The dark side of fairness creams

Aishwarya and a million other dark girls named after her must all be returning to Fairness, or so the Lux ads are exhorting .

Why does Aishwarya need to return to fairness. She is fair to start with, isn’t that why the million dark babies are named after her.

 We live in a country with such great colour prejudice and hypocrisy to boot. We keep thinking that apartheid is there across the water in deepest dark Africa, but ask any Sudanese or Ethiopian student here what they suffer at the hands of us Indians as dark or maybe one shade lighter. We are awful. Don’t go as far as Ethiopia because that is a continent and world away. Ask any dark woman or person here what they experience and how much more dowry they would have to shell out to attract a male.

Examine the product. Lux is telling you the consumer of soaps and opera that this new soap has sunscreen built in. So what do you do once Ash suckers you in to buying her endorsed brand? Walk around with the lather and soap all over you in the sun to benefit from its sunblock components. It is entirely baffling how the sunblock in the soap can affect you, maybe you the consumer of fairness needs a few answers for a change.

 

Take this a step further, it is a known fact that lighter skins are more prone to skin cancer, melanin and melanoma not withstanding. So if you are dark you have ‘sunblock’ kind of built into your skin, the wondrous evolution and nature programmed you right.  Take the Lux exhortation. It is saying, hello dark is not good, return to fairness (presuming wrongly that you were fair to start with), now with our soap you will become like Aishwarya (who is not returning to fairness since she is fair already), and then to add insult to injury they are saying implicitly that you will become more prone to skin cancer since you are fair now and our sunblock rubbish will protect you. Come on guys give us a break. When will advertising agents start to tell the truth and stop sucking up to clients to use all their skill to sell some product we don’t need.

Simultaneously, serendipitously Benzer is showing a black man, ebony on the beach, the sun in mercilessly baring down on him and the copy is indicating that the forecast is sunny and the Outlook black in Benzer is cool. 

Palmolive show a beautiful dusky, honey coloured backless, bikiniless woman in the sun on the beach, the ad could fool you into thinking it promotes Mauritius or the Seychelles.

 While it may be true that 95 % of women polled think that fair is more beautiful, where do these attitudes come from? There is mythological basis but in a more convincing and contemporary way, the films, the media influence, with the stereotypes. It’s about time we looked at our attitudes with Nietschian hammers.

Photographically the Lux ads have been shot badly, Aishwarya is wearing the same bustier she wore last millennium, she is looking tired, like all the hype and Salman are getting to her. Palmolive is super and Benzer is Rafeeq.

Its time we the consumer demanded some fairness.

Of Ovals and other offices

Bill Clinton is making geometry news these days (oct 2003) drawing ovals and global circles around Iraq. 15 years ago when Reagan occupied that office there was this Star Wars thing where life was imitating the movie. Ronnie hadn’t quite given up his acting career. Scientists were no doubt working around the clock to develop laser guided watch-ya-call it to zap the soviet missiles as they emerged from their silos. It boggles the imagination to think of the dollars allocated for this. This was when there were two superpowers.

 

Today there is one. However it is telling that while there was all this intergalactech war stuff going on in the portals of the pentagon, and while Iraq was being funded, aided and abetted by both the superpowers in its Jihad against Iran (remember the Contras and Watergate), we are being told now that a tea spoon of Anthrax bacillus can kill us a million and ten times over. What kind of iron gates and rolling shutter and naka-bundhi in the sky and sniffer dog and radar this and doppler that do we now need to prevent us from a terrorist act. It begs the question. Who or what is a superpower. Can one person on a mission with a thermos flask full of goop be a superpower?

 

America via ABCNNBCBS,  and the media with all those microphones and TV cameras pushed up every orifice, is now briefing or is it debriefing us the world,  about its justification for a military buildup,  and by the way if we are cursed with memories of the ‘pin point’ accuracy plus or minus 100 km. of the Pershing and those perishing in ‘friendly fire’, we are now being reassured that the new tech of bunker busting, head banging, bio-incinerating missiles will complete what should have been done 10 years ago. Point is that Rambo perpetrating as UNSCOM couldn’t find the bunkers. So maybe then all that concrete searing shit should be unleashed on a Presidential site or two or how about the Baghdad suq, a few concrete structures there give or take a million people. But operation Desert Storm by any other name will check which way El Nino is blowing to make sure that if some botch up happens and Botulin gets released into the atmosphere, the crud will blow away the Kurds and then move into the Taliban occupied areas. The alibi for all this going horribly wrong (for it must) is already being set up. The best case scenario ie. from the American stand point is that they will beat Saddam into ‘submission’ and allow UNSCOM unfettered access which is back to their deal 10 years ago. Worst case scenario, Russia is predicting World War III. Is that Nostradamus tape running, the blue turban or was it saffron?

