Text by Gemma Padley
"There is a series of photographs on Bela Borsodi’s website that shows a model lovingly clutching and caressing items such as a handbag and boot in all manner of sensual bordering on erotic ways. Replace the accessories with a plant, switch the images to black and white and you’ll begin to understand the thinking behind the Austrian-born photographer’s latest series, Phytophile (literally ‘a lover of plants’), recently published as a zine by Dashwood Books."...
read more about Phytophile by Bela Borsodi featured in Another Man
By Miwa Susuda
"1983年に日本の飲食会社の駐在員としてアメリカに赴任後、写真家へ転身したユニークなバックグランドを持つ日本人作家の写真集です。本作は、今やおしゃれなファッション・ブティックやレストラン、アップルストアが立ち並び、ニューヨーカーはのみならず多くの観光客で賑わう、ミートパッキング・エリアにたむろする売春婦を1990年代初頭に撮影したものです。90年代のこの地区は、人気が少なくかなり危険な雰囲気であったといいます。実は『West Side Rendezvous』は、処女作として、すでに2011年に「WILD LIFE PRESS」より刊行されましたが、前作が男娼のみを収めた写真集であるのに対し、本作は未発表の売春婦のみを含めた写真集として多くの注目が集まっています。聞くに忍びないほど悲惨な過去を持ち、他人を簡単には信用しない娼婦たちとコミュニケーションを図りながらの撮影は想像を絶するほど難しかったと内藤は語ります。その上、特に内藤がこだわったのは、通りに佇む姿だけでなく、裸のポートレイトであったため、撮影は困難を極め、スムーズに運ぶことなどありえませんでした。体を売ることを商売にするとは、まさに裸である彼女たちを捉えなければ、そのひとの全てを捉えられないと感じた内藤は、2年の歳月をかけて遂行していきました。内藤が写真家として身を固めることに決心した背景には、日本からの雑誌社のコーディネイターとして89年から働いていた際の経験が大きいと振り返ります。日本からのトップクラスの写真家の仕事を目の当たりにして写真家になることの意思を固めたのは、写真家・上田義彦、蓮井幹生や高梨豊の妥協なきこだわりと、集中力に圧巻されたためでした。肌の色も育ちもまったく違う娼婦を前に、果敢にカメラを握る内藤を支えたのは、日本の大作家たちの魂だったに違いないでしょう。"
read more about Katsu Naito Special Edition featured in VOSTOK
The Austrian photographer Bela Borsodi grew up in a family of artists, and he naturally absorbed their creativity and artistic sensibility, which had an impact on his own life path. He came to New York in the early 1990s, ended up staying, and has made a successful career in fashion photography, creating still lifes that playfully challenge our perception. His images cleverly bring together reality and imagination, often incorporating optical illusions and constantly exploring and posing questions. Borsodi often builds the sets for his photo shoots from scratch, saying that they are “an integral part of his imagery and conceptual process.”...
read more about Phytophile by Bela Borsodi featured in Collector Daily
By Sarah Nechamkin
"Once upon a time, in the disco ball-refracted distant past of 1980, a girl from Oregon headed to New York City with dreams of bumping elbows with Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Her wish came true — and with flying colors. She would soon become an advertising associate and later, an associate publisher, of Interview Magazine, then under Warhol’s watchful, and always sardonic, eye."...
By Cullen Ormond
"At first mention, it could be surprising to hear that names such as Basquiat and Cunningham were featured in her book, but she was friends with them and ran in their circles. She relocated to New York City from Portland in the 1980s and began as the advertising associate and then the associate publisher of Interview. She was one of the first artists to record footage on camcorders. While popular in the New York scene, she decided to return to her roots in 1997 to document rising artists there and work as an animal-rights activist..."
By Emilia Petrarca
This week, Gucci and Dashwood Books will publish an entire book of photos featuring famous artists eating. They come as part of a set highlighting the life’s work of photographer Paige Powell, who captured artists like Andy Warhol eating, drinking, working, and playing with animals in New York City throughout the ’70s and ’80s...
By Teju Cole
A photo book is a stubbornly old-fashioned technology. It allows for some experimentation, with scale, paper and color, but it is ultimately a sequence of photographs printed on paper and bound into a portable volume. In a time of a torrential flow of online photographs and omnipresent video, such material simplicity is almost quaint. But a form invented in the mid-19th century remains one of the most vivid ways of conveying the power of images...
