Michael Ackerman
After posting about Robert Frank yesterday, I got to thinking about some of his creative followers. One photographer in particular came to mind, Michael Ackerman.
He’s taken Frank’s wide-eyed, gritty aesthetic to new levels of mysterious tension.
I was first introduced to his work in the Summer of ’98 when a slideshow of his photos was projected in a communtiy garden on Ave. B (I think) in NYC.
I was blown away and sought out his first book End Time City, which chronicles a journey through India, specifically the deathly city of Benares. He worked in a mix of formats – square, plastic, swing-lens panoramic – to create a darkly ethereal world that I imagine would look foreign even to the subjects of these images.
His second book, Fiction, brought him back to the Western world, but creates an even more foreign world than that of End Time City. Dark, grainy, grim, nightmarish and gorgeous.
He doesn’t seem to have much of a web presence, but here’s what Agence VU has to say about him:
Since his first exhibition, in 1999, he has made his mark by bringing a new approach, radical and unique. His take Varanasi, entitled End Time City, broke with al exoticism, any attempt at description, any anecdote, to question time and death with a freedom which enabled him to move from the panoramic – whose usage he renewed – to squares or rectangles. In black and white, with permanent risk taking which led him to explore impossible lighting, he allowed the grain to show through to created enigmatic and pregnant visions. Michael Ackerman seeks – and finds – in the world he traverses, reflections of his personal malaise, personal doubts, his own anguish.
His work has been a major influence on my own street photography, trying to utilize instinct, motion and emotion to connect with a viewer, rather than merely recording a scene. His work is enormously inspiring. I feel like getting out in the street with my camera just typing this. In fact, that’s what I’m going to do (soon as I get off work of course).
More Ackerman Pix Here (featuring some new work in color!)
Michael Ackerman
Michael Ackerman
