Jörg Colberg - CPhMag.com
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Cats are the ideal form of life
November 23, 2022
Welcome to the 66th edition of this newsletter! With each email I'm sharing material that has inspired me recently. I'm hoping it will inspire you, too. If...
The problem with infinity snark
November 15, 2022
Welcome to the 65th edition of this newsletter! With each email I'm sharing material that has inspired me recently. I'm hoping it will inspire you, too. If...
How to get your work out
October 29, 2022
Welcome to the 61th edition of this newsletter! With each email I'm sharing material that has inspired me recently. I'm hoping it will inspire you, too. If...
Angry walking, trees, algorithmic kisses, and hyperart
October 19, 2022
Welcome to the 63rd edition of this newsletter! With each email I'm sharing material that has inspired me recently. I'm hoping it will inspire you, too. If...
This is not a real picture
October 2, 2022
As you might know, I have long been looking into Germany's complicated recent past in order to better understand what it means to roam the world as someone...
It’s a privilege to see how we all behave
September 14, 2022
Welcome to the 61th edition of this newsletter! With each email I'm sharing material that has inspired me recently. I'm hoping it will inspire you, too. If...
Everyone has a story to be told
September 6, 2022
Welcome to the 60th edition of this newsletter! With each email I'm sharing material that has inspired me recently. I'm hoping it will inspire you, too. If...
Pizza Flavoured Japanese English French Toast
August 29, 2022
Welcome to the 59th edition of this newsletter! With each email I'm sharing material that has inspired me recently. I hope that it will inspire you, too. If...
Dead artists behind the camera (and more)
August 14, 2022
Welcome to the 58th edition of this newsletter! With each email I'm sharing material that has inspired me recently. I hope that it will inspire you, too. If...
Tools, tools, tools
August 3, 2022
This is a self-portrait by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, a Polish artist more commonly known as Witkacy. I first came across him when I saw a 1912...
sensations that fade (or: the white cube isn't life)
July 24, 2022
You usually don't know when you're seeing a person for the last time. When they're gone, you might ask yourself whether you could have done more, should have...
Yes! Workshops!
July 15, 2022
By now, you know that every once in a while (but not too often) I advertise what I do as part of this Mailing List. Today, I want to tell you that I'm...
The artist may not necessarily understand his own art
July 11, 2022
The other day, I remembered that I had started Luis Camnitzer's One Number Is Worth One Word a while ago. It's a very good book, especially if you're...
The Power of a Documentary
June 28, 2022
Various streaming services have been churning out documentaries about all kinds of things. For personal reasons, I don't watch much TV. I never got into the...
Yasumasete agetai
June 11, 2022
Early last month, I mentioned my idea to create something visual from the Japanese green tea I drink. In part, my motivation was conceptual (of sorts)....
Where Photography Ends
May 31, 2022
The other day, I started work on what I'm hoping to become my next book. I've had the idea in my head for a while, and I'm excited about getting started. In...
Twenty Years
May 22, 2022
I'm not particularly interested in anniversaries. I'm happy to celebrate other people's; but in my own life, I prefer to look forward -- rather than back....
Photo 101, MFA-student paralysis, and more
May 8, 2022
A few years ago, when I was still posting my own photographs on Instagram, I posted a series of pictures where I had placed the same object somewhere in my...
When your own trash is your treasure
April 29, 2022
I might be one of the few people who's genuinely not interested in the planet Mars. I get it, it's a large planet. But realistically speaking, there's not...
Odds and Ends and the Past
April 19, 2022
The other day, I realized that I needed to advertise the fact again that I'm mentoring photographers. I'm basically doing what I used to be doing when I...
Creativity And Its Unnecessary Discontent
March 27, 2022
Creativity is such a strange beast. For the most part, it appears to remain elusive, with what writers call "writer's block" being a lot more common than one...
Books, Books, Books
March 15, 2022
I'm happy to report that the ten sets of Risograph prints are sold out. I'm deeply thankful for all those people who decided to get a set (some even asked...
Prints for Ukraine
March 4, 2022
I’m selling 10 sets of high-quality Risograph prints from my book Vaterland to raise money for Ukraine. All proceeds will go to CARE’s Ukraine Crisis Fund....
We Are The Frog
February 28, 2022
It has been a while. I had promised myself that I would send out an email when I was ready to do so, regardless of how much (or little) time had passed since...
Against Didactic Fiction
February 2, 2022
This picture has nothing to do with what I wanted to talk about. But I thought that if I started with text, then maybe I'd already lose a bunch of readers?...
