By Anna Carnick

Paolo Ventura, self-portrait

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Aperture is pleased to present the second installment of “SNAPSHOT,” a new series of interviews with photography’s luminaries inspired by the Proust Questionnaire.  This week, we spoke with one of our favorite artists, Paolo Ventura.

The Italian-born, Brooklyn-based photographer builds intricate, miniature sets from found objects (often flea market finds) and shoots them to appear life-size, creating haunting, narrative series. “Venice 1943,” an excerpt from his new series L’Automa, is featured in the latest issue of Aperture magazine. Ventura is also included in the new Aperture-Library of Congress co-publication, Photographic Memory: The Album in the Age of Photography, which is the subject of tomorrow’s panel discussion at the Aperture Gallery.

Ventura’s work is presently on display in the Italian national pavilion at the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale. He is also part of Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities, on view now through September at the Museum of Art and Design, NYC.

AC: What is your present state of mind?
PV: Very content. I’m under a pergola of grapes that are just starting to emerge.

How do you describe your personality?
Shy.

What do you think is your greatest strength?
My imagination.

What is your definition of beauty?
A farmhouse in Tuscany during the twenties or thirties.

Name your greatest hero or heroine.
When I was little, Tin Tin. When I was a teenager, the Corto Maltese.  And now I’m too cynical to have a hero.

What do you believe is your greatest achievement as an artist so far?
My most recent show [L'Automa] at the Museo Fortuny in Venice. It has always been one of my favorite museums.

What is the greatest challenge you’ve faced as an artist?
Dealing with gallerists.

Your greatest personal achievement?
Becoming a father.

What is the biggest life lesson you’ve learned so far?
I’ve always been against school. “life lesson” sounds too scholastic for me. I’m not sure life teaches you lessons.

If you weren’t a photographer, what would you be?
A police detective.

Who is your favorite artist, of any genre?
Piero della Francesca. I just saw the Madonna del Parto in Monterchi and it was stunning.

What is your favorite photograph?
A photograph by Ernst Haas. It’s an image of the return of the German veterans from a Russian gulag in the early fifties, and among the crowd there is a woman showing a photograph of her son to these returning veterans. It is communicative, direct, deep, strong. It challenges you—makes you think. It’s what photography can be when it’s really good. It’s also aesthetically nice to look at.

Name a person—living or dead—you’d really like to meet.
Lee Miller.

Do you have a mentor?
My wife, Kim.

The natural talent you wish you’d been born with?
To play music.

For what fault do you have the most tolerance?
I have a twin: I spent nine months sharing a tiny space, so I’m very tolerant of other people.

Your favorite motto?
Ite missa est. (Go—the mass is over.)

© Joel Sternfeld, A Railroad Artifact, 30th St, May 2000
Section 2 of New York City’s High Line is now open and there’s an entrance on West 28th Street, just around the corner from Aperture Gallery and Bookstore on 27th St. Wednesday, June 8th was the first full day that the new section was open to the public with summer hours from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm.

At West 18th Street check out Joel Sternfeld’s A Railroad Artifact, 30th St, May 2000 the first work in Sternfeld’s project Landscape with Path, which documented the High Line before it was converted. This image, which celebrates the transformation of the High Line into an urban walkway, can be seen on a large 25-by-75 foot billboard. Sternfeld has invited two other artists, Robert Adams and Darren Almond, to pick up where he left off and create new work . Adams and Almond’s work will be exhibited on the same billboard in August and October respectively.

Another Joel Sternfeld project, Oxbow Archive, that meditates on seasonality in the age of climate change, was featured in Aperture magazine 192.

Penelope Umbrico (photographs) offers a radical reinterpretation of everyday consumer and vernacular images. As the artist describes, she works “within the virtual world of consumer marketing and social media, traveling through the relentless flow of seductive images, objects, and information that surrounds us, searching for decisive moments—but in these worlds, decisive moments are cultural absurdities.”

Join us in celebrating the first monograph of artist Penelope Umbrico along with a reading by poet Rob Fitterman and a conversation with Virginia Rutledge, Vice President and General Counsel of Creative Commons.

Wednesday, June 15, 6:30 pm
FREE

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th Fl
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Click here to purchase the book Penelope Umbrico (photographs).

Join Verna Curtis, curator of photography in the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress; photographer Duane Michals, as well as Aperture Editor Denise Wolff to discuss the illustrated history of a mode of presentation that became an art form in itself—a history that has seen radical shifts in the role of handmade artists’ objects. This panel takes place on the occasion of the release of Photographic Memory: The Album in the Age of Photography which traces the rise of the album from the turn of the century to the present day, showcasing some of the most important examples in the history of the medium, as collected by the Library of Congress.

