Sketchbook Prompt Four

Prompt: Above is a series created by Eric Tabuchi. After looking at the imagery, read the following commentary. Tabuchi's series has been compared to the famous work of Ed Ruscha entitled "Twentysix Gasoline Stations." After you spend some time studying the work of Tabuchi thoroughly, research Ruscha's work on the internet and compare and contrast the two artists' perspectives.

Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations
photographs by Eric Tabuchi

French photographer Eric Tabuchi has created a modern day reprise of Ed Ruscha's ground-breaking artist's book from 1963, Twentysix Gasoline Stations. Tabuchi has published a boxed set of 26 oversized postcard-like prints of photos he's taken between 2002 and 2008. Tabuchi's work captures abandoned, rusting, toxic-leaking architectural ruins that blight the landscape and roadscapes of France. In a spirit very much akin to Ruscha's, Tabuchi photographed these abandoned gasoline stations in a flat, objective style, showing them just as plainly as they exist. If there is a moral argument to the story, Tabuchi leaves it to the viewer to decide. Ruscha talked about his own work in an interview with Bernard Brunon, in the book Leave any Information at the Signal: In the early 1950s I was awakened by the photographs of Walker Evans and the movies of John Ford, especially Grapes of Wrath where the poor “Okies” (mostly farmers whose land dried up) go to California with mattresses on their cars rather than stay in Oklahoma and starve. I faced a sort of black-and-white cinematic emotional identity crisis myself in this respect—sort of a showdown with myself—a little like trading dust for oranges. On the way to California I discovered the importance of gas stations. They are like trees because they are there. They were not chosen because they were pop-like but because they have angles, colors, and shapes, like trees. They were just there, so they were not in my visual focus because they were supposed to be social-nerve endings.

Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations is a nice follow-on to Tabuchi's previously published series, also from the highways of France, called Alphabet Truck. Both series seem to reference the history of artists' books, and typological studies like the Bechers', and some kind of hybrid salute to road movies. — Jim Casper

Sketchbook Prompt Three

Prompt: Above you have viewed the work of Scarlett Coten. What are your reactions to the work? Do you find the series interesting? Why or why not? What is going on in the imagery? Choose the image that you find most interesting to write about in more depth. Why is that particular image striking to you? Label your description so that others can refer to your chosen piece. The top image is one, the second is two, and so on. After writing your initial reactions, read the commentary below. Has your opinion of the work changed after gaining more information about the work? Why or why not?

Still Alive
photographs and text by Scarlett Coten

It’s six in the morning and in this month of February I’m crossing a border on foot for the first time! It gives me a real sense of adventure. I leave Taba in a crowded taxi, radio cassette playing in the background, and let myself be carried away, totally alert, toward the unknown. A desert road leads to the water, circled to the west by the mountains of South Sinai. Now and then, a few huts lie flattened on a pure sky, facing Saudi Arabia some miles away. Only a ship traveling to Jordan separates sea from sky. Outside, a narrow strip of beach, men in robes and kefieh, some camels, a huge wooden porch opening onto a horizon of sand. The Red Sea is turquoise, a light bulb swings over a pool table, the wind carries the smell of the sea and songs of love drift through the open windows. The end of the line: Tarabin, a small coastal village. Aïd, the driver, tells me that he is Bedouin and my curiosity is aroused. I accept his invitation and settle in one of their homes, a few kilometers away in the lone hut at the edge of the water. Friends and acquaintances appear, some speak a few words of English, in the evening they grill beautiful fish and invite me around the fire. Two men, in passing, ask me to accompany them to their village, a day’s journey away, in the middle of the desert. They are cheerful and considerate, proud to reveal their world to me. The next day wedged between them on the seat of a bone-shaking pick-up, the crossing takes my breath away. The village is a collection of scattered houses, arranged without apparent logic. Low, rectangular, with corrugated iron roofs and outside courtyards. A few electric poles. No cafeteria or bus station, not even a store. Here, you’re invited – or you are lost. I feel a thrill at the idea of being so deprived of my free will. But the welcome is amazing. Women lightly touch the men’s inclined foreheads and then greet me with a hand placed quickly over the heart. Night falls, in a few moments, a piece of oilcloth on the sand, a shared dish of rice and lamb, a cup passes around the gathering, we’re surrounded by a few men who have joined us and who speak a language that I do not understand, I feel at my ease, and happy. This is the beginning of a long history of love between these people and me, between this country and me. "56,000 miles of nothing" wrote Loti, the Khala, this empty country will become my Eden, my second family. Later I will travel this desert from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Gulf of Suez, from Rafah to Dahab, from Abu-Zenima to Naqhl, from Sarabit to Ras Abu Galum. Day after day I photograph my journey. What happens, what surrounds me, those I meet. My backdrops are the desert, our travels, stopovers. My breadcrumb trail is these. I photograph those who invite me to, those who ask me to, all those who pose. They are at the heart of this project. Gestures, laughter replace speech. The time is different, the people too. The summer is hot. From one shadow to another, we inhale every current of air, every wave of wind. I no longer know which day it is, we live in the present. Photography is a rarity for them and my camera never leaves them indifferent. A joyous complicity develops. The men joke in lascivious poses, the women make their black veils, embroidered with flashing pearls, fly. The generator runs for a few hours a day, the sheikh has a television satellite dish, installed under the stars. Everybody benefits, a bare light bulb flickers over the screen, we switch channels: football, live concerts from Arabia, Egyptian melodrama, CNN, we laugh. Some have never seen a foreigner, they demand my presence. Faced with so much novelty, surprise, kindness, I fall into the rhythm, I dissolve. I gain the trust of women, who show me their private areas. In their bright dresses, between a heart-shaped clock and a stylized palm tree on the wall, the Bedouin pose with all the seriousness and attention that a new experience requires. They smoke, raising their veils with one hand. I love these cheerful, curious people, who agree to pose. With delight. So, between reality and fiction, I photograph the inward journey, I'm witness to my experience, following the thread of my inspiration, where play and mise en scène bring us together, beyond our own cultures, for a moment of shared happiness. At each reunion, I am welcomed by these words: "still alive! " These photographs are the illustration of the humor, the enthusiasm, and the modernity of an unknown people. Forgotten, threatened, but alive. – Scarlett Coten