 

It seems from Trojan times sex and violence and S&M stimulate a psychological synapse, a power nasha. One wonders whether Bill’s secret missile is the zipless fuck.

Book Review – A ViewFinder’s Journey

It is an onerous task to review the work of a fellow photographer and when it is Praful Patel of the Piramal Gallery the task becomes more acute. However Prafulbhai as he is affectionately known may have inadvertently provided an answer with his cover collage of cows, holy and otherwise.

 

Here goes:

 

The first impression when thumbing through this modest book is that it is non pretentious which is high praise in a world of wannabes and plastic reality. It is actually quite a simple book and is one man’s journey through photography, from glassplate to digital is its subtitle. Though digital might be a little misleading. Prafulbhai has seen a lot almost encapsulating and condensing Indian history from Independence till today. Some of the images have impact for sheer documentary value.

The opening page with flag raising man can beg the question who is raising whom. The layout of the two photographs on this page is amusing however the layout throughout the book is crowded where more is more. Pictures bleed one into the other making a nightmare visually, if you are looking for a calm-snuggle-into-your-favourite-wicker-chair-bourbon-evening, to recount a Journey, forget it. There is an onslaught of black without relief not one pin head of white  space where the retina can tarry and recharge its rods and cones. You feel you are in Bhuleshwar during mahashivratri each image with pointy elbows is jostling and competing for space and attention, all sans serif text is in reverse white. You could be in a disco. Somehow you get the feeling that this is far away from what Prafulbhai actually intended.

 

On the subject of bleed, everysingle (sic) image haemorrhages but on page 56 and 57 there is synergy in the transfusion, Marine Drive becomes the Gateway, form and function and content merge serendipitously. The double spread effortlessly takes you from eye level to aerial in one fell swoop, where the total is greater than the sum of its components. This seamlessness tries hard on other pages too with varying degrees of luck. Page 172 and 173 makes a statement on ‘concrete jungle’.

 

 

There are several photographs that should have been edited out, a case in point is photo of Parul on page 68 and all the images of Mitter Bedi notwithstanding the dedication to him on the opening pages. Personal is one thing public domain is another. It is practically impossible for photographers to themselves become their own picture editors. Every photo is precious through the viewfinder, each one loaded with ‘the moment’. It is imperative to bring in an objective pair of scissors.

 

Photo on page 119, Village girl student near a board with barakhadi  is perhaps the most beautiful in the book. The look on the girl’s face as she peers into the preceding page is a fabulous comment on where women are going. This is a strong and gripping image if diluted by layout.

 

Where there is so much fear about the book publishing business having lost out to TV and periodicals and being threatened by the Internet Prafulbhai congratulations on Just Doing It.

Sikh and ye shall find.

Raghu Rai is a photographer of international importance who derives all his nourishment from the land that raised him. From his days at India Today and those remarkable, unforgettable black and white photo features that helped propel IT into the serious content magazine category, his fame is legendary now.

 

His latest book ‘The Sikhs’ along with the redoubtable Kushwant Singh is fresh off the Lustre Press. Roli Books make an impressive large square format documentary on the lions of Punjab.

 

The text has been written authoritatively and with the very readable, simple style that makes Kushwant Singh the icon that he is. It is very clear that the subject is part of KS’s (not to be mistaken for Kamasutra, he writes because a condom for the pen has not been invented yet) blue blood cells. Kushwant Singh weaves his narrative over the history of the Sikhs interlocking its spiritual ideology with the religious rubric. The politics of the Punjab, the dynastic clashes, the fall of the kingdom, the role the Sikhs played during British rule, the Nationalist movement, the Akalis, The Temple and Operation Blue Star. Through reading the text (and its un putdownable) you somehow get to know the author more and how much he loves and admires the people and the land that give him an identity and a voice. He tries to be objective but is any objectivity ever possible? One of the most endearing qualities of Kushwant Singh is his ability to laugh at one and all. There is no malice in the man despite his columns’s claim. There are typically some Sardarji jokes too in the book.