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore

Tuesday, June 14, 6:30 pm

Free

Click here to purchase the book Photographic Memory: The Album in the Age of Photography

In this clip, Finnish photographer Sanna Kannisto speaks about her experience working with biologists in the rainforests of Latin America and the different series’ she developed in the exhibition and accompanying monograph, Fieldwork.

This edited excerpt is from the artist talk with Jason Houston, picture editor of Orion magazine which took place on Monday, April 25, 2011 at Aperture Gallery.

The photographs in Fieldwork explores the dialectics of nature and culture in both artistic and scientific contexts. Since 1997, Kannisto has spent several months per year living alongside biologists in the rainforests of Latin America. Adopting elements of her companions’ scientific methods, she developed her own form of visual research, extending her depictions of flora and fauna beyond the confines of the natural sciences.

View the talk in full here:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

The exhibition Fieldwork is currently on view at Aperture through June 23.

Click here to purchase the book of the exhibition Fieldwork.

Click here to purchase the limited-Edition Portfolio by Sanna Kannisto.

By Anna Carnick

Illuminance by Rinko Kawauchi

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Rinko Kawauchi’s photographs celebrate the tiny gestures and unexpected patterns of everyday life. Known for her dreamlike yet unflinching aesthetic, the Tokyo-based artist explores the extraordinary in the mundane, championing the translucent beauty of life’s fleeting moments.

This past month, Kawauchi debuted Illuminance, her twelfth book and her first to be published outside of Japan, as well as an exhibition by the same name at the Gallery at Hermès. Drawn from fifteen years of work, this collection of previously unpublished images continues Kawauchi’s exploration of the fundamental life cycles and the world’s often overlooked wonders.

Amid all the excitement, Ms. Kawauchi sat down to answer a few of our questions.

AC: What first drew you to photography, and what about the medium keeps you engaged?
RK: I just like to think about our life and world through photography. It is the best method for me.

What type of camera(s) do you use?
Rolleiflex and Canon 5D. I just feel a good match with them. Also, they’re not too heavy.

Your work is so ethereal, connected by threads of seemingly random yet repetitive patterns. When you step out into the world to shoot, what are you looking for?
I’m looking for something to touch our subconscious.

What motivates you thematically as an artist?
My works are always meant to reveal evidence of life—such as the cycles, for example. This is what I need to live, so I would say that is my theme.

You have an extensive list of book titles under your belt now. Is there something specific you love about the book format, as opposed to other mediums?
I’ve just really loved the book format more than [any] others since I was small.

Lyrical, visual associations often structure your books. In Illuminance, for example, a circular child’s toy lies opposite a wall of spiraling graffiti, and an elongated spider stands opposite a lacy canopy of trees. How would you describe your process of image selection and composition?
It is really hard to explain it. I just follow my instincts—for shooting as well. I just would like to see something in the middle.

When determining a book’s composition, how do you maintain an emotional or narrative flow without becoming overly stiff or structured?
One image can be independently successful, but I believe that another, new perspective can be borne by connecting images to images, making a sequence of images.

Illuminance: how would you describe the series in your own words?
My obsession itself.

How was the title chosen?
As a metaphor for our life, in which we have different point of views. There are many ways to see our world.

Your exhibition opened recently at the Gallery at Hermès as well. Can you speak to the differences for an artist between book and exhibition presentation?
Making a book is more personal. Having an exhibition is a collaboration with a place, a space (Hermès, in this case).

For you, what is the biggest difference between Illuminance and your earlier books or series?
Time. It has been ten years since I published my first books.

How do you see yourself evolving as an artist?
I just would like to progress as an artist, as a human being with my work.

Thank you!

Illuminance is available now through Aperture.

The Illuminance exhibition is at the Gallery at Hermès now through July 16^th.
691 Madison Avenue, Fourth Floor, New York, NY, (212) 751-3181
Gallery open Monday–Saturday, 10:00 am–6:00 pm.

Artist profile:
Rinko Kawauchi (born in Shiga, Japan, 1972) studied graphic design and photography at Seian Junior College of Art and Design. Among her awards and accolades are the 1997 Grand Prix Prize at the Guardian Garden’s 9th Hitotsubo Exhibition, the 27th Ihei Kimura Photography Award in 2002, and the 2009 International Center of Photography Infinity Award in Art. She has had solo exhibitions at Fondation Cartier, Paris; Photographers’ Gallery, London; Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan; Hasselblad Center, Göteborg, Sweden; and Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo, among other international venues. Kawauchi lives and works in Tokyo.

