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Nice: an 80s TV documentation about Martin Parr on the archive pages of the BBC.

What a beautiful documentary (will be online for a few days only!)

There’s an interesting video about Christopher Anderson on the pages of vice magazine. Anderson became famous for his photos form wars and crisis regions, then switched to very personal work when he became a father and is now photographing mostly at home in New York City.

Every once in a while you’ll find someone – usually a journalist, an art critique or some other “intellectual”  - describing certain photographic works as a “freak show”. In my opinion comments like these say a lot about the people who say it and in most cases very little about the work itself or the photographer’s approach. Photographers like Bruce Gilden or Roger Ballen – both very diverse in style – always have to cope with critiques like that. You may like the work or not but I think it’s always good to listen to an artist before condemning them. In this context…
Roger Ballen documentation from German TV
Bruce Gilden about his Coney Island book

“If you can’t edit your work you are not really expressing yourself.”
Alex Webb in a 20 min video feature on vogue.it.

After the release of Henrik Verning’s book Berlin – Die Stadt und die Beute in 2008 I asked him if he would like to exhibit some of his photographs at FENSTER61. He exhibited some new work there in 2009 and some of the pictures are now part of his new publication Sampler.01/Berlin:Crash. Verning shows a collection of photographs with hard contrasts in grainy black and white. A wild mixture of steet impressions, close-ups, portraits, animals and night visions that drag you through a dark, rough and blurry version of the city.

The magazine is planned to be published as a limited edition of 100 on a regular basis. Here’s a video on vimeo that gives an impression about the first issue.

There’s been a lot of talk about Andreas Gursky recently because of the price that one of his photographs achieved at some auction in (was it?) London. And of course there’s the usual “is this still photography!? and Is that photograph really worth 4 millions?” debate going on… As far as I know, Gursky considers himself an artist, not a photographer, so much of the debate is obsolete anyway. I think it’s nice if someone spends 4 millions for a photograph. Why not? Just imagine what nonsense is usually bought with such an amout of money. Yachts, palaces, big cars, weapons… So I think it’s really nice to imagine that someone prefers a photo instead.

There’s a really nice and humorous feature about the Gursky World from the early 2000s. At the end of it, Gursky explains the making of “Rhein II”, that is now the most expensive photograph in the word.

For those who missed the show in Berlin:

“I didn’t wait for somebody to give me a job –  I went and created a job.”
A slideshow + the original voice of Weegee “The Famous”, the New York city freelance news photographer from the 1930s to the 1950s – here on youtube.com

There’s another fine photographer documentary on arte: Anders Petersen.

There’s a beautiful new documentary about Bruce Davidson on the arte Website.

Some of the screenings that were shown at the Seconds2Real event at exp12 Gallery in February are now online on vimeo. This video was shown as an intro to the evening and contains photographs from all Seconds2Real members as well as some thoughts about what the term “street photography” means to us.

There are more and more documentaries about German photographers from the former GDR. I just found this nice one about Arno Fischer on the pages of Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle Bonn and there will be a new movie about Harald Hauswald in the cinemas called Zwischen Liebe und Zorn [Between Love and Anger]. Premiere next thursday, Feb 24, at Babylon Mitte, Berlin. I think I should go there, it’s only five minutes to walk…

Mein Leben – Die Fotografin Sibylle Bergemann is now online on the webpages of arte.tv in a German and French version. It’s a very intimate documentary with Sybille Bergemann talking about her career in photography, working for fashion magazines in the GdR, her husband Arno Fischer, the legendary appartment at Schiffsbauer Damm, the founding of Ostkreuz and about living with cancer. Sybille Bergemann died a view days before the movie pemiere at the cinema Babylon in November last year.