 

But this is largely a Picture Book in gleaming colour fabulously produced, with a clean layout. By any standard it is a beautiful book however, Raghu Rai has to be judged on a standard that he himself sets up and by that exalted benchmark the book falls very short. Raghu Rai has this genius quality of the elements of foreground, background and midground coming together in an almost advertising set up. When you see a Raghu Rai you cant help but be messmerised at how this trained dog and trained cow and trained crow and trained people and sculpted sky and etched tree all come together co ordinated and preordained in the middle of the nowhere.  Or from within the chaos of Chandini Chowk, a pattern, a shape, a form, a canvas emerges. He does this with such uncanny regularity that you would think that he travels with a caravan size prop box and trained extras who pop up like cutouts in the desert. His unique sense of composition leaves you not getting the ‘whole in one’. You need to come back often, mull, savor, get pieces of it till finally the synapses in your head go click and it falls mysteriously in place like a cyberslot machine. The greatest quality of a Raghu Rai is its ability to make you part of the creative process rather than presenting you with a beautiful picture that leaves no doubt as to its origins and destination, a fait accompli. A picture that you ‘get’ at once does not need to be revisited. Raghu Rai’s images have a shadowy, mysterious quality but here he visits his own work like a ghost, appearing sometimes and walking out of his mind at others. The work looks too similar to Rahgubir Singh’s, most of it shot as a observer rather than a participant. Yes if you are a sikh you will definitely want to own this book, but if you are looking to see a Raghu Rai then the book hangs tenuously and it momentarily seems like the plastic credit card is heavier than the considerable book, should you commit the Rs 1975 or not, that act of indecision is where the book loses out. There are books out there that leave no doubt that even if you have to rob your grandmother to own it then shut your eyes and your qualms do it and sit down gently later to explain, and buy your ticket to visit Benares and do Ganga snan too.

The photos on page 43, 51, 54, 75, 77, 80, 81, 83, 84, 92,105 and 115 are purely redoubtable RR and truly marvellous. Some of them do look staged but what the heck, it seems natural and within context. The others are there and have documentary significance, the gaping hole in the golden temple after operation Blue Star is a glaring example, the rest of the images are cold and seem to look a bit tired. The text talks of the diaspora but where are the sikh cabbies and truck drivers? They seem to be on strike. Where is the Sikh Regiment? And the sikhs all over the subcontinent and beyond? Where is Bangra, bangra rap, and hello where is Daler Mehndi and Jaspal Bhatti? Oh they are in the cabs and trucks that are on strike and stranded.

 

Raghu Rai’s style is inimitable though a couple of young photographers try hard, they if they don’t watch out will always be a facsimile. There can be only one Raghu Rai as there is only one Kushwant Singh, but there are many sikhs and thankfully this is not the definitive volume, so take heart. The Sikhs don’t give up their secrets all that easily, maybe they are more democratic in sharing their mystique and wealth than artists and photographers are.

 

 

There is a lesson and a huge one somewhere, Sikhism is a direct reaction against the Hindu caste system, it does occur that if one exchanges  this oppressive social structure for a more egalitarian one or reorganise it to be contemporary then the people of that belief system inherit the earth and the wealth it provides. There are no Sikh beggars, chew on that Yaswant Sinha and Lal Kishan Advani.

The Dream Collector

A long time ago in 1979 I got really lucky. In those years you were more likely to get serendipitous when browsing the book stands near Flora Fountain. There were some genuine beauties you could buy easily on a collegian’s pocket money, that is if you saved up instead of the wada pavs and movies. I was obsessed with books and still am but it gets harder each year with the devaluation of the rupee and printing costs and things going through the roof. Also work is getting slicker and more finished, wonderful print values and superlative form but don’t you get the feeling that ‘content’ is sorely lacking. Everything looks like a mass make over. So Arthur Tress comes across even today as enriched uranium.

 

His early book called The Dream Collector is a documentary, social commentary and artistic rendition of the subliminal, the unconscious, the REM and the John Fowles of the visual world.

