Tony Stamolis
Some Like It Hot

SOME HUNDRED AND FIFTY years ago, images being published by the great pioneers of location photography like Félix Teynard (Egypt), Carleton Watkins (American Frontier) or Samuel Bourne (India) thrilled the enquiring minds of Europe. Hypnotic and exciting then, it is possible these eyewitness reports have even more poignancy today, glazed as they are with the patina of historical perspective - a window into an unrecoverable past and a spur to the nostalgia for a world less complex but still pregnant with possibilities.

As long as the phenomena of the photograph has existed, there have always been image makers who eschew the desire to make 'art' - and to imitate the great traditions of painting - in favour of simply recording their own little window on the world. Highly personal documents of daily existence recorded for no other reason than the author being a participant or present at the event. Of course, as camera apparatus became available to the masses (1), this sort of imagery filled countless domestic albums across America and Europe, gathering dust until finding their way to auction as each deceased generation disappeared.

As with any other creative medium, the camera occasionally found itself in the hands of a natural genius with the process. Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) epitomises this phenomenon. Although having the advantage of wealthy parents - which enabled him to begin taking snaps at age 6 - Lartigue was a serious painter all his life. However, he consistently recorded his daily activities with his camera 'diaries' and these were only revealed when Lartigue was 69 years old (1963) by Charles Rado of the Rapho Agency. Rado introduced him to John Szarkowski, then curator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who in turn arranged a Lartigue exhibition at the museum.

The perception of the 'innocent eye' and the integrity of the uncontrived image had been re-evaluated by an intelligentsia infatuated with the philosophies and conceptual motivations of 20th century art. The 'discovery' of Lartigue's work precipitated a roller coaster ride on the fame train for the mild mannered Frenchman. His first book, Diary of a Century, was soon published, in collaboration with Richard Avedon, and for the last twenty years of his life, he enjoyed a lucrative career embracing fashion and portrait photography that totally eclipsed his work as a serious painter.

Of course, each generation of photographers has produced masters of 'spectator' imagery, unconcerned with taking a 'great' photograph, but by way of instinctive talent, doing just that. Today, some 15 years since the digital Big Bang, the art of photography is the primary choice of millions across the world, offering a means of personal expression like no other. Consumer digital photography is absolutely at one with the zeitgeist - cheap, instant, ego-based, accessible to a global audience at the click of a mouse button. A half hour spent on hypnotic websites like Flickr (2) demonstrates that photography is the essential art of our time and that for a huge tranche of modern youth, it is clearly a form of visual poetry.

Many of the young photographers broadcasting their work to the world are not interested in making 'beautiful' images. Their work is raw, emotional - often banal - and imbued with a personal narrative, both conscious and unconscious. In New York, a Californian-born artist called Tony Stamolis is about to publish his first major book(3). Its subject is his home town of Fresno, situated some 200 miles north of Los Angeles. Fresno refers to the Spanish name for the ash trees that used to dominate the area 150 years before the urban concrete sprawl that is now the largest inland city in the state.

For Stamolis, Fresno epitomises Edward Hopper's description of America as being 'a chaos of ugliness'. Its citizens (and there have been some luminaries, like Cher or Sam Peckinpah) universally hate the place but remain fixed like butterflies on a pin. In America's troubled 80s and early 90s, Fresno was a place of uncontrolled violence and decay yet still it sustained a vibrant sub-culture of writers, artists and poets drawn to the edgy existence on its streets. A melting pot of many races and cultures, there is also a clear affection for the people and the places of Fresno that Stamolis cannot disguise. He understands their pains and triumphs, their hopelessness and their ambitions.

Most of Stamolis' Fresno images were created between 1999 and 2006. Now 38 years old, he came to exhibiting photographs fairly late, recording his first solo show in 1999 in New York, but he has found his medium with digital imaging. Stamolis, like countless others, has embraced the creative opportunities and extended possibilities of the digital camera. Fresno is a personal triumph for Tony Stamolis.

Fifty years ago, disenfranchised youth turned to poetry or prose - or even lyrics - to try and document their alienation from society and ambitions for future. The instant image has offered them another eloquent means to capture and broadcast these feelings to a global community of like-minded travellers. What the eye can see the heart can now grieve over...!


NOTES
1) George Eastman's first camera, the Kodak, was offered for sale in 1888. By 1900, Eastman had taken mass-market photography one step further with the Brownie, a popular, simple and very cheap box camera - various models remained on sale until the 1960s.

2) Flickr - an image-video hosting website and online community platform - was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver in February 2004. In March 2005, Yahoo! acquired Ludicorp and Flickr. resulting in all data being subject to United States federal law.

3) Fresno. Published by Process Media
1240 W. Sims Way. Box 124. Port Townsend, WA 98368
ISBN: 978-1-934170-04-5