Advanced Copy

Book: 70s 80s 90s 00s Photographer: Peter Sutherland Review by: Christian Michael Filardo

Often life can be thought of as a series of signs. Leading us down roads more and less travelled. Providing us with the knowledge we need to proceed. Occasionally, while living life we stumble upon something that feels like an answer. In Peter Sutherland’s “70s 80s 90s 00s” we explore the myth of life and the answers submerged within the everyday.

Sutherland is outside, he is on the move, camping beneath the stars, evading the snow, adapting to the elements. It feels like he is living the endless summer in the snow. He sees the urbanity in nature, prints nature onto plywood, lights a barrel fire that burns forever. In 70’s 80’s 90’s 00’s we are provided with a series of puzzle pieces that expose us to the bigger picture. The feeling of being in a cavern, the performance of stacking rocks to look like a reclining man, stumbling upon lone rebar in the high desert. Sutherland’s images show us that life is funny and that we’re all treading water in a sea of irony.

It’s not all ironic though; the best thing about Sutherland’s images is that they feel genuine. Recalling a journey both unique and timeless, marking the trail for hikers to come, 70s 80s 90s 00s is the diary of an individual both interested in contemporary society and the fleeting dream of the outdoorsmen. An individual who knows that life has more than just one path.

Overlaying smoke on plywood, Sutherland makes a statement about temporality. Reminding us that there is more to Earth than humanity. Suggesting that perhaps human achievement is nothing compared to the world’s natural beauty.

Ultimately, 70’s 80’s 90’s 00’s feels like freedom. Sutherland turns trash into treasure and brings contemporary society outside. Taking us from KOA to mountain top, highway side to bonfire, Sutherland’s work reminds us of what is important in life. Most of all it reminds us how to live.

Book: Kapadokya Photographer: Renato D'Agostin Review by: Christian Michael Filardo

Tourism is extremely complex. People travel miles from the comfort of their homes so they can live somewhere else for a second. Destinations are often naturally beautiful, culturally relevant, or simply relaxing. However, the most important aspect of tourism is the tourist. Vacationing is an excuse to relinquish the routine of everyday life and extend an open hand towards destiny. Tourists are looking to have a life changing experience and live out a secret. In Italian born photographer Renato D’Agostin’s book “Kapadokya” we experience one of those secrets.

D’Agostin’s visceral high contrast black and white images set the pace of Kapadokya from the beginning. Absorbing the viewer in dense blacks D’Agostin’s grainy photographs feel both high speed and mysterious. Balloons block out the sun, mountains dominate the frame, a blurry couple gazes down at the city from atop a hill while cars disappear into black. The highly dramatic use of light and contrast make Kapadokya feel apocalyptic at times. Rock formations transform into fictional alien dwellings while the sun is constantly setting. A vacation turned crime noir. A holiday turned into an investigation.

Abound with secrets; Kapadokya is a book that rewards multiple looks, revealing more of itself to the viewer over time. D’Agostin is undercover capturing the absurd and the surreal. In Kapadokya D’Agostin spins his get-away into a powerful excursion driven by exploration, mystery, and light. Ultimately, D’Agostin successfully tells a story that feels both exciting and smart while blurring the lines of reality.

Book: Meridian Photgrapher: Colin Stearns Review by: Christian Michael Filardo

To me most good photographs are about photography in one way or another. Often nodding in acknowledgement towards the past while looking towards the future to establish a new form of visual aesthetics. In Colin Stearns’s new book “Meridian” from Rita Books we experience the subtle power of an individual with the ability to create a dialogue between photographic history and contemporary black and white photography.

At first glance Stearns’s book feels like a collection of black and white snapshots taken across various film formats while the photographer bounced between rural and urban environments. However, upon further inspection one begins to hear the conversation Stearns’s photographs are having with the photographic past. Stearns’s knowledge of exposure and understanding of repetition turns a man waiting for the train into a businessman disintegrating into the void. A small sequence of photographs that feels like a nod to legend Duane Michal’s photographic sequence “The Human Condition”. Time and time again it feels like Stearns is looking towards the masters for advice while developing his own voice. Occasionally Stearns’s bleached out landscapes remind me of Minor White’s “Windowsill Daydreaming” stirring up feelings of nostalgia and reinforcing one’s natural curiosity of time within the photographic language.