 

 

The most wonderful part about Tress and all subsequent work that he has produced is his effortlessness. The Dream Collector is all about children enacting their fantasies, making real the virtual, making surreal the obscure.

 

Tress goes (because ‘went’ is so past tense and ‘done’) about recording on a tape machine, children’s dreams, believing that dreams are telling us about ourselves, that they are an indicator of what we are concealing, putting aside, not dealing with, in other words dreams are playing out for us a script for action to be taken, the past, present and future becoming one homogenous continuum.

 

Arthur Tress ‘renders several dominant themes in his photographs, the child’s expression of fear combined with intuitive curiosity his hands reaching, exploring shape and texture; and the emergence from darkness and light’.  He gets on amazingly well with children which may account for the ease with which they can relate to him. He has a child like quality that they intuitively understand as genuine.

 

The foreword talks about the easy conversational, non threatening style that Arthur Tress has that children trust, that he takes them seriously must throw them off. He is never disparaging or dismissive or patronising. He shows them respect and in return they give him a dream for his collection. He then plays the dream back for them and initiates an enactment in a setting and backdrop that will lend itself to the mood and the sentiment. Then he waits patiently for that flash of inspiration when the child does something spontaneous and beguiling and then he knows he’s collected the rare species in a jam jar.

 

The photographs are rich in photographic skill and temperament.  The images are disturbing in large part due to the illusion becoming tonal and bromide.  Like Fowles it is unnerving to see dreams like butterflies in a display case impaled on a pin. The ambience is largely desolate and lonely.  There are monsters looming out of children’s heads. He employs the diptych in many frame, the top half revealing one reality, the lower half another. If one becomes introspective which is what the book is ultimately seeking, you begin to see yourself as a child might see you, it can be ugly and cause you to stop, think and feel. Each image is a surprise as dreams are generally. Each dream is visually explicit and in black and white. The dreams connect literary to the audio which is connected to the smell to the texture and the sensation, the emotion and the intellect. What dreams are saying are seldom the obvious.

 

Tress is a versatile photographer a couple of his other books are available with homoerotic overtones and generally the macabre. His exhibition called Fantastic Voyage ran at the Piramal gallery for photography in 1995 and was a treat to behold, there was humour and exquisitely crafted prints. Tress is not as well known as he should be. But look out for his work which is loaded always with surprise and adventure.

Sieff – Look forward to this Rear View

There is a very large book available in book shops near you and if it isn’t then it is well worth your while to order it. Here is the good news, its discounted for us in India and makes a, must buy.

 At any price Jeanloup Sieff is well worth the money, when its a retrospective of a 40 year backward glance, in large format, beautifully produced, thick, and ‘on special’ then you have no excuse.

 Jeanloupe Sieff is an icon born of Polish parents in Paris. But Sieff is timeless and a cosmic being, like a quasar or white giant, you can claim to belong to him and simultaneously he IS, unique, by himself, enigmatic and elusive.

 

Sieff’s work in the 50s looks fresh and contemporary even today, there is no patina, it seems to have slid off his Rolliflex this morning, he is not an imitator and simply follows the dictates of his own aesthetic which is always 10 steps ahead of the rest of the world. He is known to be a fashion photographer even when he is not shooting women and clothes. His work is fashion, and fashionable, eminently copy able. He creates style that people follow.

 

When you read the forward, and you must read the forward always in a retrospective, looking back, you get the feeling that this is a man with enormous life experience, a man who has travelled within and without, a man who has tasted and a man who has loved. What is most endearing is his literary je ne sais quoi. An easy walk down the Seine and insane, a glimpse into the artists mind and really his heart.  There is a wonderful humour, self deprecating at times. The captions to the photographs are like haiku, pithily joining the visual with the verbal. Sieff has considerable verbal agility, an ability to make simple the profound. He claims that there is no art only artists and their work.

 

Even when he was hired by Elle and was riding in fast cars with beautiful women he began to tire of what he calls ‘the frills and furbelows of fashion and that trilogy of the superficial: models, couturiers and hairdressers’, so he ‘took the holy orders of photojournalism and joined Magnum which was austere and photographically and politically committed, presided over by the Cartier Bresson and Marc Riboud, Ernst Hass and other warrior-monks’.

