Photographers on Dirty

[MikeyC]

Originally Posted by kid cue

who do you like besides Araki? i'm really into Daido Moriyama and (more recently) Rinko Kawauchi and that guy who photographs the Tokyo underground tunnels.

moriyama is without question THE photographer i respect most. he and leonard cohen are the only two famous artists that i have ever wanted to meet and just have a talk with. his work in both style as well as content hit so close to my own feeling on many things. i had always been attracted to work that dealt with this sort of helplessly futile view on life ("100 years of solitude" and "on the road" for instance. "on the road" of course being a major source of influence for moriyama himself.) and so seeing moriyamas photographs for the first time (stumbled upon while looking through the japanese work from william klein, who is also a favorite), they just felt instantly familiar to me. sort of "this is what it looks like in my head."

aside from moriyama im a bit all over the place. and it also depends as very few photographers consistantly do work i like. so it is pick and choose.

takuma nakahira is amazing. was in the provoke group with moriyama. was working in the same bure boke style as moriyama was at the time, but eventually began shooting much more color and "regular" pictures. though i really enjoy that work from him as well.

anton corbijn is a big inspiration for me. ive always hoped that hed somehow end up shooting underworld. he would be my personal fav commercial photographer. his lith prints and blue prints are gorgeous.

william klein as earlier stated. the man who sort of kicked off the whole notion of not trying to get sharper clearer images but instead going for the feel of the scene and the energy in it. his new york book is fantastic.

i like a lot of robert franks later work where he began working in film and doing collages of photos and others materials. the book "storylines" is really beautiful if you havent seen it. i think its much more interesting than "the americans."

the native american photos from edward curtis. they have a similar feel to the work of corbijn. he was working with his own methods of printing and the results are really nice.

and then of course "the ballad of sexual dependency" from nan goldin was THE book that made me go from liking photo to becoming obsessed with it. her later works gets a bit blah.

but aside from moriyama i actually think that the writings of leonard cohen inspire me more than photographers do. occasionally they make me want to kill myself too.

Originally Posted by kid cue

how do you see this as being good for photography? i'd love to live there ....

i suppose id boil it down to the place has a huge energy to it. and i think a good deal of that energy comes from the push and pull in the culture. and then simply that theres such a large number of people in the cities. any time you have something like that, for me at least, you cant even put the camera down for more than a few minutes. new york is the same way. every time i go there i come back with a good bit of work.

ive gotten carpel tunnel and no work done today from all the typing on here.