Mark Steinmetz – Title Unknown (20XX)

In 8 days this blog will have its 4th birthday.

As a direct result of this project I’ve been introduced to a number of image makers whose work astounds me: Allison Barnes, Mike Brodie, Kelli Connell, Stéphane Coutelle, Anna Grzelewska, Amy Montali, Igor Mukhin, @ericashires, Joanna Szproch, and Prue Stent.

Currently, I’m fascinated with Steinmetz and his work in a way that I’m not exactly sure how to articulate with any sort of clarity. Yes, he’s probably the best B&W analog print maker since Weston. Yes, his compositions are always impeccable. Yes, he fosters an empathy between viewer and subject that is fully radical–in every sense of the word.

I think what intoxicates me about his work is not that they’re narrative–strictly speaking they aren’t. However, the presentation of people not as objects but as haver’s of incisive, often complicated and conflicting inner lives. They aren’t synecdoches for ideas or conceptual metaphors. They are closer to characters in a film of which the audience is provided only one solitary frame.

So I was thrilled to stumble onto this image of his in a video interview he did for a workshop in Spain. Here’s an image the fit the structure and content of my blog that didn’t require me to digress and be like I know this doesn’t really go here but since I’m entirely preoccupied with it, I’m going to just leave this here.

Also, he’d never take me but I would quite my job and move to Georgia in half a heartbeat if he’d accept me as an apprentice. That is how much I’m blown the fuck away by his work. I’ve begun to consider him in much the same terms as Vermeer, Tarkovsky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor–my personal trinity of creative deities.