A Glimpse into My World: Unveiling the Unfiltered Me

Immediately, when we look at photographs by Alex Coghe we think of Daido Moriyama, and Shomei Tomatsu before him. Clearly, Coghe has studied this school of Japanese photography and has acquired the aesthetic. Like Moriyama and Tomatsu, Coghe is on a quest to discover the reality around him; to untangle our world and then blur it all out again.

When we study these photographs we see both reality and the unreal all at once. The very first image in this book is of a man entering an elevated subway a few pages later, another man leaving one - what could be more real, more familiar? At the same time, when we look at these images our mind wants to wander from that reality. We know what we are looking at, and yet, we are looking at something unusual, something abstract also. This is the very appeal that is found in the photographs throughout Nasty.

But we don't only see the Japanese photographers at work in Coghe's photographs, we are also reminded of the banality of Eggleston's work and of the fragments of Mark Cohen's photography. At first glimpse, some people may accuse Coghe of merely copying, but of course that is not what is at play. Coghe does not copy, he engages, he participates in a conversation between the generations of photographers, he adds to that conversation and does so in a way so as not to be forgotten. This, of course, is the purest form of photographic innovation - informed but unique, familiar but fresh.

Some of the images in this book are so fragmented and full of grit and grain that only the wildest of imaginations might construct definite meaning from their abstractions. This is not a negative. Photography has every right to be engaged in the abstract, it is part and parcel to the very art of constructing an image. Coghe employs this masterfully throughout this volume taking us on a wild roller coaster of detachment and even daydreaming before snapping us harshly back to reality over and over again. It's thrilling. It's exhilarating. It's Nasty.

As an avid collector of the likes of Moriyama and Cohen, as well as a photographer from this very school myself, I welcome Coghe's work into the contemporary photographic world with open arms. The photographs between these covers deserve not only to be indeed between these very covers, but also among the finest collections of contemporary books of photography. Alex Coghe's work will endure. It is dark, but honest. It is blurred, but real. It is fragmented, but complete.

Nasty is a clear departure from the sameness that plagues contemporary photography. I am tired of all the perfect photographs. Technical perfection is greatly overrated and nothing more than merely a product of the abundance of technology now at our disposal as photographers. But what of the subject matter or the larger narrative? These fundamentals are lost on too many of the emerging photographers at work today. We see an endless stream of "perfect photographs", but they lack story, they lack fresh subject matter, and they lack true innovation - they are void of voice. This is not so with Nasty. This volume of photography not only speaks, it adds something new. And something new, when it comes to art, is the ultimate achievement.

Michael Ernest Sweet New York, New York - FOREWORD FOR THE BOOK ‘NASTY’

In an essay on photographer Saul Leiter, Nigerian-born American writer Teju Cole tells us that for a long time, color photography was considered superficial and suspect, and that it wasn't until the 1960s that MOMA became interested in William Eggleston and photographers working with color. But a decade earlier, Saul Leiter, had already been doing color street photography. Only Leiter had to wait until 2006 for his work to get the recognition it deserved. Today, color is commonplace among street and documentary photographers. 

If I had to describe Saul Leiter's photography, I would say that Leiter wrote poems with his camera. The same could be said of Alex Coghe's photography, only Coghe's poems are harsher, less idealized, hyperrealistic. Perhaps, Alex Coghe's work reminds me more of street photographer, Joel Meyerowitz, and even more of personal journalist, Nan Goldin.  

Alex Coghe's photographs do not have a usual composition. As far as I can tell, he never cuts them in post production. He decides to leave fragments of people, cars, objects and everything around the subject he is photographing inside the frame. This makes us feel that we are in the middle of an enveloping reality; as if we were located in the exact place where he is taking the photo. In some images we can see the photographer's intention to find a symmetry and to take our sight through lines that lead us to discover the same things he sees: that which seems to be hidden in the city, that which happens only for a second and then is lost forever. He takes us to discover a place, but not as tourists, but as travelers; as silent witnesses of a time and a place that struggles to survive poverty and marginalization. He shows us a way of life, an atmosphere and the human condition of its inhabitants, who bear little or no resemblance to the inhabitants of other parts of the world.    

Alex Coghe's street work revolves around different themes: the socio-economic contrasts of the city, the bizarre characters that circulate in the streets and their different trades; folklore, daily life, the unusual and the bizarre.   Alex Coghe's ability to find patterns and colors in the city, as if he had an internal radar, is striking. People wearing one color and standing next to objects of the same color. Geometric shapes that are repeated among people and objects, in a precise moment and place, showing us that it is possible, if we have the talent and the necessary observation capacity, to find the mysteries that happen all the time around us. 

The everyday scenes in Alex Coghe's works are deceptive, because they have very little to do with everyday life. If we look carefully, we will find that at some point in the image something out of the ordinary is happening and that life is anything but monotonous, for those who develop the capacity for admiration (like that photograph in which there is a group of people gathered together and, underneath them, the sidewalk seems to rise with ferocity). Because this is what Alex Coghe has: a latent and furious admiration for the world around him. An interest in living beyond the mundane and transcending through art.  

Alex Coghe's work is not a work for just any observer. It requires a greater engagement for the viewer than the work of other photographers.  Photographers like Alex Coghe are there to show us the path of discovery. The importance of living in the present and giving each thing a meaning and, to our existence, a more profound sense.

Juan Francisco Hernández - FROM THE ESSAY ‘ALEX COGHE: DOCUMENTING THE STREETS OF MEXICO CITY’