Academia aside it feels as if Stearns is beginning to share his own unique vision with the world. He has a good sense of composition and understands how to turn light into magic. While the feeling of transience is omnipresent in “Meridian”, Stearns’s manages to feel more like a resident than a tourist. Doric columns mirror enormous shrubs while cold beaches and giant boulders snuggle up with rooftops and bare apartments.

Ultimately, Meridian feels advanced and relatable. It exists as a meditation on the fundamental elements of what makes photography important. The quiet and subtle power contained in this monograph is rare and it transforms Meridian from a simple perfect bound book into a monolith destined to exist outside of itself.

Book: Still Life Photographer: Motoyuki Daifu Review by: Christian Michael Filardo

It’s hard to imagine the complexities of the dinner table. Simply the dinner table is a surface one sits at to eat food. However, it also exists as a social setting where one can recharge and fuel their body with nutrients for the day to come. In Motoyuki Daifu’s “Still Life”, we sit at a different dinner table.

We experience a dinner table that feels like it contains the entire grocery store. Barraged with vertical flashed out images of food, packaged and unpackaged, colorful and shiny. Still Life feels like a cross between a food based encyclopedia and a Vogue photo shoot. Animated wrappers and exposed sauces line the borders of Daifu’s shots transforming his dinner table from a wasteland into a high intensity party.

While the subject matter is simple Daifu’s aggressive in your face shooting style makes even the most timid of foods look like the main course. Corn dogs individually wrapped in saran wrap. A bowl of peanuts lying atop a sexy magazine and a pair of reading glasses perpendicular to a carton of milk and a pair of chopsticks. Two fish heads back to back cling-wrapped to a Styrofoam tray. Two chicken legs positioned next to a large knife and a stack of yen. These photos feel fast but Daifu’s focus and knowledge of composition is apparent making the images in Still Life feel dynamic, temporary, and beautiful.

While on the surface this book may appear to some as an experiment in food photography. Still Life transcends the concept entirely; while Daifu’s images are of food they are about more than that. They are about the communal aspect of the dinner table and how we as individuals choose to exist within the construct of eating and everyday life. Does our food make us feel fit to be a king or repulsed and longing for more. As the saying goes, “you are what you eat”, and if Daifu is anything like the food he eats he must be vast, interesting, and exciting just like his new book.

Movie: The Lobster Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Review by: Theodore Schafer

Watching this movie was kind of like listening to a friend that you haven’t seen in a while tell you a story about someone you know a little better than they do. I felt it was defined mostly by loose connections and gut feelings. It starts with a woman driving up to a donkey on the side of the street and calmly shooting it.

Knowing what the film is about, before viewing this action, you kind of have an understanding of why this would happen. Many things happened that made me think that my own rationale and mental processes were not far from crazy: jumping from a low window in attempts to commit suicide, making your own nose bleed, sacrificing other relationships in order to feel close to a single person. Everyone does some sort of lesser version of these things? Sacrifice for love seems to be a theme in life.

The Lobster made me consider how I act. It made me think about how I am perceived by my loved ones and my partner. I wondered how often I feel cold or distant from people. I can't gauge that too well. It doesn’t seem like many people can in this film either. This idea had me pondering how much of a satire this film was, the obvious jokes stuck out like multiple sore fingers, while the earnestness and sincerity occasionally stuck out as most of it was weaved in between choppy dialogue.

I would recommend going to see this film, the colors are pristine, the pace is swift and exciting. I never had a grasp on what could possibly happen next, which I feel is a rare thing these days, everything feels cliché and over-saturated. The Lobster did not feel that way!

Book: The First Day of Good Weather Photographer: Vittorio Mortarotti Review by: Christian Michael Filardo

It’s strange how the use of color and scale can give such a specific power to an image. In Vittorio Mortarotti’s latest monograph, “The First Day of Good Weather”, we are presented with an abundance of photographs in many different sizes all slightly tinted blue. To me the subtlety of the tint transforms Mortarotti’s images from individual snapshots into a collection of photographs that create a language all their own.

Acting as a shrine to the death of his brother and father, “The First Day of Good Weather”, borrows its title from the order President Truman gave to drop the atomic bomb. All of the images were made in Japan and to me the blue hue that covers Mortarotti’s photographs gives the impression that the sun is being blocked out casting a shadow on the Earth below. Letters between Vittorio’s brother and his Japanese penpal are intermingled between Mortarotti’s photographs. The letters create the feeling of correspondence during wartime.

