Our friend Jörg elected not to review anything on his blog but rather to give us a little personal essay, and I found it somewhat startling.
To review, Jörg is employed at the Photography MFA program at the Hartford Art School, as a professor. He helps MFA students do photobooks and, presumably, teaches some classes or seminars. He has published a book about How To Make a Photobook (and get it published, and so on).
Now, I am not one to say that only a working novelist can write literary criticism, that only a film director can legitimately write film reviews. Still, if one is going to teach writing, or teach film making, it seems as if you'd want a teacher who has at any rate hacked around with the form a little bit, surely?
When he says "I’m working on my first photobook right now" I don't know what he means. Does this mean that he has never made a serious attempt to sequence his own work into a coherent whole? Or does it mean that, while he has done that 1000s of times, he has never had a publishing contract before? I don't know. I find the statement a remarkable one, coming from a supposed expert in the field, though, no matter what it truly means.
Reading through the whole piece, he comes across to me like something of a tyro. Sure, he's moved on from trying to get things in focus, and from trying to "make a good picture" but he does not seem to have a concept for Tokyo, and to only vaguely be aware that having some concept, something to communicate, might be a good idea. Perhaps he's trying to illustrate the struggle that occurs in the very early stages of a project?
I rather hope he's not trying to make a visual book about Tokyo. A couple of visits isn't going to do it.
I am struggling to be generous here, and to find ways to read this piece that don't make Jörg out to be a complete impostor, because I don't think he is, entirely. But lawsy, he ain't making it easy.
You know, I hadn't bothered to read it through, as with so many of our hero's erstwhile scrivenings... the deadly dull pair of photos at the top, and the first sentence, "This is such a boys picture, isn’t it?" stopped me dead in my tracks.
ReplyDeleteYou have taught me the value of soldiering on, in spite of these little setbacks.
Thank you, I guess.
I don't get this drab and dreary grey aesthetic at all. I can't decide whether it's simply a failure to understand how to produce a black and white image that excites the eye, or that this wan clusterfuck of mid-tones somehow genuinely echoes the soul of so many contemporary photographers. In which case, they have my profound sympathy.
ReplyDeleteMike
Yeah, seriously. Everyone knows it's the blacks that are supposed to be a muddy mess.
DeleteYou may be interested in my most recent book.
https://www.blurb.com/b/9744828-deutscher-gef-lschterstiermist
If this is meant to be a satire of Kleinstadt, you fucking nailed it. Well done.
DeleteThat was definitely in my mind, but there's actually an entire genre that's more or less the same material. I can't find the book now, but I was also thinking of some boob who made a crashingly boring book of similarly grey pictures on a walk through some German city.
DeleteThere was some talk of how his work defied the normal workings of the photograph, forcing it to behave in new and uncomfortable ways using a crazy and technical method called "cropping"
"Very glad to see my latest piece was well received - thank you all for reading!" -- @jmcolberg (tweeted, 18-hrs ago)
DeleteMmm, so grey... So ... dull. I can feel my will to live seeping away.
DeleteThere's clearly a problem, when a parody is impossible to tell from "the real thing". It's a bit like trying to caricature Trump or Johnson: they are already so hyperreal they are beyond the reach of satire.
Mike
Those who can, do.
ReplyDeleteThose who can't, teach.
Those who can't teach, write about it.
I thought Colberg was a member of the second tier, but perhaps he's actually a member of the third?
on a side note to the actual discussion, I do understand this saying has a sort of charming structure to it but I've never understood it at all - it's so patently untrue, at least at a university level -or is it just in the sciences? If you're teaching plant taxonomy, you're also stomping around the plains and forests collecting plants and classifying them... if you're teaching people about how to manipulate DNA, you're also manipulating DNA in your research lab that same afternoon... if you're teaching plant physiology, you're also poking around tracing how carbon is incorporated into sugars and lignin and so on... [btw, plant taxonomists are apparently the most likely to get into physical fisticuffs at conferences while discussing the pros and cons of each others' classification systems - they'll run up the front of the seminar and start whaling on whoever they really disagree with. True thing] -stone seal
DeleteAs the old saying goes, Those who taxonomise, pugilise.
DeleteMike
"Reading through the whole piece, he comes across to me like something of a tyro."
ReplyDeleteI feel the same. His essay describing his project and his motivations, and the photography itself, left me with a impression that the work is remarkably sophomoric.
To be honest however, I feel that Colberg's critic/analysis of photography is equally simplistic and vapid. I lot of what he says amounts to "I like this, I don't like that / that work made me feel this, that other work didn't make me feel that." Sometimes he produces more insightful opinion beyond personal taste or perception, but I feel that these are usually not very well elaborated and makes me wonder if they original at all.
Therefore, I wasn't expecting that he would produce any genuine or interesting work of his own, to be honest. The truly mesmerizing thing (which you also pointed out) is that he authored a book about on how to make photobooks, he teaches at an university, he seats on panels and judges the work of photographers and is (or at least used to be) considered by many an influential authority on photobooks.