The Times the other day linked to an excellent photo project, Isa Leshko’s “Elderly Animals”. The Times says,

Ms. Leshko was inspired to carry out her project after spending a year caring for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease and is now in a nursing home. She considered documenting the experience through pictures but soon decided against it. “A number of fine-art photographers have gone that route and produced really powerful work,” she said. “It just didn’t feel like the appropriate response for me. I didn’t think my mother could provide consent, and I wanted to be present as her daughter and caregiver.”

Richard Avedon’s upsetting photos of his sick father come to mind, and Phillip Toledano’s “Days With My Father”, which began as an award-winning website and was published last year as a book.

I’m particularly interested in Leshko’s “Elderly Animals” because it’s a novel subject, and because I typically find animals childlike, and the old animals in her photos are both recognizably old and still cute and innocent.

Photo: August Sander

I trudged to Chelsea through the disgusting rain tonight for a lecture on August Sander and Seydou Keïta at The Walther Collection. Art historians Shelley Rice and Lisa Binder gave a quick, entertaining intro to the two photographers.

August Sander, who worked in Germany in the 1910s and 20s, set out to be a social documentarian, but as Shelley Rice pointed out, his photos have a majesty beyond a mere census-taking. Each archetypal subject—the doctor, the bricklayer, the revolutionary—presents himself to the camera as a representative of his class, and ultimately the German civilization. The farmer or librarian in the photo is practically anonymous, but he trades his personal identity for the force of his whole nation.

Although Sander was constantly on my mind when I made Strangers, I hadn’t seen his original prints before. Old prints are so small! But the tonality of the ancient negatives and papers is astonishing.

Photo: Seydou Keïta

Seydou Keïta was a commercial photographer in Mali in the 1940s and 50s. Only in the last two decades have his portraits been promoted to fine-art status. Lisa Binder delightfully summarized Keïta’s mythos as a “discovered” artist and hinted at the reality behind the myths, though she didn’t have time tonight to give the details. Each time I encounter Keïta I seem to hear the same conversation about the blurry distinctions between European art and African commercial photography, and I hear the same open-ended questions about whether we’re honoring Keïta or in some insidious way re-colonizing him. Regardless, Lisa Binder provided more interesting ideas about Keïta’s subjects’ effortless blending of African tradition and global modernity. The gallery walls displayed recent reprints of his negatives in the contemporary style: high-contrast, clean, and large. A small room on the side showed a handful of Keïta’s original contact prints for his clients. The originals were small, cracked, yellowed, and heart-breakingly intimate.

When I took the “Photographing Communities” class at ICP a few years ago with Dina Kantor, day one was August Sander and Seydou Keïta. If you want to photograph people and their culture, these two photographers are the starting point. To see them juxtaposed in a white Chelsea gallery will make your head spin—it’s worth the trip.

Walther Collection’s essay on Sander and Keïta

Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois.

More Chicago pix on Flickr.

Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

More photos from September of Scott in Chicago.

More Chicago pix on Flickr.

Luca Pizzaroni. Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

I want to sell the remainder of the prints from my solo show at the Lower East Side Visitor Center. All prints are sold framed, 16 inches square for $75. View these prints at the Lower East Side Visitor Center, 54 Orchard St, or in the Flickr set. These prints must sell by Dec 20, 2011! You can pick up your framed print at the Visitor Center, or you can receive the print by mail by January 15th at the latest. Email me: ajdavis@cs.oberlin.edu.

Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

September 17, 2011. Scott in Chicago.

Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

November 7, 2011. Matthew in Union Square.

I’ve only had my Macbook Pro for two years, but the poor thing was a lemon to begin with, and I’ve abused it until it coughs like an old Chevy. I got the latest top-of-the-line laptop to replace it today, and since we were in the neighborhood, the new machine and I went to Yossi Milo Gallery to see Pieter Hugo’s photo show “Permanent Error” before it closes tomorrow.

Pieter Hugo documents a dump in Ghana where destitute laborers melt down old computers and monitors for copper, aluminum, and brass. As I understand the economics, tens of millions of shipping containers come to Europe and the US carrying import goods every year, and since the shipping containers have to return to Africa, China, and the rest of the Third World anyway, it’s extremely cheap to ship our electronic trash back. Thus, it’s profitable (barely) for these Ghanaians to burn our computers for scrap metal, poisoning themselves and their cities in the process.

I read often that I should pay attention to where my electronic trash goes, but nothing has hit home like these photos. This is the peculiar power of images: they trick me into caring. They draw me in with their beauty, and then strike with their sadness. It’s a bait-and-switch that works every time.

There must be another way to employ the poorest people, and there must be another way to recycle our trash. I promise my new Macbook Pro I’ll find it a better graveyard when its time comes.

More photos in “Permanent Error” by Pieter Hugo

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Check out my photo show, titled “Strangers”, at 54 Orchard St. The show opened October 20th and will be on display for about two months.  More info on The Lo-Down.