Mike Mandel – Myself: Timed Exposures

Review by Hans Hickerson ·

OK, another senior photographer has just published a book of their early work. So let’s check it out. Is it like similar books? Is it murky, derivative student work that hasn’t yet found its voice? Would it see the light of day if not for the photographer’s name recognition and the associated potential sales?

Surprise! Mike Mandel’s Myself: Timed Exposures is the real deal, early work that works, early work that is fully realized and engaging. And not just engaging but humorous, playful, inventive, clever, lively, and fun.

The book is an enlarged, updated version of an earlier edition. It consists of 70 monochrome photographs made mostly in southern California in the early 1970s. They are what we now call selfies. Back then there was no autofocus and you couldn’t point a camera at yourself and expect to get a decent photo. Instead you put your camera on a tripod, framed the scene, adjusted the exposure settings, focused, set off the self-timer, and then rushed into the picture to pose and hope for the best. As Mandel explains in his text, it was not a common thing to see someone taking a picture just anywhere, and people did not know what to think. Some people ignored his camera while others played along or mugged.

In many photos Mandel does a fair share of mugging himself, staring at the camera with the deadpan, mock-serious look of a Chaplinesque Everyman. In other photos he hides behind people or from people or pokes his head above them. Sometimes he can’t help smiling or grinning. And sometimes he play-acts to mimic other people in his photographs or he pretends to work in an office, listen to a park ranger’s talk at Yosemite, pose like a mannequin, or protest the war in Vietnam.

Mandel came up with a variety of places and situations for photographs. He photographed himself at a protest, a wedding, a barbershop, a beauty salon, a restaurant, an airplane, a beach, a park, a baseball stadium, a shop display window, a reception, in front of cars, and in the middle of the street. Like with other good photobooks, the pacing in Myself: Timed Exposures is varied; it sustains your interest and when you turn the pages and you do not know what to expect.

In the middle of the book is a spectacular, nine-image sequence printed on two double fold-out pages. The series was made in an elevator of all places. How Mandel pulled that off without getting kicked out is beyond me. In four of the pictures, Mandel and a young woman, a total stranger, mug together for the camera. A magic moment, captured on film.

Mandel must have very good social skills. He appears to comfortably navigate social encounters with a diverse set of random people – kids, parents, teens, working people, students, families, older folks, riot police, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics. The spontaneity and reactions of the people can be quite revealing. They are curious, complicit, amused, surprised, indifferent, excited, distracted, and, surprisingly, mostly not offended. Though it is not what we think of as documentary photography, Mandel’s photos describe specific times and places and memorialize lived moments. They also memorialize Mandel himself as he exposes himself in photographs.

Mandel has described himself as a conceptual artist and photographer. I can see why he might say that at the time in order to distinguish himself from other fine art photographers. But I wonder about the “conceptual art” label when I think of Myself. The work is based on a way of operating, a conceptual framework, true, but beyond that it is not really so much about ideas. His selfies are direct, immediate, and accessible, and they are straight-up interesting and funny. This is human comedy. You don’t have to think big ideas to digest these photos, which, frankly, is wonderful – the way art should be.

As an object, Myself: Timed Exposures is well conceived and executed, a successful marriage of form and content. Nice paper, printing, and binding, and an informative, readable text. It’s what in fishing terms we call a keeper.

Hans Hickerson, Editor of the PhotoBook Journal, is a photographer and photobook artist from Portland, Oregon.

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Mike Mandel – Myself: Timed Exposures

Photographer: Mike Mandel (Born 1950, lives in Massachussets)

Language: English

Text: Mike Mandel

Design: Chantal Zakari

Printing: Ofset Yapimevi, Istambul

Printed softcover with French flap; Swiss binding; 70 photographs; 76 pages; 8 1/8 x 11 5/8 inches; ISBN 978-0-918290-19-9

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Articles and photographs published in the PhotoBook Journal may not be reproduced without the permission of the PhotoBook Journal staff and the photographer(s). All images, texts, and designs are under copyright by the authors and publishers.