Gueorgui Pinkhassov

What a shame you didn't pick Boris Mikhailov - a much more itneresting comparison with Parr (Pinkhassov can be rather dull and a little too "magnum").

Mikhailov is certainly one the the most interesting documentary photographers out there.

Crispin, that's a remarkably sniffy view of Pinkhassov, I'm curious as to which of his work you find "dull". With regard to him being "too magnum" I think you're plain wrong. When he released Sightwalk it had a big influence on many of his colleagues at Magnum because it actually moved away from their traditions.

Oh come on Boris, really.

he does colour well - but no better than (and sometimes not as well as and certainly not terribly different from) webb or marlow or steele-perkins or even gruyert for example. Webb is much more dynamic and graphic - more of a virtuoso.

Parr, by comparison, is unique and Magnum already had him - being the one that caused quite the stir when he arived.

Mikahilov, like Parr is pretty unique and would imo make a much better subject for comparison.

Crispin, Pinkhassov has a radically different approach to Webb, Marlow (I've no idea why you make this comparison), Steele-Perkins, or Gruyaert. Sightwalk, along with Delahaye's Wintereisse, had a real influence on a lot of working photographers in and outside of Magnum - you can actually see it's influence on Steele-Perkins more recent work.

I've no argument with your assessment of Mikhailov but I really do think you're misunderstanding and underestimating Pinkhassov. He, along with Lise Sarfati, has been a breath of fresh air within the context of Magnum. Why don't you point me in the direction of his "dull" work and clarify what makes him "too magnum"?

Ah Delahaye - the artist formerly known as a photogojournalist - I can see how if you are fan of Delahaye and Wintereise you would like Pinkhassov. Perhaps you are something of a Russian post-romantic?

Unfortunately neither book as important or as influential as you would appear to think. Just not the same kind of influence as say Sugimotos "Architecture" or Graham's "Troubled Land" or Killip's "In Flagrante" or Shore's "Uncommon Places" and say Parr's early colour books - "Last Resort" and so on. For Magnum, something like The Shipping Forecast is probably more important, though it predates Power's initiation.

Pinkhassov is very much in the Magnum line of new colour 35mm photographers already mentioned, with Parr being the real new direction. I worked on a slot of Steel-Perkins colour work in the eighties and there is a very clear continuum between that and what I've seen of his current work - again, with Parr if anyone as a much clearer influence

Pinkhassov is really more a post-Soviet Dave Harvey - a little bit harsher at times, a little more lyrical at others, but with that same tendency towards romantic and sentiment - even when it may initially appear otherwise on the surface. In that sense Webb is often a lot stronger and clearer, ore graphic. Since the first days of real colour at magnum this style has always been a strand - in a way there is less variety among their colour photographers than in B&W - again, Parr usually being the stand-out, the aberration (what was it HCB called him - an abomination?). Safarti also fits quite clearly within that continuum.

My sense of Pinkhassov as contrasted with Allan is that their photographic emphasis is totally different. Yes they both love vivid color and use it creatively, but it seems to me that pinkhassov is more concerned about the formalistic values of the photograph and less the subject. It seems for him, the subject is more of a device used to display his artistic vision,technique and style. I find some of these are beautiful, for instance the photographs he did in Tokyo, some times it doesn't work as well ie, the photographs recently on the Magnum website on Venice or the set of fashion photos, where he seems to be forcing an assignment to cover an event into his shooting style.

Allan on the other hand really seems to love and immerse himself in and with the subject he's shooting and though sometimes the coloristic techniques of the two individuals end up in similar places, I think their points of view and sensibilities are entirely different.

Needless to say, I like them both very much.

Barry, I think your analysis of Pinkhassov's work is on the money, though you are more kind to him than I would be. It seems to me that he wants to portray everything everywhere as the same big colorful, plastic store window. I wish I could see some of his earlier journalistic work, as he is obviously a talented photographer.
    Someone will have to explain Boris Mikhailov to me. Anyone who stages S&M scenes with Nazi paraphenalia is not on my short list for the Photography Hall of Fame. I can see how that would get into a gallery, but hanging on the wall in someone's home? And, how does all that mesh with Martin Parr?

I call Pinkhassov the John Ashbery of photography. Like the poetry of the latter, his work is erudite, sophisticated, lyrical, and often endlessly discursive - accompanied always by shards of meaning (and unmeaning), finding redemption in the everyday, irretrievably alone but never by himself. But that's not the only thing I call him.

Among photographers I know, living and dead, Pinkhassov's stuff is the least freighted with a political agenda or social critique (something else he has in common with Ashbery). This stands in contrast of course with the work of many notable others, whether it be, to name three, Steve McCurry's vapid vision and witless pandering, Sabastiao Salgado's running stigmata, or Martin Parr's relentless compulsion to make the obvious obvious. (Though I do appreciate much of the latter's work, the point wears a bit thin.)

In my view Pinkhassov's approach to photography is that of the true filmmaker: deeply personal and particularly cinematic. He brings a wide sweep to the small format. His pictures are for me like frames from an immense film, one which comes from a singular, intense vision of the world about us and the world within. Perhaps one of his closest aesthetic contemporaries is Fellini. But whereas much of the fun of Fellini lies in the surreality and absurdity of the real, Pinkhassov has much more in common with another grand auteur, Tarkovsky, from whom he obviously took much. Here is a quote from Tarkovsky that sounds like a prescription for a book like Pinkhassov's Sightwalk.

"The image is tied to the concrete and the material, yet reaches out along mysterious paths to regions beyond the spirit..."

Maybe it's this spiritual element that runs, on light feet, throughout the work, that gets construed somehow, above, as sentimentality. But in my view there is nothing of sentimentality in it. On the contrary there is the persistent awareness of the electric radiance to be found everywhere in common sights; or, rather, behind the lighted eyes of the aware photographer with the quick reflexes.

Remaining true to this vision and portraying it must be a challenge. And I can see how it could be taken as formalist - especially in its failures. But I don't think a preoccupation with aesthetic formalism is what it's all about with Pinkhassov. He is "married to the aesthetic" only in the broadest sense - the one in which, ultimately, we all find ourselves.

I'm really not sure what that site I linked to Tarkovsky's name is all about. I only read beyond the film part after posting. In any event, the site makes some valid points about film.