LUCAS BLALOCK

2. I am ‘here’ because I read Moby-Dick in 2007 and then—as a middling young, near 30, white North Carolinian, at odds with my body, psychically askew, still working in a restaurant, and trying to get out of a situation I felt I was never really meant to be in—I almost immediately moved back to New York from the US South.

I am ‘here’ because I loved that book, which surprised me. And I warmed up to the coincidence that photography had been invented not long before Moby-Dick was written. It kind of stopped me flat, and made me think about this time of immense shift and how the ascendency of photography had changed the world. It recontextualized what I was doing with a camera and tied it more deeply in to other structures—my experience as an American, and as my parents’ kid—and I thought maybe I’d been thinking about this photography thing all wrong, giving it short shrift, not taking as seriously as I might its contribution to our fundamental condition.

I am ‘here’ because it became undeniably evident to me that photography has been a central player in the world since then. Vilhelm Flusser writes in Towards a Philosophy of Photography that there are only two real turning points in human history— the invention of linear language, the basic building block of historical understanding, in the second century and the invention of the technical image, which mystifies historical thinking, in 1839. Photography has become a, if not the, lingua franca of the world I live in. The invention of photography and The Whale marked similar transitions into the modern. Ishmael’s world and ours became very different by the time they were done.

From Why must the mounted messenger be mounted? by Lucas Blalock. Order it here.

TRAVIS DIEHL

The Dove of Criticism

At drinks after an off-off-Broadway play with the playwright and director, the conversation turned to the critics. So-and-so from New York Magazine had been in the audience that night. The New Yorker critic had canceled. The New York Times piece was out already. The playwright felt the review had been blasé, lukewarm at best—and since this was his first play produced after eighteen months in COVID-19’s grip, lukewarm felt downright icy. The director agreed, and said that something was missing in all of the theater reviews in that day’s paper, namely any nod whatsoever to the collective ordeal that we culturati, conversing in a heated plywood box built on a Brooklyn curb, felt was more or less over. Now, business as usual felt forced—critics could see their shows and write their reviews—and the bland reception of that fact called into question whether critics were glad to have survived.

Granted, good criticism is contemporary. But is it the critic’s job, post-COVID, to shunt every minor work into the pandemic’s frame? In the theatre world, a positive review in the Times drives a theater production’s ticket sales, and it makes sense that artists might expect critics to bow in the direction of their symbiosis. But visual art criticism is different. Here, art collectors take their picks on a private plane, shielded from casual visitors and critics alike, and insulated from the effects of reviews—in fact, any review, good or bad, blasé or raving, is more or less a notice, only a weak variable in the investment calculus of “buzz.” And anyway, most reviews publish after the show has closed.

Will there be art during the pandemic? Yes: there will be art about the pandemic. But the best COVID-era shows I’ve seen haven’t named the virus, which, after all, is only one more embroidery on the pattern of regular traumas. I’m glad to be writing reviews again. I never really stopped. Meanwhile, by summer of 2020, galleries large and small in Los Angeles and New York had lost no time banding together to build online “platforms”—Gallery Platform LA, sponsored by a bank; and simply Platform, underwritten by a megagallery. For once, even the cool galleries posted their prices. These websites are rafts on the sea of time, maybe; not stages so much as desperate efforts to survive the latest wreck. Also, as they float on, tacit acknowledgements that the waters won’t recede any time soon. Oh, but the dove of criticism carries yet its olive branch, pointy end down, eyes on the rainbow.

To mark the re-release of this popular title—with two additional contributions—we have republished this text by Travis Diehl.

HILDE HONERUD

Auction for Gaza !

We are pleased to announce that Hilde Honerud is offering this work from the 2009 series ‘What do you want to be when you grow up? ’for a joint auction to help the organisation Doctors without Borders which works with the people of Gaza.

We included this picture in our second issue, the series showing Palestinian children in Ramallah. Susanne Østby Sæther wrote this on the work in 2010: 'The children are photographed frontally and outdoord … in one of the few green areas on the outskirts of the city. The portraits show the children in motion, neatly dressed in casual clothes, often smiling … It is as if they were photographed before or after the actual portrait. In recent decades, the portrait genre in photography has been characterised by a neutral, registering gaze on the subject. By breaking with this expression, Honerud's images reveal an intimacy between photographer and sitter. The encounter between them is not primarily photographic, but the result of a relationship over time. The title suggests a future perspective and emphasises the closeness between the sitters and the viewer.’

The title of the work is inspired by the words of Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who on several occasions has described how he often asks children what they want to be when they grow up. The children often answer that they want to be doctors, journalists and businessmen. 'If they lose hope, I'm afraid they will answer that they want to be a soldier, a member of the military, a terrorist or an extremist.’ (from K7 Bulletin).

Instead of our usual riso prints, we are offering this work framed. Analog 4x5, inkjet print, mounted on capa. 121,5 x 95 cm. (With frame* 127x100 cm) 5+2 ap.

* There is a small dent on the frame.