Sounds and Smells and More
January 18, 2022
You might have seen Sochi Singers by Rob Hornstra and Arnold van den Bruggen when it first came out. It's portraits of these Russian restaurant singers....
The Power of Words (and Art)
January 12, 2022
My last email generated a flurry of responses, and it was shared widely. As a consequence, this Mailing List's audience has grown quite a bit. If you've...
What It Takes
January 7, 2022
This is the time when photographers are getting their materials ready to apply for a spot in an MFA program. Having spoken with a large number of...
This Is The End (Of 2021)
December 23, 2021
It's the end of another year. Looking back, 2021 appears to have been mostly filled with disappointments for me: another year of the pandemic, no traveling...
Everything, All the Time, Everywhere (incl. Tendonitis)
December 11, 2021
Stuart Jeffries is the author of Grand Hotel Abyss, a book about the Frankfurt School that I started reading, yet never finished, in part because I had...
Eros + Massacre + Composition In Photography
December 2, 2021
A while ago, I signed up with a free streaming service. Free means: you don't have to pay money, but your programming is going to be interrupted by a period...
Kylo Ren Is The Vampire
November 22, 2021
Trying to learn Japanese entails watching the occasional movie (with subtitles). My Japanese isn't very good, but I can pick up basic conversations OK....
Heroes
November 11, 2021
Yesterday, I came across a cover of David Bowie's song Heroes, performed by Berlin-based Stereo Total. I'm not a Bowie fan, but I have been listening to...
Germanicisms and "Books For Snobs"
November 7, 2021
I don't recall how Alexander Wolff's Endpapers had made its way into my Reading List. But there it was, and since I needed to start a new book I thought it...
Mundane Halloween
November 1, 2021
During my childhood in Germany, Halloween wasn't an event. I'm not even sure I had heard about it (I can't remember). These days, things are different, as...
The Protest Is Visual
October 29, 2021
The Archive of Public Protests, photo Sebastian Cichocki I got talked into doing a (German language) podcast, which was recorded today. I don't remember how...
The Inland Sea
October 24, 2021
I had read Donald Richie's The Inland Sea before, and I had not liked it. That was years, maybe a decade ago. With my interest in Japan renewed, I thought I...
Two books
October 18, 2021
I don't read biographies very often. I have a hard time remembering names. When at their beginnings, there is talk about the family, possibly going back to...
Advice For The Young Artist
October 4, 2021
I've been involved in photoland for a while now, wearing a number of different hats. I'm am educator, a photographer, a writer. I'm listing these in...
"One hell of a photograph"
September 23, 2021
A little while ago, I decided to change the brand of toothpaste I was using. I had used the old brand for ages, but its price kept going up. At some stage,...
The Beauty of the Written Word
September 16, 2021
I finished reading Louis Menand's exhausting The Free World a little while ago. I gained much insight into the connections between a variety of artists,...
Don't be afraid to take that path (and look down every once in a while)
September 3, 2021
Even though I finished work on my new book, ideas are still swirling around in my head. This morning, I thought about how it all had started: the review I...
To Write Is To Be Sisyphus
August 29, 2021
It's hardly an original observation to compare the task of writing with Sisyphus'. Any writer will know to what extent they are Sisyphus, performing a...
Illusions and Other Afflictions
August 14, 2021
“Since the 2008 recession, profit-making from art as an asset class has only continued to consolidate within a remote strata of the ultra-wealthy.” If you...
Does GPT-3 Dream of Electric Artists?
August 9, 2021
Earlier this year, I received a copy of Stephan Keppel's Soft Copy Hard Copy in the mail. At around the same time, Nelis Franken, a student of mine, told me...
You're My Favourite Meme
August 4, 2021
This is not something I could remotely claim, and anyway, this email’s subject line might confuse you – until you watch this video. I don’t know how much...
I Will Not Write Any More Boring Newsletters
July 24, 2021
I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen this short documentary about John Baldessari. If you haven’t watch it. If you have, watch it again. Whenever I feel...
Online Hate
July 19, 2021
Some time last year, I read a book about Japan that I really enjoyed. It was written by Anna Sherman who had been born in the US and who had moved to Japan...
RIP Christian Boltanski
July 14, 2021
“One thing that really irritates me is that a large portion of art today doesn’t talk about life, butinstead talks about art. A whole segment of what’s being...
Reconstructing One's Life
July 13, 2021
There's the idea that we are familiar with our lives. I don't think that's actually the case. We are only familiar with what we're familiar with --...
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