from the actual funeral and rather delve into the actual series, the journey from New York to Washington on a train that carried the body of Robert Kennedy, and the images Fusco took of the people along the tracks to commemorate or just watch the event. There are nearly 100 images of people along railroad tracks and each and every image is worth looking at. Maybe today, 40 years later, our interest is also guided by looking at the past, we are the onlookers now, but maybe this doesn't entirely hold true. These images haven't aged and one feels their necessity straightaway. They can only have been taken by a gifted photographer, one who cared about what he was doing, but they are not masterpieces. They are restricted by the movement of the train, the rolls of film the photographer carried along, and the speed in which he would spot an image, and turn his camera to take the picture. And in this Fusco succeeded, relentlessly during the eight-hour journey. He cared, as he writes, about the people and their lost hopes and and he had cared about the assassinated presidential candidate. But independent of an interest in American history it is the "conceptual" limits of the project and the vivid quality of the images that came out of it that make this a historical series.
The New York Times has a nifty multimedia feature with Fusko talking about his work and his images running as a video: www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/magazine/01RFKtext-t.html
Stefania Gurdowa: "Negatives are to be stored"
Imago Mundi 2008, ISBN 9788392591443
These are images from the archive of a polish small-town portrait photographer. Gurdowa had her own studio between 1923 and 1937 and the selection presented here is astonishing by the serene and precise workmanship of the portraits. We know nothing about the people, nor is there an overall concept á la Sander, it is only the straight photographic quality at work that captures the eye. The sitters don't emanate this feeling of long-gone, long-dead, but confront the camera in a remarkable presence that is the mystery of Gurdowa's work. The book is very well-produced, designed and printed and three historic texts provide a frame that serves as an obstacle to a simple exploitation of the archive. The makers of the book come from cultural institutions and a collective of documentary photographers and the confident manner in which they produce their discovery is noteworthy.
27.01.2009
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