On June 6, 1968, in the midst of his campaign for president, Robert F. Kennedy died from an assassin’s bullet. Two days later, on June 8, after a funeral mass in New York City, his casket was placed on a special train bound for Arlington National Cemetery. A journey that should have taken hours took all day, as thousands of Americans lined the 225 miles of track in a spontaneous outpouring of grief. Photographer Paul Fusco was on the train, and ended up taking more than a thousand pictures from his window. These images can be seen in the Aperture publication Paul Fusco: RFK.

Now, on the 43rd anniversary of the event, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Stoddart and HBO brig Fusco’s images to life. Told by those who appeared in Fusco’s images as they stood on the tracks 43 years ago, One Thousand Pictures: R.F.K’s Last Journey chronicles the complex impact of Kennedy’s assassination on the country.

Aperture is honored to host a panel discussion featuring Magnum photographer Paul Fusco, filmmaker Jennifer Stoddart, and gallertist James Danziger to discuss the images and their ongoing impact.

In 2008 Aperture published Paul Fusco: RFK during the fortieth anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in Los Angeles while campaigning for the presidential nomination, is the long-awaited follow-up to Fusco’s acclaimed RFK Funeral Train, a body of work heralded as a contemporary classic. This historical new publication features over seventy never-before-seen images, many selected from the untapped treasure trove of slides that comprise the Library of Congress’s Look Magazine Photograph Collection.

Paul Fusco a member of Magnum Photos since 1974, began his career photographing for the U.S. Signal Core during the Korean War. He studied photojournalism at Ohio University and his work has been widely published and exhibited, including exhibitions at the Photographers’ Gallery, London, and the International Festival of Photojournalism, Perpignan, France.

Monday, June 6, 6:30 pm

FREE

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
New York

Exclusive film debut on HBO2:
Wednesday, June 8, 8:00 pm.

Click here for more details about the event.

Click here to purchase a limited edition print by Paul Fusco.

Interview by Anna Carnick

Alex Webb, self portrait in Hong Kong while on press for The Suffering of Light.

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Aperture is pleased to introduce “SNAPSHOT,” a new series of interviews with photography’s luminaries, inspired by the Proust Questionnaire. For our series debut, we spoke with the always thoughtful, ever-surprising Alex Webb.

Webb’s latest photography collection, The Suffering of Light: Thirty Years of Photographs by Alex Webb, is available now through Aperture.

AC: How do you describe your personality?
AW: Obsessive, persistent––maybe even Sisyphean––but with a sense of humor.

What is your idea of happiness?
I suspect pure happiness is only attainable for brief periods.  Creative fulfillment, however, seems like a more sustainable goal––taking the work one believes in to its ultimate end.

What do you believe is your greatest achievement as an artist so far?
If I’ve made some sort of contribution to photography––and that’s not for me to say––I think it’s about having discovered a way of working in intense color in the tropics with an eye towards the enigmatic, the unexpected, and the sometimes paradoxical.

I also think that Rebecca Norris Webb and I have made a small but unique contribution to the history of photographic collaborations with the Violet Isle project, a project which created a more complicated portrait of the island––and its people and animals––than either of our individual visions could have done alone.

If you weren’t a photographer, what would you be?
Perhaps a novelist, though I am quite sure that I would have failed miserably at it.  I think I need the immediacy of the experience of the world for inspiration.  I think I do much better walking the streets and responding with a camera than staring at a blank sheet of paper in a room.

Who is your favorite artist, of any genre?
Blues is my favorite kind of music, and I love Buddy Guy’s music––though I think Stevie Ray Vaughn’s version of Little Wing is pretty special . . .

What is your favorite photograph?
I have a lot of favorite photographs, but I’ll mention one that has lingered in my mind for many years: Robert Frank’s picture of the back of a hearse-like vehicle in London.  I love the open-ended questions that Frank’s photograph poses:  Is that a hearse? Where exactly is that child in the fog running––and why?

The last book you really enjoyed?
I recently read Vargas Llosa’s The Way to Paradise, a novel that interweaves the lives of Flora Tristan, a nineteenth century social activist, and her grandson, the painter Paul Gauguin.  The depiction of the latter is particularly compelling.

Name a person—living or dead—you’d really like to meet.
I wouldn’t even know where to begin. . . . I suppose, if I spoke Russian, I would have liked to have met Tolstoy–especially on his estate.

What qualities do you appreciate most in friends?
I think probably a good-natured sense of humor, especially the ability to laugh at yourself.

Your favorite motto?
I love the following from the sculptor Henry Moore, from late in his life:

The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.

Anna Carnick is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. Previously the editor of both Graphis Inc. and Clear Magazine, she has been an Aperture editor since 2010. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Style Magazine (The Moment), Photo District News (PDN), PopPhoto.com, Dazed & Confused, Casa Vogue, Dwell.com, Coolhunting.com, and others.