 

Jeanloup Sieff is deep. You can’t help but be affected by his work, which he tries hard to distill from the ‘oeuvre’ and edifice. His images have a direct quality that communicate swiftly. However there is always something to return to, a nuance, a twitch, a premonition. You have no choice but to own this book, possess it and let it possess you. It can’t but affect the way you breathe like an asana that gives your lungs more capacity to find oxygen in a polluted world. His images can be caressed visually and for the visually impaired no doubt running your finger tips along the bromide must set you tingling.

 

He pioneered the use of extreme wide angle lenses for fashion and used it with such elan making the distortion work for him. Sieff likes to send no silver into the hypo, all his prints are heavily burnt it, his skies in grey Europe all have a halo, much of his work has a thick, rich quality. All his images look like they have been shot in available light, there is a wonderful juxtapositioning of elements in his photographs. His images have strong graphic quality even in crowded scenarios.

 

‘A Portrait is normally made by representing a face or a bust. The face is the most exposed, visible part of the body, the part most used in social life. It has become a hypocritical mask which can be made to express whatever one wishes; it can laugh in sadness, seem interested when frightfully bored and remain impassive while one seethes with passion.’ This is the reason why Sieff has a fascination for bums, he wishes to one day make a book called ‘Homage to a hundred and twenty seven bottoms, chosen for their plastic, intellectual and moral qualities. He even finds bums that are contemplative’. The french have such a wonderful word for the tush, derrie´re,it is as sophisticated as de´colletage. He thinks that ‘bottoms for the most part are covered and protected, it retains its childish innocence, it faces the past whereas we advance inexorably into the future, it looks back over the way we have come. Some are strictly functional, for sitting or crapping, they represent little interest to Sieff who finds them resembling the faces of their owners. Others seem neutral or neuter and therefore boring. Finally there are the rare, elegant and aristocratic bottoms that transcend their function, become works of art, masterpieces, miracles of nature. They are Romanesque vaults of corporeal architecture. He feels that so unique are these bottoms that they almost deserve to have no arsehole.’

 

The book is wonderfully and intelligently laid out in four sections representing the four decades. The facing pages work fabulously, images are chosen with thought. If you are a budding fashion photographer or a full blown one, if you are a landscape photographer or just a photographer, then you need to study the likes of JeanLoup Sieff and see where the energy, intelligence, creativity and wit come from.

 

Coaxed Basalt.

Discovering Andreas Bitesnich has been a reward in itself. A tiny photograph by him in a publisher’s catalogue set up the scent. The world wide web never ceases to amaze, the most democratic invention since Plato and Aristotle, no middle man, no guru, no wise man who will part with wisdom for a fee. Information unplugged and now with the 500 bandwidth all of you reading this can go whoopie!

 

Though in the business of photographing for only 10 years now, Andreas has not been to photo school nor assisted any photographer, his art is intuitive and self learnt. His work has the maturity and skill of a longer practitioner. His website : http://www.bitesnich.com is a work of beauty in itself and indicative of his dark style not as in gothic but as in minimal light. The wall paper is a somber slate with graphic patches of a lighter grey on which reside his thumbnails. The site is easy to navigate and has plenty of images to stun and admire.

 

He is a native of Vienna and consequently not know of in India as much as American photographers are. He is essentially an advertising photographer but that might in some ways be a derogatory term for Bitesnich’s work is beyond that, it slips carefully into the world of sculpture in two dimensions. If one were to look at the bit depth of his negatives, you’d be sure to find bas relief.

 

The site has photographs on the left which open into their own windows. On the right you can navigate over the links that go : Nudes, Bio, Advertising, Editorial, Travel, Links, Contact and Home. Most visitors will ipso facto click on nudes because this is where Bitesnich’s true passion is. He is almost summoning you to see his soul laid bare, and be in awe at the bodies and the geometry. It is claimed by National Geographic in a recent issue that the human form has never been in better shape, Bitesnich endorses this. Seeing these perfect shapes male and female makes one guilty of eating that extra laddu, it might have quite the opposite effect actually, it could induce bulimia by giving all that peruse a complex, what is that extra gulab jamun going to do?

 

If you dial in Andreas Bitesnich into any search engine, you will be surprised to find the thousands of references the web comes up with, indicating that this man has a following.

