Wonderland

 



The premiere of The Geometry of Innocence was at the Noorderlicht Festival, Groiningen, The Netherlands in 1999 as part of the Wonderland exhibition. The catalog, pictured here, contained the work of 30 photographers. Cover image was by Ken Schles.

Here is the essay by Machiel Botman, guest curator for the project.























– / back to books

At Second Sight by Machiel Botman

When putting together Noorderlicht ’99, the discussion between Wim Melis, Ton Broekhuis, the organizers, and myself, guest curator, was mainly about the kind of photography that I hold dear: the ‘other’ photography, often small and personally tinted. Where looking at yourself prevails above looking at others. Where ‘real’ comes before ‘beautiful’ and where photographers are the authors of their own books. Photography that may be ‘dark’ at first sight, dark in meaning and dark in imagery: unclear, moved and sometimes gloomy. It is the kind of photography that seems a reaction to the romantic, warm, humane image of the fifties.

The ‘image’ no longer had to be beautiful; mood and feeling mattered more than the beauty of the subject. In an issue of Creative Camera about William Klein, Peter Turner mentions in particular Robert Frank, William Klein, Ed van der Elsken and Christer Strömholm. ‘Angry Young Men’, who rather sought after reality or the gloominess of reality than, as was usual at that time, the romantic or funny image. Personal worlds became the guiding principles, and self-initiated projects found shape especially in the form of ‘photo books’. We came across photographers who made their own books (that are extremely sought after at the moment), who wanted to go further than ‘catalogues’ or ‘portfolios’ between covers by creating photo books as an object, a work of art.

An important part of my contribution to Noorderlicht ’99 stems from my fascination for certain photo books. Books that contain a certain combination of this beautiful, sometimes gloomy, sometimes very personal and intimate work. Books that became an object themselves, because of the connection between the photos and between the photos and lay-outs. Above all, books that became an object because they were ‘alive’. In the Fifties Frank made his mythical Americans and Klein revolted with New York against almost everything that was known as photography. Both publications can be seen as a starting point in a series of personally tinted projects and photo books. Frank’s book was noticeable because of a combination of involvement and cynicism and his so poignant photography; Klein’s because of the combination of filmic photography and ditto layout. Both books left nothing of the usual, optimistic image of the land and the city and we saw, above all, the photographer and his way of looking. Strömholm made Poste Restante, Dave Heath A Dialogue with Solitude, books that reflect a raw reality and are of almost

meditative quality. On the cover of Strömholm book there is a dead and half–dog, not a very pretty, but indeed an unforgettable sight. Heath writes in A Dialogue with Solitude “perhaps it is about accepting the tragic things in life, not in honor of bitter frustrations, anger or self-pity, but of love and care for human existence.” Roy DeCarava came with his small big jewel The Sweet Flypaper of Life, in which he combined, in a subtle and moving way, photos with the Langston Hughes text about a grandmother in Harlem. Van Der Elsken made Liefdesgeschiedenis in St. Germain (Love Story in St. Germain), Van der Keuken Wij zijn 17 (We are 17), Achter Glas (Behind Glass) and Paris Mortel. In these books their own world is the center point, where Van der Keuken lets go of the ‘small’ and ‘personal’ in Paris Mortel and searches for a combination of city, politics and people: Something that returns in his later work.

In the sixties, seventies and eighties many remarkable books followed, that had, in any case, one thing in common: famous or not, they became very influential in the world of photography. The makers of these books cleared the road for photographers who had started to put together their own photo books. They were no longer only responsible for their own photos, but also for the selection, the layout and sometimes even for part of the production. Examples of these books are, among others, Frank’s The Lines of My Hand, Danny Seymour’s A Loud Song, Larry Clark’s Tulsa, Gaylord Herron’s Vagabond, and, more recently, Ken Schles’ Invisible City at the end of the eighties. Ken Schles in particular made a kind of ‘New York Mortel’, a beautiful, small and ‘dark’ book with texts by Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges. The book closely connects with the work by the aforementioned ‘photographic existentialists’, that Peter Turner wrote about.

Noorderlicht ’99 shows this photography from then and now. It is about photography that does not conform and often comes into being against trends. Photography that involves little money and is above all a reflection of the photographer’s personal world, surroundings and sometimes family and friends. Photography that comes into being in the shelter of life and often remains a well kept secret. Wonderland is about small and usual things, the photos showing an intimate and personal existence that seems, at first sight, to take place in a rather dark world. ‘At second sight’, however, the viewer can discover a meaning or emotion hiding behind a picture. It is up to the viewer to be amazed at the value of the seemingly small, unequivocal and everyday.

Machiel Botman