Alex Webb
(1952-)
The Suffering of Light
Wikipedia
Born in San Francisco, Webb was raised in New England. He first became interested in photography as a high school student and in 1972 attended the Apeiron Workshops in Millerton, New York, where he met Magnum photographers Bruce Davidson and Charles Harbutt. He went on to study history and literature at Harvard University but also studied photography at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. By 1974 he was working as a photojournalist and in 1976 became an associate member of Magnum Photos. During this time he documented small-town life in the American South. He also did some work in the Caribbean and Mexico, which led him, in 1978, to begin working in color, which he has continued to do.
Alex Webb is best known for his vibrant and complex color photographs. His work has been exhibited around the world, including at the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the International Center of Photography, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work is in numerous collections. He has received commissions from the High Museum of Art as well as the Banesto Foundation in Spain.
Webb now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, Rebecca Norris Webb, who is also a photographer, and they have collaborated on a number of books.
Excerpts
“I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk. and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heart of the known awaits just around the corner.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Preface, Alex Webb
“Webb has described his work as ‘highly interpretive presentation of the world.’”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 187
“‘It’s not just that that and that exists. It’s that that, that, that, and that all exist in the same frame. I’m always looking for something more. You take in too much; perhaps it becomes total chaos. I’m always playing along that line: adding something more, yet keeping it short of chaos.’”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 187
“When writing about difficult pictures or music or poetry, it’s important not to forget, deny, or disguise one’s initial (or enduring) confusion or perplexity. The purpose of criticism is not to explain away one’s reactions but to articulate, record, and preserve them—in the hope that doing so expresses a truth inherent in the work. So it’s reassuring that I am not alone in finding some of these pictures quite exhausting to look at.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 188
“Webb was therefore part of the second wave [after Eggleston] of American photographers working in color. His essential contribution was to ask the simplest of questions: if you are interested in color, doesn’t it make sense to go where the color is?”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 188
“… Max Kozloff comments on ‘a kind of electrifying enigma’ in the photographer’s approach, ‘not necessarily a contradiction in terms, but an order of dissimilar things put together in a surprising way.’”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 188
“… Pico Iyer calls Webb ‘a shadow sociologist.” He is indeed a sociologist—and catcher—of shadows, sharing D. H. Lawrence’s belief that in hot, sunny places life lurks in the shadows… Take [shadows] away from Webb and great hunks would be chomped out of the pictures. Actually, that, in a sense, is exactly what the shadows are in Webb’s work: areas of such intense darkness that they almost seem to have been snipped out of the picture frame…For Kozloff, these shadows act like a chorus of ‘unseen witnesses’, looking in on the actors and action in the light. But the distinction between actors and shadows, participants and witnesses, is fluid, shifting.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 189
“… Webb frequently photographs harmonious dislocations… that abolition of the distinction between foreground and background is important.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 189
“Wherever he goes, Webb always ends up in a Bermuda-shaped triangle where the distinctions between photojournalism, documentary, and art blur and disappear.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 190
“W. H. Auden’s claim about suffering—about the way daily life goes on while catastrophe unfolds nearby—has been documented in the field by many photographers. Webb depicts suffering or news not just as it is experienced by humans, but as it apprehended by animals…”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 190
“There is another, still larger, nonhuman dimension to these pictures: the abiding consciousness or sentience of the place itself… A given picture shows clearly how a scene looked in the instant it was taken. But it also suggests how the scene will look in an hour when the people in it have moved. on. Or in a year, when the particular political upheaval or story has run its course. Or in thirty years hence, when the only things still there will be whatever is not subject to change. This, in a word, is the light.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 190
“Webb is drawn to borders… the borders of pictures, the edges are central to his work… his signature way of dividing up the picture is by some kind of pole or tree, or the edge of a wall. On either side of the divide are two potentially quite distinct worlds, or two near-mirror images of each other.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 190
“Sometimes a mirror is glimpsed… You start to wonder: just how many pictures there are in a typical Webb picture?… mirrors are constantly reflecting on what they see going on around them; the shadows are looking in on, and leering at, the main action. All of this contributes to the feeling of claustrophobia, a feeling that the places photographed by Webb are all somewhat turned in upon themselves.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 191
“… Ezra Pound’s definition of literature—‘news that stays new’—also holds good for documentary photography.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 190
“But the doors, windows, and holes in the walls also provide views of a world beyond, a way out. Hence the contrary feeling of expanded—or even exploded awareness.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 191
“Often the disparity between the various elements in a photograph is so extreme that it can seem as if two or more images have been joined invisibly together, as collage or montage. How does this fit—how does it square with—the job of documentary reportage?”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 191
“On the one hand: Sometimes so much is going on within these pictures (in which, often, not much is going on) that it’s difficult for people to make their way from one side to the other. There’s too much stuff in the way—to say nothing of those life-devouring shadows. The picture planes are too congested. Viewed in a certain way, even empty space can assume the complexity of a multidimensional maze.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 192
“Alex Webb has an instantly recognizable style, but he is not just Alex Webb; there are Webbs that don’t look like Webbs.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 192
“It’s often difficult, sometimes even impossible—because there are so many reflections, perspectival distortions and flattenings, and so on—to work out where Webb is in relation to what we are seeing.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Afterword, Geoff Dyer; p. 193
“For me, each project and book seems to have its own unique journey. Each begins as a somewhat inexplicable obsession, and part of the challenge is discovering the individual nature of that particular obsession, including where it will lead me and how long the often-meandering trip will take.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Notes on Books and Projects; Alex Webb; p. 195
“Different projects seem to have different arcs of completion.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Notes on Books and Projects; Alex Webb; p. 196
“… most of my projects seem to start as exploratory journeys with no end in sight.”
The Suffering of Light, Alex Webb; Notes on Books and Projects; Alex Webb; p. 197
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