Andreas is not without his detractors, his work though fantastic is not that far a departure from Herb Ritts and Schatz and Albert Watson and Helmut Newton, unfortunately that is the shadow he will always risk being under, however there is plenty of emulsion left in this fine art photographer and he should be the guy to watch out for. Like the above mentioned he does travel and his works in Kenya and Cambodia are again congruent with the kind of studio controlled lighting he is famous for. His portraits seem to be urged non invasively out of black basalt rock, though there is no soft focus (thank god) the images are powdery have almost a charcoal quality. One is struck more by the absence of light as made famous by Albert Watson. His nudes dripping in oil could well be an ad for Servo, every intercostal rib is there in anatomical detail glistening like granite.

 

His first book called predictably Nudes and at $ 52 is well worth owning. He has several books out now several of them in colour.

Fetishes

Perhaps the most haunting book in recent times would be Cyclops, by Albert Watson.

 

How do you define a trend setter? By definition it is beyond definition.

 

Watson’s book is like the Ten Commandments. Thou shall not… It is easier to state what it isn’t and hope that the negative in your carrier burns a positive, dense, deep, provocative, intense, inspiring, bromide.

 

This is not a review of a book of Photographs, but a rounded book of ideas, of travel, of anthropology, portraits of celebrities and of common people. It is about fashion as in the verb. It is about documentation and photoessay. It is about presentation and excellence and most importantly it is about passion and fetishes in the non-pejorative sense.

 

Albert Watson makes distinctive images.

He is beyond being a magazine photographer despite being commissioned by Life, Condo Naste´, Time, Italian Vogue, Stern, Newsweek and Rolling Stone. He is an artist with a camera.

 

Every Watson images is an erosion of the darkness, where the subject just peeps through, all the rules of back light and butterfly light and Rembrandt light all vanish, there is darkness and there is the subject. To say that this is a book of black and white images would perhaps be perjury. This is a book of non colour images. Even the printing goes through it’s gamut to come up with a process of CrystalRaster to render the platinum originals as faithfully as possible. 5 layers of dots, two different blacks, two greys and a varnish make the experience dazzling. Gone is the screen and mesh and the dot size, here all the dots are equal but closer or further apart bringing the tonality of the final print close to continuous tone and silver bromide

 

The book originally should have been called Fetishes because that is what it is about. They are all talisman which when rubbed produces genies, rewind experiences and most magically can translate fast forward some of their potency on to others a world and millennia away. There is from Tutankhamen’s Tomb a golden thumb stall, his carbonised glove circa 1323 BC and an Apollo Astronaut’s glove handshake across time and space.  Chairman Mao’s limousine and a crushed frog share space with Christie Turlington, Jonny Depp, Queen Latifah, Uma Thurman, Bobby Brown, Mike Tyson, Clint Eastwood and a whole bunch of ferocious characters from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, the comment is provocative. The seductive, sensuous nude, faces off with a poisonous snake from Marrakesh. The thin line dividing the schizoid self is under the microscope.

The book however is called Cyclops, a veiled hint at the little known fact that Albert Watson has sight in only one eye, it however is single minded and focussed on the job in hand. In the land of the two eyed sighted, the one eyed is king. Watson’s brand new book called Morooc is a continuation of his affair with Morocco and its land and people. He has a home in Marrakesh and spends a great deal of time there.

 

The book has a most revolutionary layout and design. There is no grid lock mercifully and all the books on usage of single major font have been re written. 38 fonts make their way here and used with such great panache and wit. David Carson is a genius, he can make Fuckedskinny (the font, lest you think this is abusive to the anorexic) look sublime, There is no pagination either.

 

This is a book for those wanting or claiming ‘specialisation’, the only specialisation should be left for brain surgeons. For photographers the name of the game should be exploration, discovery, cross pollination.

 

Albert Watson where will you take us next?

Ex Libris

You do not  review Ralph Gibson but let him let you into his view and re spect. The word itself means re-view, to re-examine.

If you have the good fortune to meet Ralph Gibson you will know immediately that you are meeting a creative mind, an arrogant, intellectual man and you will come back entertained and enlightened. Here is Ralph Gibson on Ralph Gibson.

‘Context is everything, take the Venus de Milo, a beautiful nude, but if I were to say, there is still no cure for cancer, you would look at it differently.’

