Robert Frank - Come Again and on the Train

I've been crap at posting for the last couple of weeks due to tax returns, my daughter's birthday and the wheedling brutality of the publishing industry, hoho. But yesterday I received through the post my copy of Robert Frank's Come Again, which gives me an excuse for writing something. Apparently it's been out of print for a few years, until the publisher found some additional unsold stock, which they've now made available. The photos are polaroid collages (usually just 2 photos per collage) shot in Beirut in 1991. The book is produced as a facsimile of the notebook Frank stuck the pictures in, the photos spot-varnished against the blue-squared lines of the notebook pages. It's beautifully done and a bit of a bargain. The pictures themselves are of derelict (bombed, shot up) buildings, completely devoid of people - very post-apocalyptic and still raw, what with recent events in Gaza. Just to add a bit of moving picture I've posted a clip above of Frank talking about trains: "I'm sorry about the movements but... it's all symbolic. It's all how much you get beaten up while being on that train. And then you hope when you get older that you can really enjoy it, y'know, and not have to fight anymore..."

Anne Hardy - 2008

Two of the exhibitions I enjoyed the most this year were at the Whitney Museum in New York. Buckminster Fuller, ‘Starting with the Universe’, presented Fuller's visionary approach to an integrated practice of architecture, engineering, visual arts and sustainability, much of which seems both as relevant and as futuristic today as it must have been at the time. Also on show was Paul McCarthy: Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement Three Installations, Two films; this spare and minimal show powerfully articulated complex relationships between physical and psychological space surrounding the body, and engaged me with his practice in a completely new way. I also truly enjoyed John Bock's film ‘Palms’, which was included in ‘Laughing in a foreign language’ at the Hayward Gallery in London. JG Ballard's ‘Miracles of Life’ was another high point for me as it gave such great insight into the source and root of so much of his fiction writing, which is fascinating for an avid reader of his fiction writing, as I am, and was also incredibly moving, making me want to write to him immediately upon finishing. Another great discovery for me this year was Ryu Murakami, whose ‘Coin Locker Babies’ I found accidentally whilst looking for something else, and loved.

Anne Hardy is a visual artist. Her most recent exhibition was at the Bellwether Gallery in New York and she will be exhibiting at Maureen Paley in London in 2009.