The images within The First Day of Good Weather don’t let the powerful concept of the book down either. By sequencing rural landscapes, tight street shots, and esoteric nothingness together Mortarotti has created what feels like an apocalyptic last day.

Crushed cars stacked in neat piles.

Lovers caught nuzzling one another in public.

Lizards bask in the sun while Mortarotti gets up close and personal with people and junk.

It feels so close and yet so foreign. Like each moment of existence within the confines of this book are battles in a war being fought about tomorrow. To me this book is a masterpiece. It is obvious Mortarotti is in Japan but it feels like he could be anywhere. Somehow he has found a way to make tragedy feel endlessly relatable. The First Day of Good Weather is the perfect example of what makes the book as an art object special. It reminds us what it means to use the camera as a tool to answer deeper questions. Perhaps revealing the lives of people who could have been and fragments of existence that never were. Altering the way we feel about the color blue permanently.

Luckily we have Italian publisher Skinnerbooxto thank for this luscious contribution to the book world. Lets hope more books can live up to the potential of this perfect bound bliss.

Book: Black Drop Island Photographer: Klara Kallstrom Text: Viktor Johannsson Review by: Marie Claire Bryant

Almost all of the photos are taken in Tokyo at night. At night, when our scope of vision is smaller and less reliable, our surroundings are veiled in darkness. Klara Kallstrom’s 2012 book Blackdrop Island is about being a stranger in an unfamiliar place.

Kallstrom delights in tampering with this “veil” or “blackdrop”. Each snapshot contains some iteration of it, disguising the point. I found the the subject of these photos to be the things that were left out. Rather than asking the obvious what do I see? a viewer of this book will will wonder what am I missing??

A car is covered in a driveway, is it a Jaguar or a Toyota?

A hole in the ground has a fence around it, what’s in the hole?

Two people peer out of a window into darkness, what are they looking at?

omeone kneels to take a photograph, what are they taking the photograph of?

Gates, curtains, fences, traffic cones appear throughout the book as subjects.What is being retained? What is being kept out?

She captures the outside of living spaces and at one point she captures them from birdseye, but rarely takes us inside. She has little opportunity to view the private lives of locals. As a Swedish tourist in Tokyo, Kallstrom is in the dark. It is a typical emotion for a tourist. When in the book Kallstrom takes us inside a living space, it feels strange, there is still so much missing.

Kallstrom makes up for her dearth of information with the double-sided uncut pages, which suggest all the knowledge we are banned from as outsiders.

In the back of the book are 12 poems by Viktor Johannsson. Johannsson’s poems are very lively and fun to read, I will say that I liked them a lot! But they do not remind me of the photographs; the poems are personal while the photographs are detached; they are not vital to the success of the book. The most successful and also critical part of this collaboration is that the poems are kept separate from the body of photos, hence do not attempt to explain. They do not interfere.

Book: Living for Love Photographer: Masara Nakayama Review by: Christian Michael Filardo

A shirtless Japanese man wearing a Suicidal Tendencies hat adorns the cover of Masara Nakayama’s first monograph “Living for Love”. One can’t help but laugh at the anonymous figure’s smirk while diving into Nakayama’s hardcover of nudes and nature.

Subtle and simple Nakayama creates a comfortable environment in which to view nude portraits of people who he seems to know on a personal level. These individuals feel more like friends than models. It looks like Nakayama is using a 35mm camera here and with his sequencing of nudes and organic shots of rivers, flowers, shadows, etc he illustrates his natural understanding of light and photographic composition. Some individuals remain drenched in darkness, others are flashed out, and a few are illuminated by natural light.

Living for Love succeeds when Nakayama’s nudes are the focus and unfortunately they aren’t always the center of attention. Hiccups occur when Nakayama attempts to make Rinko Kawauchi style photographs of everyday landscapes and objects. While not completely incapable of creating a quality photograph of what feels like nothing, it’s not Nakayama’s strongest work. It almost feels like these images crowd Nakayama’s hyper personal nudes and distract from a possibly potent narrative.

In the end this book feels fresh, young, and new. Although Nakayama might misstep here and there it doesn’t feel like what he’s doing is a complete mistake. This is a good book, worth checking out if you are a fan of contemporary Japanese photography. In “Living for Love” we have the perfect example of a young photographer that is still searching for his voice even though he already speaks the language.