‘A missionary threw head shots of himself before he landed on an island, he then landed and the tribe promptly ate him. Either they thought he was throwing them the menu or they had difficulty reading the photograph. I’m interested in how different cultures see.’

‘I went to Egypt, I went up the Nile one man and came down the Nile another.’

….   man ….   woman, rest room symbols, and it is replicated again and again on the dummies in the show room. That forms recur is no mistake. A culture is a sum total of its shapes. Photographers have to see shapes.  I believe that there is a primal set of shapes, organic shapes are continuous, shapes of people, leaves, a smile considerably extend our boundaries, penetrate as an atom, go deep down to come up with a homunculus.  We are seeing human, am I seeing English?’

Ralph Gibson loves books and his latest called Ex Libris, is a book about  books.  He visited several Libraries, saw the Polyglot Bible in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. His fascination for words and what they mean and what feelings they evoke is only secondary to the way they look. Typography is the pre cursor of photography and its use is tactical. The filigree of Gothic and the rectangularity of Hebrew is for him a ‘departure point’. He is fascinated with shapes. He would do the diptych put two images together, a hand holding a gun, and a woman at the side of another picture, he called the picture the Perfect Future.

 

Much of the book Ex Libris is about placement of two images that are unrelated which when put alongside seem to carry on a spirited argument sometimes or a resplendent laidback smoke. The images themselves form part of the Generative System Theory where to start with there may be a painting, then a poster of the painting and then a photograph of the poster of the painting, each time the meaning changes.

He likes the idea of being incredibly arbitrary of where to put the focus, out of focus, or in focus, just to see where it will take him. On the other hand it would seem contrary that he will stick with one lens and shoot everything at a 3 foot distance till he has understood the language of that particular lens. If he signs a print he takes total responsibility for everything. No happy accidents in the background, he takes all the credit or all the blame. His morality is entirely reflected in his work, not in the amount of money he puts in the ‘poor box’ in church.

He decided early on that his life-time tool would be a Leica and he goes on to say that more great photographs have been made with a Leica and a 50mm lens than any other camera. He says that camera handling is crucial to the process, that it should be second nature and that if you shoot 10 rolls a day for the next 4 months you will automatically become a better photographer. He practices to stay warmed up, just moves film through his camera and if he doesn’t he fears he may lose his camera handling skills.

In his book Ich Bin Nacht (I am the Night) he worked by night in Berlin where he believes the night begins. He still functions as a street photographer after having dropped out of Magnum where he started out as a reporter, except now he does not want to report anything. He feels no great compunction to portray the whole Brandenburg gate, the bridge where they exchanged spies, the night is just a point of departure, it abstracts things and gets rid of a lot of information and it is a higher form of information.

‘I studied photography, learnt it, then serving it you become Photography, can you deny that Cartier Bresson is not photography? The photograph is always more intelligent than the photographer. The medium is always larger. We realise that the photographer is not the photograph, nor the radio, music. The photographer speaks through the photograph.’

His mission is that nothing comes between him and his work, he thought it was a sacrifice, to give up on time with the family, now he thinks to have done anything else would have been a sacrifice.

There are lots of reasons for making a photograph. Take a nude, you can work on minimal flatness, or as erotica, or to experience tonality, or to explore north window light in your studio, it is just an excuse to know more about photography. He says I want to make a Photography, all my points of departure make a sub text. His father is a diplomat his mother an eccentric who thought all her relatives were on the walls of Pompeii. He wants to look as far back as he can as a contemporary living today. Jews carry that around in them, they are Antiquity.

‘When I make a book, I show how I think about my work and photographs, no one will know more about my work than I. Photographs are objects that lie suspended between the present and the past. Mao brought the watch to China and forced it to measure Time, better than burning candles. Photographers have gone one better in ending time.’ A book publisher wanted to cut one of his images in half for the cover. “We will double your money” they said, when he objected. “Ok double it” I said, otherwise it will be bad for my work, but no cutting the image in half. That is staying pure, I am not going to cut my nose to spite my face’.

‘How you feel is how you determine reality, the only thing real is how you feel’ ‘So long as you want to say something, photography will be around to record it’

Even if you are not a photographer you get the goose bumps listening to Ralph Gibson, there is an insouciance, a take it or leave it style, a panache for articulation and you are touched by the wisdom.