Sketchbook Prompt Two

Prompt: Above you have viewed the work of Adam Panczuk. What are your reactions to the work? Do you find the series interesting? Why or why not? What is going on in the imagery? What are the individuals within the series trying to convey to their viewers? Choose the image that you find most interesting and write a synopsis of what you think happened the day in which that particular image was shot. Label your description so that others can refer to your chosen piece. The top image is one, the second is two, and so on.

After writing your initial reactions, read the commentary below. Has your opinion of the work changed after gaining more information about the work? Why or why not?


Actors

photographs by
Adam Panczuk

Adam Panczuk is working on a project depicting the transformation of a Polish village. His focus is on the relationship between human beings and nature, on the essence of humanity in relation to the earth and the seasons, and on passing away and birth as inseparable elements.

The Actors series shows amateur actors from the folk theater company ”Czeladonka" based in Lubenka (near the border of Poland and Belarus). They perform scenes based on old customs and rituals passed down through generations. The actors are farmers, who work in the fields during the day, only working on the plays in the evening.

Often a show is performed by a whole family – sometimes three generations of actors take part in a single performance. The plays are staged outdoors in different parts of the village. The audience follows the actors as they move along with their stage. In the end, the actors and the spectators join together for a feast.

Sketchbook Prompt One

Prompt: Above you have viewed the artwork of Andrzej Kramarz. What are your instant reactions to the series? What do these images represent to you? Choose one of the images and describe the life of the person who you think would own the objects displayed. Number your selection so that others can reference the piece you are writing about. The top image is one, second one is two and so on. After writing this initial reflection read the commentary below. After reading the perspective of the artist, does your opinion of the work change? Why or why not.

Rzeczy
(Things)

photographs by
Andrzej Kramarz
text by
Dariusz Czaja

The displays are arranged on the ground, on newspapers, cartons, strips of foil, and sheets of various colours. The objects are densely packed into the displays, lying one on top of the other, as if following the trends of horror vacui seen in folk art.

The items are for the most part old, obsolete, sometimes defunct, tacky, and of little worth, if any. Just some used and worn-out trash, desolate objects which look as if they've been pulled out of a dumpster and displayed only in pieces. In a word: that, which is left of a previous life; that, which used to live, now leads a life after life, sometimes an imagined existence. The lens of the photographer dives into this trivial space dimension with a definite fascination, and records with sensitivity these fragile remainders of daily life, searching for traces of their (non)existence.

There are so many different worlds, with every one having its unique and individual atmosphere: there is no point trying to resist the forces emanating from this junk store. Knives, blades, spoons, forks, tweezers, candlesticks and holders; a kettle, fruit bowl, decorative plate, a cleaver, machete, metal cross, stoup; a coffee grinder, an eyepiece, alarm clock; a wall-hanger, a padlock with a key stuck inside, weights, clothes brushes ... rubber dolls, medals, meat grinders, a seed extractor, clock faces and various glass panels, watch glasses; springs, mechanisms ... holy figures made of porcelain, mobile phone chargers; a children's' bike, a pipe, wooden angels, computer parts ...

And this is only a fragment of the archipelago of curious objects. When we start labelling them, we quickly notice that their names bear witness to a lesson of forgotten language (siphon, vinyl, stoup, mechanism...). This stocktaking which the photographer has recorded allows us to see the object at our leisure, without haste.

What reigns here is a world which has passed on: either not so long ago (communism) or a few decades earlier (the war, the inter war years) It does not really matter where we place the border, beyond which we speak of "the past", "antiquity", or use terms such as "out of date". What is important is that these items belong to a warm and tangible "today". After all it's not a CD: all these rubber dolls, corkscrews from the times of the People's Republic of Poland, relief carvings of "our" pope or Marshal Pilsudski, glass and crystal ware of varied authorship, all these things are emblematic of this world and the essence of its reality.