© Jaime Permuth, 2023
Day 2 / Private Workshop
July 4th, who will save us?
Destination: Central Park, the great green heart of New York City. Could the park - its meadows, boulders, lush trees and its flock of humanity - help us get a pulse on the mood of the city?
Celebration or lamentation?
Something in between?
Elin Spring wrote a thoughtful and beautifully written review of my YONKEROS exhibition at the New England School of Photography.
One hundred and two years later...
Last Sunday, when I took the photograph on the left, I had an uncanny feeling. Later the realization hit me: I had wandered into the same vantage point as Paul Strand did in 1915 when he gazed out on a group of pedestrians raked by morning light.
I'm working on my first exhibition in Eastern Europe: recent images from Cuba at the Kaunas Photo Festival.
Vilnius and Kaunas were the two most important cities for Jewish life in Lithuania. Before the Holocaust there were more than a quarter million Jews living in the country. Vilnius alone had over 150 synagogues - of which only one was spared destruction. My own family came from Poland and Belarus, neighboring countries to the south.
So on one level, this is a photographic journey. On another, it is a personal and sentimental journey as well. Grateful for the opportunity.
If I can find cheap tix, I'm on a plane to Lithuania next week!
"I like Ralph Gibson and psychedelic rock and roll from the 60s. Oh, and I only shoot film".
This is how fifteen-year-old Mark, from Hong Kong introduced himself to me at the New York Film Academy. NYFA had asked me to mentor him one-on-one for a week. I agreed without really knowing what to expect.
As Mark was taking out a Nikon FM2 from his backpack, I asked him for the title of his favorite Gibson book. Without skipping a beat he replied: The Somnambulist.
Our whole exchange reminded me of that short story from the "Book of Sand" where a young Borges has a conversation with an aging stranger on a park bench overlooking the Charles River.
The stranger turns out to be his older self, sitting next to him across time.
This week on my Instagram account @jaime_permuth I will be posting images from my travels last summer with South Korea's Arirang TV. Each year, Arirang invites eight photographers from around the world to tape two episodes each for their documentary photo and travel series "In Frame". My journey to Korea was simply unforgettable and had many surprises in store for me.
Among the distinguished colleagues who participated in 2014, were two friends which I greatly admire and appreciate, VII's Ron Haviv and Magnum's Eli Reed.
What's in a little black box?
When I returned from Guatemala in mid-March, I had 5000+ new images on my hard drive. After seven weeks of daily editing (5AM to 9AM) I've pared down that number to just under 300 images.
Printed 4x6 inches, the stack fills the box to the brim.
My hope is that I will return from my Artist Residence at FotoVisura with a new edit of 100 shining photographs. Then, I can begin to lay out the book.
The exhibition at Ryugaheon Gallery marked my fifth trip to Seoul in as many years. The gallery itself is known to photographers but not always to a larger audience. It sits tucked away in a little alley that is reached after a fairly labyrinthine walk through the back streets behind the old Imperial Palace.
When you arrive, you enter into a tiny zen garden with gravel underfoot and rough hewn wooden benches. Built in the traditional hannok style, the gallery itself feels more like a modest temple or a forest shrine than an art space per se. Clusters of tiny yellow flowers sprout here and there on its tiled roof. On one side of the garden is a bookstore and café. Beyond that, there’s an office and a workshop. On the other is the entrance to the exhibition area.
Having this show in Seoul changed my relationship with the city in an essential way. It’s hard to describe the feeling of belonging that comes from having your photographs on display and being able to bring friends to visit day after day. It’s like welcoming them into your house. As if you’ve set up residence there. Not only that, but friends bring friends and -before you know it- your circle has expanded dramatically to include all kinds of interesting people.
But of course, the greatest pleasure is seeing the work in a new context and hearing back from local audiences. It was a long journey indeed for the Latin American mechanics to make: not only from Willets Point -but from their countries of origin. Perhaps because of Korea’s Buddhist roots, many people remarked on the passing of the seasons in these photographs and the way the light and the elements redefined the landscape depending on the time of the year. Others compared Willets Point to neighborhoods in Seoul, which have –or perhaps more interestingly once had- a similar feel. One particularly perceptive man noted that the passing of the seasons underscored the useful life of machines and how everything in the world has a cyclical duration.
On two separate occasions, my Korean mother in law organized a large group of friends to come and visit the exhibition. I especially enjoyed these visits because the ladies dressed up in their finest and made a day out of it. They really enjoyed themselves. And as such, they lingered, spoke from the heart and felt free to reminisce. One woman responded to an image of a small stack of tires covered in snow with a childhood memory of her own, remembering the large earthenware jars of kimchi sitting in her mother’s yard during the winter months. Hearing that was a modest epiphany; I felt like the image had translated beautifully and poetically in a most unexpected manner.
This week I borrowed an instructor D800 from New York Film Academy (where I teach) and did a bit of testing with it. This shot was taken at f/2.8 using a Nikon 24-70mm zoom. Normally I prefer to shoot with a prime lens, but we have yet to get some of those in our equipment cage. Overall, I'm really happy with what I've seen: the files are incredibly sharp and I've had no issues with digital aberrations. I'm seriously considering upgrading from my current camera, the D700.
Opening at Ryugaheon Gallery on May 21st, 2013. Curated and organized by Joanne Junga Yang. Can't wait to see the photographs from YONKEROS and the Willets Point Junkyards in such a pristine and traditional Korean architecture.
Had a chance to catch up with Vince Cianni -who took this photograph(s)- over lunch in NYC. Over the years Vince has been a mentor and a very good friend to me and I was glad to break bread together. Midway through our meal we were joined by Graham Mcindoe. We were introduced and as we started talking it dawned on me that Graham and I had actually met about 15 years ago when he used to work for Howard Greenberg Gallery and I was printing for Gilles Peress. Man, did that bring back some memories.
Two images from my series The Completely Visible World are included in the exhibition Transitional Bodies which opens in Washington DC on November 9th.
As per the press release:
'Transitional Bodies / Cuerpos en Transición' presents cutting-edge artists from Latin America, Portugal and Spain that move away from the typical stereotypes and propose provocative, modern vanguard photography. Along those lines, the Iberoamerican Cultural Attachés Association has been participating for the last four years in the annual FotoweekDC Festival, giving the opportunity to photographers in Latin America, the US and Europe to showcase their work in what is a fast changing photography scene. Curator of the exhibition Fabián Goncalves highlights, “Transitional Bodies proposes a glance at different point of views of the Iberoamerican photographic techniques from transition to transformation of the human body. Grouped in different series this exhibition does not intend to represent Iberoamerica, but to express in great part its cultural eclecticism.”
November 09 2012 06:30 PM - December 09 2012 05:00 PM
Former Residence of the Ambassador of Spain , 2801 16th St NW
Washington, DC 20009, Northwest
Gallery Hours: Wed - Fri, 4pm - 8pm / Sat & Sun, 12pm - 5pm (Except Thanksgiving week)
Featuring the works of seventeen Iberoamerican emerging photographers. Curated by Fabián Goncalves. Organized by Iberoamerican Cultural Attachés Association - Committee for FotoweekDC. With the support of IDB Cultural Center.
Admission : contact@spainculture.u