Absolut Dilemma Tremens

Is alcohol a drug? How come alcohol has gained social acceptance? How come you aren’t sent to coventry for drinking, or pariah areas or ‘drinking zones’ like smoker’s ignominy these days. Is alcohol consumption more dangerous than cigarette smoking? Why is it that alcohol advertising has been banned, why is it that cigarette smoking has a statutory warning, why is it that alcohol with all its ‘acceptance’ is banned in both print and electronic media. Should you drink and drive? Should you drink at all? Is there a gene that makes one prone to alcoholism? Is prohibition good?

If you have absolute answers to these questions, chances are that you will have absolute opinions about the morality and ethics of advertising alcohol.

Chances are that if your read the stats Ahmedabad in Gandhi’s own land by the Sabarmati is the most drunken city in India.  Chances are that if you pass a shop in Maharashtra with a dirty curtain in its doorway, you will be passing a hooch adda. Chances are that if you are in Bangalore you will be liquored up at franchised pubs that are bought by the liquor barons whose sole aim in life is to find ingenious ways to get you young and hooked like the cocaine and crack creatures who hang around dubious corners. But the barons are smart and suave dudes who like the accepted way of greeting guests with what-will-you-have-to-drink as they walk in, drive agreeably in their Jaguars and their classic cars. They are bootleggers with a difference. Raju bun gaya gentleman.

Chances are that if you feel impassioned about these things and are a photographer offered to enjoy the king of good times in Mauritius and do a campaign with tanned women in micro bikinis you might start to questions your moral strength. But then chances are that you have not chanced upon the Absolut Book.

The Absolut Vodka Advertising Story is one of those phenomenons, from small beginnings, almost mom and pop to a brand with global equity. Every Absolut ad pure creativity, a thought that lends itself to being ripped out of the magazine and hung on your wall. In fact certain booksellers have been known to razor out the photos and sell them for a few extra sheckles. Absolut is pure fashion and we aren’t even talking women and clothes yet. We are talking about milk bottle plain jane with short neck and round shoulders becoming the see through, saucy lass.

In a fickle world where clients change agencies as often as they change their underwear (well) or cell phones, Absolut has remained corked in with their agency TBWA Chiat/Day. Consistently over 15 years they have let the genies out that have now created an absolut watermark on our collective consciousness. The ads are creative, artistic, witty and often times self deprecating.

Though the advertising team knew that Absolut was the best vodka on the market they never made that claim as they found it boring and unimaginative and knew that consumers were tired of being fed hype. They rather let the consumer discover the truth themselves. It is hoped that the advertising fraternity here is taking notes. So began the famous two word copy campaign, the first ad to ever run more than 15 years ago was Absolut Heaven where the bottle sprouts wings. The bottle is always back lit and as Steve Bronstein who has remained the principal photographer over all these years, discovered early on the bottle acts like a large magnifying glass that reversed and magnified everything it came in contact with.

Absolut Magnetism has the bottle literally pulling the text off the adjoining page. The ad creators even wangled an ‘in joke’ concerning ‘Maggie’, in the body copy. Absolut Landmark is a logistical nightmare where the bottle is agrosculpted in a field and aerially photographed. The Absolut Cities was one of the most popular campaigns. Absolut LA has a swimming pool created in the famous shape. Absolut Manahatten is a visual treat. An infra red NASA poster of N.Y was taken, before the days of Photoshop and Central Park was re-landscaped, the mayor not withstanding. Lexington Ave and the East Side were trimmed off and unceremoniously dumped on the studio floor.  Talk about continental drift. Absolut Brooklyn re-engineers the arches.

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Absolut Art is eminently collectable. Famous artists created  their take on the bottle. Absolut Edelmann is wonderfully deceptive it is actually a painting but the 3D photo-realism has most people fooled.

And then on to women and clothes in Absolut Fashion where like the artists total freedom was given to the designers to interpret Absolut in their own way. Absolut Piccone is entirely bewitching. The book goes on and on and on with creativity leaping out of every image. It would be impossible to review every great shot, the book includes shots that did not cut it, Absolut Rejects.

The trouble is that the ads are so clever and so insidious that even if you are one of those who is anti alcohol advertising, you would be hard pressed to refuse doing a campaign should the offer come your way.

Absolut Proof

Absolutely Fickle.